Robbie Rotten

About

Robbie Rotten was the primary antagonist in the Nick Jr. children’s television series LazyTown played by the Icelandic film and stage actor Stefán Karl Stefánsson. That character is known for being a lazy man who constantly schemes to undermine the influence of the protagonists Stephanie and Sportacus.

Origin

In August 2004, LazyTown was first broadcast on the Nick Jr. block on the Nickelodeon television channel. In the show, Robbie is depicted as the primary antagonist, attempting to make everyone lazy so that he may have peace and quiet. He is usually able to succeed for a while, using various disguises and inventions to trick the citizens and sabotage Sportacus.

Spread

On May 25th, 2009, a page for Robbie Rotten was created on the LazyTown Wiki.^[8] On October 8th, the Villains Wiki^[9] added a page for the LazyTown character. On February 28th, 2014, the /r/RobbieRotten^[1] subreddit was created for discussions about the character. On October 25th, 2016, the Robbie Rotten Memes Facebook page was created, which received more than 38,100 likes over the next year. On December 1st, CollegeHumor^[10] published a listicle titled “15 Robbie Rotten Memes You’ll Want to Snatch Up With a Net.” On January 1st, 2017, /r/dankmemes moderator lets_get_hyyer revealed that Robbie Rotten had become the subreddit’s “Meme of the Year.” Prior to being archived, the announcement gained over 28,700 points (79% upvoted) and 1,100 comments.

Stefán Stefánsson’s Illness

In late September 2016, Icelandic news media began reporting that actor Stefan Stefánsson was “seriously ill,” and was in a hospital to remove a possibly malignant tumor. On October 10th, 2016, a GoFundMe^[2] page for the actor was created, revealing he had been diagnosed with cancer. That day, two actresses who played Stefanie on LazyTown released a video asking viewers to donate to the GoFundMe page (shown below). Within one month, the page reached $75,382 of its $80,000 goal.^[2]

2017 Cancer Diagnosis

On May 19th, 2017, Stefánsson’s wife published an update on Facebook, revealing that two new metastases were discovered in Stefánsson’s liver, suspecting that gallbladder cancer was the cause.^[4] Within 72 hours, the post garnered more than 10,000 reactions and 1,700 comments. The following day, the Lazy Town Memes reposted the news along with a link to Stefánsson’s GoFundMe page (shown below).^[5] On May 21st, Redditor mariobros612 submitted a screenshot of the post to /r/dankmemes,^[6] where it gathered upwards of 6,500 points (95% upvoted) and 180 comments.

Related Memes

We Are Number One

We Are Number One is a song that Robbie Rotten sings in the episode “Robbie’s Dream Team”. In the episode, Robbie orders three “villains” who have had no prior experience with actual villainous deeds, which sets the tone for the song. As of November 11th, 2016, the official music video has over 2.6 million views (shown below, top). Since Stefan Karl’s cancer diagnosis, this song has seen a major increase in popularity, with popular youtubers such as SiIvaGunner making parodies of it (shown below, bottom).

Following the influx of parody videos and the unexpected success of the GoFundMe page, Stefan Karl launched an event on Facebook. He and the supporting actors in the song performed a live-reenactment of We Are Number One on December 11th, 2016. Within 5 hours, the event gained over 7.5k likes and 184,000 views.^[3]

You Are A Pirate

You Are A Pirate is another song that Robbie sings, this time in the episode “Rottenbeard”. Robbie Rotten disguises himself as a Pirate so that he may trick the town into becoming lazy, attempting to misguide them on their journey to search for an ancient stone that would describe the town’s fate. The song’s official music video has gained over 3.9 million views as of November 14th, 2016.