The Narrator
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About
The Narrator refers to a dialogue meme format popular on Twitter in which a user states something about themselves and are then interrupted by an imagined narrator contradicting the user's statement.
Origin
"The Narrator" gag in which a person says something but is then interrupted by a narrator immediately contradicting the statement is a popular trope of the television series Arrested Development (2003). The show's narrator, voiced by Ron Howard, often interjects during scenes to clarify falsehoods made by the show's characters (ex: shown below).[1]
Michael: "Okay, that would be disgusting if you’d actually slept with her, but I don’t think you did.
G.O.B.: "I did. And it was disgusting."
Narrator: "They didn’t, but it would have been."
Spread
The meme saw modest spread in the following years, appearing infrequently on Twitter and Tumblr,[3] usually as a reference to the show. On August 26th, 2016, Twitter user @flahertykeely published what many credit with sparking the joke format's surge on Twitter in 2016, gaining over 95,000 retweets (shown below).
The format held traction as a popular dialogue meme during the 2016 United States Presidential Election, particularly in reference to Donald Trump. For the 2016 United States Presidential Election Debates, Arrested Development writer and narrator Ron Howard released videos in which he reprised his role of the narrator, interjecting himself into footage of the debates when Trump told falsehoods.
On January 19th, 2017, Twitter Moments[2] featured a compilation of narrator jokes as they related to the current political climate. The joke also began spreading to Facebook meme pages around this time. On January 20th, the page Sad Comics[4] posted a variation that gained over 1,300 reactions and 473 shares (shown below).
Following the announcement that Chris Lord and Phil Miller were fired from the Han Solo Star Wars anthology film, rumors swirled that Ron Howard would step in as director. Fans on Twitter began adapting the Narrator dialogue to Star Wars.
Various Examples
Search Interest
Unavailable
External References
[1] Arrested Development Wikia – Narrator
[2] Twitter Moments – What would a narrator say about your future in 2017?
[4] Facebook – Narrator Joke
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