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The American Chopper Meme Proves Rational Debate Is Still Possible, Even on Twitter

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Vivian Kane
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Published: Apr 10, 2018 12:14 pm

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While memes usually rely on brevity and visuals for their effect, if you spend any time at all on Twitter, you’ve no doubt seen the long strips of screencaps, showing two men in a heated argument, one throwing a chair, the other rocking a handlebar mustache.

It’s the American Chopper meme and it’s my very favorite thing on the internet.

You don’t have to have any knowledge of American Chopper. (I didn’t.) The show ran from 2003 to 2010, and the images used are taken from a scene in which one of the men is fired. The meme, though, is based on creating a dramatic contrast between the men’s rage and the text superimposed over it. A version of the meme popped up in 2011, but it only fully exploded in its current debate-based form last month. The setup can be applied to any argument, be it personal, political, or abstract.

You may have issues with the meme, either its format or content. Those issues are valid, and they’ve likely already been worked out–within the meme itself, obviously.

Because ultimately, the American Chopper meme is a way to work through both sides of an argument, something most people don’t care to do these days, especially not on the internet. Essentially, it’s a miniature version of Plato’s dialectics, using a dialogue to reach truth through reasoned discussion. The visual of these two impassioned men throwing chairs serves as a catchy contrast to the factual discussion happening in the text, making it a fantastic method for disseminating information.

At the rate memes come and go, this one is already on its way to joining Distracted Boyfriend in the internet graveyard. (Most of those tweets above are from a week ago, nearly the entire lifespan of internet virality.) But I’ll miss this one, as it proved that Twitter actually can be a place for rational, respectful debate. Just so long as it’s in meme form.

(image: Pexels.com)

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Image of Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.
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