Baton Roue

About

"Baton Roue" Edits, also known as Bike Fall Memes, are Photoshopped edits of a webcomic by the French artist Corentin Penloup featuring a man riding a bicycle who crashes after putting a stick in the front wheel. Edits of the comic typically label the man, the stick, and his fall with different characters or ideas in order to describe a self-destructive action.

Origin

The original comic, titled "Baton Roue" (French for "wheel stick"), was first published on Penloup's personal art blog on January 23rd, 2011.^[1]

On October 16, 2012, Reddit user muthafuckenbeetroots posted the comic to the subreddit /r/funny,^[2] where it gained over 1500 upvotes. On September 11, 2015, Tumblr^[3] user lonely-and-the-infinite-sadness posted a screenshot of a Donald Trump edit (seen below) which gained over 110,000 notes.

Spread

Many of these memes have the character appearing to blame the failure on another party. Another common mutation of the meme involved adding a fourth frame where the fallen character asks for donations. Popular edits of this type included one of Anita Sarkeesian (seen below left) which was frequently posted in gamer forums during the Gamergate controversy^[4] and one where the bicycle rider waves a Greek flag (seen below right) in reference to developments in the mid-2010s in the European Union.^[5]

Following the meme's mid-2010s crest in popularity, many literal, anti-meme, or deconstructed versions of the meme appeared, in which the character seems fully aware of what he is doing, such as this one posted to imgflip.com in June of 2022 by TheOmegaFish, receiving 6 upvotes.^[7]

Corentin Penloup Interview About The Meme

The creator of the meme, French illustrator Corentin Penloup, gave an interview to Design Viral in 2018 about the spread of the meme and his views on it. Referencing this site, and showing this article on his phone, Penloup described how people had added political and other meanings to his Baton Roue comic strip which he did not intend, which he found "hyper cool."^[6]

He shared that this meme, which disrupts the format by combining it with Chuck Norris (who, of course, does not fall because of Chuck Norris Facts) is one of his favorite memes in the format:

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Various Examples

External References