Origin. San Andreas reached PC in June 2005, and many players in Russia and nearby countries first played pirate copies with a near-machine translation. WASTED became «ПОТРАЧЕНО» and BUSTED, the arrest screen, became «СЛОМАНО» ("broken"). Onliner in 2016 and VGTimes in 2020 both list «Потрачено» among the best-known game memes of the 2000s. Who made the translation is not known.
How people use it. As a caption for fails, lost money, ruined plans and people asleep in odd places, usually in big letters over a grey or blurry photo.
Example. A phone that fell face down into a puddle, with «ПОТРАЧЕНО» across the picture.
Sources
- 1 Onliner: «Потрачено» и «Грабить корованы», лучшие игровые мемы нашей юности (20 November 2016) tech.onliner.by
- 2 Memepedia: Потрачено memepedia.world
- 3 VGTimes: лучшие мемы из видеоигр, Press F, «Потрачено» и другие (1 October 2020) vgtimes.ru
- 4 Wikipedia: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas en.wikipedia.org