Fedora Guy: The Story Behind A Neckbeard Legend

in recent years the reputation surrounding the fedora hat has taken a dive due to it becoming associated with Internet neckbeards white knights and nerdy try-hards Paul check this out and because of this stigma that's been attached to it in recent years people are generally more cautious about wearing fedoras this stigma relating to the tips fedora meme and there's a certain image that's been floating around that essentially serves as the cornerstone for the tips fedora meme that exists online and this image is known commonly as fedora guy this image of a smug looking young man donning a neckbeard in fedora hat has long been a meme used to Lampoon try-hards on internet forums it essentially serves as satire that pokes fun of these guys on forums that talk all of this big game acting like they're just the ultimate gentlemen when it comes to ladies but in actuality they're probably some guy in his early thirties chillin in his mom's basement while this image of fedora guy isn't the only example of a tips fedora meme as there are multiple variants it is by far the most widely and recognized example of it so I got curious and wanted to know how this guy's picture ended up becoming this big meme online the backstory behind it spread who is the actual guy in the picture and how did his likeness becoming a meme affect his real life before starting I'd like to think the ridge for sponsoring today's video they make these sleek metallic wallets this one I have is the aluminum version on the ridge website you'll find that their wallets come in various different types of metals and materials from titanium to carbon fiber I've used both the aluminum and the titanium they're both excellent choices and rich has more than just wallets they also have phone cases book bags power banks charging cables and even pocket knives so check those out as well I've got a 10% off link in the description box that includes free worldwide shipping that's wwe.com slash surf and use code surf to save that 10% off anyways let's get onto the video so before I begin talking about the fedora guy himself I need to explain how tips fedora Beach in the first place because I think it's essential to understand that in order to give context to the fedora guy picture well as with the origin of many memes that we find online the genesis of tips fedora can be traced back to none other than the folks over on 4chan the phrase tips fedora was first used in a thread on 4chan svey board in mid-2012 and it quickly began to spread and become popular on several of the other boards and it was generally stuff like this I want to borrow your pin tips fedora m'lady I'd be honored to help you with your homework the meme evolved for some time on 4chan and eventually it spilled over to tumblr and I think this particular example I'm about to show you is a perfect showcase of what the whole tips fedora phenomena is all about the back story of this post is supposedly this tumblr user buys his crush a pack of donuts in an effort to win her over and this is the result I tried this on a female before she took the bottom middle donut that says girl and handed the box back to me leaving me with five donuts that read will you be my friend tips fedora and shame friend-zoned again by another succubus the phrase tips fedora then found its way onto reddit and this is where we begin to see the meme transform from its text-based origins to more of an image macro template in mid to late 2013 you began to see more and more image based incarnation of tips fedora memes which displayed oftentimes undesirable men wearing fedoras accompanied with melodramatic hot takes on women or these we live in a society ask testimonies I'm sorry that I'm always the one you need to talk to you but never good enough today I'm sorry that I thought sex can wait till after marriage then you went out and got pregnant I'm sorry that I always held your hair back when you threw up and didn't get mad at you for puking in my car but when we went out you went home with another guy I'm sorry for not being sorry anymore I'm sorry that you can't accept me for who I am as an atheist why should I tolerate all the many different religious views that people subscribe to I have decided that I will tolerate it no longer and any religious person I ever meet I will instantly regard as of lesser intelligence and delusional and treat them as such and this is just a small selection of tips fedora memes you can find online there's thousands upon thousands of them so in late 2013 when we had the proliferation of these tips fedora memes appearing on reddit this is when the actual fedora guy himself comes into the fold on October 31st the first image of the fedora guy was shared to Reddit and was associated with the tips fedora meme for the first time when it was posted to this hour circle jerk thread by redditor I have two broken arms AMA the title of the post was the more you hit the upload button the more you forea you receive and the thread essentially just features the photo of the fedora guy this entire hour circle jerk post is actually a meta joke poking fun at a rather infamous thread that was submitted over on our atheism by redditor a Louis and in this thread he details this cringe inducing embellishment of his status as an atheist just to be clear I'm not a professional quote maker I'm just an atheist teenager who greatly values his intelligence and scientific fact over any silly fiction book written 3,500 years ago this being said I am open to any and all criticism in this moment I am euphoric not because of any phony God's blessing but because I am enlightened by my intelligence yeesh this infamous post by a Louis would become an inside joke amongst redditors I did my video up to you at this moment and the legendary fedora guys picture was made a meme within one of the many threads that mock the are atheism user after its initial use in the our circle-jerk thread the fedora guy began to spread rapidly across the internet and essentially became the poster child for the entire tips fedora joke and would be closely associated with internet neckbeards in general there have been numerous renditions and remixes of it throughout the years and it's actually still a somewhat relevant meme today but I think at this point you get the picture you understand the spread of how the actual fedora guy picture became a meme I want to start talking about the man behind the fedora guy the actual human being who is he and how did this thing get online in the first place well in early 2014 redditors were asking the same questions a thread was created in February of 2014 entitled who is the famous fedora tipping neckbeard what are his origins and within this thread someone came up with the idea to reverse image search the fedora guy photo and it turns out that the image was associated with an IMDB page