In some cases, the comment comes from an already-established bigot, generally an unabashed one. They might well be an Innocent Bigot who sincerely has no idea that their beliefs are objectively invalid.

It's often a good and memorable way for an audience to discover a character's belief in races, but more importantly, it showcases the speaker as being blunt, perhaps to the point of tactless, but well-meaning. The audience blinks, even if no-one on the show does. On April 9th, 2022, Twitter user posted a White Man Has Been Here meme about K-On! fans that gained over 560 retweets and 16,800 likes in roughly two months.A character makes a maybe-bigoted, maybe-innocuous remark to the Token Minority, often in the form of a backhanded compliment. On October 17th, 2020, Redditor arghmelegs posted an Evil X Be Like meme about K-On! fans that gained over 2,200 upvotes (shown below, right).īy April 2022, the fandom generalization format spread to Twitter through frequent reposts. On August 31st, an unknown Redditor posted a screenshot of the October 2020 /a/ post to the subreddit. For example, on August 6th, Redditor Cornual_of_boats1492 posted a GIF Caption meme that gained over 1,400 upvotes in 10 months (shown below, left). Starting in early August 2021, fandom generalization memes about K-On! achieved notable virality in the /r/okbuddybaka subreddit. The post gained over 5,500 upvotes in the subreddit. On August 5th, Redditor leaderofthebunch_ posted a screenshot of a Twitter user with a Haruhi Suzumiya profile picture acting anti-semitic, titling the post, 'Least Antisemitic K-On fan' (shown below, right). The post gained over 5,700 upvotes in the /r/okbuddybaka subreddit in 10 months.

On August 1st, 2021, Redditor Rocketeer posted a collection of three racist tweets made by users with anime profile pictures, including a George Floyd meme about the anime and a Wojak Comic featuring the K-On! character Yuri Hirosava (shown below, left and center). The trope did not achieve widespread public recognition until early August 2021. On December 26th, 2020, iFunny user MugiMilitant made the earliest found fandom generalization meme about K-On! fanbase being racist, a Don't Mess With Fans meme that gained over 220 smiles in two years (shown below). On February 12th, 2020, an anonymous 4chan user made a post on the /a/ board in which he wrote that K-On! was the trigger point for him turning fascist (post shown below). On June 16th, 2016, an unknown Redditor shared a fan theory that stated that K-On! is set in a world where the Axis won World War II. Starting in 2017, a photoshopped K-On! frame in which the characters salute Adolf Hitler has been widely circulated (shown below, right). In early 2016 a photoshopped image of K-On! characters standing next to Adolf Hitler went viral, with the earliest found repost made by iFunny user KidSquid_Marie on January 3rd that year (shown below, center). The image (shown below, left) received over 12,000 views in 12 years and was widely used on imageboards through the 2010s. On October 28th, 2010, DeviantArt user prikkSG1 posted the earliest found Nazi-themed K-On! fanart, an image of the character Azusa Nakano given a Nazi armband and superimposed over a Nazi flag.

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