About

#BrianWilliamsMisremembers is a Twitter hashtag and photoshop meme featuring the American news anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News Brian Williams which began in February 2015 following the revelation of the journalist's false claims about his time he spent in Iraq. The photoshopped images commonly feature Williams present in notable historic events.

Background

On January 30th, 2015, NBC anchor Brian Williams recounted a story from the time he spent as a wartime correspondent in Iraq in 2003, claiming that he he was flying in a helicopter that "was forced down after being hit by an RPG." After the broadcast, several crew members of the U.S. Army who were onboard the aforementioned helicopter came forward saying that Williams was actually on a different helicopter that arrived at the crash site later. Prior to this incident, Williams had told the story on numerous occasions in the media (shown below).

Notable Developments

William's' Apology

On February 4th, Brian Williams issued an official apology, describing the tale as "a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran."

On Twitter

At 7:36 p.m. on February 5th, Twitter user Ivan the K uploaded a photoshopped image of Williams superimposed over a still shot of the squad members from the 1998 World War II epic film Saving Private Ryan along with the hashtag #BrianWilliamMemories. In less than half an hour later, Twitter user Charles shared an image of the famous American Revolutionary War-era painting Washington Crossing the Delaware with the caption "So, there I was, crossing the Delaware…" and the hashtag #BrianWilliamsMisremembers. Throughout that evening, dozens of similar photoshopped parodies emerged on Twitter under #BrianWilliamMemories^[11] and #BrianWilliamMisremembers.^[12]

By February 5th, the photoshops had spread from Twitter to Reddit and shortly after there was the creation of r/brianwillamswasthere.^[7] Along with the photoshops, meme generator sites like imgflip,^[8] memegenerator^[9] and imgur^[10] have Brian Williams exploitable macros and have been spreading around the internet. Even Conan O'Brian poked fun at his former NBC colleague. The Twitter reactions were subsequently covered by various online news outlets, such as Business Insider,^[2] Washington Times,^[3] Mediaite,^[4] Total Frat Move^[5] and Buzzfeed.^[6]

Notable Examples

Trending Statistics

Within the first 30 days, the hashtag received over 75,000 unique tweets, reaching a maximum of nearly 20,000 tweets on the night of February 4th. The hashtag began a small resurgence on February 26th after the macro was mixed with the events of #LlamaDrama and #TheDress.

External References