Tim Allen's Evolution Tweet

Submission 32,778

About

Tim Allen's Evolution Tweet refers to a series of parody tweets mocking a post by comedian and actor Tim Allen, questioning the fundamental tenets of evolutionary science.

Origin

On August 16th, 2017, comedian and actor Tim Allen tweeted^[1] "If we evolved from apes why are there still apes." The tweet (shown below) received more than 14,500 retweets and 48,600 likes in less than 48 hours.

Spread

Shortly after Allen posted his tweet, Twitter^[2] user @michaelaranger answered question. In a series of tweets, he said:

"Us & today's "apes" evolved from a common ancestor, different from both of us. Technically we split once, came together again & split again. That last common ancestor looked & acted more like what we think of as ape than us, but it wasn't an ape of today.Why are we balder/smarter? In short, evolution is driven by environment & death. Our ancestor's environments caused the weaker ones to die & stronger to propagate. If a species' environment is less difficult, it might change less- less "fit" traits don't die out as quick. Among other reasons, this is why species with a common ancestor can diverge from that ancestor at different rates. Also, humans are considered apes too👍."

The tweets (shown below) received more than 275 retweets and 4,500 likes.

People on Twitter also joked that Tim Allen could ask Wilson, his fictional neighbor from the television series Home Improvement that his character Tim Taylor would ask questions about the universe. That day, Twitter^[3] user @sirmitchel, tweeted "You are so fucking lost without Wilson." The tweet (shown below) received more than 420 retweets and 5,000 likes.

Additionally, people started parodying Allen's tweet by using the same structure as the comedian's tweet. They would ask If x is true, why is "Y" true too?. These were the prevailing joke used in defining the meme.

That day, Twitter^[4] published a Moments page to archive the response to Allen's tweet. Additionally, several media outlets covered the response to the tweet, including Inverse,^[5] Maxim,^[6] AV Club^[7] and more.

On August 17th, Redditor ^[8] Not-Patrick posted a picture of Allen's tweet with a stock photo of a man smashing his hands on the ground with a black and white picture of the founder of evolutionary science Charles Darwin photoshopped over the man's face. The picture was captioned "Dammit! What a fool I was." The post (shown below) received more than 2,100 points (97% upvoted) and 35 comments.