These Are Not the Droids You Are Looking For

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About

"These Are Not the Droids You Are Looking For" is a catchphrase often used to humorously assert that an object/statement is is not representing what it appears to represent. The catchphrase has inspired the phrasal template "These Aren't the X You're Looking For".

Origin

The original phrase is a quote from the 1977 movie Star Wars, spoken by Obi-Wan/Ben Kenobi(Alec Guinness) after being stopped by Stormtroopers when traveling into the city of Mos Eisley in search of the smuggler Han Solo.^[2] In the original line, the Jedi Obi-Wan uses the contracted form of "are not" and "you are."

Spread

The phrase has been used consistently both in and out of the Star Wars fandom. In February 2008, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney used the phrase incorrectly during an interview with a New York Times reporter, causing a brief return to mainstream popularity.^[6] In addition, in 2008, American rock and roll band Queens of the Stone Age recorded a song with the phrase as its title; the song was then released as a bonus track to an album reissue in 2011.^[7] In addition, Neko Case, Ellie Kemper, and Kelly Hogan also released a song titled "These Aren't the Droids" in 2014.^[8]

In 2008, The Snowclones Database wrote about the phrase and its adaptation into a phrasal template, addressing why the meme form of the catch phrase uses the un-contracted forms of "are not" and "you are."

"I’m not sure why the uncontracted “are not” has become the commoner form on the original “aren’t” [the top results for the “aren’t” form are direct quotes from the film]; perhaps it’s our association of a more formal mode of speech with the Jedi style embodied by Sir Alec Guinness."^[3]

An Urban Dictionary^[1] entry for this phrase was first created on July 9th, 2010 and as of August 2015 has 63 upvotes and 57 downvotes. On June 24th, 2012, the Memegenerator page was created; as of August 2015 over 3,000 memes have been created and the rank is 3,816.^[4] There are 34 images using the phrase in their tags on Imgur,^[9] and at least seven different titled blogs on Tumblr.^[5]