Shout out to EarlG!!! How a Romney Gaffe that Wasn't Went Viral on the Web

[maddezmom]

"The Romney family misspells their own name in what might be the greatest Freudian slip in US history," the Facebook photo caption reads.

In the photo, Mitt Romney is lining up a group of young children to spell out his last name with letters printed on their t-shirts. Only they're in the wrong order in the image, and spell out "RMONEY" instead. Posted most recently in July on a Facebook page for the website Kulture Kritic, it has been shared over 40,000 times since it first appeared in February and is still going strong.

There are two problems with this image: those children aren't the candidate's family and in the real image, they're lined up to spell out "Romney." Humor winning out over truth, that hasn't stopped the doctored photo from traveling for months, not always being called out as a fake. Conservative and progressive commentators alike chuckled over what appeared to be a believable campaign gaffe, one that was perhaps prophetic given Team Romney's copy-editing foibles in the months that followed.

"I happened to stumble across the original photo of Romney with the children while I was searching for images for inspiration," Dave Allsopp, who tells techPresident that he created the image and first posted it on the left-leaning online community he co-founded, Democratic Underground, wrote in an email to techPresident. "I'd seen a few DU members referring to Romney as 'RMoney,' and it just hit me."

Since then the image has spread everywhere, sometimes with DU attribution and sometimes without, sometimes acknowledged as a Photoshop job and sometimes not, from the Huffington Post and Buzzfeed to Republican-leaning blogs that decisively debunked it. Even Google Search suggestions point to widespread interest in the photo, prompting Googlers to complete their searches with terms like "romney money picture," "romney money family photo," and "romney money kids."

more: http://techpresident.com/news/22741/how-ap-photo-became-viral-romney-meme

[WilliamPitt]

1. EarlG with the Win...

...even though that was *so* early summer.

Jeez.

[freshwest]

2. +1

[Segami]

3. +1000

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Photoshop or not, it's funny because it's true :)

[genxlib]

5. Too close to the truth

Maybe it seems true because it is just so darn plausible.

Really, we could see him doing this coudn't we?

[Coyotl]

14. This thing has legs

that crawl the web



Photoshop this = http://www.democraticunderground.com/125173320

[hifiguy]

6. Rmoney for Amercia!

[Berlum]

7. I certainly hope no one will kick* this thread

* more than is necessary

[yodermon]

8. EarlG wins the internet! No, really!!

[MadrasT]

9. DU for the win!

Well played, sirs, well played.

[SunSeeker]

10. A classic. nt

[Lone_Star_Dem]

11. The day EarlG got his first copy of photoshop, was a great day for the Democratic Party!

Yay, you go EarlG! Creating visual fun and mayhem across the internet!

[patrice]

12. The probability of Poetic Justice is authentic. Thanks EarlG!

[pacalo]

13. That's awesome!

[Historic NY]

15. who can forget their own self inflicted Amercia...

it makes everything else plausible.

[maddezmom]

21. true enough

[BrainMann1]

16. Ka POW!!!!!

[October]

17. Brilliant!

Still (!) makes me laugh!!!

[Major Hogwash]

18. It's not real?

Now ya tell me!!!

[Paka]

19. Big Time K&R!

[randr]

20. The new Republican "Family Values" poster?

[Generic Other]

22. A Legend

I salute you!!

[cr8tvlde]

23. Ah think y'all are misunderestimatin' the whole sheebang.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

24. Bwhahahaaaaa!

Way ta go EarlG.

[MADem]

25. An artist gets his due...! nt

[UnrepentantLiberal]

26. That's really cool.

Sailing the web like a belligerent pirate ship. I wonder if Romney has seen it?

[PatrynXX]

27. oh look

it's a I can See russia from my house moment. and being Mitttens, Palin Part Deux hasn't done much to get rid of it. zzzzz

[marble falls]

28. Sometimes a story has more truth than fact. Perception and acceptance of that perception .....

trumped reality. Most people in this country regardless of party accepted this photo as an actual moment in Romney's life.

[Kalidurga]

29. Even if it wasn't photoshopped, it would still be a mock worthy event.

Seriously who does this kind of thing. Having kids line up in t-shirts to spell out a name. It seems rather egotistical. Besides Rmoney is way more accurate.

[KeepItReal]

30. Legen---wait for it----dary!

[fadedrose]

31. omg ;) :)

[iamthebandfanman]

32. Did you read the poor mentally challenged persons

comments below the story in the link?

some made up story about obama being a thief .. n some other garble..

went to their facebook.. the person claims to have worked with presidents..
found his website..
it shows ALL the signs of someone whos mentally unstable..
the classic conspiracy website with lots of text and graphics garbled all around.. like an armature just threw a bunch of stuff up , ya know?
ive seriously witnessed other unstable people with the same type of order of website.
his site is :
http://www.bobbydias.com/

now compare it to website of a confirmed delusional and schizophrenic person :
http://www.gabriellechana.com/

pretty similar in layout/design dontcha think?

[drynberg]

33. YES, BOYS AND GIRLS, THAT IS JUST HOW

Rmoney got his name...and I've been using it ever since, explaining to REthugs that it was the family that created this "enhanced" extra value name

[tridim]

34. Birth of a meme..

EarlG's graphic was created a day after this thread appeared.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002142200

Proud to say that I was one of the first people to type the word "Rmoney", though I actually typed it as "R Money". Should I put it on my resume?

[sellitman]

36. The biggest RWNJ I know would of freaked if I could send him this.

But alas he won't speak to me anymore. Early wartime casualty of the 2012 election I guess.