About

Fall Out Boy Fan Protecting Ferguson Police is a photoshop meme based on an exploitable image of a young woman wearing a merchandise t-shirt for the American alternative rock band Fall Out Boy and standing in front of a row of police officers during a protest held on the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri. The original photograph was widely mocked online, with many criticizing the woman for her views on police brutality controversies.

Origin

On August 10th, 2015, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch posted an interview with a 19-year-old student Lexi Kozhevsky, who defended police officers against demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, claiming "I would rather get hit by something than let it hit them" (shown below).

That evening, Lynden Steele, the director of photography at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, tweeted a picture of Kozhevsky standing in front of a row of police officers during the protests (shown below).^[1] In the tweet, Steele noted that Kozhevsky was attempting to protect the officers from objects thrown by demonstrators (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the tweet received upwards of 2,200 retweets and 2,100 favorites.

Spread

During the early morning on August 11th, Twitter user @AshleyLynch^[3] posted a photoshopped screen capture from the 2015 action film Mad Max with Kozhevsky superimposed in the foreground (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Twitter user @MrPooni^[2] tweeted a photoshopped image of Kozhevsky standing in front of the cast of "Dragon Ball": (shown below, right). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 1,500 retweets and 1,400 favorites.

That same day, The Blaze YouTube channel uploaded a short video of Kozhevsky defending police officers (shown below). Also on August 11th, the music blog Noisey^[4] published an interview with Lexi, who described the Internet response she received as "overwhelming" and expanding on her views regarding police actions in Ferguson. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the photoshop meme, including The Independent,^[5] Billboard,^[6] NME,^[7] Vice,^[8] Complex^[9] and UpRoxx.^[10]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References