Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Matt Stapleton
Dr. Smith
English 8530
15 April 2019
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
other factors.
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
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
of players using Ugandan Knuckles character models followed users and told them they
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.
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
even rose to the extent where users began to fetishize Ebola as something positive, as
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
actuality, it was more the fault of the “malicious actors” previously mentioned than of the
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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@sonic_the_hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog). “Let us show you the way… to make the
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Index