About

Artie Pointing a Gun, also known as Go Ahead, Post Another "Take", is a series of memes based on an image of The Sopranos character Artie Bucco (John Ventimiglia) pointing a gun captioned with a rant about hot takes that label things generally considered positive as discriminatory. Spawned by a viral tweet in 2020, the format achieved widespread prevalence online in 2022.

Origin

On March 7th, 1999, episode nine "Boca" of the crime drama television series The Sopranos premiered.^[1] In the episode, the character Artie Bucco, who suspects the main character Tony Soprano of burning down his restaurant, pulls a rifle on him and accuses him.

Don't say she's lying, Ton, because why would she?! Don't make it worse. Do me the respect of not treating me like a fucking idiot piece of shit!

On August 10th, 2020, Twitter^[2] user @uncledoomer captioned the image with a rant daring a person to post another "take" labeling something generally considered a positive thing as discriminatory. The post (shown below) gained over 1,900 retweets and 11,000 likes in two years.

Spread

Prior to June 2022, the format saw limited spread online. For example, on April 16th, 2021, Redditor^[3] DawnGreathart posted a Warhammer 40,000 meme that gained over 760 upvotes in the /r/Sigmarxism subreddit in one year (shown below, left). On March 14th, Twitter^[4] user @KnowNothingTV posted a meme that received over 110 retweets and 1,300 likes in eight months (shown below, right).

The format achieved more prominence on Twitter in the summer and fall of 2022, with several examples posted during that period being widely shared. For example, on August 1st, 2022, Twitter^[5] user @borgposting posted a meme that received over 1,100 retweets and 9,400 likes in three months (shown below, left). On November 17th, Twitter user @lukeisamazing posted a meme about Thanksgiving that garnered over 2,000 retweets and 28,500 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References