Of Course That’s Your Contention memes are copypasta memes that feature different takes on a monologue by Matt Damon in the movie Good Will Hunting, often alongside a screenshot of the actor from the scene.
Meme basics:
- Meme Creator: Unknown
- Meme Type: Reaction, Copypasta
- First Appearance: Jan. 2013
- Origin Source: Unknown
- Peak Popularity: Aug. 2014
Origin
The meme’s roots come from the 1997 Academy Award-winning film, Good Will Hunting. In the film, Matt Damon plays Will Hunting, who works at MIT as a janitor despite being a genius. In one scene, he’s at a bar near the school when he hears his friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) fighting with a pretentious guy who’s sharing his opinion on the economics of the American Revolution.
Hunting’s response about the student’s “contention” shows the audience just how bright he is, despite his humble background. Not only does he prove he knows everything the stuck-up student does, but he draws original ideas from it while his humiliated opponent is unable to.
Copypasta
Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first year grad student. You just got finished readin’ some Marxian historian — Pete Garrison probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ’til next month when you get to James Lemon, and then you’re gonna be talkin’ about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That’s gonna last until next year — you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the Pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.
The first part of the rant is usually used as a copypasta. Later in the scene there’s a weak attempt at a comeback and Hunting further humiliates his opponent.
Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you…is that your thing? You come into a bar. You read some obscure passage and then pretend…you pawn it off as your own idea just to impress some girls and embarrass my friend? See the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One: don’t do that. And two: You dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a f—-n’ education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.
Meme spread
In the early 2010s, the copypasta and altered versions of it appeared across message boards, Twitter, and Tumblr. In response to brainy or verbose posts, sometimes people would react with the Of Course That’s Your Contention copypasta.
The meme experienced a resurgence in 2020 when Senator Ted Cruz tweeted out a thread that mentioned “renown historian Gordon Wood,” prompting people to respond to and quote tweet his tweet with the copypasta.
In addition to being used as a copypasta, people substitute details in the rant to apply it to a given subject or interest of their choosing.
Meme examples
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