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What Is The Story Behind The Clown Putting On Makeup? The Viral Meme Template Explained
The "putting on clown makeup," commonly called the "clown makeup" tutorial, is a trendy macro-image template based on a YouTube tutorial video of someone putting on clown makeup. The format gained lots of popularity on Twitter in 2019, and spread to other social media in the following months, usually used to mock or show how someone continues to progressively make a fool of themselves by making increasingly dumb arguments or decisions.
But what is this clown makeup tutorial? And how did it become the go-to meme template to show how stupid people can be online? Here's everything you need to know.
What Is The Origin Of The Clown?
The original template comes from a YouTube video published on October 28th, 2015. YouTuber SmiffysFancyDress posted a video titled "Male Clown Make-up Tutorial" which involves a detailed tutorial on how to apply clown makeup (shown below). The video has since garnered 163,000 views since the time of its publication.
On May 21st, 2019, Facebook user Trash Bin posted the very first iteration of the meme template, which featured various screen grabs from the video with captions describing various levels of communist nations. The original post received more than 4900 shares and 1,000 reactions in under two years (shown below).
How Did The Meme Spread Online?
On June 13th, the earliest viral instance of the meme was posted on Twitter by user @m6sloth, which illustrated someone defending GameFreak's decision not to include a full roster of Pokémon in Pokémon Sword and Shield (shown below). The meme would gain even further traction as it was commonly used to mock or make fun of people who make terrible arguments/decisions.
How Was The Clown Makeup Tutorial Used In Memes?
The template would be remixed and used numerous times in the following months, with lots of different examples of its usage online, each providing a different take on someone's rather questionable opinions. One meme illustrates someone who has progressively terrible views on corporate capitalism, and doing everything in his power to please his boss (shown below, left).
Another meme discusses the Minecraft Bees update controversy, and how incredibly lazy Mojang is when it comes to releasing updates to the game (shown below, right).
For the full history of the putting on clown makeup meme, check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.
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