Misunderstood D-Bag

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About

Misunderstood D-Bag (sometimes known as Misunderstood Mitch) is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a man wearing a blue polo shirt with an erect collar and "soul patch" facial hair. The caption at the top describes stereotypical frat-boy behaviors reminiscent of Scumbag Steve, followed by the bottom caption offering a convenient excuse that somehow justifies the aforementioned deed, similar to the twist in Successful Black Man captions.

Origin

The series is based on a stock photograph titled "Optimistic Man," uploaded by photographer Justin Horrocks on January 3rd, 2007. The first instance of the image macro, which read "pops collar to protect neck from sunburn," surfaced years later on Quickmeme.^[1] It was subsequently posted to Reddit^[2] on August 8th, 2011, where it reached the front page of the advice animals subreddit with 1,652 up votes.

The ambivalent character of Misunderstood D-Bag may have been inspired by combining the motifs of Scumbag Steve and its antithesis Good Guy Greg which became quite popular earlier that same year in January and April 2011, respectively.

Spread

On August 9th, 2011, a compilation of Misunderstood D-Bag images were posted to the photo sharing blog The Bigster.^[3] On November 2nd, a compilation was featured on Just Memes^[11] followed by a thread on the Body Building Forums^[17] on December 7th. Misunderstood D-Bag was given the name "Misunderstood Mitch" on August 16th, 2011 in a post on Memebase.^[8] The same day, a compilation with the new name was shared on FunnyJunk^[9], followed by a thread on the Body Building Forums^[10] on the 17th and a feature on Uproxx^[12] the next day.

As of May 2012, there have been more than 180 related posts to Reddit^[5] and 1000 submissions to Quickmeme.^[6] Facebook fan pages^[4]^[13] were created for both names but neither have over 100 likes. The image macros continue to be posted on Tumblr^[14] and Memebase.^[15] There was also a short-lived Twitter^[16] account for Mitch.