interviews
'How Do I Get Him Off' Meme Creator Reveals Why 'Mr. Washee Washee' Was Stuck To His FL Studio Project And How He Finally Removed Him
They say there's a reason for everything … and the reason why Mr. Washee Washee, the Asian laundromat owner from Family Guy, is stickied to your TikTok timeline is because of a hip-hop producer named Ezra who accidentally cursed his FL Studio project last October.
He frantically asked his Instagram followers, "How do I get him off?" in a now-famous Instagram Story post.
"I genuinely could not get him off," he said on an exclusive call with Know Your Meme this week.
During the conversation, Mr. Washee Washee spread to memes, GIFs and viral videos across social media — characterized by the unassuming, kind of angry-looking, tertiary Quahog resident breaking the fourth wall of apps, video games and even real life. It's a trend that needs little explanation (or a lot of explanation, depending on how old you are).
Ezra, who goes by wdgaaf online, has been cooking beats on SoundCloud for the past six years. For the past four months though, he's become most known for his viral, one-off Instagram Story, expressing his FL Studio plight in the midst of making music.
"I was on FL Studio making a beat and there was a folder I had in one of my drum kits," he recalled. "I thought it was a sound that I was dragging in but it was a photo. I didn’t even know you could drag photos into FL Studio." He was apparently on a call with a bunch of his friends and they thought, "What's the most ridiculous photo I could drag into this."
Ezra admitted that he's a Family Guy connoisseur, with an affinity for the older episodes. He even said he knew who Mr. Washee Washee was, even though he appeared in only one episode. But on that fateful night, all he Googled was, "Family Guy PNG," and the character was one of the first results.
This might be because of a mysterious DeviantArt user who's gone viral for the weirdly high amount of Mr. Washee Washee PNGs they've created. While we might have the answer to Ezra's choice, we might never know what drives the infamous user washeewashee.
Regardless, Ezra's IG Story spread when it was screenshotted and reposted to Twitter / X by his mutual @boolymen. It instantly gained numbers, accruing over 84,000 likes seemingly overnight.
After that, Ezra thought that it would go away but he noticed an uptick in people tagging him on TikTok every time a new mutation of his meme popped up. "It was just becoming a lot of tags," he said. "I was like, this is actually becoming popular."
When trying to explain why the meme resonates with people, Ezra noted, "I feel like a lot of people in this generation are trying to make music and I think them seeing FL Studio … it connected it to them. So, not relatability, because I don’t think there's a lot of people trying to get Mr. Washee Washee off FL Studio, but I guess relatability in connection to the music thing."
That's also how the meme has evolved too. Different subcultures and fandoms are putting Mr. Wahsee Washee into the landscapes of their interests and communities. Mr. Washee Washee, although he's literally covering the meme, is kind of in the background of what's really being communicated.
For instance, Ezra's favorite iteration so far is a Geometry Dash meme in which Mr. Washee Washee is the spike and he shouts his iconic catchphrase whenever he's touched.
@rare_.1303 forever gooned 💔 #mrwasheewashee #familyguy #geometrydash #howdoigethimoff #falloff #idkwhatimdoing ♬ Five nights at don pollos – TheRipReuploader
For the record, Ezra did get Mr. Washee Washee off his project. It took him a while though.
Only after the meme went viral on Twitter, he was able to look at the replies to @boolymen's tweet where someone informed him that the trick is pressing ALT+N. "I don't want him gone anymore. I'm learning to love him," Ezra said at the time.
Even though Mr. Washee Washee got in the way, Ezra did end up finishing that beat. He posted it to his Instagram as the last slide in a carousel post, with the smell of fresh laundry still wafting from it.
"I don’t know where the meme is headed," Ezra said. "I think it will probably dissipate in a month. But I'm hoping it's one of those memes in 2032 that people will quote ironically, like how people are quoting the Jeff Bliss meme now. I hope it gets that treatment."
You can follow Ezra on Instagram at @wdgaaf, on Twitter at @wedntgiveafk and on SoundCloud at ezra @wdgaaf.
