Not Sure If Brilliant or Merely Pedestrian: Toward a Rhetoric of the Meme by Phill Alexander

Figure 14: So many arrows. So few knees.

Another factor in the creation of a meme is their unabashed ubiquity among their intended audience. In November of 2011 Bethesda Software released the fifth title in their hugely popular Elder Scrolls series: Skyrim. To say Skyrim was popular is an understatement: in the first day it had 230,000 concurrent players on the Steam PC game streaming network and had sold 3.4 million physical copies, according to Wikipedia. By the end of the first week, 7 million physical copies had shipped and the game had net $450 million.
A photo a warrior from Skyrim, 'advice animal' style, with the caption'Used to be adventurer. Took arrow in the knee!'
Figure 15: A variation on the Arrow to the Knee meme from KnowYourMeme


A photo the famed History Channel UFO expert, with the caption 'Used to be an alien like them. Took arrow in the knee!'
Figure 16: A variation on the Arrow to the Knee meme from KnowYourMeme, this time mixed with "Because Aliens."


Skyrim also gave the gaming community perhaps its most famous quote of the last decade, the most repeated since “All your base are belong to us.” The guards peppered throughout Skyrim all, at some point within a few minutes of the player walking near them, says “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee,” as can be seen in Figure 14 above.
A photo of 2 Face from batman, with the caption'Used to be a good goy.Until I took acid to the face!'
Figure 17: A variation on the Arrow to the Knee meme from KnowYourMeme, this time mixed with Batman.


The gatekeeper here is obvious: do you know Skyrim or not? In this case, the repeated portion is the text more than the image (which appears in roughly half the examples of the meme appearing at knowyourmeme). The important piece is “took an arrow to the knee,” which based on the numerous examples was easy to replicate, desirable to the people replicating it, and urged spread.

This particular meme also serves as a sort of flag planted in the ground. Because it is derived from a particular gaming culture, it tends to polarize, as those who know the game and the meme tend to enjoy it while others find it derivative and annoying.

A photo of a Skyrim guard, with the caption'Used to be an adventurer, until I was offered this job as a city guard.It's a much more stable wage and less dangerous plus I get to spend more time with my family'
Figure 18: A literalist variation on the Arrow to the Knee meme from KnowYourMeme.


A photo of a Korean dad, with the caption'Used to be a proud father, until I took a disappointing son to the knee'
Figure 19: Asian Father variation on the Arrow to the Knee meme from KnowYourMeme.


I tried to make an example of this meme, but then I took an arrow to the knee.