Umbrella Town: Oerjan Moy Assignment 5 Soc 167

Social media assignment #5: Meme
Oerjan Moy

The Photoshop meme “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop” is a based on an event that happened at the University of California Davis on November 18th in 2011 when a police officer (Lt. Pike) ruthlessly pepper sprayed a group of occupy Protestants. I highly quality photo was taken by one of the persons that looked at the incident, and posted it one day later on Reddit, on the November 19^th. Only one day later the two first photoshopped image of the “Pepper Spray Cop” was out on Reddit. The one image was Strutting Leo (another Photoshop meme) photoshopped over the cop (Lt. Pike). The other picture was placing Lt. Pike in the well-known painting by John Trumbull; Declaration of Independence. The meme quickly spread, when photoshoppers began to but Lt. Pike in a large variety of situations such as Zinedine Zidane head-butt on Materazzi in the Soccer World Cup Final, spraying in fashion show, spaying the “Unknown Protester” etc.

I think it became so popular because the quality of the picture that was taken by the spectator was in very good quality and was easy to Photoshop in different situations. The lieutenant has a very uncared attitude that give the photographed mean a very funny picture no matter what the original picture is about. Other reasons that these meme got so popular could be all the attention the event got in the media, and a lot of people reacted to what happened at UC Davis. The internet group Anonymous respondent to what happened by releasing Lt. Pike’s personal information online, which resulted in over 17,000 threatening emails and 10,000 text messages.

Other mean that has emerged from this mean is the mean Megyn Kelly Essentially, which is about the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that said that pepper spray was a food product, essentially. Only one day later the video was posted online, and the same day people began to post “advice animal images” on Reddit, featuring Megyn Kelly saying something, and then ending it with “essentially.(Bamboo under fingernails is a manicure, essentially)

When I used Google Insight I had to use “pepper spray cop”, “John Pike” and “UC Davis pepper spray” to get good enough results. It seems that it was very popular in late 2011 right after the incident on November 18th till the early December and the beginning of 2012, and then it almost died out. The incident got alto of media attention right after the spraying of the Protestants.

“Casually pepper spray everything cop” has a own Tumblr site (http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/) with over 100 different pictures of the “Casually pepper spray everything cop”