The WEIRD Lore Behind 40K Memes. | Warhammer 40K

well seeing as i've been recently thrice blessed by papanergal and have begun my ascendancy into demon hood needless to say my mind is not operating at peak efficiency right now so instead of doing my normal deep dives we're gonna deep dive something a lot more educationally fulfilling that's right we're deep diving warhammer memes and memes are great everybody likes memes but do you know where your memes actually come from i'm willing to bet there's some memes from the grim darkness of the far future that have got you believing stuff that isn't actually true and admittedly some of that may be my fault from space furries to suicidal trench fighters to purple orcs and a primark who definitely didn't do anything wrong memes are basically an extension of a community's passion and obsession and they're a pretty interesting snapshot into what we find endearing about such a bleak and depressing universe and yeah many of them are not accurate hell some of them are blatantly wrong but so what they're fun and everybody likes fun the only people that get upset about the lore inaccuracy of memes are people who aggressively hate fun which definitely isn't you as you clicked on a video all about warhammer memes anyone know the greatest thing about 40k memes they literally never change the community crafted 8 jokes to rule them all several decades ago and everything else has just been derivative of them so let's deep dive those eight jokes that fans tell themselves over and over and over and over again and figure out their origins and explore their deeper meanings because that's how you make a joke even funnier right you just explain it over and over and over everybody likes when you have to explain a joke anyways let's get into it before we get started i want to give a shout out to this week's sponsor one of my favorite types of games has always been online shooters but as life keeps getting even more hectic i just don't have the time to play them like i used to that was until i found mech arena it lets me get in a whole bunch of fast-paced mech action in seconds the maps and objectives are set up to absolutely maximize the action encounters are intense and constant and the respawn times are practically non-existent not to mention the short round times mean i can get two or three matches in in under 10 minutes and there are thousands of different mech and gun combos i know i personally love going tank mode in my panther with twin thermal lances the other team might as well pack up early because ain't nothing stopping this monster and once they're completely demoralized i like to kick it up a notch and switch over to my fast max namely either the kill shot or the lancer they drop the armor in exchange for pure speed letting me go in for the flank pop an unsuspecting mech or two and slip back out before they even know what happened and my absolute favorite part about this game is that i've never really felt like a match was unwinnable i always feel well equipped for whatever the other team is throwing at me which is ridiculously impressive considering that the matchmaker can come up with two equally balanced five-man teams in around 10 seconds this dude right here thought he had some pretty good juke skills my mans was absolutely confident he got away you thought oh snappy got mad shouldn't have been on the other team my dude i don't know what to tell you mecharina's got a ton happening this month including battle pass season 6 where you can get your hands on some amazing new skins and a bunch of other goodies and if that's not enough there's a ton of special events happening as well that are gonna have some pretty sweet rewards including new weapons skins and even a new pilot asami macarena is getting pretty big and that means bigger prizes more competition and a lot more fun you can play mech arena on ios and android right now and it's completely free to play and if you use my personal link or scan my qr code you can get a whole bunch of bonuses worth 45 dollars we're talking about a steel reaper skin 500 acoins and 70 000 credits and that should help kick-start your game thanks again to my friends over at mecharina and let's get into the video so to do a warhammer meme video proper i feel like we have to talk about the orcs first as they've spawned more memes than pretty much any other faction but we're gonna focus on one in particular here and it's my personal favorite and with that said i have one question to ask you have you ever seen a purple orc the answer is no you have not stop lying and believe it or not there's actually a really good reason why you haven't seen one and that's because purple is the most sneaky color you see orcs believe that certain colors bestow upon them certain abilities and powers and since each one of them generates a psychic field that can tend to manifest their beliefs into reality these colors do tend to do what the orcs think they should the most well known of which is the color red which orcs believe makes things go faster thus the vehicles that are painted red tend to go faster than the ones that aren't blue represents luck and blue orcs tend to be luckier than other orcs black equals toughness yellow equals wealth and better explosions and all works agree that green is the best color so without having any kind of specific examples of what green actually does for them they all agree that everyone can benefit from having at least a little bit of green on them now here's the thing about purple it's actually not one of the colors that canonically gives them any kind of extra ability there has never been any mention of purple orcs anywhere in the official canon but you see this makes a lot of sense to the orc fans as the reason you don't see purple orcs is because clearly purple is meant as a stealth color for them purple orcs are so damn stealthy that you can't even see them in the lore okay moving on from the orcs let's talk about the adeptus mechanicus's complete obsession with of all things toasters okay personal bias showing but the