About
The Four Elements refers to a series of reaction images that revolve around the four elements (water, earth, fire, air) applied to various people or things, usually with wordplay involved to associate them with each type. These memes typically include a caption and a four-panel format with a subject edited to reflect all four elementals below a caption. These memes are often associated with Avatar: The Last Airbender, including quotes from the show’s opening sequence.
Origin
Though not all of these memes revolve around Avatar: The Last Airbender, many of them make reference to the show’s opening sequence with excerpts from the dialogue. In the intro (seen below), the narrator (voiced by protagonist Katara) says, “Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished.” Various portions of this intro are frequently seen in Four Elements memes within captions or text on the image.
Spread
The exact first meme to use this theme is unknown, but they began appearing online as early as 2017. One example of this (seen below) was posted on July 18th, 2017, by 9GAG’s Twitter account with the caption, “Only the Catvatar, master of all four elements could save the world.” The image received over 3,000 likes and 1,800 retweets.
The theme spread further as additional users began posting their own takes on the trend. On May 26th, 2018, YouTuber Ricky Dillon uploaded a version to his Twitter account with the quote from Avatar. This example (shown below) received over 30,700 likes and 4,300 retweets.
On Reddit, the trend was commonly seen in late 2019 and early 2020 in memes. On November 28th, 2019, Redditor Flqmingg posted “The four elements of st” to the r/memes sub, receiving over 39,000 upvotes and 266 comments (seen below). Later that day, Redditor MachoMitch9046 posted another variant featuring different elemental versions of The Prince of Bel-Air, with 15,600 upvotes and 77 comments.
On March 30th, 2019, Twitter user MildraTheMonk posted an example featuring Guy Fieri as “Flavatar: the Last Flavorbender.” This meme (shown below) was liked over 53,000 times and retweeted 16,600 times.
Redditor nosamnamnoC posted another take on the meme to the r/PrequelMemes subreddit on January 7th, 2020 (seen below), receiving over 5,500 upvotes and 64 comments.
On May 30th, 2018, YouTube account Meme Money uploaded a video titled, “Avatar The Last Chairbender,” which references the meme. The video (shown below) received over 873,000 views, 16,000 likes and 361 comments.
Various Examples
Search Interest
Unavailable.
External References
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-four-elements