About

Nicola Sturgeon With An Arrow refers to a series of exploitable images depicting First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon shooting a bow and arrow. In memes, the two images showing Sturgeon first drawing back the arrow and then reacting with a humorous expression of surprise are placed on top of and below another image that's photoshopped into the scene so it appears as though she shot something.

Origin

The original two images used in the meme format were taken on May 1st, 2017, when Sturgeon visited an archery range in Turriff, Scotland as part of the 2017 general election campaign (shown below).^[1]

The picture wasn't widely used until 2020 when members of a Facebook group called "Nicola Sturgeon's Dank Meme Stash" started creating photoshop pictures with the images, making it look like Nicola Sturgeon was hitting someone or something with an arrow. One of the earliest examples of this was posted on October 17th, 2020, by Facebook^[2] user Luke Buchan, who edited a photo of Boris Johnson falling down with an arrow in his leg into the middle frame, receiving over 340 likes and 220 shares in three days (seen below).

Spread

The photoshopped edits continued to spread in the following days as more users edited scenes into the meme. On October 17th, Facebook^[3] user Luke Buchan shared another example to the Nicola Sturgeon's Dank Meme Stash page, receiving over 480 likes and 140 shares in three days (shown below, left). On October 18th, Facebook^[4] user Thomas Lamont added another variant referencing Skyrim's Then I took an arrow in the knee, receiving over 88 likes, 17 shares and 12 comments in 50 hours (shown below, right).

The pictures started getting shared across both Facebook and Twitter and included photoshops of Nicola Sturgeon hitting U.S. President Donald Trump, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross and British Conservative leader Boris Johnson. One such example was posted by Facebook^[5] user Roy Clark Isserlis on October 18th, receiving over 134 likes and 117 shares in 50 hours (seen below, left). On October 18th, Andrew Batchelor shared another version on Facebook^[6] showing her hitting the coronavirus, receiving over 100 likes in 45 hours (seen below, right).

Various Examples

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External References