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Gallery: Pepper-Spray Cop Squirts Internet in the Eye

• By Angela Watercutter  
• 
 
• November 21, 2011  |  
• 4:40 pm  |  
• Categories: Art, Design and Fashion, Current Affairs,internet

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The notorious image of Lt. John Pike, aka Pepper Spray Cop, is incorporated into The Creation of Adamby Michelangelo.

Pepper Spray Cop assists some Stormtroopers in capturing nonviolent protesters.

Pepper Spray Cop is incorporated into Nighthawks by Edward Hopper.

Pepper Spray Cop shakes things up on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.

Call PETA! Pepper Spray Cop abuses teh kittehs.

Pepper Spray Cop is incorporated into Guernica by Pablo Picasso.

Pepper Spray Cop blasts Spider-Man.

Pepper Spray Cop tries to stop the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.

Pepper Spray Cop visits John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "Bed-In."

Pepper Spray Cop douses Keyboard Cat.

Pepper Spray Cop is incorporated into Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.

Pepper Spray Cop visits Sesame Street.

Pepper Spray Cop is pasted into a scene from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Pepper Spray Cop is added to an old-school My Little Pony image.

Pepper Spray Cop is incorporated into Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull.

Pepper Spray Cop makes his mark on the Look At All the Fucks I Give meme.

Pepper Spray Cop brings his special sauce to The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.

You'd scream, too. Pepper Spray Cop makes a perfect addition to The Scream by Edvard Munch.

Pepper Spray Cop faces off against Yoda.

Pepper Spray Cop crashes Thanksgiving.

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Clever Photoshop artists have turned the image of a police officer pepper-spraying Occupy Wall Street protesters into a fast-spreading internet meme.

Soon after Lt. John Pike was videotaped and photographed pepper-spraying protesters Friday on the University of California at Davis campus, the video of the confrontation went viral and a photo of the incident went up on reddit.

That photo, by Louise Macabitas, sparked a slew of Photoshop spoofs showing Lt. Pike pepper-spraying everyone from Keyboard Cat to God. The artworks incorporate the officer into historical works of art likePablo Picasso’s Guernica and already-established internet memes like “Look at All the Fucks I Give.” And not too long after the images began circulating, Tumblrs to collect them were born.

“The imagery of the pepper-spraying cop somehow managed to top the chilling photo of pepper-sprayed 84-year-old Dorli Rainey from last week,” said Brady Hall, the 34-year-old filmmaker behind thePepper Spraying Cop Tumblr, in an e-mail to Wired.com. “And unlike that photo, ‘pepper spraying cop’ was just brimming with opportunity for humor.”

Hall said the pictures “also help highlight just why the images of this guy hosing peaceful park-sitters in the face with pepper spray is so wrong and representative of the baffling (but unsurprising) stance police are taking with the [Occupy Wall Street] protesters.”

The similar imagery of cops pepper-spraying participants at various Occupy Wall Street protests is what makes them easy to meme, said Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger Network. Some of the images take on aBanksy-esque quality because the act of pepper-spraying can look like spray-painting, making Pepper Spray Cop easy to incorporate into other photographs or art works.

“I think this started with Occupy Wall Street with the women who were penned in that got pepper-sprayed by that cop, so now everyone’s looking for pepper spray,” Huh told Wired.com. “They may not be consciously looking for it, but subconsciously when they see it they go, ‘A-ha! There’s another one.’ It’s bringing to light the problems that occur when police overuse pepper spray.”

Check out some of the best images from the meme in the gallery above, then hit the comments to let us know if you find any other cool versions of the Pepper Spray Cop photo.