About

Dezzing is a photo fad inspired by an unflattering mugshot of Oakland Raiders football player Desmond Bryant. The fad gained momentum on Twitter after it was introduced by American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in late February 2013.

Origin

On February 24th, 2013, Oakland Raiders' defensive tackle Desmond Bryant was arrested for criminal mischief after he allegedly went to his neighbor’s home inebriated and caused a commotion.^[1] The next morning, his arrest record was made public^[2], along with his booking photograph in which he is seen shirtless with his neck awkwardly twisted and his mouth agape. The mugshot photos have since been removed from the public record.

Spread

On February 25th, Bryant’s mug shot began spreading across sports blogs and news sites including Big Lead Sports^[3],CBS Sports^[4] and USA Today,^[6] as well as the /r/NFL subreddit.^[5] The same day, Deadspin^[7] launched a photoshop contest with the image, encouraging viewers to edit Bryant’s face into other images (examples shown below). On February 27th, image macros submitted to /r/Funny^[18] and /r/AdviceAnimals^[19] utilizing Bryant’s mug shot hit the front page of Reddit, earning more than 1400 points each.

On the February 27th episode of his late night talk show, Jimmy Kimmel showed viewers Bryant’s mug shot and invited them to take photos of themselves imitating the face (shown below, left). Following the path of Tebowing, Kimmel also asked people to tweet the photos with the hashtag Dezzing^[8] and showed examples of that night’s guests posing with Bryant's facial expression, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

Between February 27th and 28th, the hashtag was used on Twitter more than 1500 times.^[9] On the 28th, the Jimmy Kimmel clip was shared on BroBible^[10], Bleacher Report^[11], YardBarker^[12] and Larry Brown Sports.^[13] That evening, Kimmel aired a second segment (shown above, right), featuring several user-submitted photos from Twitter fans making the face. Over the next several days, Dezzing was featured on PetaPixel^[14] and CBS Sports.^[15] Though most of the photos were submitted through Twitter^[8], additional images can be found on Instagram^[16] and Tumblr.^[17]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References