Deal With It

Update (3/7/2011): Twitter hashtag #DealWithIt is trending; click here for details!

About

Deal With It is an image macro series and catchphrase used as a retort when someone disapproves something. The image macro structure consists of a picture of someone looking smug with sunglasses. If sunglasses are not present they have a tendency to fall into place.

Origin & Search Trends

“Deal With It” in its own is a rather common colloquialism. Though Google Insights’ search queries reveal a noticeable spike in mid-2007, this can be largely attributed to the High School Musical singer Corbin Bleu’s song “Deal With It,” which was released in May 2007.

The dog in the image originates from the SomethingAwful forums, as an emoticon :smugdog:. The catchphrase itself also has a SAclopedia entry dated May, 31, 2009:

A catchphrase attributed to atheists that is much much more commonly used to make fun of atheists.

Example: “There is no god. Deal with it”

On SomethingAwful, the catchphrase has seen excessive use on the Let’s Play and YOSPOS forums but because of the commonality of the phrase, it is very difficult to pinpoint a date and may very well be coincidental.

In mid-late 2005, Matt Furie, creator of Boy’s Club and the creator of Feels Good Man, posted a webcomic on MySpace using the phrase:

Spread

Image site dump.fm is currently taking claim for popularizing the image macro series in 2010. They created a page and contest in late June 2010 providing the sunglasses template, along with examples, so you may make your own

The dog image itself does predate dump.fm, but the date it was posted is still unknown. Ryder Ripps, dump.fm site producer, cited the dog image in an interview with Know Your Meme:

That Something Awful duck hunt dog had been around for a while and myself and jertronic and some others started making our down versions of it to be funny, and then it just sort of took off. I put the photoshop template I made online and people were making them with that I think.

Ryder credits a Urlesque article recognizing dump.fm as being the turning point for recognition of Deal With It. The image macros were spread prior to the article but Urlesque was one of the first to actually cite dump.fm as a source.

One of the earliest Tumblr instances appeared in early June 2010, posted by jertronic, a dump.fm admin. It was then amplified by reblogs by Greg Rutter and Brad O’Farrell.

Other Works

• On demand ‘deal with it’ gifs.
• dump.fm search (NSFW)

Derivatives

Photographer Chris Clanton posted a photoset on August 3, 2010 of real life Deal With It gifs, complete with falling sunglasses.

Trending Hashtag: #DealWithIt

On March 7th, 2011, Twitter hashtag #DealWithIt became a trending topic, in reference to Ohio State University students who displayed their support for the basketball team with 1,400 red embroidered towels that read “DEAL WITH IT.”

According to Cleveland Sports News, the drama behind the “Deal With It” towel originates from a basketball match between OSU and Wisconsin University in February 2011, during which Ohio State freshman star Jared Sullinger was spat on by a Wisconsin fan as he left the court. In responding to allegations of unruly Wisconsin fans in the crowd, Wisconsin team coach Bo Ryan dismissed them by saying “all I know is, we won the game. Deal with it.”

As shown in the Trendistic graph for #DealWithIt, the hashtag began gaining momentum early in the morning circa 6 am on March 7th, 2011: