• When did this begin to become
popular/famous on the Internet and why? Provide a context and offer an analysis
of why you think this became so popular (if no obvious reason presents itself).
The “casually pepper spraying everything cop”
meme became popular/famous on the internet in November of 2011 during the
Occupy Wall Street movement. A group of students at UC Davis were protesting
during the Occupy movement and when they refused to move, an officer shot
pepper spray through the line of students, stunning onlookers and the entire
nation. I think that this meme became so popular because a lot of people had
fun inserting the casually spraying cop into a variety of situations in which
he pepper sprayed things from kittens to historic photos such as the signing of
the constitution. However, I think that the meme also received a lot of
publicity because of the context of the situation. The actions of the cop who
pepper sprayed innocent college students outraged the nation. Pepper spray can
be extremely harmful and the students were simply peacefully protesting. In
light of the Occupy movement which was gaining momentum across the United
States, this was something that they used to point out the injustice against
people.
• The details/description of the
"meme," person, event, etc.
The casually pepper spraying everything cop is takes the cop from
the UC Davis Occupy Movement and photoshops it into other backgrounds in which
the cop “casually pepper sprays” other things. The meme is based off of the
pepper spray event that took place in UC Davis on November 19, 2011 in which a
group of students were a part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. They sat on
the pavement and linked arms, forming a human chain. When they refusd to leave,
an officer walked through the line of innocent students and pepper sprayed them
all in the face. The event was seen as outrageous and wrong to use such a
harmful weapon on innocent students that were peacefully protesting.
• How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest).
The meme became extremely popular in light of
the Occupy movement and was talked about on various news channels, and featured
on facebook, BoingBoing, the Washington Post, ABC News, the Metro, Gawker, and
Buzzfeed. According to Google Insights, the peak of its popularity was on
November 22, 2011. The time span that the meme was popular was from the
November 18th incident into January 2012.
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
Another meme that has emerged from this is that
of Megyn Kelly, the news anchor, on the Bill O’Reilly show in which she
addresses the incident. When referring to the pepper spray, she states “It’s a
food product, essentially.” The video of Megyn Kelly aired on November 21st
and on November 22nd the video was posted on youtube. That same day,
a meme of Megyn Kelly with the caption X (phrase), Essentially was created and
became popular. The captions included dismissive statements about abuse,
crimes, etc. which were downplayed by her quote “essentially.”
No comments:
Post a Comment