00:00No way he just put in a Naruto reference in there.
00:03The Naruto fandom is one of the biggest anime fandoms online,
00:06but that doesn't necessarily mean there's solidarity among them.
00:09One such fan has turned into a meme by hyping a Naruto reference made by a rapper.
00:13But why exactly do creators think he's cringe for it?
00:16On March 12th, 2025, TikToker Morzart11 reposted a clip from a video by YouTuber Anthony Ray.
00:22The original video is no longer available, deleted by Anthony Ray according to Morzart.
00:26Anthony Ray, or AR, is a YouTuber who mostly reacts to rap music on his channel.
00:31The clip features Anthony reacting to the song Down on the Beat by Ren,
00:35which was shared to YouTube by the rapper in August of 2023.
00:38After hearing this lyric,
00:41AR pauses the track and goes on a bit of a rant in appreciation of the reference.
00:45No way he just put in a Naruto reference in there.
00:49People seem to especially latch on to the way that AR says Naruto,
00:52as well as other names from the anime.
00:54My anime fans are going, man, I love this reference.
00:57Sasuke! Naruto!
01:00Sharingan. Izanagi Amatrasu.
01:03For many, the American YouTuber saying the names with a Japanese accent painted him as a weeaboo
01:08and therefore made the clip cringe.
01:10A weeaboo, or weeb, is a slang term for a person, generally of non-Asian descent,
01:14who prefers Japan and all things Japanese over their indigenous culture.
01:18The Morzart clip displaying this moment received around 1.4 million views in the next three weeks,
01:23and the sound from the video started to spread among other memers on TikTok.
01:26Some started sharing Jug Talk videos with it,
01:29a new genre of memes characterized by walls of text and squished background videos.
01:33For example, on March 23rd,
01:35TikToker HookedProd used the sound for a Jug Talk video with an NBA background.
01:39A rough version of AR's quote was written in text overlay.
01:42The post garnered over 1.2 million views in under two weeks.
01:45The sound and clip started to evolve into other forms of brain rot memes,
01:49with users posting all kinds of meme edits to it,
01:52using lightning eyes, explosions, and other lobotomy core and brain rot elements.
01:56which→
01:58description are the most
02:18possible emotions.
Comments