Good Will Hunting Bar Scene / Of Course That's Your Contention

About

Of Course That's Your Contention, also known as Goodwill Hunting Bar Scene, is a copypasta and reaction image meme format consisting of a caption and a screengrab from the 1997 film Good Will Hunting in which Matt Damon's character corrects another pretentious character's view of American history at a bar, impressing the girl he is with. The captions typically feature dialogue that Damon's character would say to dismiss a person who thinks they know a lot about a subject but really doesn't, riffing off the original dialogue in the movie. In this way, the memes express a meme maker's informed opinion on a given subject and correct common misunderstandings of the topic. The format circulated widely in startup and tech circles in January 2023 and then found larger audiences in May of that same year.

Origin

Good Will Hunting, the story of a math genius from humble origins played by Matt Damon, was originally released in 1997.^[1] The bar scene that the meme's screenshot is taken from happens early on and serves to demonstrate the intelligence of Damon's character (clip shown below).^[2]

In the scene, Damon's character debates a pretentious man with a ponytail about the political economy of the Southern colonies of the United States prior to the Revolutionary War, explaining how he is unoriginal and saying:

Of course, that's your contention. You're a first-year grad student. You just got finished readin' some Marxian historian — Pete Garrison probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'til next month when you get to James Lemon, and then you're gonna be talkin' about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year — you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

This exact phrase from the famous movie has been posted widely online since the film's release. However, the combination of the still image from the film and rewriting of the quote as a phrasal template that references different kinds of niche knowledge (which mostly have nothing to do with the South's 18th-century political economy) first emerged on Twitter in 2021.

On May 8th, 2021, Twitter user @Belugamesh made a post that appears to be the earliest example in which these elements were combined into a meme, though it received just one like over two years (seen below).^[3]

A more influential series of posts around August 31st, 2022, brought the meme into finance and cryptocurrency circles, such as this one by Twitter user @BookOfNick, which earned almost 5,000 likes in roughly eight months.^[4]

Spread

More posts pairing the meme with finance content emerged through early 2023, such as this one (seen below) by @almostcmb, earning almost 5,000 likes on January 13th, 2023.^[6]

In late May 2023, more examples of the meme pairing it with non-finance slang and lingo spread online. The increased prevalence of the meme started in the last week of May, with the most prominent and earliest post made by Twitter user @GlennLuk on May 23rd about a debate within the finance industry. The tweet earned over 11,000 likes in one week, receiving more engagement than all the earlier examples of the meme (seen below).^[5]

From there, the posting of the meme format expanded beyond the finance niche. For example, on May 24th, 2023, Twitter user @Fredward3948576 used the meme to discuss Gatorade connoisseurship, earning over 35,000 likes in six days (seen below, left).^[7] On May 27th, Twitter user @dieworkwear earned almost 20,000 likes in three days for posting a version of the meme related to menswear (seen below, right).^[8]

Some of these memes involved extending the conversation in the replies and showing the ponytailed pretentious man replying to Damon's points. For example, Twitter user @dieworkwear, discussing menswear, used this technique (seen below).^[8]

Various Examples

Template

External References