created for an actor named Jerry Messing the page says he was from Los Angeles California and was born on April 3rd of 1986 which would make him 27 years old at that time in 2014 this IMDB page lists Jerry Messing's acting credits from as early as 1997 and stops around 2003 and oddly enough this list includes some pretty remarkable acting credits notable credits included playing Pugsley Addams in the 1998 Addams family reunion movie and playing a character named Gordon crisp in the TV series freaks and geeks which actually has a pretty good review online here he is in the Addams Family movie [Music] how's our patient doing well okay but do you remember our little lesson from last time don't you if the patient refuses to stop screaming offer him some anesthetic good boy Pugsley I'm sure you'll be at the top of your class when you reach medical school and here he isn't and gigs I don't like sci-fi I love it here mom drivers should mine hey me my mom should drive because she puts on my makeup on in the parking lot before I go in great so from what the redditors were able to dig up it looked like the fedora guy was a childhood actor whose name was Jerry Messing and to add even more evidence that this picture of the fedora guy was really Jerry Jerry Messing's Facebook page was promptly dug up and lo and behold the infamous fedora guy picture was on Jerry Messing's Facebook page with a post date of May 1st 2011 so without a shadow of a doubt this is the real guy so the internet knew the real identity of fedora guy but there were still some unanswered questions questions like was Jerry Messing aware that his likeness had become a meme and had he acknowledged it and also what was the actual story behind this photo being taken well on May 8th of 2014 Jerry Messing would take to Facebook and for the first time acknowledged the meme so I've been made aware of a meme that I seem to become a part of due to my picture something that seems to have to do with the recent influx of friend requests I've been unsure how to or even if I should respond to this possibility but I now find it too humorous to not say something first I want to thank those who have been respectful as to how I might feel towards this and second I would like to say how funny it is for a photo I had taken for the fun of it would generate this much well I'm not sure what to call it infamy as to why a for fun shot appears to have been done professionally that's simple when I got my last set of headshots done there was still some film to use up and the result was this on a final note to those who have come because of this meme in remaining respectful I ask you to also respect the photographer who took it he does excellent work and the only reason this picture is up is because it is not an official one so yeah Jerry Messing was certainly aware that he had become a living meme however after this acknowledgment Jerry Messing would remain rather silent on the whole situation even as the friend requests to his Facebook page would continue to increase as more and more people learned that he was the actual fedora guy and I can certainly understand why somebody would want to distance themselves from a meme based off of their likeness especially in this circumstance when more often than not the Fedora guy image was used to mock and make fun of people online and not only that who really wants to be known as the poster child for internet neckbeard culture I know I wouldn't want to be brah as the summer of 2014 rolls around the Fedora guy meme begins to reach its peak popularity and it had been shared across pretty much every fathomable corner of the internet and people still had questions for jerry he did acknowledge that the photo was taken at some sort of headshot photo shoot but people wanted to know why he was doing that particular pose in the photo shoot but in the summer months jerry was elusive and didn't answer many questions about the fedora guy meme on his facebook page but for whatever reason in august he finally decided to break his silence and further explain the backstory behind the photo and it turns out at the end of his headshot photo session he wanted to pay homage to one of his favorite movies after some deliberation i've decided i will finally start answering some questions if you have something you really want to ask me it is respectful and I feel I can properly answer it at this time please post it as a comment and I will respond to it however just to knock one off the asking roster I will say why I took the now infamous photo I've loved the Blues Brothers movie since I saw it I also fell in love with the style that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi portrayed in the film certainly part of the charm of the film and while I knew it was a style I could never do justice to I wanted to try at least once when I'm down more wait I still plan to try and pull off a hopefully semi decent homage to the late Belushi on some Halloween night complete with karaoke renditions of soul man I can already envision the cringing but there you have it so it turns out the fedora tip engaged upon by Jerry Messing in the infamous fedora guy photo was just him paying homage to the Blues Brothers and that's really the story as with many of the cases I talk about on this channel this is another example of someone uploading a piece of content that's rather unremarkable it gets hijacked by the internet and gets transformed into a meme fortunately for Jerry's case him being transformed into this living meme actually had a pretty negligible effect on his life and he didn't suffer much of a negative consequence from this at all and going through his Facebook post it seems like he almost wears the fedora guy meme as a badge of honor and as for what he's doing recently it looks like he's trying to start up a podcast so if you want to get updates on that make sure you check out his Facebook page and if that thing ever comes out I guess tune in and leave a comment but that my friends is the story of how Jerry Messing aka the fedora guy got looped into the tips fedora movement and became a meme let me know what you thought about this video in the comment section and I'll see you guys in the next one major shout outs to my patrons I appreciate you guys wavy web surf out peace [Music]

Channel: wavywebsurf

Views: 1,642,079

Rating: 4.9131899 out of 5

Keywords: wavywebsurf, neckbeard, fedora guy, internet history, 4chan, reddit, reddit memes, reddit history, 4chan history, meme history, who is the fedora guy, jerry messing, whatever happened, whatever happened wavywebsurf, meme explained, fedora neckbeard, tips fedora, *tips fedora*, reddit fedora

Id: rBhAfUwj1Qo

Length: 13min 40sec (820 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/fantasypants]

Um. The way he says Dan Akroyd at 11:43 really threw me off.

[u/donteatyourvegs]

turns out fedora guy is actually a cool guy