It's Media Pointing Camera

Submission 499

Elon Musk VIA GAG.COM WSJ Mainstream Media

INTERRACIAL VIOLENT CRIME INCIDENTS 2018 600,000 547,948 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 112,365 100,000 59,778 207,104 365,299 44,551 0 BLACK ON BLACK ON WHITE ON WHITE WHITE ON HISPANIC HISPANIC HISPANIC CK HISPANIC ON WHITE ON BLACK Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Na Victimization Survey, 2018 (Table 14) 59,778 WHITE ON BLACK This is Media.

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About

It's Media Pointing Camera refers to the political cartoon showing a camera man pointing a camera at two men who are running, with one running away from the other. In the cartoon, it is shown that one man is running away from another who is chasing him while holding up a knife. In the lens of the camera, however, it is shown that the man who is running away is portrayed as the aggressor, with his foot being pointed as if he is holding a knife. Online, this image has been used in various Object Labeling to show different things are not as they are portrayed.

Origin

The political cartoon first started to be seen online in early 2012, where various political blogs and forums would post it as part of a conversation on how the mainstream media is believed to change the bias of things by portraying them differently. On July 17th, 2013, the Redditor u/gnomegnome^[1] uploaded a question to the Subreddit r/tipofmytongue in which they described the meme as 'The meme is about different perspectives. There is a cartoon guy chasing another guy and it looks like he is holding a knife but I think it was the others guys foot or something like that and it shows a camera guy taking a picture that captures the moment weird.

Sorry about how vague this is, any help is appreciated!' and received the following image as the solution (shown below).

Spread

Following the meme's usage on Reddit, it started to appear in other websites with various types of changes done to it. On May 21st, 2014, the Tumblr user bellajuiicybaby^[2] uploaded a version of the image in which there was a red circle added to the meme, as well as the text 'The Media' added to the camera to make it overly obvious what the meaning behind it was (shown below).

It's Media Perspective is everything they only show what they want you to believe.

The meme continued to be used sparingly over the next decade, only used in political arguments in which one side attempted to say that media bias was at fault for something being perceived a certain way. In early 2020s, however, it started to see a resurgence with people using it as an object labeling meme. In 2022, the imgflip user BrianTaylor2^[3] uploaded a version of the meme in which every character is labeled in various ways, making the meme be about narcs and victims, with narcs on YouTube being the media in the example (shown below).