Witness Me

About

Witness Me is a catchphrase spoken by the characters known as War Boys in the film Mad Max: Fury Road before they commit a kamikaze-type act in battle. The phrase has become popular in online forums as a way to draw attention to one’s post.

Origin

Mad Max: Fury Road was released May 15th, 2015, and during the film, the phrase is spoken frequently by the War Boys, a group of leukemic children of the villain Immortan Joe. The War Boys usually yell the phrase after spray painting their mouths silver and before attempting to die by suicide in battle, which they believe will send them to Valhalla, or heaven. In some scenes of the film, they pair the phrase with “We will ride eternal, shiny and chrome!”

Spread

The first use of WItness Me on 4chan’s /tv/ board actually occurred 5 days before the release of the film, by a poster who was claiming that he’d seen the film and that it was good.^[2] Since then, the phrase has been used about 2,200 times on various 4chan boards, often times paired with a variety of images of different characters with chrome sprayed around their mouth, including Pepe the frog.^[3] Alternately, the phrase was often paired with mugshots of people who had been inhaling spray paint as a drug, which can cause the person to appear as if they had sprayed themselves in the face. The phrase is used as a comment on various other Mad Max-related memes, including the official Mad Max subreddit, /r/madmax, which calls its readers War Boys and indicates their presence by saying they are “WITNESSING!”^[4] In addition, there are 122 different works of art on DeviantArt using the term.^[7]

On May 23, 2015 a link was posted to r/WTF which featured an image of 2 adult males, one with his mouth painted silver chrome using car spray paint with the title “YOUWILLARRIVE AT THEGATES OF VALHALLA, SHINYANDCHROME!”, the link received 4531 upvotes and 668 comments^[8]

Amazon Comment Trolling

On May 27th, 2015, the Onion’s AV Club and other media outlets reported that users posing as War Boys had been leaving troll reviews on a product called Wilton Silver Color Mist, an edible food spray used in dying cakes and other foods a chromed silver. The war boy-imitating users asked questions like “Will this product ensure my path to Valhalla? Do I need to be witnessed as well?” and left reviews like “IMMORTANJOEWILLWITNESS ME FORFINDINGTHISSPRAY ON SALEFORCERTAIN.”^[5]^[6]