No Meme (Y U No Guy)
The no meme, properly the Y U No guy, is a crudely traced screaming face demanding to know why someone will not do the obvious thing. The caption is always text-speak: MOM, Y U NO TEXT BACK?
Make your own no meme
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Where the no meme comes from
People who type no meme into a search box are almost always looking for one specific template, and this is it: a wide, contorted face with bared teeth and clenched fists, drawn onto a stick figure, screaming a grammatically broken question. Generator libraries file it as Y U No or Y U No Guy, and it is one of the last surviving members of the rage comic family.
The face is not original art. It was traced from a panel of Gantz, the science fiction manga by Hiroya Oku. Meme reference works place the panel in chapter 55, usually given the English title Naked King, published in Japan in February 2002. The official English translation reached readers in June 2009, and traced and recoloured versions of the panel were already circulating on imageboards before anyone attached a catchphrase to it.
The catchphrase arrived on Tumblr. The first widely reproduced instance placed the traced face on a flat beige background under the line I TXT U, Y U NO TXT BAK!?, posted by the blog LOLTumblrWallpapers, where it collected over ten thousand reblogs and likes. Once an exploitable blank was uploaded to Meme Generator, the format collapsed into a single reusable sentence shape: a subject noun, then Y U NO, then a verb. That is the entire grammar of the meme, and it has not changed since.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| February 2002 | Hiroya Oku publishes the Gantz chapter containing the panel. The character is drawn mid-shout inside a violent story, not mid-complaint. |
| June 2009 | The English translation of the chapter appears. Traced versions of the face begin circulating on imageboards without any catchphrase attached. |
| Around 2010 | The Tumblr blog LOLTumblrWallpapers posts the first widely shared instance carrying the Y U NO phrasing. |
| 2011 | An exploitable blank on Meme Generator turns it into a mass format. This is the year the template is genuinely everywhere. |
| 2012 to 2013 | Rage comics fall out of fashion. Y U No survives as one of the few rage faces people still recognise on sight. |
A note on an ambiguous search
Because no meme is two extremely common words, the query catches several different intentions. Most people want this template. Some want a generic refusal reaction, a shaking head or a slammed laptop. A smaller group is using the phrase literally, as in a request for a serious answer with no joke attached. This page covers the template, because that is what the editor on this page produces.
What it means and when to use it
Y U No is a complaint format, and complaint is a narrow emotional band. It is not anger and it is not sadness. It is the precise feeling of being personally betrayed by a small inanimate system that had exactly one job. Every good caption names a thing that should obviously work, and then asks it, apparently sincerely, why it does not.
| Element | Literal reading | How it is actually used |
|---|---|---|
| The screaming face | A manga character in genuine distress. | Comic overreaction. The gap between the rage and the triviality of the grievance is the entire joke. |
| The broken grammar | Someone who cannot spell. | Deliberate. It signals that the complaint is not serious enough to deserve whole words. |
| All capitals | Shouting. | Mandatory. Sentence case reads as a real grievance and kills the format instantly. |
| The subject in the top box | Who is being addressed. | Should be a thing, a service or an institution far more often than a person. Aim it at a printer, not a friend. |
| The stick body | Character design. | Load bearing. The mismatch between a detailed scream and a five-line body is half the humour. |
| Aimed at an individual you know | A joke about a friend. | Usually wrong. It reads as a public nag, because the format is genuinely accusatory. |
Captions that work
Two text boxes. The top box names the guilty party in capitals and nothing else. The bottom box is the question, in text-speak, with no punctuation if you want it to read correctly. Never put a full sentence in either box.
