Misunderstood D-Bag — Young man with popped-collar blue polo shirt smiling and looking upward

Misunderstood D-Bag

2011image macroclassic

Published November 2, 2026

A stock photo of a soul-patched man in a popped-collar polo became the face of a 2011 Advice Animals series where the top caption named a frat-boy sin and the bottom caption gave it an innocent excuse. By late August 2011, Memebase had rebranded him as Misunderstood Mitch, and the macro ran across Reddit, Quickmeme and Tumblr for the next year.

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Overview

Misunderstood D-Bag, also known as Misunderstood Mitch, takes a stock photo of a smiling guy in a blue polo with a popped collar and a soul patch and uses him for a two-line setup. The top line reads like something Scumbag Steve would do, and the bottom line hits with a wholesome reason that reframes the behavior as totally reasonable1. The gag is the swerve from assumed douchebaggery to accidental decency.

The writing convention leans on frat-boy signifiers (polos, protein shakes, Jager bombs, girls at the bar) and then undercuts them with excuses like helping a friend, protecting someone's feelings, or avoiding sunburn2. The format sits squarely between its two obvious parents on the Advice Animals grid: Scumbag Steve for the surface read and Good Guy Greg for the twist1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Quickmeme / Reddit (viral spread)
Date
2011

The base image is a stock photograph titled "Optimistic Man," uploaded to iStockPhoto by Canadian photographer Justin Horrocks on January 3rd, 20071. The man in the photo is a model, not a real person named Mitch, and had no connection to the meme that was later built on his picture.

The earliest known macro, captioned "pops collar to protect neck from sunburn," first appeared on Quickmeme and was reposted to the r/AdviceAnimals subreddit on August 8th, 2011, where it hit the subreddit's front page with 1,652 upvotes2. Eight days later, on August 16th, Memebase published a post christening the character "Misunderstood Mitch," and that nickname stuck alongside the original D-Bag label1.

How It Spread

After the August 8th Reddit post hit the Advice Animals front page2, aggregator blogs picked up the format fast. On August 9th, 2011, the photo blog The Bigster published a compilation titled "The Best of Misunderstood D-Bag"3. A week later, on August 16th, Memebase introduced the "Misunderstood Mitch" alias in its own feature1, and a FunnyJunk compilation using the new name went up the same day1.

Uproxx ran a Meme Watch column on the character on August 18th, 2011, which pushed him outside the Advice Animals bubble and into general web-culture coverage1. Bodybuilding.com forum threads kept the format alive through the fall, and JustMemes featured another compilation on November 2nd, 20111. By May 2012, Reddit had logged more than 180 Misunderstood D-Bag submissions and Quickmeme had hosted over 1,000 entries1.

Fan infrastructure stayed small. Facebook pages existed for both the D-Bag and Mitch names but neither cleared 100 likes, and a parody Twitter account for Mitch was short-lived1. The macro kept circulating on Tumblr and Memebase through 2012 before fading with the rest of the classic Advice Animals grid.

Timeline

2007-01-03

Justin Horrocks uploads the stock photo "Optimistic Man" to iStockPhoto, the image later used for the macro.

2011-08-08

A Quickmeme version captioned "pops collar to protect neck from sunburn" is posted to r/AdviceAnimals and hits the front page with 1,652 upvotes.

2011-08-09

The Bigster publishes "The Best of Misunderstood D-Bag," an early compilation post.

2011-08-16

Memebase introduces the "Misunderstood Mitch" nickname; FunnyJunk posts a compilation under that name the same day.

2011-08-18

Uproxx runs a Meme Watch feature on Misunderstood D-Bag.

2011-11-02

JustMemes publishes a compilation of the macro.

2012-05

Reddit logs over 180 submissions and Quickmeme hosts more than 1,000 entries using the format.

How to Use This Meme

A typical entry writes a stereotypically terrible action on the top line ("Buys girl at the bar a drink" or "Wears Ed Hardy to the gym") and then supplies a benign motive on the bottom line ("She looked thirsty," "It was laundry day"). The common convention is to keep both lines short and to make the excuse as mundane as possible, so the reveal reads deadpan rather than clever.

Frequently Asked Questions