Alexandra Hill Meme

Chuck Norris Meme: The Ultimate Superhuman

On May 12, 2004 NBC merged with Vivendi Universal Entertainment. For Conan O’Brien, this meant he could play video clips from Walker Texas Ranger at any time without paying royalties to USA network. Conan exploits this by creating “WTR lever”.  Throughout his shows, Conan would pull this lever, causing a scene from the film to play above. Now, flash-forward to the summer of 2005 when The Pacifier was released to theaters. In the film, Vin Diesel is a Navy SEAL turned babysitter assigned on an (belittling) assignment. This absurd idea of the SEAL being assigned to protect five children, leads to a comical forum on SomethingAwful called “Post Your Vin Diesel Facts”. This forum essentially poked fun of the movie concept. This site gave way to Ian Spector’s idea to create a website solely dedicated to these posts—people post the facts and also created new ones about Vin Diesel. The website was a huge success, and received over 20,000 hits on the first day. However, the excitement of Vin Diesel died down, and Spector realized he needed a new face for the website. He asked readers to vote on twelve people to be the new face for the fact generator. Emails came flooding in in favor of Chuck Norris—he was not even part of the original list of twelve! The landslide win, in concurrence with the WTR lever on Conan O’Brien, aided into the creation of the Chuck Norris meme.

Chuck Norris has come to represent the epitome of manliness in our culture, mostly due to his roles as a fighter in movies and TV shows such as Walker Texas Ranger. The memes are based upon Norris’s endurance, attitude, superhuman qualities, and overall “badass-ness”. For example, one meme says “I threw a grenade at fifty people. And then the grenade exploded” or “Chuck Norris only goes to the gas station. When he’s thirsty”. In the memes, he can often be seen holding two machine guns. Chuck Norris even confessed that his favorite meme was “They once tried to carve Chuck Norris’ face into Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t hard enough for his beard” from The Best Damn Sports Show Period.

The Internet is so powerful because it has the ability to create real world consequences. There is a relationship between the virtual reality of the internet and the reality of the real world. This is exemplified numerous times due to the Chuck Norris memes. For example, World and Warcraft asked Chuck Norris to be in their commercial, which is sponsored by a series of celebrities that deal with in-game characters of the celebrities. Chuck Norris was also referenced in an episode in family game, premiered on April 29. 2007. The episode “Boys Do Cry” featured a scene where the Chuck Norris facts were mentioned. Unfortunately, most who were fans of the memes lost their interest after this episode. Yet, the point being that memes—and the Internet—have the power to affect the real world.