Stapleton 1

Matt Stapleton

Dr. Smith

English 8530

15 April 2019

Ugandan Knuckles: Racist Remix of a Neutral Image

Internet memes have been a vessel for both implicit and explicit racism since their

inception in the early 1990’s. With one of the first widely known image macros “All Your Base

Are Belong To Us” being spread as a thinly veiled example of discriminatory language barriers

in video game production, more recent memes such as Pepe the Frog have taken on new meaning

as alt-right and racist icons within the larger Internet community. Ugandan Knuckles stands as an

example of a meme that acquired a more racially biased identity over its time as a cultural icon,

and is particularly interesting considering the various mediums through which this

discriminatory behavior emerged, taking place within virtual reality, social media and image

forums. As a result, Ugandan Knuckles displays implicit racism within memes through this

unique context, as well as the varied forms that it appeared in during its evolution.

Memetic research has been a primary subject within the field of new media given the

variety of cultural phenomena that comprise the evolution of memes within an Internet

community. A common first approach is to look into the actual infrastructure of a website to see

how its underlying algorithms accomplish the distribution of materials and information, with

particular interest in how these formulas can actually manipulate discussions within communities

or propagate issues (Daniels 696). Additional considerations can be made towards the actual

categorization of how something goes viral, which Jarred Prior describes under three methods:
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“trend distribution, trend hijacking, and trend creation” (54), which respectively refer to where

the meme permeates within online communities, how others take control of these trends, and the

very formation of the viral object (54). With these bases as a foundation, new media rhetoricians

can then select a cultural issue to use as a terministic screen1, enabling them to study the effects

of how these communities react to problematic viral phenomena. However, the crossover

between memetic studies and racial perspectives is often lacking due to the typical motivation of

the former to view the specific website and social structure rather than the effects that arise from

the virality of a meme.

Ugandan Knuckles is based on a character from SEGA’s Sonic the Hedgehog franchise;

he is a red echidna that wears gloves with spikes on his knuckles, hence the name “Knuckles.”

Within that context, Knuckles has no relevance to any racist discourse, as the character is simply

an anthropomorphic animal and side protagonist in this game series. On the content-sharing site

DeviantArt, user tidiestflyer created and released a 3D model based on Ugandan Knuckles in

September 2017, which many players downloaded to use as a model in the game VRChat, a

casual virtual reality game that emphasizes player interactions. Subsequently, the variety

YouTuber Stahlsby made a video in December 2017 in which he and a group of other

VRChatters downloaded tidiestflyer’s model to use while sexually and verbally harassing other

players, shouting many phrases initially popularized by Twitch streamer Forsen that featured a

fake Ugandan accent and clicking tongues. This video also went viral, leading to many VRChat

players copying how Stahlsby and another YouTuber Syrmor harassed others in January of 2018.

Ultimately, companies and branding offices started posting in reference to the meme, in

1 Terministic screens refer to a particular lens used to view an issue, i.e. a specific perspective.
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particular Sonic the Hedgehog’s parent company SEGA, without full understanding of its racist

connotations before it was ultimately banned in many communities in late January of 2018.

In the following discussion, I aim to describe and analyze the various factors that led to

the Ugandan Knuckles meme not only appearing in the public sphere, but also becoming such a

radicalized form of implicit and casual racism for so many players of an online game. I believe

that understanding Ugandan Knuckles can be specifically pared down to the distinct image in

which the character is pictured to be holding a spear as seen in Figure 1 and described later, due

to its underlying purpose of displaying racism. I have limited scope of my discussion to the

period where Ugandan Knuckles was the most popular, which was the six-week period starting

December 23, 2017 and ending February 2018. That one-month period has been divided into two

sections of how the meme evolved: the rise of the meme in VRChat, and the subsequent spread

and fallout in various pop culture news sources. I argue that this meme is representative of remix

culture wherein intellectual property can be changed without the explicit purpose of spreading

racist ideals, but ultimately providing users with an avenue to express their implicit bias. With

international companies falling into the trap of discussing Ugandan Knuckles without

understanding the ramifications of entering such a dialogue, I will further look into how Internet

communities propagate such widespread racism without it being truly detectable by even major

corporations with dedicated social media teams. With the understanding that many discussions of

memes across multiple disciplines utilize “memesplaining”2 to communicate broad ideas about a

picture without mature discussion, I will conclude with a discussion on the merits of looking into

