Ziggy's Mullet

Submission 13,353

About

Ziggy's Mullet is a photoshop meme based on a photograph of Australian teenager Ali Ziggi Mosslmani, who was widely mocked online for his mullet-style haircut. In October 2016, the images saw a resurgence in popularity after Mosslmani filed lawsuits against several publications for posting the photographs, leading to what has been cited as an example of the Streisand Effect.

Origin

On July 14th, 2015, photographer Jemerey Nool posted a photograph of Mosslmani dancing with a young woman at an 18th birthday party on his Jnoodles Photography Facebook^[2] page (shown below). Over the next 16 months, the post gained over 12,000 comments, 11,000 reactions and 1,600 shares.

Spread

On July 15th, 2015, a Facebook^[1] page titled "The Holy Mullet" was launched, highlighting the photographs of Ziggy. Within 16 months, the page gathered upwards of 12,000 likes. That day, the Australian news site Stoney Roads^[8] published an article highlighting photoshopped versions of the Mosslmani photo (shown below).

On July 20th, The Daily Mail,^[9] The Daily Telegraph^[6] and Yahoo News^[7] published articles about the photoshop meme. Two days later, the Australian news site News.com.au^[10] published an titled "The viral haircut that says so much about Generation Y."

Lawsuits

In October, Mosslmani sued Daily Mail Australia, The Daily Telegraph and KIIS radio for defamation, claiming they implied he was a "ridiculous person" with a "controversial," "silly" and "horrendous" haircut. Official court documents revealed the Judge Judith Gibson cited a Barber meme referencing the Pythagorean theorem as a "humorous" and "clever" example in her preliminary judgement (shown below).

"These are very short publications which make the point that the plaintiff’s striking mullet haircut has generated a great deal of interest on the Internet, most of it humorous, and some of it in the form of clever observations, such as the 'Pythagoras' direction in one of the memes."

Additionally, Gibson added that the the lawsuit "seems to be designed to claim as many imputations as possible while simultaneously avoiding a defence of honest opinion or justification." On October 26th, the Jnoodles Photography Facebook page created a Mop Head Ziggy^[5] photo album, highlighting various examples of the photoshop meme.

On October 28th, the tech news site Tech Dirt^[11] published an article about the lawsuit, saying it created "something of a Streisand Effect." On November 3rd, 2016, The BBC^[4] published an article about the lawsuits, noting that Mosslmani's friend Paul Behman was a fan of many of the mullet memes, saying "the memes are funny, but I am his friend so I can't really upset him."