Carl the Cuck and AIDS Skrillex

About

Carl the Cuck and AIDS Skrillex are nicknames given to two unidentified young men featured in a viral video depicting a clash between supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and anti-Trump demonstrators. After clips of the two protesters began circulating on 4chan’s /pol/ (politics) board and Reddit in mid-March 2016, the two were mocked by many for their argument tactics, including the invocation of Godwin’s Law and discounting a Trump supporter’s arguments for being a “White male.”

Origin

On March 11th, 2016, The Alex Jones Channel YouTube channel posted a video titled “Anti-Trump Protesters Go Berserk!”, featuring a heated argument between Trump supporters and anti-Trump activists taking place outside of a Trump rally in St. Louis, Missouri (shown below).

Spread

On March 12th, YouTuber chickenfingers991 posted an edited version of the video, focusing on clips of the two men interacting with the Trump supporter (shown below).

On March 16th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a thread to /pol/,^[2] identifying the Trump supporter in the video as YouTuber Owen Shroyer.^[1] The same day, Redditor SherlockDoto submitted a video of one of the men proclaiming “You fucking white male” to the Trump supporter to /r/videos^[4] (shown below, left). Over the next day, the video received upwards of 11,900 votes (67% upvoted) and 6,900 comments. Meanwhile, a clip of the other demonstrator saying “are you kidding me?” when asked to explain why Trump is similar to Adolf Hitler was upvoted to the top comment in the post (shown below, right).

On March 17th, Redditor turtledan87 uploaded a Just Girly Things-style image macro titled “#JustCarlThings” with the caption “Asking your wife’s boyfriend to vote for Sanders” (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post gained over 5,000 votes (65% upvoted) on the /r/The_Donald^[3] subreddit.

Also on March 17th, a post asking about the meme was submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[6] In the coming days, several 4chan^[5] threads were created featuring images mocking the two anti-Trump demonstrators nicknamed “Carl the Cuck” and “AIDS Skrillex” (shown below).