Um, Light, That's Not How It Works

About

Um, Light, That's Not How It Works, also known as Racist Light Yagami, refers to a series of memes parodying a scene in the Death Note anime series in which the character Light Yagami writes down names of criminals, sentencing them to death. The format imagines Light to be racist or hateful towards certain groups and attempting to kill off entire country populations by writing them down in the notebook and Ryuk trying to tell him that the Death Note doesn't work this way.

Origin

On October 4th, 2006, episode one "Rebirth" of the anime series Death Note premiered in Japan.^[1] In one scene of the episode, Light Yagami writes down the names of criminals in the Death Note, sentencing them to death by heart attack (scene shown below).

On May 18th, 2023, X^[2] / Twitter user @einsatzgroypen posted images of Light Yagami writing in the book and Shinigami Ryuk captioned with a humorous dialogue about Light, apparently racist, attempting to write down names of entire countries in the book to kill off their entire population, and Ryuk trying to tell him that this is not how the book works (original post no longer available, repost shown below).

Spread

In May and June 2023, the post saw viral spread through reposts. For example, on June 7th, 2023, iFunny^[3] user CaptainGadget posted a screenshot of a repost by user HakkiTheDeaf together with several comments building upon the joke. The post (shown below) received over 180 smiles in eight months.

The format saw moderate spread through 2023, primarily on X / Twitter. For example, on August 6th, 2023, X^[4] user @IslandGoSAMe posted a meme that received over 20 reposts and 290 likes in six months (shown below, left). On January 29th, 2024, X^[5] user @IronicallyinEur posted a version that garnered over 70 reposts and 1,100 likes in three weeks (shown below, right).

The format experienced a surge in popularity in late January and early February 2024.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References