The American Chopper Guys Discuss “The Meme”

American Chopper made it’s return to Discovery Channel on Monday and we’ve seen a noticeable uptick in talk about the show in both its past and present iterations. While the show had a long and successful run the first time it was on the air, what most people remember most vividly is the fight between the Pauls that marked the shows eventual decline and end.

While that argument will forever be emblazoned on the memory of everybody who followed the show even casually, the fight itself was immortalized in a completely different way that can only be understood by those familiar with how today’s internet – and the people who use it – works.

A series of stills from the footage became a sort of blank canvas, if you will, to be used for make memes. As Mikey points out, they function much like a blank comic strip, where those creative geniuses – some who prove themselves more intelligent than other, as we all know – are free to add their own text and create a completely different context.

As you can see from some of these, the meme took a drastically different turn than the actual argument itself, being used as more of a tongue-in-cheek reference point for disputes that quite literally have nothing at all to do with American Chopper, or even modern day society. Instead, the text added would put the argument in a historical context, using the Paul’s expressions and gestures to banter the pros and cons of reading literary works or scenes from The Lord of the Rings.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what the internet does, and it’s just one of many reasons it’s both hilarious and terrifying, because the people who come up with this stuff live among us, and we have no idea who they are. Just think about that next time you read a funny meme!