Draft:Hood irony
Hood irony refers to a widespread genre of ironic internet memes intended to satirize Black American culture (the "hood") and its humorous aspects, ultimately turning the original signifiers of "hood" content into the avant-garde, the surreal, or even the completely meaningless. edit for posterit
History[edit]
The etymology of the term "hood irony" is uncertain: the term "hood" comes from a common slang term for Black American ghettos, while the "irony" refers to how the humorous nature of the content is reliant on how nonsensical it appears and how different it is from the original content. "Hood irony" content normally spins content produced by accounts that appeal to a "hood" audience.
Early history (2013-2020)[edit]
Hood irony can find its very earliest roots in humor associated with Black Twitter, as well as the short-form video content platform Vine and popular content creators from the "hood" who uploaded humorous videos on it. In 2013, Canadian internet personality and actor King Bach uploaded a popular video in which he asks a friend for ice cream, after which the friend posits that Bach can only have "a spoonful", after which Bach reveals a comically large spoon, and opens the refrigerator. This video experienced a surge in popularity, along with Bach's surge in popularity, on the Vine platform.
Also Vine, prolific White creators such as "Osama Bin Turnt" (currently operating the popular ironic humor account @killmefam on X) began satirizing the "hood comedy" Vines from Black male creators. Other popular Vine users dabbled in this form of content. Among these videos are the earliest roots of the surrealist hood irony popular in 2023, containing edited-in abstract noises and deliberately subpar video editing.
On Instagram, many of the earliest accounts dedicated to this nature of content surfaced by popular uploads parodying content made by "hood comedy" pages such as WorldStarHipHop. The dramatic and theatrical nature of WorldStarHipHop, a video aggregator website described by its founder as the "CNN of the ghetto", made it a popular and easy target for satirization.
Resurgence (2020-2021)[edit]
The aforementioned Bach video resurged in popularity in the earliest months of 2020, in which users on online platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and TikTok began to heavily edit its content and satirize the phrase "comically large spoon". Examples include a video uploaded by @juicybignutjr in which the video's joke is overexplained to a comical extent, causing the humor of the video to be rooted in how ridiculous the unnecessary commentary is. Other examples of this image macro included Bach's photo being edited to holding a normal-sized spoon, with the caption "What if it was all nothing but a dream?" The concept of "hood irony" began to informally adopt its name online.