AboutWhat does the meme depict?
The Chill Guy Vietnamese Magazine Cover Plagiarism Hoax meme involves false claims that the meme character Chill Guy, created by artist Phillip Banks in October 2023, was plagiarized from a Vietnamese children's magazine cover. The controversial magazine cover in question, from a December 2024 issue, features a boy and a dog arranged in a similar posture to the meme character. The dog bears a face resembling Chill Guy and sports a similar color scheme, while the boy mimics Chill Guy's iconic pose and outfit. Despite the striking similarities, these allegations of plagiarism were later debunked by Banks himself.
OriginWho did it first?
The meme began with a post on December 24th, 2024, by Redditor Kaito8008 in the subreddit r/CHILLGUYCOIN, featuring a photograph of the cover of Học Trò Cười magazine's issue 883 (52nd issue of 2024), with the incorrect caption stating that ‘Chill guy was originally came from Thailand’. The cover depicted a boy and his dog styled similarly to the Chill Guy meme, receiving significant attention on Reddit. The post rapidly gained traction, amassing over 170 upvotes within two days. The next day, another Reddit user, Informal-System-4614, further shared the image on the r/blursedimages subreddit, where it received over 6,400 upvotes. Concurrently, a grave error occurred when a post on Twitter (now X) from user @onchainbookie showcased an image search result for the magazine cover, mistakenly citing the creation date of the r/blursedimages subreddit as the date the image was posted. This led to false claims that Chill Guy was plagiarized, stirring a viral social media debate until Banks publicly refuted the allegations.[1]
Origin: 2024