About

Mick Fanning Shark Attack is a photoshop meme depicting Australian professional surfer Mick Fanning fighting and dominating sharks in a variety of humorous contexts. The series was launched following Fanning’s close encounter with a shark during the Jeffrey’s Bay Open surfing contest in July 2015.

Origin

On July 19th, 2015, Fanning encountered a shark during the Jeffrey's Bay Open surf competition. That day, a video of the incident was uploaded by the World Surf League YouTube channel, which gathered upwards of 18 million views and 3,000 comments in the next four days (shown below). After returning to shore, Fanning revealed in an interview that he struck the shark in the back to drive it away.

That day, radio host Charli Robinson tweeted a photoshopped image of Fanning wearing boxing gloves while carrying a shark on the beach (shown below).^[3]

Spread

Also on July 19th, 2015, Redditor da1s1 posted a video of the shark attack to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, where it gained over 5,500 votes (91% upvoted) and 1,100 comments in four days. Meanwhile, other Twitter users tweeted photoshopped images of Fanning battling and riding sharks (shown below).^[2][4][5]

On the following day, Redditor Bbrowny submitted a photoshopped picture of a great white shark speaking into several microphones about the incident to the /r/funny^[7] subreddit(shown below). Within 72 hours, the post garnered upwards of 2,800 votes (88% upvoted). On July 22nd, the sports blog The Inertia^[6] published an article about the incident, arguing that Fanning was not attacked by the shark. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the photoshop meme, including The Daily Examiner,^[8] Metro,^[9] The Guardian,^[10] Sydney Morning Herald^[11] and The Daily Mail.^[12]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References