2 “Memesplaining” is a recent term in cultural studies that functions as a parallel to “mansplaining” in feminist
theory. Memetic rhetoricians often “memesplain” by posting pictures of memes without much description, or will
devote vast amounts of space within a piece to describe what is already known by the reader, as in the case of
“mansplaining.” Several publications within economics and linguistics have rejected pieces that “memesplain” due
to it being used as a tool to have a piece with some sort of pseudo-statistical connection.
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specific memes rather than specific communities, with the main example being the plethora of

Pepe the Frog literature and image macro discussion that leaves many varieties of memetic

images without citation. Racial issues often present themselves through memes because they can

become a common force to rally behind for both implicitly and explicitly racist individuals,

potentially exploiting such biases in those who are typically not outwardly discriminatory such

as in the case of Ugandan Knuckles; Ryan Milner describes memes as a way to dehumanize a

subject, and in that sense, “racism…is itself memetic, and memetic logics underpin its

prevalence” (92).

With those parameters in mind, scholars within visual rhetoric have discussed similar

methods used to properly model descriptions of viral images within social media. Laurie Gries

points towards new materialism as a potential method to describe such images as a way to

“rethink our underlying beliefs about existence and…our attitudes toward and our relationships

with matter,” due to the incorporeal nature of these online images (5). Online materials still

affect offline behavior and as a result can utilize many of the descriptive methods previously

used within visual rhetoric, as detailed in an earlier piece by Gries wherein the archival nature of

visual culture allows for an extension of research within a digital space towards a “contemporary

composing process” (447). This is applicable to my work through its relationship with archival

work; because trends are the main point of analysis when looking into a meme such as Ugandan

Knuckles that permeated a non-written space such as VRChat, much of that description must be

extrapolated from secondhand accounts. This relates directly to Bruce McComiskey as well, who

discusses the merits of visual rhetoric in describing multimodal images with particular reference

to modern popular culture, and how the utilization of such existing models of discourse that are

used in visual rhetoric are helpful when describing digital objects that are visual with textual
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connotations. He claims this as resulting from digital objects being “[unable] to be described as

ethical or unethical; only their users and the uses to which they are put can be described in this

way” (198). I believe this is directly relevant to discussion that include the actions taken by those

using Ugandan Knuckles as a mask for their actions, which are further defined by Mary Hocks,

being the “audience stance, transparency, and hybridity” that can be transferred into digital

writing environments as a result of the already-present multimodal nature of visual rhetoric, the

modes being both the visual and the written (632). My analysis of this image hinges on what

others discuss in the rhetoric that surrounds the meme, which contributes to the somewhat

ethereal nature of the discussion.

I believe that the proper approach will be to combine parts of these various methods into

a model that can situate quantitative data utilizing qualitative parameters. Google’s data site

Google Trends contains statistics that allow for a look into the popularity of a certain word or

phrase that was used in a search, but represents wholly empirical data without any application in

the sense of rhetorical situations. By utilizing the definitions of virality proposed by Gries and

new materialist theory, specific keyword phrases such as “Ugandan accent” can be analyzed

alongside the images in order to explain the public’s response to the growth of racism within the

evolving Ugandan Knuckles meme. Google Trends results displays actual interest statistics

surrounding the actual community buzz regarding the meme. Various keywords that will be

qualified through discussion within this piece will serve as the qualitative framing for this

quantitative data, allowing for trends in the evolution of the meme to be analyzed and discussed,

as well as providing the appropriate defense for the understanding of racist undertones and

strategies that permeate the growth of the meme in society. In this piece, I aim to discuss the

relationship between the evolution of the Ugandan Knuckles and the perception of racial
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discussion around the meme utilizing strategies that track the virality of the image and

subsequent “fallout” in the social sphere.

Google Trends for Various Keywords

Utilizing the qualitative reasons for the racism behind the Ugandan Knuckles

meme, specific parameters can be placed on the Google search trend data for various

phrases and keywords that relate to the image, and as a result can display the virality and

spread of trends on the Internet. The additional restriction placed is on the time frame,

which is stated as six weeks before February 3, 2018. These trends display a variety of

comparisons among the keywords that describe a level of implicit racism; I believe these

trends are representative of the qualitative factors I describe throughout this piece, and

will be located related to the various sections that detail similar information. Within

Google search interest results, there aren’t specific numbers that are given; rather, they

are charted on a percentage scale compared to the highest amount of searches over the

selected period of time. Due to the nature of this information, this could present potential

bias within the results because of a lack of knowledge of how Google calculates such

analytics.

