About
“That’s Rough, Buddy” is a line of dialogue from Season 3, Episode 14 of Avatar: The Last Airbender. In the scene, Sokka tells Zuko, “My first girlfriend turned into the moon.” There’s a pause, and then Zuko responds, “That’s rough, buddy.” This became one of the most famous comedic lines from the show due to how much of an underreaction “that’s rough, buddy” is as a response to Sokka’s issue.
Origin
On July 16th, 2008, the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode titled “The Boiling Rock: Part 1” aired on American television, which featured the line of dialogue. Fans quickly latched onto the line, posturing it as one of the funniest in the series.
On July 17th, 2009, YouTuber noobradio posted a video of the scene to their channel (shown below). The video garnered over 773 thousand views and 29 thousand upvotes in 11 years. This is the oldest and most viewed upload of the scene on YouTube.
On October 12th, Deviantart user iCannons posted a meme about the scene, featuring the on-image caption, “That’s rough buddy: Because it’s kinda hard to respond to ‘My first girlfriend turned into the moon.'” (Shown below.) In the post, she describes how she laughed about it for 45 minutes straight. The post received over 6,000 views and 56 favorites in 11 years, and is one of the earliest instances of the scene used as a meme.
Spread
On July 9th, 2011, Reddit user Infantrysgirl18 posted a remade version of the meme iCannons posted to Deviantart, featuring the same image and text in a different font (shown below, left). The post received 59 upvotes in nine years. On May 28th, 2012, Reddit user siegel_caww posted a link to a meme on Tumblr featuring Sokka’s line of dialogue, using the post title, “That’s rough, buddy.” (Shown below, right.) This post garnered over 1.1 thousand upvotes.
Fans of the show continued to create memes out of the scene across social media platforms. On October 17th, 2014, YouTuber lulu smith uploaded a video titled, “Zuko That’s rough buddy” to their channel. The video features another scene from Avatar with Zukko saying, “That’s rough, buddy,” spliced onto the end. The video garnered over 1.4 million views by September of 2020 (shown below).
On May 15th, 2020, the meme and the phrase, “That’s rough, buddy,” saw increased use as a reaction image after Netflix added Avatar: The Last Airbender to its platform. In September 2020, Twitter users started applying the phrase to other media and situation in their lives (examples shown below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
Know Your Meme Store
External References
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-rough-buddy