# Morgan Freeman Morgan Freeman is the internet's favorite voice to impersonate, a running joke that started with a 2008 xkcd comic about reading text in his baritone and grew into a decade of YouTube impressions, fake quotes, and copypasta pranks that even fooled Snopes. ## Origin The bit crystallized on August 13th, 2008, when the webcomic xkcd published a strip joking about 'Freeman Paracusia,' a made-up condition in which the sufferer reads every piece of text in Morgan Freeman's voice[3]. The gag named an experience people already had and gave the meme a shared vocabulary. A Facebook page called 'Morgan Freeman's Voice' launched on February 8th, 2009, and pulled in more than 968,000 likes within four years[3]. That May, the imageboard game 'read this in my voice' spread across forums, and Freeman's voice was one of the default picks[3]. - **Platform:** xkcd (source joke) / YouTube (viral spread) - **Creator:** Randall Munroe (xkcd) - **Date:** 2008 ## Overview The Morgan Freeman meme is less about the actor himself and more about his voice, which internet users treat as a universal narration setting. The joke usually takes one of three shapes, a text image captioned 'read this in Morgan Freeman's voice,' a YouTube video of somebody doing the impression, or a fake inspirational quote pinned over his photo[1]. The format sticks because his delivery, made famous by narrating March of the Penguins and playing God in Bruce Almighty, is easy to hear in your head even from a still image[3]. That effect got so widely recognized that xkcd invented a satirical medical condition for it, and later fake Twitter accounts weaponized the same trick to launder invented quotes as things Freeman actually said[2]. ## How It Spread YouTube did the heavy lifting for the impression side. On September 20th, 2012, SeaNanners uploaded footage from The Hidden, a Half-Life 2 mod, where player GassyMexican hunted enemies while impersonating Freeman, and the clip pulled over 7.6 million views in seven months[2]. Ze Frank followed on January 10th, 2013, with 'True Facts About Morgan Freeman,' a fake-narrator bit that hit 2.1 million views in three months[4]. The format also produced the 'Titty Sprinkles' copypasta. On January 19th, 2012, Redditor assblaster7 posted a Morgan Freeman photo with a long inspirational-sounding quote that ended with the phrase 'titty sprinkles,' a callback to a 2007 South Park scene, and it collected roughly 14,500 upvotes[3]. YouTuber Robert Thompson later filmed himself reading the copypasta in a Freeman impression, and that video passed 772,000 views[3]. The voice was convincing enough on the page to fool people who never heard it. In August 2012, a parody account called @MorgonFreeman posted a quip about the word 'homophobia' that got widely reshared as a real Morgan Freeman statement, and Snopes later traced it back to the 'Tweets from God' parody feed rather than the actor[1]. ## How to Use The template is flexible. Slap any text over a photo of Freeman with a caption telling the reader to hear it in his voice, film yourself doing the low, measured impression over dramatic B-roll, or attribute a fake inspirational quote to him and post it as if it were real. The joke works because most viewers will supply the voice automatically. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Morgan Freeman? As a meme, Morgan Freeman refers to the running internet joke of reading text or narration in the actor's distinctive baritone, whether through image macros, YouTube impressions, or fake quotes pinned over his photo[3]. ### Where did Morgan Freeman come from? The joke got its name from an August 13th, 2008 xkcd comic that invented a fake condition called 'Freeman Paracusia,' where the sufferer hears everything in his voice[3]. ### What does Morgan Freeman mean? Online it is shorthand for a default narrator voice, an authoritative delivery people mentally overlay onto text, videos, or invented quotes, sometimes convincingly enough to fool fact-checkers[1]. ### How do you use Morgan Freeman? Common uses include captioning an image with 'read this in Morgan Freeman's voice,' filming an impression over dramatic footage the way Ze Frank did in his True Facts video[4], or posting a fake inspirational quote attributed to him. ### Is Morgan Freeman still popular? The voice-impression format is a classic that stuck around well past its 2008 to 2013 peak, with the SeaNanners Hidden clip and Ze Frank's True Facts still cited as touchstones[2][4]. ## References 1. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scared-straight/]() 2. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDQx-guzx2s]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/morgan-freeman]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5MEJk5ZCQ]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlosJjJQq7g]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khUPpFQu35o]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/morgan-freeman Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library