The “Default” Ugandan Knuckles

One of the most prominent images appearing during the rise in popularity of the

Ugandan Knuckles meme was a poorly edited remix of a screen capture of the original

video by Gregzilla (see Figure 1). On March 6, 2017, this remix artist uploaded a video

of a humorously drawn Knuckles singing the Ink Spots song “I Don’t Want to Set the

World on Fire,” the illustration of which was based on a previous and much less popular
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video also by the same creator. A screen cap of this already parodied Knuckles figure

served as the basis for the anonymous remix, and has an unknown publishing date with

none listed on any major websites, as well as the lack of any sort of identifying

watermark. The most important feature is the lack of any legitimate editing of this image;

instead, a poorly designed spear and headpiece are pasted crudely onto the still, leading to

a very unprofessional yet humorous design. I believe this piece to be the most basic of

Ugandan Knuckles images, as it displays the connection between Knuckles and Uganda

in the most straightforward manner without the need for context; additionally, it serves as

the figurehead for discussions of this meme in a variety of online forums and news

sources due to this clear connection. Although this meme appeared in a variety of

contexts, all can be traced to the root image because of its explicit and implicit racism,

which I will expose and analyze in the following section.

The first, and most obvious, search phrase to compare with the Ugandan Knuckles

image is the actual keywords “Ugandan Knuckles.” Google Trends reveals initial search

activity started December 23 and peaked January 10, with subsequent deterioration to the

end of our period of evaluation, February 3 (see Figure 2). This spike corresponds

directly to search activity using “Knuckles” as the keyword, displaying a correlation

between the search activity of the meme and the character (see Figure 3). Combining

“Knuckles” with “Meme” into “Knuckles Meme” for keywords also displays a similar

trend leading up to the January 10 spike (see Figure 4).

Analyzing Various Racist Connotations of an Image

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The racial meaning is very explicit in the design of the additions (see Figure 1);

both the spear and headband are a grotesque perversion of the classic American racist

personifications of what an African individual is, particularly those in poor and less

industrialized regions such as Uganda. “Spear chuckers” serves as a derogatory term used

by racist individuals in the United States due to the misperception of all of Africa being

saddled with severely inferior technology, and can be classified under Jesse Daniels’s

description of white supremacist propaganda through editing in online environments

(704). Headbands serve a somewhat similar role in displaying Western tropes of African

natives, albeit in a less derogatory manner than with a spear. The original intention of this

image was very obviously a humorous avenue to display the strange juxtaposition of a

Sonic the Hedgehog character with these uninformed African tropes, but belies inherent

racism in the creator by the lack of understanding of harm that this sort of cultural

reinforcement can cause, hence the connection to propaganda techniques in Internet

mediums.

However, there is an additional analysis of this meme that can lead it to being

construed more as a mask for racism, rather than just an attempt to propagate these racist

ideals through an unsuspecting population of Internet users. While having obvious racial

overtones to a fully engaged observer, it nevertheless allows for a satisfaction of “the

longing and desperation to avoid having to think about…racial differences” for the

predominantly casually engaged white culture on the Web (Daniels 710); thus, the

popularity of the image is not hindered with a written statement of racism, rather with a

derived understanding of the inferiority of this ethnicity of people. Users can act out their

racist thoughts regarding the African people through Ugandan Knuckles, while also
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accosting users through the guise of it just being a meme, leading to a totem armor of this

image that protects these racially driven actions from scrutiny.

Masking behavior through this meme allows for an understanding of the racist

intentions behind its propagation. There are specific, key examples of problematic actions

taken by those who used Ugandan Knuckles in VRChat in a variety of contexts. One such

display comes from YouTube, where the creator Masked Luchador posted a video

wherein he pretends to be a McDonalds employee, but uses explicitly racist tones to

express that his character is a Ugandan Knuckles derivative that is both African and

stupid. It also allows discrimination against several users on the server; while some find it

funny, it is obvious that some are bothered by this behavior and leave. The perceived

inferiority of the Ugandan culture becomes even more prominent when individuals are

allowed to use this racist image as a barrier of anonymity in these online environments;

while VRChat allows for a blocking function that prevents audio to come from other

players, the visual models are still not censored which allows for continued harassment

from and propagation of such a meme due to a lack of real consequences (Shifman 342).

