I Don't Care If You Win, I Just Need X To Lose — General Hux from Star Wars grimacing in a dark First Order uniform on a blue-lit ship bridge

I Don't Care If You Win, I Just Need X To Lose

2021phrasal templatesemi-active

Published October 16, 2026

Lifted from a line General Hux hisses in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, this phrasal template exploded on X in late December 2024 as a way to admit you hate one side of a fight more than you like the other. By January 2025, posters were slotting in rival films, athletes and politicians, with an Emilia Pérez version collecting more than 1.5 million views.

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Overview

I Don't Care If You Win, I Just Need X To Lose, also known as General Hux Losing, is a phrasal template where posters swap out Kylo Ren for whichever enemy they want to see fail more than they want anyone else to win1. The joke sits on a very specific pose: the speaker admits they do not actually like the opposing party, they just hate the target more. That makes it a clean way to root for a mediocre film, a hated sports rival or a politician's opponent without lying about enthusiasm2.

Most posts stay text-only, quoting the line with a new target plugged into the X slot, though an image macro version of the General Hux scene exists on Imgflip for people who want the visual gag2. Rivalry contexts dominate, including football derbies, awards races and franchise fights, since the format needs two sides where one is clearly the greater evil to the poster3.

Origin & Background

Platform
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (source) / Imgflip (template) / X (viral spread)
Date
2021

The source line comes from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, released on December 20th, 2019, where General Hux betrays the First Order and says, "I don't care if you win, I need Kylo Ren to lose"1. A clip of the scene was later uploaded to YouTube by @TheManinBlack9054 on May 24th, 2022, and picked up roughly 17,000 views over the next three years4.

The meme format itself traces back to Imgflip, where an unknown user posted a captioned template on January 24th, 2021, giving the line its blank X slot and marking the earliest documented use as a meme2.

How It Spread

After the Imgflip template went up in January 2021, the format spent years as a low-key reaction option before X propelled it in late December 20241. Reddit saw an early notable reuse on July 8th, 2021, when u/swimmers0115 posted a General Hux losing edit about the Italy versus England football rivalry to r/MemeTemplatesOfficial, where it collected more than 4,800 upvotes and 182 comments over the following four years3.

On X, the format broke through with the 2025 awards season. On January 14th, 2025, @darnthatdave posted a version aimed at the 2024 film Emilia Pérez, and the tweet picked up over 1.5 million views and 67,000 likes in a week5. Rival-film and sports-rivalry posts filled out the trend, with the General Hux Losing name sticking as shorthand for the structure1.

Timeline

2019-12-20

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker releases, with General Hux saying "I don't care if you win, I need Kylo Ren to lose"[1].

2021-01-24

An unknown Imgflip user posts the earliest known captioned template, establishing the X-slot phrasal format[2].

2021-07-08

Reddit user u/swimmers0115 posts a General Hux losing edit about the Italy versus England football rivalry[3].

2022-05-24

YouTube user @TheManinBlack9054 uploads the Hux betrayal clip, which later gathers around 17,000 views[4].

2025-01-14

@darnthatdave posts an Emilia Pérez version on X that collects over 1.5 million views and 67,000 likes in a week[5].

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Frequently Asked Questions