Brian Peppers (2005)

About

Brian Peppers was a sex offender from Ohio whose hard-to-believe photo was widely circulated on the Internet in 2005.

While it was initially suspected to be fake, online sleuths Snopes.com were able to confirm the photo’s authenticity with Ohio authorities. Snopes even managed to dig up some photos of Brian in highschool

Snopes also suggests that Peppers’ unusual appearance may be due to “malformation of the cranium caused by a branchial arch condition such as Apert syndrome or Crouzon syndrome.”

Spread

The photo of B-Peps followed a typical memetic path of photoshoppery, “OMG WTF” and “stop being so mean,” culminating in Jimbo Wales banning Brian Peppers from Wikipedia. On YTMND we would see numerous excellent pages for the fad, and the infamous ‘Allen Peppers incident’, which turned out to be fake.

Notable links

• ‘WE LOVE SEX OFFENDER BRIAN PEPPERS’ community on LiveJournal (still reasonably active)
• first Brian Peppers YTMND (March 28, 2005)
• sadly, many notable sources for B-Pepe photoshops are now offline

Brian Peppers would set the bar high for sex-offender memes to come (e.g. Pedobear)

Crimes

Peppers was sentenced to 30 days in jail with 5 years probation in 1998 for the crime of “Gross Sexual Imposition.” Allegedly he groped a nurse on at least 2 occasions.

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