About

The Fastest Draw in the West is an image macro series featuring a photograph of a man fanning the hammer of a revolver. The image is often captioned with jokes about performing a task or challenge quickly, followed by variations of the phrasal template "The fastest X in the west."

Origin

On November 25th, 2013, the firearms blog All4Shooters^[1] published an article titled "Choose your defensive pistol… wisely!", which featured a photograph of a man fanning the hammer of a Colt M1873 SAA "Peacemaker" (shown below, left). On October 30th, 2017, Redditor gietek posted the photograph with the caption "The fastest draw in the west" along with a joke about quickly closing a pornographic video to /r/dankmemes,^[2] where it received more than 8,600 points (96% upvoted) and 110 comments prior to being archived.

Spread

On October 31st, 2017, Redditor Vice_roy submitted a photoshopped variation of the image in which a skeleton is shown fanning the revolver along with the caption "The fastest spook in the west" (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor JeNeSuisPasQuiJetais reposted the image to /r/MemeEconomy,^[5] where it gained over 17,100 points (89% upvoted) and 70 comments prior to being archived. On November 10th, Redditor SirGentlemanOstrich submitted the image along with the caption "When you calculate 2+2-1 in record time / The fastest maths in the west" (shown below, right).

On July 8th, 2018, Redditor pineapple-1001 submitted an edit of the image in which the gun shoots a bullet labeled with the word "Nice"," referencing a Reddit trend that involves posting the word "nice" in comments (shown below, left). Within 24 hours, the post gathered upwards of 33,000 points (93% upvoted) and 1,400 comments on /r/dankmemes.^[4] On July 9th, Redditor paolonoci posted the image along with a joke about posting Fortnite wins on social media (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References