About

Zenzi was a short-lived prank attempted by members of 4chan in February of 2017 meant to discredit and take down YouTube meme-explainer channel Behind The Meme.

Origin

On February 19th, 2017, an anonymous 4chan user took to /r9k/ to complain about popular YouTube channel "Behind the Meme," and ask how 4chan could take it down. In response, another user suggested that in every video, 4chan commenters demand he cover "Zenzi," a meme that doesn't exist, and downvote every video in which he doesn't cover Zenzi, which they thought would result in Behind The Meme getting frustrated and quitting (screenshot shown below). It appears the original thread has been deleted, though a similar thread has been archived.^[1]

Spread

4chan members in on the joke quickly got to work trying to make "Zenzi" appear legitimate. Several image macros and videos referencing "Zenzi" were created and a subreddit^[2] devoted to treating "Zenzi" like a real thing was created. On Urban Dictionary^[3] user DrSalsa posted a definition saying Zenzi was an old meme that was inaccessible to western nations. This definition was also posted to KnowYourMeme.com, though it was deadpooled (shown below).

Behind The Meme response

Behind The Meme quickly discovered what was going on and thwarted the attempted 4chan raid by creating an explainer video for Zenzi the same day as the raid. The video turned into less of an explainer and more of an extended riff on the elitism of some meme communities. Behind The Meme's quick and accurate response to Zenzi resulted in the Zenzi raid being deemed a failure.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References