Patihard (Party Hard)

Andrew W.K.’s song

The song “Party Hard” by American rock musician Andrew W.K. was released as a single on October 29, 2001, and became his first notable commercial success. The chorus is built on the repeated phrase “party hard,” and the lyrics present partying as a way of life. It was this song that made the expression recognizable to a wide audience, and in the Russian version of the meme the meaning “wild party” took hold.

The word before the song

According to one meme reference, the expression appeared even earlier, in a song from an episode of the series Fraggle Rock, which premiered in May 1985. This finding should be considered preliminary, since it rests on a single source. Even if it is confirmed, it was the 2001 song that turned the phrase into a meme and set its main meaning.

The first GIF

The first meme was tied to a GIF. In June 2002, Something Awful forum user Buffington Post posted “Andrew_wk.gif,” a two-frame animation of Andrew W.K. with the caption PARTY HARD. One source links the GIF’s mass spread with the twitching guy to March 2003, naming the Something Awful forum and 4chan. The dates in the sources differ: one meme reference gives June 2002 as the time of the first GIF, while another gives March 2003 as the time of its mass spread.

Spread across forums

On March 26, 2003, a Something Awful user opened a thread that gathered almost 360 replies. On March 29, another member started a thread for clips based on the GIFs. The meme moved to 4chan, where it turned into a flood of remixes. On March 15, 2008, Anonymous members staged the “Operation: Party Hard” protest outside Church of Scientology buildings as part of Project Chanology. On February 13, 2011, Andrew W.K. himself held a Q&A session on 4chan’s /mu/ board, which temporarily knocked the site offline.

The word in Russian slang

According to one source, the meme spread to Russia in the 2000s, and the word “patihard” entered slang. It means a wild party, and from it came the verb “patihardit’” (to party hard). The word was written not only on GIFs but also on ordinary pictures. The ironic meaning appeared later: “patihard” is used for photos of obviously dull get-togethers. An example given in one reference is the meme “Geeks’ Party.”

In Russian usage the word often stays spelled in English, while its pronunciation is adapted to colloquial speech. Such adaptation is typical of 2000s youth slang, when foreign expressions quickly acquired their own suffixes and verbs, and their meaning shifted from literal to ironic.

Caption examples and format

A typical caption is short: “Party Hard” over a GIF or picture where what’s happening looks like a celebration. The ironic version goes like this: “Patihard at the office party where everyone left at 9:30.” The format relies on the contrast between the loud caption and what is visible in the picture. The looping animation amplifies the effect, because the movements look like an endless dance.

The format also handles a serious tone poorly: the caption “Party Hard” under a photo of an official event almost always reads as irony. So in slang the word has settled into two meanings at once, and which one applies is determined by what is pictured, not by the word itself.