# Gaston

Gaston is a remix and phrasal template meme built around the boastful song from Disney's 1991 film Beauty and the Beast. Starting with YouTube poop edits in the late 2000s, it exploded in 2016 through recut videos and later became a Twitter format where users swap in absurd activities Gaston is best at.

## Overview
Gaston is the vain, muscle-bound antagonist of Disney's 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast, and the meme built around him revolves almost entirely around the tavern song where his sidekick LeFou cheers him up after Belle turns down his marriage proposal[3]. The tune's assonant "no one [X]s like Gaston" hook, with lines like "in a wrestling match nobody bites like Gaston," made it ideal raw material for both audio remixes and lyric rewrites[2].

Online, Gaston appears in two overlapping formats: chopped-and-screwed YouTube edits of the song scene, and Twitter posts that swap the lyric's verbs and nouns for absurd modern activities[1]. The character himself was also embraced somewhat ironically as, per Mashable, "the arrogant physical manifestation of toxic masculinity" who is nonetheless one of the most beloved Disney villains[3].

## How It Spread
Interest picked back up in late 2016. On October 30th, 2016, Redditor Lichzim posted to r/MemeEconomy claiming "Gaston memes" were "on the rise," and a wave of recut YouTube videos followed[2]. On December 3rd, YouTuber Fresh Memes For Your Health uploaded "Gaston but all the rhymes are switched," and on January 5th, 2017, Emilio The Burrito posted "Gaston, but every time someone says Gaston, he eats 4 dozen eggs"[2]. YouTuber Friendly Fingers piled on days later with edits that sped the clip up 5% per mention of the name and another that added heavier frame trails with each "Gaston"[2].

The character then bled into pop culture writing. On March 17th, 2017, Smosh published a listicle titled "22 of Tumblr's Most Important Thoughts on Disney's Best Villain, Gaston," and on March 22nd the Observer ran Dana Schwartz's slide deck "Why Belle Should Have Chosen Gaston"[4]. Around the same period, Tropical Storm Gaston in the Atlantic triggered a separate round of song rewrites, with Twitter users mashing the storm's path together with LeFou's lyrics in posts collected by the Daily Mail[5].

The biggest single burst came on September 4th, 2018, when Twitter user @readingtheend tweeted a mock exchange building the lines "no one grieves like Gaston, acts bereaved like Gaston" and "no one orders ornate funeral wreaths like Gaston," which drew more than 14,000 retweets and 67,000 likes in three days[2]. Two days later, Mashable rounded up the wave of copycat rewrites in a listicle of its own[3].

## How to Use
The Gaston format typically works as a phrasal template based on LeFou's original lyric structure. People commonly pick a hyper-specific activity, often something unglamorous or inappropriate for the source material, and slot it into the "no one [verb]s like Gaston" or "no one [noun]s like Gaston" frame, chaining two or three variations together to mimic the song's rhyme scheme[3]. On video, the convention is to take the tavern scene and apply one escalating rule, such as speeding up with every mention of the name or replacing rhymes, rather than editing the visuals from scratch[2].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Gaston?
Gaston is a remix and phrasal template meme built around the boastful "Gaston" song from Disney's 1991 Beauty and the Beast, spanning YouTube poop edits and Twitter lyric rewrites[2][3].

### Where did Gaston come from?
The song comes from Beauty and the Beast, released November 22nd, 1991, and the meme's early online life started with YouTube remixes like mrsimon's November 27th, 2008 upload[1][2].

### What does Gaston mean?
In meme form, invoking Gaston is a mock boast built on LeFou's tavern song, treating the arrogant Disney villain as the peak of over-the-top masculine self-regard[3].

### How do you use Gaston?
People typically rewrite LeFou's rhyming lines, such as @readingtheend's 2018 tweet about grieving and ordering funeral wreaths, or splice the song clip into a rule-based YouTube edit[2].

### Is Gaston still popular?
Gaston is a classic remix meme with cycles of activity through 2018, including Tropical Storm Gaston jokes covered by the Daily Mail and Mashable's roundup of song rewrites[3][5].

## References
1. [https://observer.com/2017/03/beauty-and-the-beast-why-belle-should-have-chosen-gaston/](<https://observer.com/2017/03/beauty-and-the-beast-why-belle-should-have-chosen-gaston/>)
2. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gaston](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gaston>)
3. [https://mashable.com/article/best-gaston-memes/](<https://mashable.com/article/best-gaston-memes/>)
4. [https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Gaston](<https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Gaston>)
5. [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3756724/He-s-especially-good-priciiipitating-Tropical-Storm-Gaston-inspires-host-witty-musical-memes-giddy-Beauty-Beast-fans.html](<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3756724/He-s-especially-good-priciiipitating-Tropical-Storm-Gaston-inspires-host-witty-musical-memes-giddy-Beauty-Beast-fans.html>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/gaston
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