Actor Jonathan Frakes, best known as William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation, starred on a lesser-known Fox series for three seasons from 1998 to 2002. Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction was an anthology that featured stories about unusual occurrences including ghosts, psychic phenomena, the supernatural, or seemingly impossible coincidences.
It was then up to the audience to guess which stories were based on fact and which ones were works of fiction, which Frakes would typically hammily reveal with a twinkle-eyed pun or another witticism at the end of the show.
Which brings us to last week, when Twitter user @softsynthbear brilliantly compiled and edited together 47 entire seconds of Frakes telling us that we’re wrong.
jonathan frakes telling you you’re wrong for 47 seconds pic.twitter.com/zU7HqQjGdN
— uncleared sample (@softsynthbear) April 12, 2019
“It’s false,” Frakes says in the video. “No way. Not this time. We created it. Not this time. No. Not this time. It’s totally made up. Pure fiction. It’s fiction. It’s fiction. We made it up. We made this one up. It’s a made-up tale. It’s a total fabrication. It never happened.” And … it just goes on and on and on like that for like 30 more seconds.
Frakes is already perfectly memeable in a variety of ways as Commander Riker, and this latest offering was no exception as people began retweeting the clip as a clever way of calling themselves out on their own bullshit.
https://twitter.com/hordie/status/1118847386410016768
Me: I’m going to start exercising daily and eating healthy
— Reverend Scott (@Reverend_Scott) April 18, 2019
Also me: pic.twitter.com/U8paNn5Kyo
When I tell myself I’m just going to watch one episode & NOT the entire series in one sitting https://t.co/lKgOd0J2Ly
— Angelica Trae (@ayytrae) April 18, 2019
Me and my friends from high school every time we say we’ll get coffee when they’re in townhttps://t.co/YZPZeob4x8
— Chandler Dean (@chandlerjdean) April 18, 2019
When people try to tell me about things I did while I was drunk
— Roman Killgore (@RomanKillgore) April 18, 2019
pic.twitter.com/Tx26VSyClm
Others used the clip to call out additional examples of nonsense, such as student excuses, so-called “good” billionaires, and made-up Twitter shenanigans.
https://twitter.com/Cameronbcook/status/1118677401901387776
https://twitter.com/lukeisamazing/status/1118511509703991296
https://twitter.com/boy_from_school/status/1117926010530320384
Someone else used the meme to roast the phenomenon of people thinking there was a genie movie starring Sinbad n the ’90s.
https://twitter.com/MamoudouNDiaye/status/1118966636411801600
And finally, Frakes—who typically has a good sense of humor about the strange ways the internet obsesses over him—weighed in on the meme, tweeting the YouTube link to the clip with the hashtag, #ProudToBeAMeme:
I’m #proudtobeameme
— Jonathan Frakes (@jonathansfrakes) April 18, 2019
jonathan frakes telling you you’re wrong for 47 seconds https://t.co/Zo7eI3OtHO via @YouTube
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