Bait This Is Bait

2013image macroclassic

"Bait This Is Bait" is a 4chan image macro from May 2013 showing a royalty-free clip art fish chasing a bare hook, captioned "THIS IS BAIT." Posters use it to publicly flag comments written to provoke a flame war, calling out anyone dumb enough to take the bait.

trolling memes4chan memesimage macro memesdismissal memesearly 2010s memes

Overview

"This Is Bait" is an image macro built on a plain piece of royalty-free vector clip art showing a fish swimming toward a bare fishing hook, with the words "THIS IS BAIT" stamped across it in bold caps2. It works as a low-effort reply on 4chan and other imageboards, dropped under a comment that looks obviously written to start a fight so that other readers know not to argue with it.

The macro is one visual branch of a much older idea called flamebait, a Usenet-era label for posts intended to trigger hostility1. The fish drawing came from a free vector library and got no artistic credit, which is part of why users felt free to trace, recolor, and edit it into hundreds of variants23. It sits in the same family of 4chan bait culture as the rhyming shorthand "gr8 b8 m8," which took off in the same window and often gets typed as a verbal companion to the image3.

How It Spread

From /a/, the picture jumped to other 4chan boards including /vg/ (Video Game Generals), /tg/ (Traditional Games), and /s4s/ (Shit 4chan Says), each of which started producing photoshopped variants that swapped the fish, the hook, or both for characters and jokes specific to that board3. Copies later showed up on DeviantArt as user art edits and on Ponychan, where the format traveled into the My Little Pony fandom3.

The shorthand "gr8 b8 m8" ("great bait, mate") spread on 4chan in the same May 2013 window as a text-only way to compliment or mock a baiting post, and it is often paired with the image in the same reply3. The underlying vocabulary had been mainstream on the wider internet for years by then: Urban Dictionary logged an entry for flamebait on March 24th, 2004, and the software-culture site Wiki Wiki Web added its own "Flame Bait" page in February 20063. What 2013 added was the visual shorthand, which turned a long argument about someone's motives into a single reply anyone could post.

How to Use This Meme

The convention is straightforward. When a post looks so provocative that it reads as engineered to farm angry replies, you post the fish-and-hook "THIS IS BAIT" image underneath it. The idea is to warn other readers off engaging and to embarrass anyone in the thread who already took the bait seriously. Edits typically swap the fish or hook for a character, logo, or in-joke tied to the board or fandom where the reply is being posted, and the phrase "gr8 b8 m8" is often typed alongside it3.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bait This Is Bait

2013image macroclassic

"Bait This Is Bait" is a 4chan image macro from May 2013 showing a royalty-free clip art fish chasing a bare hook, captioned "THIS IS BAIT." Posters use it to publicly flag comments written to provoke a flame war, calling out anyone dumb enough to take the bait.

trolling memes 4chan memes image macro memes dismissal memes early 2010s memes

Overview

"This Is Bait" is an image macro built on a plain piece of royalty-free vector clip art showing a fish swimming toward a bare fishing hook, with the words "THIS IS BAIT" stamped across it in bold caps2. It works as a low-effort reply on 4chan and other imageboards, dropped under a comment that looks obviously written to start a fight so that other readers know not to argue with it.

The macro is one visual branch of a much older idea called flamebait, a Usenet-era label for posts intended to trigger hostility1. The fish drawing came from a free vector library and got no artistic credit, which is part of why users felt free to trace, recolor, and edit it into hundreds of variants23. It sits in the same family of 4chan bait culture as the rhyming shorthand "gr8 b8 m8," which took off in the same window and often gets typed as a verbal companion to the image3.

How It Spread

From /a/, the picture jumped to other 4chan boards including /vg/ (Video Game Generals), /tg/ (Traditional Games), and /s4s/ (Shit 4chan Says), each of which started producing photoshopped variants that swapped the fish, the hook, or both for characters and jokes specific to that board3. Copies later showed up on DeviantArt as user art edits and on Ponychan, where the format traveled into the My Little Pony fandom3.

The shorthand "gr8 b8 m8" ("great bait, mate") spread on 4chan in the same May 2013 window as a text-only way to compliment or mock a baiting post, and it is often paired with the image in the same reply3. The underlying vocabulary had been mainstream on the wider internet for years by then: Urban Dictionary logged an entry for flamebait on March 24th, 2004, and the software-culture site Wiki Wiki Web added its own "Flame Bait" page in February 20063. What 2013 added was the visual shorthand, which turned a long argument about someone's motives into a single reply anyone could post.

How to Use This Meme

The convention is straightforward. When a post looks so provocative that it reads as engineered to farm angry replies, you post the fish-and-hook "THIS IS BAIT" image underneath it. The idea is to warn other readers off engaging and to embarrass anyone in the thread who already took the bait seriously. Edits typically swap the fish or hook for a character, logo, or in-joke tied to the board or fandom where the reply is being posted, and the phrase "gr8 b8 m8" is often typed alongside it3.

Frequently Asked Questions