ad mech toaster memes are by far my favorite grim dank memes in all of 40k like with pretty much everything on this list it's one of those jokes that no matter how many times it gets told it's [ __ ] hilarious every single time listen i'm a man of simple pleasures somebody mentions toasters and admak to me i laugh it's the joke that just keeps on giving so if you didn't know the adeptus mechanicus really likes toasters i mean really likes toasters like to an upsetting level and according to emperor text-to-speech device they actually have a holiday called toaster [ __ ] day as you can imagine it's a wonderful time of year it's a joyous celebration of all that is good and there's a lot of oiling of holy mecha dendrites if you get my meaning a bunch of tech priests who have a fetish for toasters that's hilarious in its own right but where did this meme come from and what is it supposed to represent so the toaster here is supposed to represent ancient technology you see the mechanicum is obsessed with tech specifically old and ancient tech from the dark age of technology considering that the dark age of technology was the height of humanity's power and we were capable of some pretty ridiculous stuff back then the adeptus mechanicus isn't really into innovation preferring to rely on ancient wisdom that's why you'll see a common pattern with them and pretty much everything they create being an ancient holy relic and on the surface it seems kind of silly like why wouldn't you try to advance why wouldn't you try to make something new but when you start diving into the older stuff you see that what humanity was capable of in the year 25 000 and earlier was way better than anything they can come up with now there's an episode of the show hammer and bolter over on warhammer plus that focuses on a tech priest and it's about her journey to find a new stc which if you don't know what those are they're basically the blueprints for some of this old tech and this may be a minor spoiler but i'm going to avoid spoiling the entirety of the episode just enough to make my point when she does ultimately find this stc it is revealed to be basically like the necrons living metal it allows their existing machines to literally repair themselves like the metal can actually regrow and this is insanity can you imagine how powerful that would be if the imperium just suddenly had the same abilities that the necrons do like if one of their ships just got blown in half and it can just suddenly repair itself that's how powerful the stuff from the dark age of technology was the data stored on the stcs from this time are insanely valuable and highly sought after by the mechanicum so the toaster is used as a stand-in for this old technology and between you and me i 100 understand why they would use a toaster for this it's the perfect machine it's elegant yet simple trivial yet essential and most importantly it can be trusted to enact its divine purpose without failure its design is deceptively simple yet it's a marvel of engineering to gaze upon the divinity of the toaster is to look backwards at simpler times when the universe was not engulfed in the flames of war it is to see the accumulation of all of mankind's achievements condensed down into a humble yet refined machine wholly dedicated to a single purpose and that's a purpose that its master can depend upon it to deliver with divinity and grace you may see but a humble toaster whereas the mechanicus sees it as a beacon in the dark a gateway into divine purpose of machines the toaster is perfection made manifest and i'm sorry but if you look at this thing and you don't think peak divine sexiness are you even really alive because that's that's that's a good ass looking toaster i would love to slap a purity seal on that okay enough sexy toasters let's move on yes inquisitor this video right here i have received about approximately hundred million variations of this comment in my time creating warhammer content every single time i talk about anything that isn't space marines this comment appears over and over and over again hell even when i do talk about the space marines depending on your perspective you can definitely still find a reason why this comment would apply and because of its universal usage it's kind of the perfect joke you see the inquisition is a massive organization and they have a branch that is designed to cover pretty much every form of heresy you see the orders are broken into two major categories majoris and minors the major ordos are hereticus malleus and xenos which cover heretics demons and aliens but there's a whole ton of minor ordos as well but we'll get into that when i make an inquisition video now all of the inquisitors that the inquisition uses are all trained in different areas and they all have unique personalities and ways of dealing with problems to compound on this and don't get it twisted i'm speaking very broadly here there are two major categories of inquisitor there are puritans and radicals puritanical inquisitors are sticklers for the rules they adhere pretty strictly to religious and political doctrines whereas radical inquisitors are definitely the ends justify the means kind of guys in the eisenhorn trilogy the titular character is basically considered a radical and at one point he literally binds a demon to himself a puritan inquisitor would see this as the ultimate heresy but to a radical if he's using this demon to better understand and fight chaos then it's a tool that should be utilized so it should go without saying that the inquisitors don't always agree with each other and fighting and squabbling amongst themselves is definitely pretty common so depending on if they're a radical or a puritan what ordo they happen to be working for or even just down to their unique personalities you could kind of make the argument that no matter what the video's topic is there's at least one inquisitor out there that would declare it as heresy is it a video about chaos heresy a video in orc biology heresy a video on space marine tactics well that's definitely