#Roommates, back in 2015 social media couldn’t get enough of the “What Are Those?!” memes and they no doubt had pretty much everyone in tears. The hype has since died down but that didn’t stop the writers of “Black Panther” from getting in on the fun.
In the movie, Shuri—- played by Letitia Wright — shows how connected she is to the world beyond Wakanda through the internet. In the scene, her brother T’Challa was looking at some of her inventions and asked her a question about a particular one, saying, “And what is this?” She looked at his sandles and shaded him, saying, “The real question is: What are thoooose?!”
The viral meme was originally posted by creator Busco (Brandon Moore) on June 14, 2015, but blew up days later after Vine user A-RODney King uploaded it. The Huffington Post reports that it had acquired up to 40 million loops, with over 200,000 re-vines and other posts which kept the phrase going for so long.
When viewers heard the phrase in the movie it no doubt caught them off guard, but no one was more surprised than the creator of the phrase himself. “When I saw [the scene], my girl was trying to record it [in the theater]”, Brandon told HuffPost. “I slapped the phone out of her hand because I was like, ‘I don’t want to f—ing be a part of this.’”
“For real,” he added. “Every time I see that sh—, I get depressed.”
Brandon said he regrets not protecting his work prior to the meme going viral. “I be depressed every time knowing I didn’t full court press on an opportunity that I created,” he said.
“I actually got a deal. I did a contract with the people that did Vine,” he said. “They monetize it for the YouTube sh—t, the monetizing sh—t. I was getting a check off the YouTube sh—t, but people talking about copyrighting, I should do this, that…”
“I would’ve put my watermark on the video. I would’ve put my face on the video when I did it,” he said. “I would’ve copyrighted it. I would’ve done a whole lot of sh—t different.”
He admits, however, that a brief run in with the law messed up one of the the biggest opportunities for him. “If I had been home, I would’ve started sweating my page with hella videos … but it is what it is … I ain’t gonna cry about it,” he continued.
He ended spending two weeks in jail, and said that once he had gotten out people had already begun selling merchandise. “I didn’t do what I was supposed to do when everybody getting paid off this sh*t, and I’m not.”
“I feel good I created something that’ll be with the world forever, but then I feel bad because I didn’t handle my business part correctly. I don’t know nothing about no mother—-g trademarking. I’m a n***a from the streets… I had to take it on the chin, man.”
