The Far-Right Stole Makeup Artist Anthony Gordon’s Pic For A Meme. He Clapped Back!
A stolen snapshot goes viral.
Los Angeles-based makeup artist and fitness content creator Anthony Gordon woke up this week to find his cowboy-hat selfie repurposed by a TikTok account pushing ultra-conservative talking points. The meme, splashed with the line “Remember boys, they keep calling us far-right when in reality we have been right-so-far,” painted him as a poster boy for hard-right masculinity.
What the anonymous TikTok poster missed, however, is that Gordon is proudly progressive and openly gay.
Gordon’s quick clap-back breaks the spell.
Jumping onto Threads, Gordon told followers, “Some of you will remember the idiotic far-right stole an image of me to make a meme for them… What they don’t know is I’m a far-left gay liberal man lol. Bozos!”
The post drew a wave of encouragement, along with a few laughs at the troll’s expense. One supporter wrote, “I lolled when I first saw this because I knew,” while others joked that far-right meme makers keep choosing “another gay progressive hot daddy” to front their agendas.
Why do trolls keep borrowing our faces?
At DNA, we have watched this pattern repeat: conservative accounts latch onto photos that look “rugged” without checking the person’s politics. Followers noticed Kristofer Weston, a leatherman educator, was also used in similar memes. Is it sloppy research or wishful thinking? Either way, the joke keeps landing on the creators, not the targets.
Platforms still lag on safety, says GLAAD.
Gordon’s experience highlights a larger problem. The latest Social Media Safety Index (SMSI) from GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, grades six major platforms and finds each one “failing to mitigate harmful anti-LGBTQIA+ hate and disinformation that violates their own policies.” TikTok scores just 56 per cent; X (formerly Twitter) bottoms out at 30. GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis warns that online hate is fuelling “real-world safety and health” risks for queer users.
So, what now…
We can’t stop every meme, but we can call it out. Gordon’s humour turned a stolen image into free publicity for his art and values. His advice arrives between the lines: stay visible, own your narrative, and keep receipts handy. How long will the platforms let trolls get away with this?
