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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 has taken on a more racially biased identity through 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 memetic evolution.

Memetic research has been one of the primary subjects within the field of new media due

to the variety of cultural phenomena that comprises their evolutions within an Internet

community. One of the first approaches taken is to look into the actual infrastructure of a website

to see how the underlying algorithms accomplish the distribution of materials and information on

said side, 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
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under three methods: “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

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 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 the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise: a red

echidna who wears gloves with spikes on his knuckles, hence the derivative 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. The 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 VRChat players downloaded

tidiestflyer’s model to use while sexually and verbally harassing other played in a swarm,

shouting many phrases from the Twitch streamer Forsen that featured a fake Ugandan accent and

clicking their 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 posted in reference to the meme, in particular Sonic the

1
Terministic screens refer to a particular lens used to view an issue, i.e. a specific perspective.
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Hedgehog, without full understanding of its racist connotations before being 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 both 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 the understanding of Ugandan Knuckles can be specifically paired down to the distinct

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

its primary motivation of displaying implicit racism. I have limited the scope of my discussion to

the period where Ugandan Knuckles was the most popular, being that around January of 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 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 provides users in this

participatory remix culture 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 leave 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). They 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 the an extension of research within a digital space towards a “contemporary

composing process” (447). This is applicable to my own 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
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textual 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 search trend

statistics allow for a look into the popularity of a certain phrase that was Googled, 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 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 Ugandan Knuckles meme. Google Search results display

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 atmosphere 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 December 23, 2017 through February 3, 2018 for an even six weeks of

data. These trends display a variety of comparisons between these mentioned keywords

that describe a level of implicit racism within those interested; I believe these trends are

representative of the qualitative factors I described 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 displays such

analytics.

The “Default” Ugandan Knuckles

One of the most prominent images during the rise of the Ugandan Knuckles

meme’s popularity was a poorly edited remix of a screen cap of the original video by

Gregzilla (see Figure 1). On March 6, 2017, said YouTube animator uploaded a video of

a humorously drawn Knuckles singing the 1938 Ink Spots song “I Don’t Want to Set the
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World on Fire,” whose illustration was based on a previous and much less popular video

also by the same creator. A screen cap with of this already parodied Knuckles figure

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

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

watermark by its original creator. 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 of such a piece. I

believe this piece to be the most basic of Ugandan Knuckles images, as it displays the

connection between the two subjects in the most straightforward manner without the need

for context; additionally, it serves as the figurehead for discussions on this memes in a

variety of online forums and news sources due to this clear connection. Although this

meme was present in a variety of contexts, they can be traced to this root image as a

result of the implicit racism that can be explicated and exposed in the following section.

The first, and most obvious, trend to compare with the Ugandan Knuckles image

is the actual phrase “Ugandan Knuckles.” The popularity was small through the

beginning of December, with the highest search interest being on January 10,

subsequently deteriorating in interest over the next month, which represents a spike. This

corresponds directly to the phrase “Knuckles,” displaying an immediate connection

between the character and the meme. Combing the two into “Knuckles Meme” also

displays a similar trend leading up to the January 10 spike, although also adds a level of

association with the inability for onlookers to distinguish Ugandan Knuckles as a specific

region in Africa due to it fully spiking a day later, as well as additional bursts in search

interest not seen by “Ugandan Knuckles.” Unknowing players also appeared to associate
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“Red Sonic” with the Knuckles meme, as it displays a strikingly similar trend to the other

keywords, and allows for the explanation of association with Sonic the Hedgehog due to

the visual similarities between the characters.

The Explicit and Implicit Racism of an Image

The racial implication is very explicit in the design of the additions; both the spear

and headband are a grotesque pervasion of the Americanized ideals of what an African

would be like, particularly those in poor and less industrialized regions such as Uganda.

