Parkour! (The Office)

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This is an article about The Office meme. For the urban sports activity of the same name, see Parkour.

About

"Parkour!" refers to a memorable scene from the American TV series The Office in which character Michael Scott performs a clumsy roll over a couch and excitedly screams Parkour! afterwards. Online, an image macro based on the scene has been used as a reference to extremely rapid changes.

Origin

On September 17th, 2009, episode one "Gossip" of season six of the American TV series The Office premiered in the United States.^[1] In the opening scene of the episode, character Michael Scott, portrayed by Steve Carell, performs a clumsy roll over a couch and screams "Parkour!" after regaining balance.

Spread

Before 2019, the scene saw moderate spread online as a GIF^[2] and a reaction image.^[3]^[4] On May 10th, 2011, Tumblr user likeevers uploaded the scene to the website, where it gained over 1,300 upvotes in eight years.^[5] On October 5th, 2011, Tumblr user theofficeopenings uploaded the scene, receiving over 4,000 likes and reblogs.^[6]

On October 31sth, 2012, YouTube user Happy Savage uploaded the scene to the website, where it gained over 210,500 views in seven years.^[7] On September 12th, 2014, The Office YouTube account uploaded the opening of the episode, where it accumulated over 5.4 million views in five years.^[8]

On November 1st, 2016, YouTube user Mark W uploaded the first known meme based on the scene, referencing Talon players in League of Legends.^[9] The video gained over 4,500 views in three years.

On June 18th, 2018, Tumblr user bob-belcher posted a series of three GIFs based on the scene, with the post garnering over 16,300 likes and reblogs in ten months (shown below).^[10]

On January 4th, 2019, Redditor Velvet_Thunder-567 posted a meme based on the scene to /r/DunderMifflin subreddit, where it gained 63 upvotes in four months (shown below, left).^[11] On January 6th, 2019, now-deleted Facebook group The Office-isms posted a meme which accumulated over 3,600 reactions and 13,000 shares before the page was removed (shown below, right).^[12]

On January 9th, an unknown Redditor made a post based on the scene in /r/memes subreddit, gaining over 15,100 upvotes in four months.^[13] The template subsequently gained significant popularity on Reddit, with multiple examples appearing in /r/memes, /r/dankmemes, /r/DunderMifflin and other communities in the following months.