Manzieling

About

Manzieling is a photoshop meme based on an exploitable cut out image of Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel laying down on his back with his arms crossed over his chest during the game against the Buffalo Bills in November 2014.

Origin

On November 30th, 2014, the Cleveland Browns quarterback laid motionless on the field after losing the ball due to a failed snap during the team’s regular season match against the Buffalo Bills (shown below, left). That day, Twitter user Robby Kalland^[1] posted a photoshopped image of Manziel laying on the ground with several other professional athletes (shown below, right).

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Spread

That evening, the novelty Twitter account @CockyWesWelker^[6] tweeted several photos of people mimicking Manziel’s pose with the hashtag “#Manzieling”^[5] (shown below, left). Many Twitter users subsequently posted photoshopped images of Manziel laying on the ground in other base pictures with the “#Manzieling” hashtag. On December 1st, Redditor violentrob11 posted an edited photo of former professional boxer Muhammad Ali standing over Manziel in a boxing ring to the /r/buffalobills^[4] subreddit (shown below, right).

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

The same day, the local news site Cleveland.com^[2] published an article about the photoshop meme, highlighting several notable examples from Twitter. According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[3] the hastag #Manzieling was tweeted over 1,300 times in the first 24 hours.

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Clik here to view.