Concerned Special Forces Guy

About

Concerned Special Forces Guy or Concerned OMON Guy refers to a viral photograph of a masked Belarusian OMON officer pointing at a downed protester with an expression of concern upon his face. Taken on the first day of the 2020 Belarusian protests, the photograph has been used as a meme template, particularly on Russian-speaking social media pages.

Origin

On August 9th, 2020, during the first day of the 2020 Belarusian protests Reuters^[1] photo reporter Vasily Fedosenko took a photograph of an OMON (special police unit) officer pointing at a downed and injured protestor, identified as Yevgeny Zaichkin (shown below).

Spread

The photograph was featured by multiple news outlets in Belarus, Russia and worldwide. For example, on August 9th Telegram^[2] channel 4chan featured the image, where it received over 65,200 views in four days.

Starting on August 10th, 2020, the image gained popularity as source material for memes on Russian-speaking social media pages on VK, Telegram and other networks. For example, on August 10th, 2020, Telegram^[3] channel 2ch posted an object labeling meme captioned "Lukashenko / Belarus" that received over 188,000 views (shown below, left). Later on the same day, Telegram^[4] channel MDK posted a MMORPG meme based on the template captioned "Heal the tank, FFS." The post received over 168,500 views in three days (shown below, right).

On the same day, Redditor^[5] resonic posted the photograph to /r/memes, writing "Meme Material." The post received over 6,800 upvotes prior to being removed by the moderators for violating the rules of the subreddit.

On the same day, multiple Reddit^[6][7][8] users posted object labeling memes based on the photograph to /r/memes and other subreddits, with many posts being later removed by the moderators (examples shown below). Reposts of the original photograph to /r/AccidentalRenaissance^[9] and /r/hmmm^[10] subreddits received over 55,300 and 18,900 upvotes in three days.

On August 10th, 2020, Twitter^[10] user @sorockha tweeted about the Reddit memes, writing "a man was beaten half to death and Reddit has turned this into a meme. fucking hell." The tweet (shown below) received over 470 retweets and 6,500 likes in three days.

In mid-August 2020, more memes based on the photograph were posted both on Russian-speaking and English-speaking social networks, including viral posts on VK, Reddit and Facebook. In many examples, the man lying on the ground was edited out.

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References