Hey, Authority

Submission 10,412

About

"Hey, Authority" refers to a photograph of American singer-songwriter Kid Rock holding up a middle finger at the camera outside of a courtroom in April 2016. Short after it was posted to his Twitter and Facebook accounts, the rock musician's petulant anti-authoritarian message went viral online and spawned a photo fad of various individuals mimicking his gesture with the caption "hey, authority."

Origin

On April 12th, 2016, Kid Rock posted an image of himself smiling and sticking up his middle finger while standing outside of a courtroom, prefaced with the caption that reads "hey, authority." Within hours of the post on Twitter^[1] and Facebook^[2], Kid Rock's photograph began racking up thousands of likes and shares; in just a little over two weeks, the image garnered more than 4,800 retweets and 8,500 likes on Twitter, as well as over 55,000 likes, 4,800 shares and 1,500 comments on Facebook.

Spread

That same day, American standup comedian Joe Mande^[6] tweeted a parody image of himself awkwardly sticking up a middle finger while standing next to his office nameplate, followed by American comedian Andy Richter's tweet^[7] featuring the Chihuahua dog (as seen in the "Sleep Tight Pupper" meme) with the caption "hey, authority."

On April 13th, Comedy Central's @Midnight host Chris Hardwick^[9] hosted a live challenge event inspired by Kid Rock's viral "middle finger" photograph, prompting another batch of parody photographs mimicking the musician's defiant message. Also on April 13th, Kid Rock's tweet was covered by a number of viral media and internet culture blogs, including The Verge^[3], Uproxx^[4] and The Daily Dot.^[5] In addition, Redditor w4lt3r submitted a screenshot of the original tweet to /r/FirstWorldAnarchists.^[10]