McKayla is Not Impressed

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Part of a series on 2012 Summer Olympics. [View Related Entries]

About

McKayla is Not Impressed is a photoshop meme featuring a photograph of United States gymnast McKayla Maroney wearing a scowling expression during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Origin

On August 5th, 2012, Maroney performed a nearly flawless vault during the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, leading many to believe she would win the gold medal for the competition. During her second vault, Maroney failed to reach enough height to land on her feet and subsequently fell on her backside.

After receiving a total score of 15.083, Maroney ended up taking the silver medal for the competition. While on the winner's podium, Bryan Snyder of the international news agency Reuters took a photograph of Maroney making a scowling expression. On August 7th, the single topic blog McKayla is Not Impressed was launched on Tumblr^[8] to showcase photoshopped images of Maroney's glare set against historical or spectacular scenes in the background.

Precursor

In July of 2011, designer Sean Bonner created the single topic blog Spock is Not Impressed, which featured photoshopped images using a cut-out of the Star Trek character Spock posing in a cross-armed stance.

Spread

On August 6th, BuzzFeed^[11] compiled a series of AP and Reuters photographs from the Women's Vault Final event into an article titled "McKayla Maroney Falls, Lets Out Her Inner 'Mean Girl'." The post gained more than 170,000 views within the first 48 hours. On August 7th, a Quickmeme^[9] page titled "McKayla Not Impressed" was created, which featured an image macro with the caption "Hydrox cookies? / I thought you said Oreos" (shown below, left) that was subsequently submitted by Redditor prbentz to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[7] subreddit.

Also on August 7th, compilations of notable examples from the series were reblogged on the Internet news sites Mashable,^[1] Daily Mail^[4] and What’s Trending^[6], followed by an article in The Examiner^[3] titled “McKayla Maroney’s Vault Fall Goes Viral: Memes of Olympic Moment Spread Fast.” On the following day, additional notable examples were highlighted on the Internet news site UpRoxx^[5] and the sports news blog SB Nation.^[10] Also on August 8th, The Wall Street Journal^[2] published a post titled “McKayla is Not Impressed by This Meme”, which lauded the series as “the Olympics first breakout meme.”