As a boy growing up in the early years of the internet I didn’t think the American actor Chuck Norris was a real person due to memes about his strength being just too absurd to believe
Today the world has lost an action movie titan as the American martial artist and actor Chuck Norris has tragically passed away at the age of 86.
However I must confess growing up in the 2000s I didn’t actually know if Chuck Norris was a real person and viewed him more like a modern day fictional superhero. The early days of the internet was filled with comments of the most absurd “Chuck Norris facts“ about the American marital artist so wild during my childhood I questioned if these feats were fact or fiction.
Jokes rampant on the internet throughout the 2000s had created the illusion the man was more like a mythical figure who was not bounded by the limitations of physics or reality. For my generation the meme became bigger than the man resulting in many people knowing about these wild Chuck Norris “facts” but not really knowing who Chuck Norris the actor or the marital artist really was.
Jokes that were stated as facts spanned comment sections across the internet like like:
- “Chuck Norris was the only man to attend his own birth.”
- “Chuck Norris was once bitten by a cobra snake and after 2 days of excruciating pain the snake died.”
- “Chunk Norris doesn’t do push ups, he does Earth downs.”
- And finally: “Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his dad.”
As a boy growing up in the 2000s – shock horror – my early internet experience was filled with schoolyard conversations of nerds and comic books fans debating which of their favourite superhero’s would win in a hypothetical death match against each other.
Think of schoolyard topic like “who would win in a fight Spiderman vs Batman” or the “anime character Goku vs DC’s Superman”. However one person always reigned supreme in these debates – the Earth’s strongest man – Chuck Norris and his freighting roundhouse kick.
As a child I never really knew what to believe about this “Chuck Norris” guys whose alleged feats of strength straddled between real-life and fiction.
While it all sounds very absurd looking back on it, I was just a boy who had fallen for a very ridiculous internet joke – and I’m sure I was far from the only one.
But despite the absurdity of the ordeal I think it says something very profound about the legacy of Chuck Norris. For my generation it was clear Chuck Norris’ legacy was more than his movie appearance and work on the big screen.
During the action star’s 86 years he managed to become a cult icon and a symbol of toughness, attitude, sophistication, and masculinity – whether his wild feats are exaggerated obviously are still up for debate.