You Guys Are Getting Paid
Where it came from
A line from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), delivered deadpan by a surprised pirate. Became a meme in 2019 for exploited-labor jokes.
A pirate with a look of genuine astonishment says "wait, you guys are getting paid?" You use it to react to any situation where someone discovers that other people are being compensated for a thing they've been doing for free. "You work on open source? You guys are getting paid?"
It's the go-to "I'm being exploited and just now realized it" meme. The pirate is so genuinely surprised that it perfectly captures the moment of realizing you've been doing unpaid labor — or that the normal price of something is wildly higher than what you agreed to.
Still in use, especially in tech and creative-labor discourse.
Search interest, over time
↳ data courtesy of google trends
