This is your reminder that Chuck Norris was a hateful, racist ghoul.
@alda came here to favourite everyone who says this
@alda and a meme that we didn’t actually relate to
@alda I lived in Utah during the Prop 8 thing. And he was in Utah alot fundraising for the Mormon church for the fight in California. I'm gay, and Salt Lake City is actually a very gay friendly city believe it or not. It's a fun place. But the vitriol he would say about SLC, the mayor, and the gays in SLC, because every last queer in the valley was protesting, were just outrageous. Good riddance. I'm sure there is a party at The Trapp tonight. He is NOT liked in SLC at all.
@alda I didn’t know that. Time and again, you find out that celebrities are wrong.

@AccordingtoWouter @alda I'm surprised people didn't already know about him. He has been a hateful, horrible person for a very very long time.

I do sort of wish that it wasn't like 99% of celebrities that people like who ultimately turn out to be absolute crap though. What ever happened to celebrities at least *pretending* to be good even if they weren't? These days they're just completely open and proud to be horrible.

@nazokiyoubinbou @alda To be honest, I had to look him up (after seeing this thread) to find out who Chuck Norris was. Then I recognised his face. I must have seen him in a film or something. Other than that, he didn’t ring a bell.
@AccordingtoWouter @alda He was before my time — perhaps before the time of many here — but I'm surprised you hadn't run into him. Well, he was largely an American star in crappy beat-em-up shows and such, so you may have had less chance to run into him as directly. There are... a lot of Internet memes though. I'm surprised you haven't run into those. Or perhaps you have and just forgot? I guess it has been a while on most of them.

@nazokiyoubinbou @alda Don’t laugh, but internet memes? Where on earth would I come across them?

That sort of film isn’t really my cup of tea. That’s probably why it didn’t look familiar to me.

@AccordingtoWouter @alda "Don’t laugh, but internet memes? Where on earth would I come across them?"

You're... literally *on* the Internet as you write that and as you see my response. There are memes all over the Fediverse. That said, I will concede that Chuck Norris memes are old and I'm not surprised if you didn't see them on Mastodon.

Those shows and movies aren't my thing either. I've never seen a single thing Chuck Norris was in I'm happy to say. I lost nothing finding out he was bad

@nazokiyoubinbou @alda I decided to look up what internet memes are :). Pictures with text. But I don’t really come across them that often here on Mastodon. And certainly not with that Chuck.

In any case, it was another educational day today.

@AccordingtoWouter Technically a meme is anything repetitive — generally done in a form of "you're supposed to laugh because you're supposed to laugh" (rather than you're supposed to laugh because it's funny.) It's most frequently presented in the form of pictures with text, but doesn't have to be. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch the American version of The Office, you'll know well what memes are from it...

A good example would be the "have you ever sat on" polls going around.

@nazokiyoubinbou @AccordingtoWouter
Thank you for explaining the "have you ever sat on ..." stuff

When i saw "sat on a crow" I thought it was a mistranslation or mistake - being sat on (perched on) by a crow, thats cool

Sitting on a crow....wtf??No, of course not thats stupid and weird

I must be missing something, but I dont think its a great loss

Thanks again

@OliverNoble @AccordingtoWouter It's just a little piece of silliness and word twisting for humor. Honestly as far as memes go, that one was kind of funny at first.

The real issue is sometimes it takes *years* for people to let go of a meme. Some *still* do the saying "that's what she said" to everything meme. It was never funny, but they'll keep using it anyway. Forever...

