The “Are Ya Winning, Son?” meme depicts a stick-figure father smoking a pipe while opening the door to his son’s room and asking, “Are ya winning, son?” His stick-figure son, meanwhile, sits at the computer wearing headphones and playing a virtual reality hentai game.
It is often used to convey the out-of-touch nature of parents when it comes to their digitally literate children’s everyday lives.
Meme Basics:
- Meme Creator: Unknown (first surfaced on 4chan)
- Meme Type: Image Macro / Exploitable Format
- First Appearance: Circa 2014
- Origin Source: 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board
- Peak Popularity: August 2020
- Notable Variations
- Wholesome parodies where the son is having fun
- Father and son characters are reversed, or other characters replace father and son
- Dark humor versions where the son is struggling
- Edits replacing the father’s question with other text
Origin and Spread
Are Ya Winning, Son? has somewhat mysterious origins, as its exact birth point has never been documented. There’s speculation that it may have originated from 4chan based on its name “Anon-kun,” which references the anonymous users on the site.
The meme began on 4chan’s /v/ board. According to Know Your Meme, its first documented appearance was on January 11th, 2014, when it appeared on an Oculus Rift thread on the RPG Codex Forums.
The original black-and-white image features a father asking his son if he’s “winning” while playing video games, with various responses added depending on the meme’s context.
Popularity
The growth of Are Ya Winning, Son began in earnest on March 21st, 2014, when user Aejax submitted the comic on FunnyJunk in the comic section. A caption was added reading, “This is the future you chose.”
On August 15th, user SheZowRaisedByWolves posted it to the subreddit /r/justneckbeardthings, and on January 29th, 2015, user bakoahmed posted an animated GIF on MemeCenter featuring a crowd viewing virtual reality porn for the first time positioned above the “Are Ya Winning Son?” template. (The original post has since been scrubbed from the internet.)
A little over a month later, the image appeared on Tumblr via user eva-420, who reblogged a variation in which the song seems to have become one with his computer. “The only moral action is the minimization of entropy,” reads the text bubble above the cyborg.
Cultural context
The meme references the generational gap between parents—often out of touch with the internet and gaming culture) and their kids, many of whom spend most of their time in digital worlds. The father’s question—”Are ya winning, son?”—signifies the parental desire to connect with his child’s hobbies, even though in this instance, his son is watching hentai, and the concept of “winning” is completely irrelevant.
Similarly, many variations of the meme are existential in nature, with the child responding “no” while lying on the floor crying, or otherwise depicted battling depression, loneliness, or anxiety.
Meme variations
A variation on Are Ya Winning, Son appeared on FunnyJunk on September 22nd, 2015 when user magmamax posted a series of comics featuring the father from the original comic discovering that his son had taken his life.
In 2024, the image has been recontextualized once again, with the son lying on the floor. A popular trend was a twist on the original, with the father entering and asking the son, “Are u ok.”
Are Ya Winning, Dad?
In 2018, Charlie Jones, the dad from 2009’s Coraline became a meme in the form of Charlie Jones On The Computer. The image was mainly used to depict someone mindlessly sitting at their desktop, bereft of vitality or verve.
In mid-2018, MythicalMicah posted an expansion of the original image on Reddit from the film featuring Coraline entering the room. The image was then combined with the Are Ya Winning, Son meme to become Are Ya Winning, Dad?
Recent use
Are Ya Winning, Son? had a spike in popularity in May of 2020. This time, the meme had taken a more wholesome direction, often reversing the roles between the father and son.
Some have speculated this is due to the acceptance and more inclusive nature of gaming in recent years.
More meme examples
More MS Paint memes:
- Graphic Design Is My Passion—the meme behind the internet’s greatest creations
- Bogos Binted
- A short history of the Spoderman meme
The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
