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Today Many People Learned That Robert Redford Is The Nodding Meme Guy And Not Zach Galifianakis

By Rachel Tsoumbakos
Published on: 12:59 PST, Jul 9, 2019

Fans of the actor Robert Redford started to panic when they noticed his name trending on Twitter today. Thankfully, the star had not died, like many were worried had happened. Instead, his name was trending thanks to fans of Zach Galifianakis finding out that Redford was the Nodding Meme Guy and not Galifianakis.

As Hollywood Life points out, both terms Robert Redford and Zach Galifianakis started trending on Twitter on July 9 after users discovered that Galifianakis was not the Nodding Meme Guy. Instead, this honor belonged to Redford and the gif came from the 1972 movie, Jeremiah Johnson. Galifianakis, who is 49, would have been 3-years-old at the time of the movie’s release.

According to Know Your Meme, the Nodding Meme Guy is often used as a sign of approval on social media posts. The image shows a smiling Redford, who played the title role in the movie.

It is believed that the image first appeared as a screenshot and in gif format on the internet sometime in 2012. However, video of the scene involved was uploaded to YouTube in March of 2013 by user pnightmare89.

Now, many fans of Galifianakis are coming to the realization that they had it all wrong, that Robert Redford is the man behind the Nodding Meme Guy and have taken to Twitter to discuss the confusion.

In fact, even TV and film critic, Jeff Spross discovered the mistake.

“Honestly I always assumed the nodding meme was Zach Galifianakis,” Spross tweeted in reply to an article detailing the mix-up.

So, if a film and TV critic can be mistaken, then there is hope for everyone else.

However, baby boomers were not impressed with the mistaken identity. Many spoke out about the fact that the image is from a movie from the 1970s and that fans of Galifianakis should be able to recognize that.

While many people are today working out that the Nodding Meme Guy is Redford and not Galifianakis, this is not the first time the mix-up has been pointed out on Twitter. Last year, Eric Vespe, who is the entertainment writer for Rooster Teeth’s The Know, pointed out the mistake via his official Twitter account.

“I just learned that pretty much every under-30 Twitterer thinks this gif is Zach Galifianakis nodding, not Robert Redford in Jeremiah Johnson,” Vespe tweeted on February 10, 2018.

“Someone hold me and tell me everything will be okay.”

At the time, plenty of people noted that there were lots of people over the age of 30 who also didn’t know the gif was Robert Redford.

As for whether the confusion between the actors and the Nodding Meme Guy will continue, remains to be seen or whether this time will finally clear things up for everyone.

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