Jeremiah Johnson Nod of Approval
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About
Jeremiah Johnson Nod of Approval is a GIF of Robert Redford playing the titular role in the 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson, though oftentimes Redford is mistaken for comedian Zach Galifianakis. It is often used as a reaction image indicating a form of approval.
Origin
Jeremiah Johnson came out on December 21st, 1972. In a scene of the film, the camera zooms in on Redford's bearded face, when he nods, smiling. An upload of the clip was posted to YouTube on March 4th, 2013 by pnightmare89 (shown below).
Spread
Prior to being posted on YouTube, the GIF circulated online as early as 2012. One of the earliest extant posts featuring the GIF was posted to Funnyjunk[1] on April 3rd, 2012 (shown below, left). It also appeared in a whatshouldwecallme[2] post on June 27th, 2012 (shown below, right).
The GIF appeared in a Mashable[3] post identifying the sources of popular GIFs on August 20th, 2013. The GIF has been turned into an exploitable, with users recreating the GIF with different characters. For example, on July 19th, 2013, Redditor EditingandLayout posted an edit of the GIF showing Redford holding a lightsaber, gaining over 2,600 points on /r/reactiongifs (shown below, left). On April 1st, 2015, Tumblr user stupjam posted a GIF of an animated Inkling Girl from Splatoon, gaining over 2,100 notes (shown below, right).
Splinter Article
On July 9th, 2019, Splinter wrote an article about the GIF, with author Nick Martin expressing his surprise at learning that the man in the GIF is Redford.[4] As the article spread on Twitter, others expressed similar surprise. User @ZeeOhGee[5] tweeted that he always thought the GIF was of comedian Zach Galifianakis, gaining over 470 retweets and 1,300 likes (shown below, left). User @ohjefframos[6] tweeted a GIF of Galifianakis with the caption "I can't believe this is robert freakin redford!", gaining over 30 retweets and 320 likes (shown below, right). Responses were covered by Twitter Moments.[7]
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[2] Tumblr – whatshouldwecallme
[3] Mashable – The Origins of 15 of Your Favorite GIFs
[4] Splinter – Did You Know the Nodding Meme Guy Is Robert Freakin' Redford???
[6] Twitter – ohjefframos
[7] Twitter Moments – PSA The 'nodding meme guy' is Robert Redford, not Zach Galifianakis
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