Uno. Depending on your upbringing, the word might bring back memories of gentle laughter and wholesome family camaraderie, gathered around the table, a scene worthy of Norman Rockwell himself—or a competitive, heated battle that ends relationships.
But ask the internet about the significance of the “reverse” card, and you’ll get a different thing altogether.
In April of 2018, an Urban Dictionary user defined the term “Uno reverse card” as “An upgraded no u.”
“No U” is actually an anagram of “Uno”—printed on the back of every card in the game.
Illustrating this, a few weeks later, Imgur user “thefloralgalaxy” posted an image of the back of an Uno card photoshopped to reference the Urban Dictionary post. As it spread throughout social media, it was pretty quickly a natural way to visually daydream about being able to turn the tables on a bad situation.
In other words: “This bad thing is happening, I wish I could Uno reverse card the whole thing.”
Like this time, when an Instagrammer got pulled over on the side of the road.
Or this time, when an X user tried to do the dishes and it went horribly wrong.
Or this time, when a footballer was given a yellow card.
Gaining momentum, in October, the shortly lived subreddit /r/UnoReverse launched, as a place for all the memes to gather. And musical YouTuber, “Your Favorite Martian”—even created a music video glorifying its near-mythic power in the summer of 2022.
And for what it’s worth, “Reverse card” is not the only Uno meme out there. An honorable mention has to go to “Draw 25,” which has a real online following in its own right.
Humor often needs to contain a little seed of truth in order to work. So, whether it’s because we all secretly wish we could get back at those who have wronged us, or whether it’s because we all need a do-over once in a while, the Uno reverse card hits hard, simply because it’s so real.
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