Jumping Alex

Submission 13,705

Part of a series on Arctic Monkeys. [View Related Entries]

About

Jumping Alex is a photoshop meme featuring a photo of the Arctic Monkeys guitarist, songwriter and vocalist Alexander David Turner^[2] jumping on stage in mid-air. The images are typically edited to make it appear as if Turner is jumping in a variety humorous contexts.

Origin

On April 14th, 2012, The Orange County Register^[4] published an article about the first day of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which included photographer Kevin Sullivan's photo of Alex Turner jumping in mid-air while playing his guitar.

On April 16th, Tumblr user eatsleepstrokesrepeat^[3] posted four exploitables^[6] using the photograph, including pictures of Turner next to Ridiculously Photogenic Guy (top left), running on a track (top right), jumping over a double rainbow (bottom left) and jumping in a promotional photo for the television film franchise High School Musical (bottom right). Within one week, the post received over 1,800 notes.

Spread

Also on April 16th, 2012, Ultimate-Guitar forum user RampagingAcorn^[10] submitted the original photograph in a thread titled "Shoop Alex Turner, frontman of Arctic Monkeys" with a template image and the description “Do your worst.” On April 17th, Tumblr user eatsleepstrokesrepeat launched the "Jumping Alex"^[1] single topic blog, which posted examples from the photoshop series. The same day, a Facebook^[7] page for "Jumping Alex" was created, which received over 240 likes within six days. On April 18th, a Twitter^[8] account for @Jumping_Alex was made, accumulating over 750 followers in five days. The meme has since spread to the fan club social networking site Fanpop.^[12]