Anton Chigurh's "Call It"

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About

Anton Chigurh's "Call It" refers to a series of memes based on a scene from the 2007 film No Country for Old Men in which the antagonist Anton Chigurh, portrayed by Javier Bardem, forces a store clerk to call a coin toss. In memes, various dichotomies are offered, with an image of Chigurh from the scene captioned with a version of the dialogue in image macros or used as an exploitable.

Origin

On November 9th, 2007, the crime thriller No Country for Old Men premiered in the United States.^[1] In one scene of the film, antagonist Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) confronts a store clerk, tossing a coin into the air and insisting that he calls it (shown below). The scene implies that Chigurh would have killed the clerk should he have guessed wrong.

- Call it.
- Call it?
- Yes.
- For what?
- Just call it.
- Well, we need to know what we're calling it for here.
- You need to call it. I can't call it for you.

On December 20th, 2020, Twitter user @Darkcel_Gorky posted an image from the scene, altering the dialogue, "Based or Cringe. Call it" (post no longer available; shown below, left). On January 21st, 2021, iFunny^[2] user azerbaijanlawngnome posted a screenshot of the tweet, gaining 25 smiles on the app in two years. On March 22nd, 2021, iFunny^[3] user TheCenturion posted a remake of the meme, with the post gaining over 1,100 smiles in two years (shown below, right).

Spread

More memes using the format were posted on iFunny in 2022. For example, on August 27th, iFunny^[4] user DukeofNukem posted a Cope / Seethe meme that gained over 1,900 smiles in seven months (shown below, left). On August 26h, 2022, iFunny^[5] user imserious posted a ЭBlue Lobster":https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/blue-lobster meme that gained over 4,800 smiles in the same period.

On March 6th, 2023, Twitter^[6] user @sardonic posted a Gay Son or Thot Daughter version of the meme (shown below). The post received over 1,400 retweets and 13,200 likes in three days and helped popularize the format on Twitter.

Kek or Cringe

Kek or Cringe refers to a series of ironic memes in which various fictional characters host a show called "Kek or Cringe" where they rate memes as "kek" or "cringe". The format originated on iFunny in March 2019 and was later spread by ironic meme pages on Twitter, Instagram and Reddit.