This anonymity can be seen in the example of Masked Luchador’s video, where despite

the later claim of these actions as just following a trend for his YouTube channel, he

becomes another actor in a Ugandan Knuckles costume acting out racist tones and beliefs

towards other users without fear of recognition or retribution. An ongoing example of the

refusal of this population of players to follow cultural norms comes from VRChat players

talking in this Ugandan accent and clicking to mask broken English. These Ugandan

Knuckles avatars would also follow users with female avatars, calling them “queens” and

sniffing them with very overt exaggeration of the racist-derived barbaric trope of the
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Ugandan people they are portraying. An additional keyword phrase associated with each

of these Google Trends as well as with the Knuckles figure was “De Wey” (see Figure 5),

which signified users in both text forums and in VRChat who would lead others into

compromising positions under the guise of being helpful; they would proceed to show

up-skirt angles of female avatars, wherein they would express that this was “certainly de

wey.”

Specific racist terms associated with the Knuckles meme that display such

thoughts can also be understood from Google Trends associated with other keywords.

“Spear chucker” (see Figure 6) has a very lopsided graph comprised of large chunks

without data, but spikes during the same period as “Knuckles Meme.” “Ugandan

language,” which refers to the clicking performed by players with the Knuckles avatar,

only displays interest surrounding the January 10 spike (see Figure 7). Finally, the racist

phrase “de wey,” including many of the miscellaneous spellings, has a sustained and

larger search interest through the month than the other racist keywords while still

adhering to the general trend of the other searches (see Figure 5).

The opportunity for racist intent through the Ugandan Knuckles meme plays a key

role in the extensive behavior that created many online communities; in part, this implicit

bias against Ugandans allowed for an image that could be remixed easily within that

paradigm. This initial image is remixed through the various popular YouTube videos that

propelled the discourse about Ugandan Knuckles, such as the one detailed above. The

videos mentioned in this piece view Knuckles as a figure that online content creators can

use to harness a meme to gain popularity within their social sphere through a form of

brute force marketing; by Stahlsby and Symor becoming associated with the meme early
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in its inception while it was less problematically racist, they were able to garner

widespread attention as the meme began to spread through social circles (Prier 56). While

they supported and influenced many of the racist remixes of the Knuckles meme in

popular understanding of how to describe the image to others, they became less

associated with the subsequent discussions in news sources as a result of the meme being

perceived as controlled by other factors.

Memes, Casual Racism, and White Supremacy

Tying the bias against Ugandans to Knuckles changed during the course of the

meme’s lifespan, and at some point the introduction of “Ebola” as a concept entered not

only as a new way to harass or to discriminate, but also as a novel and creative rebuttal

against the meme. People became very annoyed on VRChat with the prevalence of

players with Knuckles avatars to the extent that many servers issued widespread bans on

the use of such icons, and subsequently on the players themselves who attempted to

bypass this restriction. In many cases, the administrators would add their own degree of

racism to the context of the meme by implying that these players were Ebola carriers

because of their association with the racist trope, and thus needed to be banned for the

safety of other players. In another variation, one particular YouTube clip by

TooManySkids detailed a specific instance in which a group of players using Ugandan

Knuckles character models followed users and told them they “smelled of Ebola,” in a

bigoted reference to their ability as Africans to sense such a prevalent disease merely by

smelling it. The meme evolved to absorb this notion, and many Knuckles players

implemented the mention of Ebola into their harassment of other users. In a sense, the

meme adapted to become “advantageous to itself,” as its continued survival needed to

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permeate beyond the original boundaries of simply existing and being spread through

sheer repetition of visuality (Dennett 130). Ebola was previously associated with the

general understanding of Africans due to the poor healthcare systems in many of the their

countries, as well as a perceived lack of understanding of medicine there; the Ugandan

Knuckles meme became even more inherently discriminatory as a result of this

association with an Africa-endemic disease. It even rose to the extent where users began

to fetishize Ebola as something positive, as seen in an image by an anonymous user

where Ebola is personified as an anime character dubbed “Ebola-chan” that is also

pictured holding a basic Ugandan Knuckles. In this sense, the very nature of Ebola is

forgotten by a community due to the numbness contrived by its continual repetition in a

positive manner.

Defining keyword searches on Google Trends independent from the meme

provides very similar results, with “Uganda” (see Figure 8) reflecting a very similar

search pattern to “Knuckles Meme,” revealing a clear correlation between people’s

interest in Uganda with a meme that perpetuates racist ideology about that region.

“Africa” displays only a single clear similarity with these previous trends, with a large

spike occurring close to that of “Knuckles Meme” and “Uganda” on January 12.