“Spear chuckers” serves as a derogatory term amongst racist individuals in the United

States due to this misconception of severely inferior technology in such parts of the

world, and can be classified under Jesse Daniels’s description of white supremacist

propaganda through editing in online environments (704). The original intention of this

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

Sonic the Hedgehog character, but belies implicit 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 perpetuate these ideals

through an unsuspecting population of Internet users. While having such explicit racial

overtones to a partial observer, it also allows for a satisfaction of “the longing and

desperation to avoid having to think about…racial differences” with regards to 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
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through Ugandan Knuckles, while also accosting other 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 perpetuation. There are specific and key examples of problematic

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

One such example 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, being Ugandan Knuckles, is both African and stupid. It also

allows for the discrimination of several users from 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 models

are still not censored which allows for continued harassment and propagation of such a

meme due to a lack of real retribution (Shifman 342). This anonymity can be seen in the

example of Masked Luchador’s video, where despite the later claim of these actions on

his YouTube channel by posting the video, he just becomes another actor in a Ugandan

Knuckles costume acting out racist tones and beliefs towards other users without fear of

recognition. One of the continued forms of white superiority comes from the players

talking in this Ugandan accent and clicking, which many used to mask broken English as

a statement of the inability of this population to understand cultural norms. These

Knuckles avatars would also follow users with female avatars, calling them “queens” and
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sniffing them with very overt expression of the barbaric nature of the Ugandan people

they are portraying. An additional phrase associated with each of these trends as well as

with the Knuckles figure was “Sho U De Wey,” wherein users in both text forums and in

VRChat would lead others into compromising positions under the guise of being helpful;

they would proceed to have 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 truly such

thoughts can also be understood from Google trends. “Spear chucker” 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, also displays its only interest surrounding the January

10 spike. Finally, the racist phrase “de wey,” which encompasses many of the

miscellaneous spellings of the key phrase, has a sustained and larger search interest

through the month than the other racist descriptions while still adhering to the general

trend of the other searches.

The expectation for racist intent through the Ugandan Knuckles plays a key role

in the extensive behavior that resulted in 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 creators can use to harness

a meme to gain popularity within their social sphere through brute force advertising; by

Stahlsby and Symor becoming associated with the meme early in its inception while it
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was less problematically racist, they were able to garner widespread discussion as the

meme began to influx 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 and White Supremacy

Tying the bias of Ugandans to Knuckles changed during the course of the meme’s

lifespan, and at some point the introduction of “Ebola” as a concept entered both as a new

way of discriminatory harassment, but also as a counter-cultural 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 models, and subsequently on players that attempted to bypass this restriction. In

many cases, the administrators would provide their own level of racism to the context of

the meme by the implication that, by association with Ugandan tropes, these players were

Ebola-carriers and thus needed to be banned for the safety of other players. 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 vague reference to their ability as Africans to sense such a

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 as a result of needing all factors to become

“advantageous to itself,” as the continued survival of it needed to permeate beyond the


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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 of those 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-based 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,” and 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.

Distinguishing real-life trends apart from the meme provides very similar results,

with “Uganda” reflecting a very similar graph to “Knuckles Meme,” which displays 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 the largest spike being in the same time period as “Knuckles

Meme” and “Uganda” on January 12. Similarly, the lack of association that people took

with the meme taking the Ugandan moniker can be seen in the search trend for “Where is

Uganda,” where interested individuals who wanted to dig deeper into the meme not

searching it as often until after the spike around January 10-12. 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;” it shares a striking similarity to “Knuckles meme,” but has its largest

spikes later due to the association with this African disease being applied to the image

near the end of the lifespan of the meme.


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I believe this continued association with the generic understanding of Africa

within the meme’s spread speaks to the white supremacy often featured 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 in the presentation of these African tropes through

shoddy editing work. The sheer blandness of the image allows for the later

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

due to the lack of explicit wording describing 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

potential discrimination against 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 real life. Additionally, Google trends will be viewed as a way to

describe the actual reactions across the Internet to the sensation.

