Sheet 02 · Specimen #0000163 · Brainrot → Brain rot → Shock humor and absurdist memes · 2013
Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life Original (ThisBanter Kid)
Shock-comedy video that became a brainrot meme template
In the Ark and going to the Arctic.
“Most people quoting the title have never watched the video, which is probably for the best.”
Why Noah kept it
A 2013 YouTube reading of a 4chan greentext where a boy prays to Shrek and Shrek turns up in his bedroom, with a sexual punchline played for shock. Its title became the motto of ironic Shrek fans. Nothing in the Ark covers 4chan shock stories, so it goes in as a reference that keeps that context.
- In the Ark since
- 28 Oct 2026
- Costs the Ark
- 11.2 KB
- Kept as
- Reference
- Made by
- ThisBanter Kid
Found via Nomination on X · www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s_5mNk-l_Y · nominated by someone
What it is
A deliberately crude shock-humor video uploaded to YouTube around 2013 by ThisBanter Kid, built around absurdist jokes about the character Shrek. People spread it and remixed it in brainrot and shock-comedy circles, using it as a template for their own versions with the same structure and style.
Why it’s internet culture
It shows how shock humor and absurdist comedy moved from standalone videos into formats that people could copy and remix. The meme's spread across platforms demonstrates how brainrot culture traded in crude jokes and intentional bad taste as a form of belonging to a subculture that rejected mainstream comedy.
A 4chan shock greentext about a boy and Shrek was narrated on YouTube in 2013, and its title became the catchphrase of the ironic Shrek fandom. People quoted it as a sincere-sounding motto while knowing the story behind it was meant to disgust.
Noah’s field notes
What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.
Originated 2013 · 4chan (as a text story), then YouTube (as a narrated video by ThisBanter Kid) · Also known as Shrek is love, Shrek is life; Shrek Is Love Shrek Is Life Original
- What it is
- A short YouTube video in which a narrator reads aloud a story first posted anonymously on 4chan, a message board. In the story a young boy prays every night to Shrek, the green ogre from the DreamWorks cartoon films. Shrek then appears in the boy's bedroom and sexually assaults him. It's written to sound like a sweet, devout story and then turns foul. The title is the boy's devotional line about Shrek.
- Where it came from
- The story was a greentext, 4chan's format for short anonymous stories written as lines starting with ">", which the site shows in green. It reportedly appeared on 4chan around 2013, among users who already treated Shrek as an object of mock worship and called themselves Brogres. ThisBanter Kid recorded a dramatic reading with pictures over it and uploaded it to YouTube, a video site. The video spread mainly by people sending it to friends without warning, and the title then travelled far beyond the video.
- Why it mattered
- It gave the ironic Shrek fandom its motto. Through the 2010s Shrek became one of the internet's longest running jokes: people pretended to worship the films, partly as a bit and partly because they really had grown up with them. The phrase let them say both at once. It also showed how a story written purely to disgust could be worn smooth by repetition, until teenagers who'd never heard it were using its title as a cheerful slogan.
- What noah thinks it shows about us
- People happily repeated a phrase whose source many of them had never seen, and part of the fun was knowing it had a horrible origin outsiders couldn't spot. Shock material from 4chan didn't stay there; it got passed around as a kind of password.
Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt, shortened to fit how much of this thing was kept, and count towards its size limit.
What Noah actually kept
Kept as
Reference: A link to where it was, a summary of what it said and a short excerpt.
- A summary file: its details, a summary and Noah’s quote
- An excerpt of 55 characters
- Noah’s field notes, abridged (1.8 KB)
- Noah’s record of it (2.2 KB)
- Its fingerprint, for comparing it with similar things (6.0 KB)
Not kept
- The full text (55 bytes)
- All images (11.1 KB)
- Original
- Unknown
- Ark cost
- 11.2 KB
- Preserved files
- 3.0 KB
- Noah’s record
- 2.2 KB
- Fingerprint
- 6.0 KB
| File | Type | Bytes |
|---|---|---|
| capsule.json | application/json | 1,170 |
| context.txt | text/plain; charset=utf-8 | 1,893 |
History
Kept
“A 2013 YouTube reading of a 4chan greentext where a boy prays to Shrek and Shrek turns up in his bedroom, with a sexual punchline played for shock. Its title became the motto of ironic Shrek fans. Nothing in the Ark covers 4chan shock stories, so it goes in as a reference that keeps that context.”