About

"Ay, Tone" (abbreviation for "Hey, Tony") refers to a series of memes that mimic the speech patterns and slang of fictional television character Paulie Gualtieri from the HBO gangster series The Sopranos. These memes frequently begin with "Ay, Tone," a phrase frequently uttered by Paulie on the series and include an image of Paulie photoshopped into the image. The meme has frequently been used in anti-semitic memes, which generally feature jokes about Holocaust denial. A variant trend called Christopher Moltisanti Explains also emerged from the meme, gaining traction in mid-2021.

Origin

On March 26th, 2006, the season six episode of The Sopranos "Mayham" aired in the United States.^[1] In the episode, Paulie (portrayed by Tony Sirico) can be seen wearing the red tracksuit and raising his arm, which is an image frequently used in these memes (shown below).

The earliest known usage of "Ay, Tone" memes was posted by Twitter^[3] user @mockfountain on February 18th, 2018 (shown below). In the image, the user photoshopped Paulie in a scene from the television series Twin Peaks.

Spread

On September 11th, 2018, Twitter ^[2] user @nukemelbourne posted an image of Paulie from "Mayham" photoshopped into an image of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, where the Nazis systematically killed 1.1 million people (shown below). They captioned the image with a joke about Holocaust denial conspiracy theories. They wrote, "Ay Tone, why would dey build swimming pools and theatres for em if they were just gonna whack em?"

While the meme has been popular within white supremacist and anti-semitic groups, particularly on 4chan's /pol/ message board and iFunny, ^[4] it has also been used for jokes about video games (example below, center). On September 11th, Twitter^[5] user @nichegamer posted an image of Paulie photoshopped into the video game Resident Evil. The post received more than 280 likes in less than one year (shown below, right).

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Related Memes

Christopher Moltisanti Explains

Christopher Moltisanti Explains, also known as "Christopher Moltisanti Weighs In On Current Events," refers to The Sopranos character Christopher Moltisanti, among other characters, explaining internet slang and meme terms to Tony Soprano, often following two phrasal templates, "It's called an X, T," or, "It's called X, Tone." It started on Twitter in mid-2019 and later became associated with a gimmick account that focused on it in mid-2021.

Various Examples

External References