Steve Buscemeyes

About

Steve Buscemeyes are photoshopped images of people, typically celebrities, with Steve Buscemi’s characteristic eyes substituted for their own.

Origin

On April 2st, 2011, the humor website Something Awful posted a Photoshop Friday^[1] contest that featured a photo of Steve Buscemi combined with a photo of Justin Bieber created by user Imaginary Friend.

I’m sure you’ve heard some idiot describing a celebrity who kinda looks like a combination of other celebrities as, say, “the lovechild of Dolph Lundgren and Nick Nolte.” And given that you’re reading this on the Internet, you probably had a pedantic response like “it’s obviously impossible for a same-sex couple to produce offspring in such a fashion, and even if they could, they would have been 12 years old when the child was conceived, and furthermore -” Well, let me stop you right there, Dr. Giggles, because technology now enables all sorts of genetic alchemy, and the SA Forum Goons are going to take full advantage! First, though, they’ll make some Photoshops.

Spread

On April 7th, 2011, a thread titled “Justin Bieber with Steve Buscemi Eyes” with the Something Awful photoshopped image reached the front page of Reddit and accumulated 11,059 up votes prior to being archived. The Tumblr blog “Chicks With Steve Buscemeyes”^[3], that contains edited images of female celebrities with Steve Buscemi eyes, was created on April 8th, 2011. The following day, BuzzFeed^[4] editor Chris Menning posted a compilation of images taken from the “Chick With Steve Buscemeyes” Tumblr. On April 16th, 2011, artist / writer Alex Pardee posted a printable Steve Buscemeyes mask to his personal blog^[6] and was subsequently featured on BoingBoing^[7] and BuzzFeed.^[8]

Notable Examples

The Actor

Steve Buscemi is an American actor from Brooklyn, New York, who is notable for his performances in The Big Lebowski, Ghost World, Fargo and in the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire for which he has received a Golden Globe award for Best Actor.

According to Wikipedia^[5], his face was badly scarred while aiding a fellow actor in a bar fight:

In April 2001, while shooting the film Domestic Disturbance in Wilmington, North Carolina, Buscemi was slashed and badly scarred on the face while intervening in a bar fight at the Firebelly Lounge between his friend Vince Vaughn, screenwriter Scott Rosenberg and a local man, who allegedly instigated the brawl.

Search Interest

Search queries for “Steve Buscemeyes” peaked in April of 2011, the same month the Reddit thread and Tumblr blog were created.

External References