Scout Face

About

Scout Face, also known as “Derp Scout,” is a screenshot from a Garry’s Mod video featuring the Team Fortress 2 character Scout. On YouTube, photoshopped variations of Scout’s face have been notably used as profile avatars, particularly when chain replying in the comments section of a video page.

Origin

YouTuber RubberFruit uploaded a video titled “Heavy and Scout think they are birds” on June 4th, 2010, in which the Team Fortress 2 character Heavy flies through the air and regurgitates sandwiches into a Scout’s mouth (shown below). Within three years, the video accumulated over 1.8 million views and 8,900 comments. However, chain commenting with YouTube profile avatar pictures didn’t begin until sometime in July 2011 when YouTube launched a new feature that allows user profile pictures to be displayed in the comment section.

YouTube launched a new feature that allowed user profile pictures to be displayed in the comment section sometime in July of 2011.^[1]

Spread

On August 1st, a screenshot of the Scout’s face was uploaded to DeviantArt^[4] by user Jonix04 (shown below), which received more than 2,100 views and 980 downloads within the next two years.

On September 28th, 2012, YouTuber MegaGFilms uploaded a video titled “My Brand!”, in which YouTuber AingelProject667 commented “SCOUT IS DEAD,” prompting other YouTubers to replace their profile avatars with variations of Scout’s face (shown below) and check-in via comments. In turn, comments accompanied by Scout’s face were showered with positive ratings, with many of them receiving anywhere from 100 to several hundred up votes. Similar “Scout’s face” threads began appearing in other Garry’s Mod and Source Filmmaker YouTube videos, including “My Beans” by MegaGFilms^[2] and “Heavy’s Pizza Song”^[3] by RubberFruit.

Reactions

Since this comment trend has started, many other users of various websites usually get quite annoyed of these. Some people respond to these comments using quite negative ways. Many of these hater comments are usually down pored with down votes. Even the original creators of these videos can flag the comments as spam.
Others tend to use Team fortress 2 characters to respond, such as the Engineer.
Some are open to these comments, including Youtuber RrikooProductions, the creator of the “Scout Comment Simulator” videos.