Martin Belam 

Meme explained: why do I keep seeing the same two angry men on social media?

Stills of row between father and son on 2000s reality show American Chopper become internet hits
  
  

Paul Teutul Sr in one of the stills from reality TV show American Chopper which has become an internet meme
Paul Teutul Sr in one of the stills from reality TV show American Chopper which has become an internet meme. Photograph: Discovery Channel

If you’ve been on social media over the past few days you may have found yourself unable to escape two men arguing. What’s new, you may ask, but this is two specific men: Paul Teutul Sr and Paul Teutul Jr.

The pair starred in a US reality TV show in the late 2000s called American Chopper. The programme was based on their business manufacturing custom chopper-style motorbikes.

A key component of the show’s format was the frequent arguments and disputes between the father and son. In one episode, first broadcast in April 2009, a row between them escalates until by the end of the show Teutul Jr is fired by Teutul Sr.

It is one of the exchanges from that episode that has become creative fuel for internet jokes – with new dialogue captions overlaid on the images of the argument, which was originally about Teutul Jr repeatedly being late for work, and which culminates with Jr throwing a chair across the room and walking out.

Although people have been using the images from American Chopper in this way since 2011, the format appears to have really taken off on the web in the past month.

The resurgence of the meme was sparked by two popular examples in rapid succession. The first depicted the two arguing about whether “all women are queens” – another meme format. The second showed them arguing about the cartoon Garfield.

Despite the US origin of the pictures, British social media users have also taken it on and used it as a backdrop to previous internet jokes such as the notorious 2015 Arsenal fan exchange over the age of possible transfer target Jackson Martinez.

As is often the case once a joke takes off on social media, users have also made jokes that rely on referencing the format itself.

And it seems to have taken over from the “distracted boyfriend” meme as the image you cannot avoid.

Not sure this is progress.

 

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