Bitches Love Smiley Faces

2006catchphraseclassic

Bitches Love Smiley Faces is a catchphrase from a 2006 episode of the animated Adult Swim series The Boondocks, delivered by Ed Wuncler III as texting advice. The line became a snowclone template ('I sent that bitch an X, bitches love X') that spread through hip-hop forums, humor blogs, and Tumblr across the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Overview

Bitches Love Smiley Faces is a catchphrase from a 2006 episode of the animated Adult Swim series The Boondocks1 that grew into a widely-used snowclone template: 'I sent that bitch an X, bitches love X'4. Users swap in any object or gesture, and the joke lands on the absurd self-assurance of the pickup logic behind it.

The classic image macro version pairs the phrase with stock photographs of a man leaning back smugly at a desk beside a woman smiling at her computer, framing the smiley face text as an unreasonably effective flirting move. In the original scene, teenage character Ed Wuncler III delivers the boast with complete deadpan conviction3.

How It Spread

The line first crossed into online circulation through hip-hop and forum communities. Commenters on the rap blog Nahright started echoing it on September 13, 2006, the Wu-Tang Corp forum picked it up on February 19, 2007, and by that summer it was being passed around as unironic dating advice on boards including the Phantasy Star Online forums and Bodybuilding.com4. The first stock-photo image macros appeared on the humor site My Confined Space on June 10, 2007, and the reposted version on EvilMilk pulled over 76,000 views within four years. A personal blog registered at BitchesLoveSmileyFaces.com in March 2008 kept the joke alive, and an eCard version showed up on Your Ecards in April 2009.

The template hit peak Tumblr in 2010 through the blog 'Things Bitches Love' and, from April 2011, 'What Bitches Love,' which cranked out fresh variations of the phrase4. UpRoxx published a 'Bitches Love Movies' macro roundup on June 8, 2011. The Twitter account @BiiitchesLove pulled over 500 followers in its first month after launching on April 29, 2012, and comedian Matt Lobster's YouTube skit 'Bitches Love Toast' from May 8, 2012 pushed the joke into short-form video. A dedicated Facebook page later crossed 51,000 likes.

How to Use This Meme

The format is fill-in-the-blank: 'I sent that bitch an [item], bitches love [item].' The joke typically works when the noun is either wildly inappropriate, like a subpoena or eviction notice, or absurdly mundane, like a slice of toast. Image macro versions often pair the phrase with the original desk stock photos or a screenshot of Ed Wuncler III from the show1.

Frequently Asked Questions