- socialGROUP CHAT Y U NO ANSWER ME BUT POST STORY
- moneyLANDLORD Y U NO FIX HEAT AS FAST AS U RAISE RENT
- WIFI Y U NO WORK IN THE ONE ROOM I SIT IN
- AUTOCORRECT Y U NO LEARN THE WORD I TYPE DAILY
- foodRECIPE SITE Y U NO SHOW RECIPE BEFORE LIFE STORY
- SELF CHECKOUT Y U NO BELIEVE ITEM IS IN BAGGING AREA
- workPRINTER Y U NO PRINT BLACK WHEN CYAN IS EMPTY
- tvSTREAMING APP Y U NO REMEMBER WHERE I STOPPED
- workRECRUITER Y U NO REPLY AFTER FOURTH INTERVIEW
- PHONE BATTERY Y U NO GO 40 TO 39 LIKE U GO 100 TO 99
- homeSMOKE ALARM Y U NO CHIRP DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS
- fitnessGYM GUY Y U NO RERACK THE PLATES
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Y U No Girl | Derivative blank from the same era | A redrawn version made so the complaint could be voiced by a different character. Same grammar, far less used. |
| Rage comics generally | Imageboards and Reddit, roughly 2008 to 2013 | Trollface, Me Gusta, Forever Alone and the rest. Y U No outlived the wave because it works as a single panel. |
| Futurama Fry | A frame from Futurama | Suspicion rather than accusation. Use Fry when you cannot tell what is happening, and Y U No when you know exactly what is happening. |
| First World Problems | A stock photograph of a crying woman | The same grievances, the opposite posture. That format admits the complaint is trivial. Y U No refuses to. |
| Text-only Y U NO | The phrase with no image | The grammar travelled further than the drawing. People still type Y U NO in chats that have never seen the face. |
Common mistakes
- Writing it in correct English. Why do you not reply is not the meme. The broken spelling is the entire register.
- Using lower case. The format was born in an era of all-caps image macros and reads as flat without them.
- Putting the whole sentence in one box. The setup belongs on top and the demand on the bottom. Compressed into one line it loses its rhythm.
- Complaining about something genuinely serious. The comedy depends on the grievance being small. Real injustice under a screaming stick figure reads as mockery.
- Naming a specific person you actually know. The face is angry and public. Pointed at a friend it stops being a bit.
- Stacking punctuation. One mark at most, and preferably none. A question mark plus an exclamation mark plus an ellipsis is trying too hard.
- Calling it a rage comic character. It is a traced manga panel that joined the rage comics later, not a drawing made for them.
Limits and etiquette
Be honest about this one: it is old. The format peaked around 2011 and 2012, and the rage comic aesthetic it belongs to was thoroughly mocked out of fashion by roughly 2013. Using it today is a period reference. That is not automatically a problem, because the reference is still legible to almost everyone over twenty five and deliberate retro is a real comic move. But nobody will read a Y U No post as current. If you want it to land, lean into the datedness rather than pretending it is not there.
There is also an attribution point worth stating plainly, because template libraries almost never do. The face is traced from a copyrighted manga by a working artist. It was never drawn to be a complaint format, and the original panel sits inside a violent, serious story rather than a joke about printers. That does not make captioning it wrong, but the drawing has an author and a context that predate the meme by the better part of a decade.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
What is the no meme?
It is the template usually filed as Y U No, a traced screaming face on a stick body that demands to know why something will not do the obvious thing.
Where does the Y U No face come from?
It was traced from a panel of the manga Gantz by Hiroya Oku, chapter 55, released in Japan in February 2002 and in English in June 2009.
When did the meme become popular?
The Y U NO wording spread on Tumblr around 2010, and the format went mainstream in 2011 once an exploitable blank appeared on Meme Generator.
How many text boxes does the template have?
Two. The top box names the subject in capitals and the bottom box carries the Y U NO question.
Why is the grammar wrong on purpose?
The text-speak signals that the complaint is not serious. Written in correct English the same line reads as a real grievance and stops being funny.
Is Y U No the same thing as a rage comic?
It travelled with rage comics and is usually listed alongside them, but it began as a traced manga panel rather than a drawing made for that format.
Is the no meme still used?
It is dated. It peaked around 2011 and 2012 and now reads as a deliberate period reference rather than a current format.
What should the top box say?
A single subject in capitals, usually a service, device or institution rather than a person you know. Anything longer weakens the shout.