heresy what if it's a video or a post praising the god emperor well you better hope he capitalized g in every single instance that god appears because otherwise that's a heresy and i know what you're thinking wes you read warhammer comments all day every day you've seen this exact comment in some variation 10 000 times hasn't it gotten at least a little bit old and the answer to that my friend is absolutely [ __ ] not it's still hilarious every single time someone says it moving on from the inquisition let's talk about the death corps of greek and more specifically let's talk about their absolutely iconic shovels which turns out may be less iconic than you think so i'm going to be super duper honest with you i like the krieg but the guard are one of those factions who have insanely deep and complex lore they may honestly even rival that of the space marines and i've only read a couple of novels focused on them so the death core of krieg is a faction i really don't know too much about i've read the supplements on them read the wiki pages and watched lore videos on the krieg but to me it's just all facts on paper like i really like reading the novels because it gives me a better understanding and a better feel of how all these facts fit together and like everybody else in this community what i think i know about something is often flavored by the memes so i was always under the assumption that the krieg were suicidal trench fighters that fought with shovels and turns out that's only partly true in doing my research for this video i have found not a single instance of shovels being used by the krieg in actual combat pretty much anywhere which was making me really scratch my head because i've seen so much artwork depicting krieg soldiers charging at chaos space marines with a sharpened shovel in hand but it turns out they use a chain sword or the majority of the time their actual bayonet over a shovel that doesn't really happen in any of the lore it's just something that the community has kind of invented and i kind of get where it comes from they're famous for trench warfare and a shovel would definitely be pretty useful for digging a trench so yeah the men of the creek don't fight with shovels i'm incredibly disappointed and my day is ruined [Music] the space wolves are a bunch of furries i mean it's kind of obvious to see where this joke comes from they're pretty obsessed with wolves they ride wolves into battle they wear wolf pelts they've got wolf skulls hanging all over their armor they've even got a unit called the wolfen which is basically a space wolf werewolf complete with a walmart level fursuit but let's dive beneath the surface of this and see if there's a little bit more information here and determine whether or not they actually are furries so there's a line in the novel a thousand suns that has kind of stuck around for a really long time and created an enormous amount of debate in warhammer 40k circles it's where magnus the red of the thousand suns cryptically says that there are no wolves on fenris which is kind of ridiculous there's clearly wolves on fenris we can see them the space marines are riding them into battle but there might actually be something to this as it's rumored that the original colonists of fenris had wolf dna spliced into them this would have given them better survival chances because fenris was a pretty harsh place i mean it's not called the death world for nothing now it's believed that the wolves of fenris were descendants from these colonists so the space wolf recruits that were taken from fenris still had this wolf dna locked deep inside them additionally it is said that the genetic material used to create lehman russ the primark of the space wolves had wolf-like dna added to it and this wolf dna is still present in the canis helix so it's not far off to say that space wolves do literally have the dna of wolves in them now it's well documented that the canis helix can sometimes make space wolves turn into the wolfen and because of this warhammer fans have speculated that some of the larger wolves may actually be space marines who have turned completely now as interesting as this is it's mostly fan speculation we don't really have anything concrete in the lore that says this is true so whether or not they turn into full-fledged wolves it doesn't really matter they do literally have the dna of canines inside their genetic code so that's check one for definitely furry confirmed the other more simple source of this meme is just the fact that wolves appear pretty much everywhere with spacewolf culture pretty much everything has something to do with wolves and a lot of fans kind of get mad at this because it seems like games workshop is trying to override the viking culture and make them way more focused on being wolves instead of the more 30k feel where they were definitely vikings with just a little bit of wolf flavoring sprinkled on top now i'm gonna be honest even since around 5th edition when the thunder wolf cavalry were introduced i never really saw memes about space wolves being furries it seems to be kind of a newer thing from the last few years and i think this is mostly just due to the prevalence of both of these communities growing over time on the internet and the funny thing is if you look over at warhammer age of sigmar or the old world there are literally beast races there's the skaven the lizardmen and the beastmen they are actually armies of anthropomorphic animals but nobody makes furry jokes at skavenplayer's expense that doesn't really happen so why is this why do the space wolf players get called furries but it doesn't really happen with the people who are actually playing a furry army now it's my personal belief that this is a little bit of the streisand effect and that's where the more somebody tries to censor cover up or hide something the more people start to dig deeper into it i have seen a lot of posts from space wolf players basically saying that they're not [ __ ] far race and getting big mad whenever anybody insists that they are and here's