Immediate Responses and Company Ignorance


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

among companies who failed to recognize the associated racism with the image of

Knuckles. RAZER, a gaming keyboard manufacturer, shared an image where a user had

edited a large group of Ugandan Knuckles edited to have a rainbow gradient reflecting

the LED-lighting capacity advertised heavily by RAZER; one of the Knuckles near the

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

pinwheel (Figure 3). Jarred Prier discusses this as a method of rhetoric wherein

“malicious actors” are able to control the sway 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 can be performed 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 makes the necessity 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. Being a Sonic series property, SEGA and its

associated Sonic the Hedgehog properties came under scrutiny for the allowance of such

a meme to permeate into the cultural sphere. Reported on by news organizations such as
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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 the property, implying

the potential for racism from the company. 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 redistributing 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 very obvious trends between the

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

These Google trends allow for the wrote discussion of specific phrases utilizing Google’s

search algorithms, providing 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 time frame of January 10-12 is displayed 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 the influx of

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

stemming from.

Additionally, it is apparent that Ugandan Knuckles entails multiple racist

understandings by Americans in particular of the African continent and its citizens. The
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mutual understanding of that specific accent applied to the Knuckles image was that of an

African country; it is almost random that Ugandan was chosen, as many people who

viewed the meme still attributed it to a generic African country when looking into search

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

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

on specifically by the spread of this meme.

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

implicit racism within memes becoming an additional factor when looking into their

spread within Internet communities. When something is perceived as racist, it can

actually incurs 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

ideals presented 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

display 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. One additional meme

that can be analyzed alongside Ugandan Knuckles is Pepe the Frog, which allowed for

the concept of white supremacy to take center stage during the 2016 presidential election

due to the coverage by various news sources on how the meme actually influenced the

implicit biases of individuals in the 4chan community.


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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 applied to many different members in the history of

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

online communities lead to many different individuals taking control over the perception

of this specific image in an environment where the original creators become disassociated

with such a piece, and lose both the advertising potential as well as gaining the risk of

perceived biases applied by other individuals onto their work. 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 the know-

how and potential control 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 can display 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

of that knowledge to a random image, which could measure the threads that are created
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within the user experience of a subject and what their preconceived biases can control

about a visual piece.


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Masked Luchador. “UGANDAN KNUCKLES BECOMES MCDONALDS

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/02/09/ugandan-knuckles-do-

you-know-de-wey-meme-explained/307575002/.

Nagle, Angela. “The New Man of 4chan.” The Baffler, no. 30, 2016, pp. 64–76.

Prier, Jarred. “Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare.” Strategic Studies

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.

Shifman, Limor. “The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres.” Journal of Visual Culture,
edited by Laine Nooney and Laura Portwood-Stacer, vol. 13, no. 3, Dec. 2014, pp. 340–
358. Crossref, doi:10.1177/1470412914546577.
Stapleton 21

@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.

https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/951519837351591936?.

Stahlsby. “YOU DO NOT KNOW THE WAY.” YouTube, 22 December 2017.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxjofn2bYE8. Accessed 12 March 2019.
Syrmor. “DO YOU KNOW THE WAY | VRchat.” YouTube. 1 January 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eix7fLsS058. Accessed 12 March 2019.
tidiestflyer. “The Knuckles meme as a 3D model.” DeviantArt. September 2017.
https://www.deviantart.com/tidiestflyer/art/The-Knuckles-meme-as-a-3d-model-
704695335. Accessed 13 March 2019.
TooManySkids. “YOU SMELL OF EBOLA | Uganda Knuckles.” YouTube. 10 January 2018.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FER9yGwBwn4. Accessed 22 April 2019.

“Ugandan Knuckles Holding a Spear.” Know Your Meme, Cheezburger Network, Jan

2018, i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/025/067/ugandanknuck.jpg.
Stapleton 22

Index

Figure 1: The “Default” Ugandan Knuckles

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