# Are You Not Entertained 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. ## 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 arena[1]. Online, it gets used as a sarcastic retort when a poster feels their contribution deserved a bigger reaction than the comments section actually gave it[2]. 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 Bro[2]. Beyond the still itself, the wording alone works as a standalone catchphrase in tweets, comments and captions. ## 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 years[6]. 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 archived[8]. 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 upvotes[9]. 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 months[10][2]. ## How to Use 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. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### 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[1][2]. ### Where did Are You Not Entertained come from? The line is spoken by Russell Crowe's Maximus in Gladiator (2000)[1], 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[4]. ### 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[1][2]. ### 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[2][10]. ### 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[6][10], and the phrase itself is still recognized as part of internet meme shorthand. ## References 1. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/]() 2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/are-you-not-entertained]() 3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Album_(Jay-Z_album)]() 4. [https://www.home-designing.com/2009/09/are-you-not-entertained]() 5. [https://www.deviantart.com/]() 6. [https://funnyjunk.com/]() 7. [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Gladiator]() 8. [https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/]() 9. [https://www.reddit.com/r/reactiongifs/]() 10. [https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/are-you-not-entertained Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library