Hernandezing

Submission 42,098

About

Hernandezing refers to two photo fads inspired by pictures of New England Patriots National Football League (NFL) tight end Aaron Michael Hernandez, who was charged with first-degree murder in June of 2013. One version of the fad mimics the way Hernandez held his arms inside of his shirt during his arrest, while another mocks a mirror self-photograph taken by Hernandez in which he is holding a handgun.

Origin

On June 26th, 2013, Hernandez was arrested for gun charges and suspected murder of his friend Odin Lloyd (shown below).

Hours later, Twitter user @Amburglar_ tweeted a photo of two women posed with their arms inside their shirts with both hands behind their back as if they were handcuffed, describing the pose as "Hernandezing."

First, we had Tebowing. Then, Bradying. May I present: Hernandezing pic.twitter.com/SpjojFiKka
— Amber (@Amburglar_) June 26, 2013

Spread

According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[9] tweets containing the keyword "hernandezing" peaked on June 26th with 8,876 mentions.

On the same day, the celebrity gossip site TMZ^[1] published a self-taken photograph of Hernandez wielding a pistol in a mirror (shown below). On the following day, the @RTNBA^[3] Twitter account tweeted a picture of a man mimicking the mirror photograph while holding a toy gun(shown below, right).

Also on June 26th, the single topic blog "Hernandezing" was launched on Tumblr.^[7] In the coming days, several news sites published articles which highlighted notable examples from the series, including BuzzFeed,^[2] NY Mag,^[8] USA Today^[4] and the New York Post.^[6]