Meme of the Month? Meme of the Year? Ladies and Gentlemen, Meet Ugandan Knuckles.
Memes. They are everywhere. They have influenced many like me heavily. They are the embodiment of witty entertainment that surpasses many others due to their: 1.) availability, 2.) cult-like following, 3.) and simplicity.
Every now and then, a meme is born that has the potential to take over. Take for example the freestyle by one of Michael Dapaah’s characters, Roadman Shaq/ Big Shaq, for a “Fire in the Booth” session on the BBC Radio that parodied U.K. gangster stereotypes, which quickly grew into what we now know as the song Man’s Not Hot. This song then gave birth to three great memes: the “man’s not hot” retort that has resulted into hundreds of pictures like these…
The hilarious exaggeratedly lengthy gunshot dubs in his rap...
And basically Big Shaq himself.
Now let’s talk about something new.
Ugandan Knuckles is a new meme that is slowly growing traction as it continues to influence more and more people, particularly in VRChat, a free game that seeks to create a community and socialize by chatting, talking to each other in different 3d environments. I discovered Ugandan Knuckles while I was browsing YouTube. And somewhere there in my Recommendations tab I found a cute litte native Knuckles video, titled “Ugandan Knuckles Tribe.”
This hilarious video documents a group, or more appropriately, a made up tribe of tiny, roughly made models of the actual Knuckles from the Sonic the Hedgehog game franchise…
… that did nothing but troll other users by constantly making clicking noises, sniffing those who used loli avatars, spitting on other players whom they did not like, asking over and over, “Do you know de wae?,” to bystanders, and, if unwilling, by following around their self-proclaimed “Queen,” all while doing crude impersonations of Ugandans. They basically just had fun pretending as Ugandan Knuckles while they continue to entertain others in their numerous videos in YouTube. The video made me laugh so much, I just had to know how the Ugandan Knuckles fad originated.
As I conducted my research, I found out that Ugandan Knuckles didn’t start out as “Ugandan Knuckles”, but as a 1-second interlude animation by a YouTuber named Gregzilla, in one of his Kinda Reviews videos. He liked his funny work and later on uploaded a video last March 6, 2017, of the same Knuckles lip syncing to part of The Ink Spots’s song, “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire,” which subsequently gave rise to the Knuckles Sings remix series.
Let’s skip to September 15th of the same year when DeviantArtist tidiestflyer uploaded 3D model based on Gregzilla’s work.
The same 3D model then resurfaced as a VRChat avatar when YouTuber named Stahlsby posted the first Ugandan Knuckles video last December 22, 2017, titled “ YOU DO NOT KNOW THE WAY.”
Garnering more than 2 million views on YouTube and as more videos are created about the Ugandan Knuckles tribes, the echidna has officially become an internet meme sensation.
The story of Ugandan Knuckles is still ongoing and lives strongly throughout the internet. And as the Ugandan Knuckles army continue to raid places in VRChat, let me leave you with this, “You do not no de wae. De Deval has not gifted you with Ebola. I am sorry my Brudda. Only de queen can save you now.”
Memes will live on long and strong. Ugandan Knuckles, a single strand of the continuous weave of meme culture, proves just that.
