That's Not How It Works You Little Shit

About

“That’s Not How It Works You Little Shit” it’s a catchphrase uttered by the character Kyubey, from the anime and manga series Puella Magi Madoka Magica, on a fancomic as response to the possibility of wishing making more wishes on his contract. Kyubey’s face while uttering the quote became an exploitable and a reaction image for posts seen as nonsensical or stupid.

Origin

The original comic was created by the artist Slurpoof, and first submitted to her personal Tumblr blog on February 11th, 2013.^[1] The comic despicts a girl asking Kyubey if she could wish that she could make more wishes, followed by a close up of Kyubey’s face and the reply “that’s not how it works you little shit”. The post got over 10,000 notes in the following two years.

Spread

On February 19th, 2013, the bottom panel of the comic was used as response to a post submitted on 4chan’s anime and manga board /a/, which suggested wishing to Kyubey infinite wishes.^[3] On March 13th, 2013, a post on /a/ used the catchphrase as response to a post.^[4] Both image and catchphrase started being used as a common response on 4chan.^[2]^[5]

In November 2014, user unknownjedi uploaded to the media sharing page Meme Center a picture titled “Get Your Shitty Story Together, Kyle!”, featuring a Facebook post with the image at the end, gaining over 1700 likes in less than a year.^[8] Previously, in September 2014 the catchphrase was featured in the title of another submission, though the content is unrelated to the picture.^[7] Since unknownjedi’s picture, the image was adopted in the website as exploitable and featured on various images.^[6]