There was a period of like 2 years when I was a kid where chuck Norris jokes were all the rage on the playground and I made an iPhone app that listed them all.

Jokes like “Chuck Norris is able to slam a revolving door.”

Anyway, I “built” this stupid app when I was like 13, copy-pasted like 300 jokes in there and a random one would show every time you tapped the screen.

Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.

It was so funny how that whole thing happened.

For the first time in over a decade he was suddenly relevant in a way. People remembered he existed, and they were playing off his tough guy image.

And what did he do? Try and shut it down and start suing people. Stupid.

It took him a couple of years to come around to it. If it wasn’t for those jokes would he be remembered anywhere as well? Or would he be a much more obscure celebrity by now?

The Ruby gem "Faker" is used for generating fake data for testing, like legit-looking names, emails, phone numbers, lorum ipsum text, etc. About 10 years ago I was working on a messaging app, and wanted some real messages to see in the UI while I was developing it. One of the best engineering decisions I've made in my career was to pick the Chuck Norris Facts generator for the messages, so every time I re-seeded my local db or looked at a review app on staging, I was greeted by two fake people sending a half-dozen Chuck Norris facts to each other.

https://github.com/faker-ruby/faker/blob/main/lib/locales/en...

The "slam a revolving door" one was absolutely one of my favorites. Also "Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups; he pushes the Earth down".

I'm pretty sure they were all the rage when _I_ was at school, but that was long before the iPhone.

I'm curious on what grounds they blocked the app.

Jeff Dean got his Chuck Norris app published by Chuck Norris.

I knew of "Walker, Texas Ranger" but the jokes definitely kept him relevant to my generation (age: 49) for a resurgent period of time.

The only one I remember offhand:

"Chuck Norris doesn't do pushups, he pushes the world down."

The expendables had a scene that was basically the meme in live action, highly recommend. It’s all over YouTube.

I printed out all the jokes on my dad's home office printer and sold copies at school. This was pre smartphones.

John Wick wears Chuck Norris pajamas. RIP to a legend.

Was this before or after Mike Huckabee started publicly offering Chuck Norris as his solution to "border security" on the campaign trail?

In India, we have Rajni (Rajnikanth) jokes that keep increasing in number and are still pretty popular...

I remember reading 'The Vinci Code' in college which was very popular those days and getting a SMS from a friend almost the same day, "Rajnikanth gave Monalisa that smile!".

I'm still enjoying the Nolan jokes / memes, but in a weird way because of course, via https://www.reddit.com/r/CroppedNorrisJokes/

I did something similar when Microsoft gave away Windows Phones for every app published on the app store. I used the Chuck Norris API though. The one I used is sadly no longer available (I think it was called CNDB). But there's a new one: https://api.chucknorris.io

Only God could defeat Chuck Norris.

His estate? While he was still alive?

i created a Facebook App that did something similar, it posted random jokes on your wall

This was like 2005-2006

In had one app like that from Cydia Loved it.

Having been near the epicenter, I recall that Vin Diesel jokes (same format) pre-dated Chuck Norris ones. I always found it a shame that the Chuck Norris ones caught on; Vin Diesel is, imo, a better role model.

I bet Vin wouldn't have blocked your app.

> Chuck Norris’s estate blocked the app from going live. I wish I had printed that rejection out and framed it.

Seeing the youthful spirit run headfirst into the corprocracy of locked down devices and app stores is depressing. Twenty years ago you would have made a webapp or flash animation, most likely avoided scrutiny and not even been shaken down. Thirty years ago you would have made a QBasic program and floppy/email/dcc it to your friends, completely illegible to the corprocracy. But these days simply trying to publish through the common channels, and you're immediately subject to restrictions made for businesses.