Comic strip of a monk shouting 'WOLOLO' converting a girl who then attacks her friend

Wololo

1997catchphraseclassic

Published October 8, 2026

Wololo is the chant uttered by Priest units in the 1997 Ensemble Studios strategy game Age of Empires when they convert enemy soldiers to their side. The nonsense syllables stuck with players so hard that they migrated out of the game into YTMND pages, loop videos, and taunting shorthand across forums, growing into one of gaming's longest-running audio memes.

gaming audio memes catchphrase memes ytmnd memes late 1990s memes

Overview

Wololo is the voice line a Priest shouts in the original Age of Empires while casting the Conversion ability, which flips an enemy unit's allegiance and swaps its team color between red and blue2. Players quickly fixed on the chant because the Priest's slow walking speed and long cast time meant the sound usually meant one of your best units was about to defect, making it a dreaded audio cue in competitive matches3.

Online, the word gets typed out phonetically and used as a taunt or an interrupter, often paired with recolored images or GIFs that mimic the in-game team-swap effect3. Later entries like Minecraft and The Henry Stickmin Collection reference the chant as a nod to the original Priest line, keeping it alive as shorthand for conversion jokes6.

Origin & Background

Platform
Age of Empires (video game) / YTMND (viral spread)
Creator
Ensemble Studios; meme spread by Unknown fans
Date
1997

Age of Empires was developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft in 1997 as the first entry in the long-running real-time strategy series3. The Priest unit, which heals allies and converts hostile units, chants "wololo" during the conversion animation; the sound file became an instantly recognizable fixture of the game's audio design1.

Ensemble Studios wrote and shipped the voice line as part of the base game; it is not a fan-made meme format but a stock sound effect that fans later turned into one. The original clip can be heard in a 10-minute loop uploaded by YouTuber Nov1706 on February 23rd, 2009, which collected over 1.3 million views1.

How It Spread

The chant jumped from the game into early web culture through YTMND, where user oftoronto posted a page titled "You are being converted" on June 7th, 2005, and user Jokerkaaos followed on September 16th, 2006 with a page simply titled "Wololo!"3. Both pages leaned on the gag of color-swapping imagery synced to the audio.

YouTube extended the joke into longer formats. Beyond the Nov1706 loop1, user ccmazza uploaded "Wololo Blues [NOW WITH LYRICS!!!]" on November 27th, 2010, a musical riff on the sound effect that pulled over 461,000 views2. On DeviantArt, user pokketmowse posted an image titled "WOLOLO" on February 21st, 2010 that drew tens of thousands of views and hundreds of thousands of downloads, and FunnyJunk user nissanshitbox uploaded an "Age of Empires" image on March 4th, 20123.

Urban Dictionary entries catalog the word's slang drift, with definitions ranging from the straight Age of Empires reference to crude new usages, and note later appearances in games like Minecraft and The Henry Stickmin Collection6. The chant is still a running punchline in Age of Empires communities whenever conversions come up3.

Timeline

1997

Age of Empires ships with the Priest's "wololo" conversion voice line baked into the base game.

2005-06-07

YTMND user oftoronto posts "You are being converted," an early web riff on the chant.

2006-09-16

YTMND user Jokerkaaos posts the "Wololo!" page, which later tallies tens of thousands of views.

2009-02-23

YouTuber Nov1706 uploads a 10-minute loop of the Wololo audio that passes 1.3 million views.

2010-02-21

DeviantArt user pokketmowse posts an image titled "WOLOLO" that spreads as a reaction image.

2010-11-27

YouTuber ccmazza uploads "Wololo Blues [NOW WITH LYRICS!!!]," a musical take on the sound effect.

2012-03-04

FunnyJunk user nissanshitbox posts an "Age of Empires" image macro riffing on the chant.

Frequently Asked Questions