Meme of the Week: Ultra Instinct Shaggy

Ultra Instinct Shaggy is a meme that has become an internet sensation over the past few months, leaving social media goers unable to stop sharing and reposting it all over social networking sites. The meme is of the character Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, undergoing the “ultra instinct” transformation from animated show Dragon Ball Super; “ultra instinct” being a trait of the show’s main character, Goku. An Ultra Instinct Remix featuring Shaggy became very popular, starting the beginning of the Shaggy meme.

October 12th, 2017, a Youtube creator called Midya posted the Ultra Instinct Remix showing Shaggy fighting a gang of thugs from Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur, while the song “Ultimate Battle” from the Dragon Ball Super soundtrack used as background music. Once this video was posted, it gained a lot of attention and grew a fanbase, where fanatics created fanart and other video edits of Shaggy. November 3rd of 2017, an artist on DeviantArt named MielSibel10032002 uploaded fan art of Shaggy and the Dragon Ball Super transformation, where it was later posted to TwoBestFriendsPlay, who has a large following, where it received 643 points. In January of 2018, Tumblr user mgx0 posted various frames of Dragon Ball Super with Ultra Instinct Shaggy edited into them. Mgx0’s post got over 35,000 notes and spread widely over the platform. Edits of Ultra Instinct Shaggy became popular on Youtube, specifically edits uploaded by Youtube creator Joe Capo, who got beyond 330,000 views on his videos. Since then, the video has been removed from Youtube’s platform for unknown reasons. Another YouTuber called GOWBuuzer created a video edit of Ultra Instinct Shaggy in a mod for the video game Dragon Ball XV 2 and received more than 358,000 views.

Another version of the Shaggy meme is called Shaggy’s Power. In January of 2019, the popularity of the meme swelled on Instagram and Reddit and created Shaggy’s Power. January 27th, news outlet Woken News created a petition titled “Make Shaggy A DLC In Mortal Kombat 11” on the site Change.org, that gained exceeding 83,000 signatures. It is unsure that Shaggy was ever incorporated into the game, but we can only pray.

It isn’t only cartoon Shaggy that was turned into a meme, actors from the live-action Scooby-Doo films were also subjected to being turned into memes for all of the internet to be entertained by. One of the most popular memes of the actors is in an interview after the movie, where Freddie Prinze Jr., the actor of Fred from the Scooby Doo gang, is edited over talking about Matthew Lillard’s acting, who plays Shaggy. Fred is edited over and says “we actually couldn’t film with Shaggy for more than 5 seconds at a time or our bodies would be ripped to shreds even though he was only using 1% of his power.” This is where the meme really exploded and had the entire internet talking about Shaggy only using 1% of his power.

It is also rumored he beat Thanos, from Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War, who is seemingly impossible to beat. Yet, somehow, Shaggy destroyed him only using 1% of his full power. Other villains Shaggy has annihilated are Goku from Dragon Ball Z, a popularly hard to beat Wii Sports character called Matt, and God himself. In conclusion, Shaggy is, and always will be the most powerful and god-like being. Shaggy is the new God.