미안하다 이거 보여주려고 어그로 끌었다

Origin

‘Sorry, I baited you to show you this’ is the opening line of a bait post. The post believed to be the original is dated October 15th, 2019.

A common misunderstanding starts here. This is not a prank post filled with nonsense unrelated to the headline. The title is written to be as clickable as possible, but the body contains a long, entirely earnest piece of writing about the final battle between Naruto and Sasuke in the manga Naruto, written by someone who had just been moved by it, with some thoughts on Boruto mixed in. The opening ‘sorry, I baited you’ is a sincere apology for having done so, and that sincerity is the point of the meme.

Two images typically accompany it: a capture of the final battle from the later stretch of Naruto Shippuden, or the scene from Boruto: Naruto the Movie in which the Nine-Tails, clad in Susanoo, fights Momoshiki Otsutsuki.

Spread

The format survived because it is so easy to refit. Keep the three beats — clickbait headline, then ‘sorry, I baited you to show you this’, then the thing you actually love — and anything can take Naruto’s place. Communities filled with variants swapping in games, sport, idols, even academic subjects.

As a result, people who never read the original know the opening line, and the sentence itself hardened into a signal meaning ‘I am about to enthuse about something I love’.

Usage

• A preamble before holding forth about your own interests, knowing nobody asked
• An apology when a headline drew clicks and the body is about something else entirely
• A cushion against embarrassment when posting an earnest fan write-up

What matters is that the bait is not malicious. It is not a post trying to deceive you; it admits the deception immediately and announces that it is going to talk about something it loves.

Sources

• Namuwiki, ‘Sorry, I baited you to show you this’ — the presumed original post of October 15th, 2019; the body being a Naruto and Boruto write-up; the two accompanying images; the spread of refitted variants
• Goodgag, ‘The original “sorry, I baited you to show you this”.jpg’ — a capture of the original post