Similarly, the lack of initial association that people made with the meme’s association

with Uganda can be seen in the search trend for “Where is Uganda,” where interested

individuals who wanted to dig deeper into the trending meme did not do so until after the

spike on January 12. With a lack of Ebola scares anywhere in the world in this time

period, data can also be gleaned from the search result for “Ebola” (Figure 9); it shares a

striking similarity to “Knuckles meme,” but has its largest spikes later due to the
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association with this African disease being applied to the image near the end of the

lifespan of the meme.

I believe this continued association with the generic understanding of Africa

within the meme’s spread speaks to the racism, and even white supremacy, so prevalent

in many social forums on the Internet, particularly in the spread of the default Ugandan

Knuckles image. The understanding of casual racism as a pervasive threat in Internet

communities is discussed by Angela Nagle to be because of a “protective layer of irony”

(74), which is applicable to the Knuckles image and its masking of these African tropes

through humorously shoddy editing. The sheer blandness of the image allows for the

implementation of later tropes within the meme’s evolution, such as in the case of Ebola.

Additionally, the lack of explicit wording enables the specifics of what makes Ugandan

Knuckles a specific force within the community, which Huntington understands through

the use of discursive dialogue when understanding an image (3). The message of such an

image changes inherently as a result of the surrounding culture and response to the

image, which is apparent in the ability of the Ugandan Knuckles meme to adapt to and

overcome disfavor to its racist ideals and bothersome applications in a cultural sphere.

Fallout of Racist Imagery

This section aims to describe the subsequent reaction to the popularity of the

Ugandan Knuckles meme as it propelled itself from VRChat into other mediums,

including those in gaming and chat rooms. Additionally, Google Trends can again be

viewed as a way to describe the actual reactions across the Internet to the meme’s

sensation.
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Immediate Responses and Company Ignorance

One of the key turning points in this meme’s lifespan came from the propagation

of it by companies on Twitter who failed to recognize the associated racism with the

image of Knuckles. RAZER, a gaming keyboard manufacturer, shared images where a

user had edited a large group of Ugandan Knuckles together to have a rainbow gradient

reflecting the LED-lighting equipment it heavily advertised; one of the Knuckles near the

top was also holding a spear with the company’s logo on the end, which resembled a

pinwheel (see Figure 10). Jarred Prier discusses this as a method of rhetoric wherein

“malicious actors” are able to control the reach of an image (53-55); by presenting a

meme as something wholesome or otherwise neutral and lacking any potential

controversial topics, these motivators can later change the undertones of such a piece so

that the public opinion surrounding it changes without the original object being remixed.

The speed at which this occurs is detailed somewhat by Laurie Gries as a reflection of the

need for new methodologies to reflect such issues (439), and companies specifically

become encumbered by internal bureaucracy that highlights the need for such swift

understanding and reflection on a meme that has been hijacked impossible in many

situations. RAZER subsequently had to issue an apology for their Tweet and their

perceived lack of social understanding surrounding such a racist image (@RAZER); in

actuality, it was more the fault of the “malicious actors” previously mentioned than of the

company’s ineffective methods of analyzing such a piece.

Other companies were able to respond to the association of the image with

themselves in a more positive manner. For example, SEGA and its associated Sonic the

Hedgehog properties came under scrutiny for allowing such a meme to permeate into the
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cultural sphere. Reported on by news organizations such as USA Today and the Daily

Dot (Hathaway; Molina), the generic nature of the image caused a false association with

SEGA due to their ownership of underlying intellectual property, exposing the company

to potential accusations of racism. This is due to an improper transparency of the image’s

sources and a contrived “audience stance” affecting the outcome of the image of

Ugandan Knuckles, as is described by Mary Hocks (632). SEGA proceeded to hijack this

image in their own way by channeling the racist undertones into a more beneficial

situation for themselves and for the image by beginning a fundraiser to send aid to the

actual country of Uganda in a humanitarian effort (@Sonic_the_Hedgehog).

Conclusion

The data presented through this analysis displays obvious trends between the

virality of this meme and the perception of racism within the culture surrounding it.

