Why'd 'He Pull Up Wit Da Choppa?' Unpeeling The Meme Onion

Sometimes you see a meme that you could picture in a history textbook or as a Document-Based Question in an AP United States History exam fifty years from now. The meme below is one such meme. Why?

Well, you could argue the meme has a political meaning because it features former President George W. Bush. But putting that aside, this meme is also the culmination of two decades of meme history. Let’s begin at the start of this story.

Where Does This Meme Come From?

Our story begins with Cereal Guy, a Rage Comics character first posted on the imageboard forum SomethingAwful at some point in 2007. Like many Rage Comics, Cereal Guy played several roles: you could tell a story using the four-panel Cereal Guy format, you could use him spitting out his cereal as a kind of reaction image, and you could also create a dialog between Cereal Guy and another character or event. Often, Cereal Guy memes do all three.

The most popular sub-format of Cereal Guy was “He will never have a girlfriend.” In the first panel, a character looks pretty wimpy. In the second, Cereal Guy says He will never have a girlfriend. In the third panel, the character transforms into a better version of themself. In the fourth, Cereal Guy realizes the character will have a girlfriend and spits out his cereal in surprise.

The Bush/mouse/choppa meme takes its four-panel format and plot structure from Cereal Guy.

In January 2019, the well-established "He will never have a girlfriend" format was transformed into “He will never be ballin',” a meme format which gave Cereal Guy a different phrase to say. Arguably, He will never be ballin' is a more surreal format than "He will never have a girlfriend." The language itself is less grammatical and the situation is more abstract than "He will never have a girlfriend."

Meanwhile in 2019 and 2020, a photograph taken of George W. Bush at the moment he was informed of the 9/11 terrorist attacks saw increased usage as a meme called George bush learning about 9/11. Generally, posters supplied a new phrase for Bush to hear and respond to. The meme was used both as a reaction image and a modern advice animal, meaning Bush was often the butt of a joke.

An April 25th, 2022 tweet took a crucial step, swapping out Cereal Guy for President Bush in the "He will never be ballin'" meme: instead of Cereal Guy spitting out his food in response to the toad’s transformation, we see George W. Bush's face as he learns about the 9/11 attacks. The second panel's image is taken from a Bush speech in front of an American flag, a more prestigious and confident setting for the 43rd President.

The final (at least, for now) step in the further transformation and abstraction of this meme took place on September 30th, 2022, with the toad of “He will never be ballin'” as well as the phrase itself replaced by the white mouse and his “choppa.” The image of Bush is also swapped out: in the second panel, we see a much older Bush.

Why Does This Matter?

Odds are most of the people who liked, commented, and shared this meme did not know the full extent of the lore. There is simply too much of it out there, and too little time in life.

But in the same way we use the word “amazement” all the time without remembering how Shakespeare invented it, we use memes without knowing their full history. This history isn’t just a fun fact to spit out to impress your acquaintances, but it teaches a lot about where our culture comes from.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia says “I am amazed and know not what to say” — it’s one of thirteen instances of “amaze” or one of its variants in Shakespeare’s works. “A-mazed” shares the same old English root as “maze,” and originally meant being in a situation that felt like being lost in a maze. Adding “-ment” is a Latin suffix, which Shakespeare did to make the verb into a noun. Historically, English as we speak it now emerged from people purposefully adding Latin (the classiest language out there) to Anglo-Saxon words in order to make them do more and sound cooler.

It’s changed even more since then. Now, we use “amazement” to mean a feeling that’s impressive rather than confusing. Memes are like words in this way: their meaning shifts over time, and people like Shakespeare remix them. Further, those remixes are not random: Shakespeare chooses to borrow from Latin in the same way a memer may choose to borrow from newspaper photos of George W. Bush. Each transformation fulfills specific goals and helps a creator communicate their message.

So What Does The Meme Mean?

It’s hard to say what a meme “means” in the same way it’s hard to say what a play by Shakespeare means, but it is possible to catalog what a meme evokes.

This meme, first off, evokes a rich history: it has an “old internet” vibe, with the four-panel format calling back to Rage Comics. But the meme also feels deeply American: the motorcycle of the mouse has an American flag on it, and we see an American President. At the same time, however, there’s a kind of ambiguous relationship with America: we have, first of all, the contrast between the Bush learning about 9/11 photo (a very serious, solemn moment) and a silly absurd joke. It is using the cultural vibe around the Bush photo as material: by subverting expectations about what this moment means, the meme makes us question how we remember 9/11 and the Bush administration.

But there is also an interesting thing going on with masculinity and power in this meme. The first panel shows the mouse dominated by a human hand, while the third shows the mouse independent and strong. The status of “He” is deeply important: one “he” (be it Cereal Guy or Bush) thinks he dominates another “he” (the toad, the mouse) but in reality he does not because the other “he” is either ballin’, pulling up wid the choppa, or suddenly hot enough to have a girlfriend. The mouse in this meme may be a kind of sigma male, especially since he is not human: often “He will never have a girlfriend” memes feature a non-human character in the first and third panels. The sigma male is a man who can’t be understood in the ways we usually understand men: what better example than a non-human man?

A third and final question is how the viewer is involved in the relationship between Bush and the mouse. Everybody is different, but it’s likely a natural instinct to side with the mouse as an underdog which is pulling up wit the choppa in defiance of an authority figure that tells him he can’t do that. But at the same time, Bush’s emotions and expression call for empathy — especially since the second panel shows him aged and the fourth shows him hearing about a national tragedy.

How Does A Meme Mean Something?

There are many possible guesses about what the meme means, but at the end of the day, maybe what a meme like this really does is just bring up a bunch of stuff, pull in a bunch of threads, and leave them wound up. It’s like a knot: the meme is important not for what it is, but for what it holds together. On one end of the string is you, on the opposite end, there are other humans. There’s something beautiful in these disparate threads — masculinity, animals, motorcycles, 9/11— all wound together in this meme; the meaning is in the connection and tension that joins you to others.