Who is Boo Boo the Fool and is it you?

Boo Boo the Fool is a meme used to express moments where you or someone you have made an ass out of yourself or themselves. It's been a popular phrase in Black American communities for decades, before being co-opted by the internet at large.

What does Boo Boo the Fool mean?

If someone calls you Boo Boo the Fool it's time to stop what you're doing and look around. You're being stupid or naive or being taken advantage of by someone slightly less foolish. Most of us probably react negatively to being told we're acting that way, so Boo Boo the Fool is kind of a gentle jester description that can wake up anyone to their asinine qualities. Plus, it sounds funny.

Who is Boo Boo the Fool?

You will understand how old Boo Boo the Fool is when you hear where the name came from: in 1961, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon show Yogi Bear introduced the character Boo Boo Bear. Boo Boo was Yogi's bestie, even though all Yogi did was play pranks on Boo Boo and talk him into doing ridiculous things. The poor gullible fellow!

He was always being implicated in Yogi's picnic basket stealing antics, even when he was perfectly willing to live as a bear should—on the bounty of the forest. Boo Boo, you fool! Yogi's not good for you!

How did Boo Boo the Fool become a meme?

There isn't exactly an inciting incident for Boo Boo the Fool memes. The concept of a meme is fairly recent in the history of human communication, but the act of spreading a quickly understood idea through a phrase or picture is not. People already knew who Boo Boo was and what it meant to embody him, so it was only a matter of time before that got boiled down even more into meme and GIF format.

But according to Know Your Meme, it started getting more popular in 2016. In January of that year Tumblr user blkproverbs posted "Do I look like Boo Boo the Fool?" calling it a "Black Mother Proverb," and the post took off.

A few months later, Tumblr user fonzworthcutlass posted an image of Barack Obama looking in the mirror and his reflection wears a clown wig, while he thinks "I'm boo boo the fool." The caption read, "when u swallow ur pride and double text, but u get no reply."

Boo Boo has definitely evolved and is certainly not pictured as a bear. Often, Boo Boo is illustrated as a literal Jester, like one you would see catering to a King in the middle ages. Jester were sometimes called Fools so it kind of makes sense. Or sometimes an image of a clown is used, especially GIFs where someone is putting on their clown regalia.

Meme examples

A lot of Boo Boo the Fool memes seem to come from people realizing that they are Boo Boo, more often than being accused of it. We've all been there. Here are some memes for the next time you realize you've been sucked into some stupid scheme once again.

More reaction memes:

• Straight out of the ‘Terrifier’ movie series, ‘Art the Clown’ memes are not for the faint of heart
• How to use the ‘sad ant with bindle’ meme
• A shortlist of the best ever reaction memes
• The ‘Confused’ or ‘Confused Nick Young’ meme, explained

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