Google Trends allows for the analysis of specific keyword phrases utilizing Google’s

search algorithms, and provides for a proper defense for the assertions of the various

associations that I have applied to the Knuckles meme. In particular, the spike that nearly

all of the trends underwent during the general time frame around January 12 is revealed

over and over, coinciding with the meme being initially reported on by organizations

such as USA Today and the official Sonic the Hedgehog tweet. These allowed for

discussion around Ugandan Knuckles to permeate into popular culture outside of gaming

circles and players of VRChat specifically, where most of these videos and memes were

initially discussed.
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Additionally, analyzing Ugandan Knuckles reveals multiple forms of racism by

Americans, in particular of African countries and their citizens. The mutual

understanding of the community of the initial trope applied to the Knuckles image was

that it was African; it is almost random that Uganda was chosen, as Google Trends

reveals many people who viewed the meme initially associated it to a generic African

country. It also described the disparity that many perceive between the cultures of the

United States and Uganda, with the gap in technology and difference in language being

highlighted specifically by the spread of this meme.

Given this information, one conclusion that can be inferred is the spread of

implicit racism within memes comprises an additional factor to explore when evaluating

their propagation within Internet communities. When something is perceived as racist, it

can incur much more attention than would have been received otherwise, providing an

artificial boost to the virality of a meme in cases where it wouldn’t have been as popular.

The connections between the Ugandan Knuckles meme and the inherently racist views

held by many Americans, where the meme was most popular, are something I believe

allowed for the spread of the meme as the humor behind it required an understanding of

African language and cultural norms on only the most basic level. Insight into the actual

workings of the African continent, and in particular Uganda, would reveal a disparity

between what is actually occurring there from a technological and language-based level

and the extremely primitive portrayal of it through the actions of participants within the

paradigm of the Ugandan Knuckles image. This process is similar to another meme that

can be analyzed in the form of Pepe the Frog, which allowed for the concept of white

supremacy to take center stage during the 2016 presidential election due to the coverage
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by various news sources on how the meme actually influenced the implicit biases of

individuals in the 4chan community.

I also believe that these results lead to the problematic spread of intellectual

property on the Internet, copyrighted or not. This meme involved many levels of remix;

from the original creator of SEGA to the subsequent redrawing of Knuckles into many

forms, and even the design and spread of the Ugandan Knuckles image due to its racist

remix. It displays one of the major issues of information spread on the Internet, with the

racism of the piece potentially being attributed by many different members in the history

of the Ugandan Knuckles remixes. The amalgamative nature of creative design in many

online communities leads to many different individuals not just contributing, but taking

over perceived responsibility of this specific image in an environment where the original

creators become disassociated with such a piece. Contributors can lose advertising

potential while at the same time gain the risk of perceived attributed biases. Ultimately,

this is due to the anonymity of sources on the Internet being commonplace, which allows

for the trail of an image’s evolution to be hard to follow.

I believe further research is necessary into the description of visual racism on the

Internet due to the implicit racism that can be exploited by manipulators with both the

know-how and potential influence on various social media forums. Methodologically, the

use of search trends should be utilized more often when attempting to understand the

virality of images, as it can provide practical results that reveal the connections between

various subject matters that are applied to rhetorical atmospheres around a piece. The

connection between this and implicit bias could be studied through clinical trials where

tests are given to individuals to measure their knowledge of a subject and the application
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of that knowledge to a random image, which could measure the threads that are created

within the user experience of a subject and what their preconceived biases can control

about a visual piece.

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Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 4., 2017, pp. 50-85.

@Razer (RAZER). “We shared a tweet from a member of our community. It was

highlighted to us that the meme shared may have negative undertones. We

reached out to the user who clarified he was unaware of the connotations and had

no ill-will. Both parties decided it was best to remove the content.” Twitter, 27

Jan. 2018 11:04 p.m. https://twitter.com/Razer/status/957464373294854144.

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edited by Laine Nooney and Laura Portwood-Stacer, vol. 13, no. 3, Dec. 2014, pp. 340–

358. Crossref, doi:10.1177/1470412914546577.

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@sonic_the_hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog). “Let us show you the way… to make the

world a better place. bit.ly/donateforuganda." Twitter, 11 Jan. 2018 1:23 p.m.

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Index

Figure 1: The “Default” Ugandan Knuckles

Figure 2: Google Trends keyword interest for “Ugandan Knuckles”

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Figure 3: Google Trends keyword interest for “Knuckles”

Figure 4: Google Trends keyword interest for “Knuckles Meme”

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Figure 5: Google Trends keyword interest for “De Wey”

Figure 6: Google Trends keyword interest for “spear chucker”

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Figure 7: Google Trends keyword interest for “Ugandan Language”

Figure 8: Google Trends keyword interest for “Uganda”

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Figure 9: Google Trends keyword interest for “Ebola”

Figure 10: Image shared on RAZER’s social media page