# Thats How Mafia Works

Thats How Mafia Works is a caption meme built around a suited cartoon businessman from Instagram ads for the mobile game Mafia City. Australian YouTuber Slazo pulled the line out of the ads in a December 2018 video, and his audience turned it into an ironic Reddit reaction template through 2018 and 2019.

## Overview
Thats How Mafia Works is a caption meme built around a suited cartoon businessman from Instagram ads for the mobile game Mafia City. In the ads, the character points at scenes of in-game violence and delivers the line "That's how mafia works," which viewers turned into an ironic reaction template [3]. The image works as a mock-serious punchline, often slapped onto anything considered edgy, tough, or absurd [5].

The format usually pairs a "level" progression joke with the businessman's declaration, riffing on Mafia City's own tiered ad style [5]. It also became a fixture in deep fried memes and shitposts, where the low-res ad clip fits the pixelated, over-compressed aesthetic those communities favor [3].

## How It Spread
From r/slazo the caption jumped to bigger communities. Redditor mat383 submitted a "That's How Mafia Works" post to r/memes [2], and Redditor ThatCandianJacket released a clean .png version that made template edits easier [3]. That version fed the deep fried and shitpost circles, where recut variants kept surfacing.

Not long after, user GopnikMihail posted a version to r/dankmemes that pulled over 11,000 upvotes and 150 comments within days [4]. The catchphrase ended up glued to the wider Mafia City meme wave, showing up in the comments of "level" jump edits and other Mafia City jokes [3].

## How to Use
The typical build places the businessman screenshot at the bottom of a "before/after" or "level up" progression and adds the caption "That's how mafia works" underneath [5]. Users often pair a low-tier example with a high-tier one, or drop the line as a sign-off on a Florida Man post or an edgy clip [3].

## Frequently Asked Questions
### What is Thats How Mafia Works?
It's a caption meme parodying Mafia City Instagram ads, built around a suited cartoon businessman who points at the screen and says the line [3].

### Where did Thats How Mafia Works come from?
Australian YouTuber Slazo popularized it in his December 30, 2018 video "Hilariously Bad Instagram Ads," then his subreddit r/slazo turned it into a template [3][1].

### What does Thats How Mafia Works mean?
It's an ironic punchline used to frame something as tough or edgy, commonly stacked with a low-level vs. high-level comparison [5].

### How do you use Thats How Mafia Works?
Place the businessman ad screenshot under a "level up" or before/after image and add the caption "That's how mafia works" [5].

### Is Thats How Mafia Works still popular?
It peaked in early 2019 on Reddit, where GopnikMihail's r/dankmemes post pulled over 11,000 upvotes, and use has slowed since [4].

## References
1. [https://www.reddit.com/r/slazo/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/slazo/>)
2. [https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/>)
3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-how-mafia-works](<https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-how-mafia-works>)
4. [https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/](<https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/>)
5. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Thats%20How%20Mafia%20Works](<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Thats%20How%20Mafia%20Works>)

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Source: https://meme.com/memes/thats-how-mafia-works
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