Memes Rule Everything Around Me: 'Ed, Edd n Eddy's' Rolf Stares Into The Soul Of The Internet

Source: YouTube/Cartoon Network

Okayplayer is the source for black culture. Music, movies, television, politics — and now — memes. We all share them; we all love them. In our new franchise series, "Memes Rule Everything Around Me," we'll be exploring some of the most popular black memes currently dominating the internet. In the foreseeable future, we'll have artists and figures within the Okayplayer family speak on their favorite black memes of the moment too. But until then, Okayplayer welcomes you to "Memes Rule Everything Around Me."

Memes — especially black memes — are an integral part of internet culture. The deconstruction of a photo, song, or video into a viral joke happens every second online, with users able to choose from countless hilarious memes, as well as add their own take on them too.

The latest black meme to take over social media? The Ed, Edd n Eddy Rolf meme. Surely, you've seen it: a still shot of Rolf, the self-proclaimed "son of a shepherd," staring thoughtfully out of what appears to be a window.

The image is taken from this scene, where it reveals that Rolf isn't actually looking out of a window but his shed. The clip is so quick and subtle though, that it's a little surprising it's now social media's meme of the moment.

Although it's difficult to pin down who first made this meme, the person to first draw Rolf as black was an artist by the name of Elijah Rutland. Rutland, a student at Florida A&M University, posted the drawing on Twitter September 5.

Then, it took off.

"The next thing I knew, people were sharing it and editing it with new skin tones, hairstyles, and captions, so all of this is new to me because I've never had anything that has gone viral before," Rutland said to BuzzFeed.

Initially, Rutland was happy about seeing his art go viral, but then he saw countless people reposting the image without giving him credit.

"They'd post it from their page and get way more attention than I did when I was the one who created it, so that kinda got under my skin for the first few days, and since then I've been getting tagged and DMs from people all over who are showing me when my work was reposted, so that has been great," Rutland said.

Rolf has been transformed into a Wendy's employee, Smokey (Chris Tucker's Friday character), Goku (from Dragon Ball Z), a black woman, Ghost (from Power), and more. He's even been made into Permit Patty, the name given to a white woman who called the cops on a young black girl for selling water in San Francisco.

There was even this brilliant crossover moment, where Rolf and Squidward watch a jubilant Spongebob and Patrick from a window in Squidward's house. If you're not familiar with the Squidward meme, it comes from the Spongebob Squarepants episode "That Sinking Feeling," which was released in 2010. However, the scene didn't become a meme until 2013, courtesy of this Tumblr post from Heliolisk.

Cartoon Network hasn't seemed to take notice of the meme, save for the Canadian Twitter account for the kids channel.

There has been a handful of Rolf memes to hit the internet before this one. He's been the punchline for weed memes, as well as the focus of other Ed, Edd n Eddy memes. At the moment, a Google search of Ed, Edd n Eddy will result in numerous Rolf memes.

Rolf was always one of the more fascinating characters from Ed, Edd n Eddy, the mystery surrounding his background and culture informed by his mannerisms and even some traditional — and very, very violent — dances. So it's nice to see him getting the acknowledgment he deserves — even if he gets transformed into Young Dolph in the process.

Aside from Ralf, other popular memes have been circling the Internet too. Check them out below.

A White Supremacist Gets Stumped On Discussing Slavery

Zack Fox's #SquareUpChallenge

Joe Budden singing the hook to Tyga's "Taste."