the thing about being on the internet if somebody makes a joke at your expense and you get defensive you can expect that joke to keep coming up over and over and over if you kind of roll with the punches and embrace it or laugh about it then people are not really getting the reaction that they want out of you and they tend to just kind of stop so this is me just thinking out loud but if somebody plays one of the beast races in age of sigmar they're literally playing a race of anthropomorphic animals and they like that whether or not they're a furry it doesn't really matter they enjoy the army for what it is so if somebody calls it a bunch of furries they'll be like yeah i mean i guess that is literally what they are but if you tell the big proud space wolf player that his vikings are actually furries they have a tendency to write up a big long response on why you're wrong and why they don't like how games workshop is making them all about wolves and erasing the viking culture and blah blah blah stating the obvious here but it's obviously not all space wolf players that are like this i mean i personally play chaos and we have a tendency to be just as if not a lot more whiny but there does seem to be a pattern here so the joke is going to keep coming back so in conclusion are the space wolves furries no they're not but the joke stems from spaceball players being easily offended by it the idea that magnus did nothing wrong is probably one of the most common debates that i've seen in the warhammer community for a long time and it mostly stems from a novel known as a thousand suns where magnus is seeking to warn the emperor of his brother horus betrayal and he kind of goes about doing this in the worst way imaginable and ends up flooding the imperial palace with a whole bunch of demons so i'm gonna be glazing over a whole lot of stuff here but the super abridged version is that the thousand suns were a legion of psychers this was kind of their whole thing they were all psychically gifted but then at the council of nikea it was determined that psychic powers would be completely banned and the librarian program would be dismantled magnus and the thousand sons were obviously outraged by this as that's basically what they were made to do their entire culture and history was based around their psychic gifts it would be like teaching a man to fly only to clip his wings and scold him for trying to take flight now it was some time after the council of nikea where magnus would be made aware of horus betrayal and seeking to warn his father before it was too late he cast an insanely powerful spell now this allowed him to astral project all the way across the galaxy to terra because prospero was a pretty far distance away and trying to get a message through normal channels could have taken too long so magnus's soul flew across the cosmos like a comet desperate to reach his father and warn him of what was coming but when he got close he encountered a massive psychic barrier that no matter what he did he couldn't penetrate it now this is when zinc appeared before him and offered him the power he needed to break through no magnus didn't know what this thing was he didn't know about zinch he had appeared to him before as a serpent but this thing seemed like a completely different entity now whatever this presence was was incredibly powerful in fact it is said that they communicated not with words but through power and the astral forms that both zinc and magnus took were comprised of their psychic might and the exact dimensions of magnus at this point aren't really known but it is said that zynch was the size of a continent so magnus took the chaos god's power and broke through the barrier when he materialized inside of the palace he had realized what he had done the emperor had set that barrier up in the first place to protect tara from the denizens of the warp and magnus having broken through it had basically just opened the floodgates so needless to say this went really really badly and undid an enormous amount of the emperor's work now the ramifications of this event is not really the point of this video we're focused on the meme so did magnus do anything wrong here proponents of magnus say that he didn't do anything wrong that his father had not made him aware of the dangers of the warp and more importantly what lurked within its seas now what magnus did from his perspective was the only right decision to make if he had waited too long or used the pre-approved methods to send his warning it could have been intercepted or worse it may have arrived too late so even though he literally broke one of terra's main defenses against demons and let them into the imperial palace many magnus fans say that he did the best he could with the information he had he had the right intentions and if the emperor had been more clear with him this may have been avoided and that's a solid argument doing the best you can with the information you have available sometimes laws have to be broken for the greater good however in retrospect looking at what actually happened people on the other side of this debate will say that magnus clearly [ __ ] up it wasn't just him doing what he thought was right he was being controlled by his insanely powerful ego that magnus was beyond arrogant to think that he knew better than his father the emperor of mankind magnus disobeyed not only his father but the decision of the council of nikea and in doing so he literally played right into zinch's hands that thinking you know better than everybody else is not a sign of altruism it's naive and childlike and ended up getting a lot of people killed and i think what makes this meme particularly interesting is that there isn't really a right answer here you may feel really strongly one way or the other but there's always somebody else that's gonna feel the exact opposite so it leads to some pretty fun ethical debates and unlike with the space wolves being furries i don't think i've ever seen anybody actually be triggered or super upset by this argument so it's one of those