@AccordingtoWouter
Strictly speaking, an internet meme is *any* concept that goes viral on the internet, including pictures with text (grouped as "image macros") videos, animations, trends, ideas in general (the concept of Hamster Dance being most of these is a good example), etc.. Chuck Norris jokes were a popular Internet meme between about 2005-2008ish (when Chuck Norris himself killed them by trying to take them seriously).
@nazokiyoubinbou @alda
@AccordingtoWouter @nazokiyoubinbou Twenty years ago, maybe even before that, there were a lot of jokes circulating that went like "Chuck Norris isn't afraid of the dark, the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris" based on his fame as a karate movie star.
@davidculley @nazokiyoubinbou I’ve never seen them go by. But that might be because I don’t live in America. Or because I wasn’t paying attention. Around Christmas, people would always send videos or images with some generic wishes on them via email. I never opened those either. They’re those generic images with meaningless text on them. It’s the ‘easy’ way out for the sender. At the very least, include a personally written message.

@AccordingtoWouter I agree. That's why I started using fountain pens again with beautiful ink, after years of ball-point pens. 🙂

Handwritten, thoughtful messages are the best. Everyone always cheers up when I hand them a card on their birthday.

@davidculley It’s much nicer when you know that someone has put time and effort into you.

@AccordingtoWouter
I am pretty sure I have never seen a #chuckNorris meme
I guess its because I dont see much right-wing, lazy, hate-filled crap propaganda

Maybe not seeing these things is a good measure of a healthy online life?

@OliverNoble probably too. But I am also not so interested in images with text in or short videos with meaningless messages or jokes.
@alda oh thanks, I hadn’t known the past tense applied to him yet. Good riddance.
@alda so it turned out, Chuck Norris was the Joke...
@alda and quite a few other famous people. Perhaps we should stop making people famous.
@Netraven @alda or we could stop shopping out our thinking to the “popular” people. Should probably stop subbing out our morality to someone else’s imaginary friend while we’re at it too.
@alda And apparently alive yesterday. Who knew?
@alda
While I know nothing about him, it wouldn't be hard for me to believe
@alda i only know about him from boomer jokes
@alda like the people that got excited about him
@alda I'll miss the meme material, not much else.
@alda Time to play the AxCx song "Walker, Texas Corpse" I guess
@alda
Bluesky doesn't care either.
@Sassinake Ah yes. That's a great idea. You should do it.
@alda Now he is a good hateful, racist ghoul.
@alda I wish he'd have lived long enough for me to throw a deadly shuriken directly into his saggy scrotum.
@alda Taken from us entirely too late.
@alda
I'm in the age group where some of the kids I grew up with were into him. Grade school age boys are going to be into martial arts, that's just a thing, but Chuck Norris was a specific vibe. I can't prove it, but I would bet anything that a notably high percentage of these guys grew up to be Trump voters, just saying.
@TheGreatLlama @alda Let's call it the 'insecure in their masculinity' vibe. That's what all those fans seemed like to me. Desperately afraid someone was going to find out they like petting puppies or something and somehow that would make their penis fall off. A more generalized term might be 'sadsacks'

@obscurestar @alda
I hesitate to hang "sad sack" on third graders, but yeah, that's the ballpark.

Chuck seemed to be specifically the "karate guy" (terminology we used 😆) for the super Christian kids though. Also gingers, but I suppose that's understandable.

@TheGreatLlama @alda I am sad that I did not get into martial arts until much later in life because Norris, Van Dam, and that lot had made it seem so toxic and empty. I think I could have benefited from the meditative and body awareness aspects of it.

I guess I should have realized they treated the ideology of their teachers much like the same self-professed christians treated the word of Jesus.

@obscurestar @alda
Yeah, US culture does specialize in missing the fucking point.
@alda Never watched a single show with that guy in it. All I know now is that he fought the Grim Reaper, and the Grim Reaper won. Hi Ho Binky, awaaayyyyy
@alda I was taught not to speak ill of the dead.
So….
@bazcook Chuck Norris can fuck himself while dead.

@bazcook @alda

Death does not absolve actions of the living.

Curse the dead.
Insult the dead.
Mock the dead.

Do Speak ill of the dead.

So...

@alda I find it amusing that I have never given a single solitary fuck about norris, trump, krud rock, sorebow, cain, chachie, etc nor anything they have ever done. In my entire life. I must be on the right path in life.
@thriftwicker You just spent time writing this.