What is Are You Not Entertained?

It's a reaction image and catchphrase drawn from a scene in the 2000 film Gladiator, typically used online to mock a lukewarm audience response to a post.

Where did Are You Not Entertained come from?

The line is spoken by Russell Crowe's Maximus in Gladiator (2000), and the image macro version is believed to have started on 4chan in late 2007, with an early documented use on Home Designing in September 2009.

What does Are You Not Entertained mean?

It's a sarcastic retort implying the speaker just put on a show and the audience is failing to react appropriately, echoing Maximus yelling at the silent Colosseum crowd.

How do you use Are You Not Entertained?

People commonly drop the Gladiator screenshot or the phrase itself as a comeback when a post gets weak engagement, or pair it with images of someone posing with outstretched arms.

Is Are You Not Entertained still popular?

It's a classic reaction format from the early 2010s that saw heavy use on 4chan, Reddit and FunnyJunk between 2009 and 2013, and the phrase itself is still recognized as part of internet meme shorthand.

Are You Not Entertained

2009reaction imageclassic

Published August 15, 2026

Are You Not Entertained is a reaction image and catchphrase pulled from the 2000 Ridley Scott film Gladiator, where Russell Crowe's Maximus shouts the line at a silent Colosseum crowd. Online, it gets deployed as a snarky retort when a post, joke, or piece of content gets a lukewarm response.

movie quote memes catchphrase memes reaction memes image macro memes late 2000s memes

Overview

Are You Not Entertained is a reaction image and catchphrase built around a screenshot from Ridley Scott's 2000 film Gladiator, showing Russell Crowe as Maximus with his arms flung wide after slaughtering opponents in the arena1. Online, it gets used as a sarcastic retort when a poster feels their contribution deserved a bigger reaction than the comments section actually gave it2.

The format usually pairs the Gladiator still (or a similar wide-armed pose) with a caption echoing the line, slotting it into the same family of confrontational reaction macros as Come at Me Bro2. Beyond the still itself, the wording alone works as a standalone catchphrase in tweets, comments and captions.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

Gladiator (2000 film) / 4chan and blogs (viral spread)

Creator

Ridley Scott / Russell Crowe; anonymous 4chan users popularized the image macro

Date

2009

The line comes from a Colosseum scene in Gladiator (2000), in which Maximus Decimus Meridius, played by Russell Crowe, cuts down several gladiators and turns to a hushed crowd yelling "Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?"1. It got an early bump in wider pop culture when Jay-Z sampled the audio in the intro to "What More Can I Say" on his 2003 album The Black Album3.

As an internet image macro, the format is thought to trace back to 4chan in late 2007, with the earliest documented use of the Gladiator screenshot as a captioned image appearing on the blog Home Designing on September 26th, 2009, where it was used to solicit reader feedback4 2.

How It Spread

On April 25th, 2010, DeviantArt user Astaldo Fea posted an illustration of Maximus titled "Are You Not Entertained?"5. Roughly a year and a half later, on November 8th, 2011, FunnyJunk user mrgreeny built a rage comic around the Gladiator screenshot with the same caption, and it pulled in more than 26,000 views and 1,200 upvotes over the next two years6.

The phrase kept branching out through 2011 and 2012. TV Tropes added it to its Gladiator entry on May 10th as an example of "Chewing the Scenery"7. On June 16th, 2011, a macro pairing the quote with a photo of a Vancouver Stanley Cup rioter posing with a hockey stick in front of a wrecked storefront hit r/pics and picked up around 1,300 upvotes and 80 comments before being archived8. On August 20th, 2012, Redditor TomSellecksStash posted a GIF of the scene to r/reactiongifs captioned about a toddler refusing to stop crying, clearing 2,000 upvotes9.

By 2013 the meme had its own dedicated Facebook page, launched on April 22nd, and on May 15th r/funny user herplderpster posted an image macro of a man in a Batman costume with arms outstretched under the same caption, which racked up more than 15,800 upvotes and 280 comments in its first four months10 2.

How to Use This Meme

The typical setup is to post something (a meme, a screenshot, an in-joke) and, when the reaction is muted, reply with the Gladiator still or just the words "Are you not entertained?" as a mock-outraged callback. It also gets attached to any image of a person with arms flung wide, from athletes to characters in costume, as a caption riffing on the pose.