fun little philosophy 101 type online debates and an s-class meme in its own right literally everybody hates the tau hating on the blue cowfish is probably the 40k community's favorite pastime and even though i personally love the tao and i think they're pretty cool tau hate memes will never get old that is as long as people understand that it's a joke there definitely are a few people in the community that kind of miss the memo on this one and think everybody else is being serious there's definitely a lot of weird neck beardly virtue signaling that tends to happen in warhammer community sites where somebody posts a picture of a towel miniature they painted and they're really proud of it just to have somebody comment this like 10 paragraph long rant about how they don't fit the universe and they personally don't like the towel and it's like yeah dude that's not what this post was about but go off i guess now if you were a person who literally knew nothing about the tao other than what you've gathered from memes you'd probably think that they're like the most hated faction in the entire 40k universe but this honestly couldn't be further from the truth the tower one of the most popular factions in all of 40k if they weren't popular they would have been removed a long time ago games workshop is notorious for this hell they blew up the entire old world and killed warhammer fantasy because sales dipped like just a little games workshop has dropped model lines for far less so if the tower pretty popular and they sell well where does all the hate come from well we can find a source in a few different places the first and most obvious is some people actually just genuinely don't like them which is something i've always found kinda weird because if i'm being honest with you i kinda like everything in warhammer even the really dumb stuff but this just kinda comes down to personal opinion and i think those people are entitled to it you know as long as they're not being an [ __ ] about it but the more interesting origin of tau hate i believe comes from a period in 6th and 7th edition where they were unbelievably overpowered you see i got started in warhammer at the end of 3rd edition and the beginning of 4th and during that time the tower still pretty new and in my experience there really wasn't any hate for them they had this really unique aesthetic and it appealed to a pretty large portion of the community and needless to say it attracted a lot of new people to warhammer as well i played warhammer up until around 6th edition and then i quit for a few years and came back during 8th and i think around 6th edition is when the tao hatred really started and now thankfully i never had to fight this but apparently taudar which was an alliance of tao and eldar was the most ridiculous thing that anybody could possibly feel even if you were able to beat them it just wasn't fun it wasn't going to be a good experience i know around the time in 5th edition when grey knights were overpowered we saw a very similar level of hatred for them but when they eventually got toned back down the meme sort of stopped but this didn't happen with the tau when they were inevitably nerfed and i find that pretty interesting i think it's because they were more dominant for a much longer period of time that being said i don't necessarily think this is a bad thing the humor that warhammer fans tend to espouse in comment sections and stuff definitely stems from its grim dark nature just as long as people aren't taking it too far and they understand that at its core it's just a joke if you're a person who would genuinely make somebody feel bad for liking the tao you're an [ __ ] and don't get me wrong it's fun to make fun of the tao it's fun to make fun of the imperium it's fun to make fun of everything in 40k it's fun to accuse people of heresy and tell them that they're calling the inquisitor warhammer is a pretty dark universe and thus the humor that stems from it tends to be pretty dark as well but at the end of the day we're a family this is an awesome community and we don't really want to make somebody feel unwelcome for liking something within our community so that being said i will never stop making fun of the towel i'll never stop making fun of the space wolves and i don't think we need to that's not what i'm calling for just you know be cool we're all gathered together to play make-believe generals with our toy soldiers so could you just be cool for like a minute so what memes do you think i missed is there anything that you'd like to see me cover and dive into the origins of in a future video it's no secret that warhammer players never come up with new jokes we rely on old faithful the eight jokes that were made to rule them all but let me know in the comments which ones are your favorite and more specifically why i'm always curious to see what warhammer fans actually find funny as always thanks a ton to all of my patrons you guys have had my back since the beginning and i honestly couldn't do it without you and if you're somebody who enjoys my content and wants to help support more of it then head on over to patreon.comwesthammer or just click the link in my description if you'd like to make a pledge it does seriously help me out i offer an exclusive podcast on there as well as an option where i send you a hand-painted miniature every month thanks again everybody and i'll see you in my next deep dive

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 359,198

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, wh40k, 40k orks, adeptus mechanicus, 40k inquesition, space wolves, space marines, grimdankgrim dark, warhammer memes, 40k memes, warhammer 40k funny, warhammer jokes, games workshop, table top gaming, weshammer, purple orks, I'm a tank, warhammer orks, orks, warhammer lore, 40k lore, warhammer explained, warhammer deep dive, deep dive, tau, tau 40k, tau hate, tau memes, ork memes, magnus the red, thousand sons, primarch, death korps of krieg

Id: y39eM2YarMQ

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Sat May 21 2022