About

Diamonds being portrayed as the "hardest metal" is both a textual and image meme referencing a particularly dense discussion on the GameFAQs forum.

Diamond, an allotrope of carbon, is the hardest known material on Earth, with a rating of 10 on the Mohs Scale of mineral hardness.

Because diamond is an insulator rather than a conductor of electricity, it is not classified as a metal.

Origin

In 2005 a bunch GameFAQs users had an argument about what would happen to cars that smashed into various walls. One user argued that a car could take anything if it were made of diamond, unless of course if the wall were also made of diamond. He smugly informed his fellow GameFAQer that "Diamond is one of the hardest metals (If not THE hardest metal) known the man." [sic] The conversation was thus brought to a conclusion.

Spread

Some months later, 4chan stumbled upon this argument and made nearly every single sentence of it into hilarious catchphrases.

References

• Uncyclopedia – Diamond
• Lurkmore wiki Section on Memes
• Genmay – referenced in a thread, April 6th, 2007
• 4chanarchive – Hardest metal known the man

Charts

The majority of searches for diamond as the "hardest metal" began in January of 2007.

Analysis

The humor derived from the meme comes from the arrogant tone used in proclaiming diamond to be the hardest metal, paired with the fact that Diamonds are not metal, and the obvious grammatical error made by saying "known the man" rather than "known to man."