"How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?"

About

“How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?” is a reaction image commonly used to respond to users pretending to be part of a community that they are clearly unfamiliar with. The image features the actor Steve Buscemi dressed youthfully and holding a skateboard, and is usually subtitled with the tag line. The image is often photoshopped to adapt to a particular subculture, and the phrase is often used in conversation without the image.

Origin

On February 16th, 2012, the 30 Rock episode “The Tuxedo Begins” (season six, episode 8). In the show, actor Steve Buscemi plays Lenny Wosniak, a private detective hired as a strike buster.^[1]

In a scene where Wosniak is describing his prior investigations, he flashes back to a scene where he believes he successfully masqueraded as a high school student, parodying the TV show 21 Jump Street.^[12] Buscemi, a 55-year-old at the time the episode aired, approaches a group of high school teens dress as a “one of them.” However, his grizzled appearance in contrast with his silly approximation of high school attire, which includes a backwards hat, a skateboard worn over his shoulder and a t-shirt that reads “Music Band” in the style of the classic AC/DC logo, is indicative of his poor and obvious disguise. As he approaches, he says, “How do you do, fellow teens?” The catchphrase has since come to represent all egregious attempts at appealing to subcultures.

Spread

A subtitled screen capture first began to appear online in spring of 2012, just as 30 Rock was about to air its last episode, because the moment was featured on many viewer’s lists of best jokes from the show.^[2] From there, it spread as a reaction image.

On October 11th, 2012, We Know Memes posted the image, where it has since been shared more than 22,000 times.[]

The phrase is in frequent use on 4chan, where, for example it has 57 uses on the /v/, or video games, board.^[4] The gif is more popular on Tumblr, and there are four separate blogs titled “How do you do, fellow kids.”^[5] Several versions of the gif and image have more than 100,000 views on Imgur.^[6]

On several web sites, including RedBubble and Skreened, the t-shirt Buscemi wears in the scene is available for sale.^[7]

On August 2nd, 2014, Redditors three_am, dillonfbecker and Urplescurple^[8] launched the subreddit /r/FellowKids. The subreddit is used to share examples of people or corporations trying to “be cool” and “blend in” with youth culture, often expressed through overuse of internet slang or emoji (examples below).^[3] Within three years, the subreddit has garnered more than 194,000 subscribers.

On May 26th, 2016, Redditor bosoxdanc^[10] posted a Bagel Bites-sponsored Facebook post to /r/FellowKids featuring an elderly man dressed as Steve Buscemi from the 30 Rock episode (shown below). The post, which read “God, this is really meta… and I like it,” received more than 27,000 points (90% upvoted) and 200 comments. On Imgur, the post received more than 6,000 points and 1.6 million views.

One year later, on June 13th, 2017, the Verge^[11] published an article on the meme, asserting that it had become the very thing it originally mocked, a ploy for people posturing in subcultures. Writer Kaitlyn Tiffany says:

“According to my life experience, and to Google’s data, ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ is more popular now than it was when the show it referenced was still a Thursday night staple for a national television audience that had so far seen only two Netflix original series and had never heard the phrase ‘peak TV.’ It is out of touch, out of date, and totally out of place in its current context. A meme of a meme, a monster that will kill me.