Mean meme
UC-Davis' casual pepper spraying of student protestors inspires new meme; makeshorror comedic
Following the series of violent measures taken against the peaceful Occupy protestors across the country, it was only a matter of time before the humor bubble popped. Know Your Meme has released their latest craze, Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop, and Photoshopped images are multiplying by the hundreds.
The nationwide protests have entered a level of background noise for most news organizations and observers, and now the stories have shifted to documenting incidents of violence like Friday's pepper spraying of protestors at UC-Davis by a campus police officer — and more recently, violence toward Houston's own usually affable occupiers.
The brutal incident at UC-Davis is not funny at all, and resulted in hospitalization and injury to several students after they would not vacate their occupation location on campus.
Lt. John Pike of the UC-Davis Police Department was recorded "casually pepper spraying" the crowd, compared by Gawker, to "a gardener using pesticide." The New York Times has similarly reported that in New York, abuses by the NYPD have abounded in their treatment of the original Occupy Wall Street protestors.
Troubling statements about hierarchies abound. And one way powerless Internet onlookers have chosen to rebel is to make Lt. Pike the butt of the joke. Using humor to shift the scales of power, a new meme has spread faster than... well, faster than a broken-up Occupy protest.
Is it too soon to invite divisive humor into the situation, or does it relieve stress from the tension-filled news spiral we've landed ourselves in? Do we cope better with upsetting images if we can put them into a manageable pop-culture paradigm?
Either way, Lt. Pike has found his ho-hum stature superimposed on some pretty impressive works of art. Some images contain explicit messages of censorship and brutality; others just replicate the image in a disorienting context.
Take a look and see which images you like/hate the most and share with us in comments.
