Boston Explosion Investigation: 10 Tweets About #Brofiling

Apparently, it is never too soon to start making bro jokes, even just days after a deadly national tragedy.

Search Twitter for #brofiling, and you will find a lot of Tweets joking about the fact that the two main suspects for Boston Marathon bombing are now light-skinned men wearing baseball hats.

This is in direct contrast to the earlier reports and speculation that the suspect was from Saudi Arabia, or dark-skinned. Please note that these earlier inaccurate reports have already had violent consequences, including the Islamophobic assault against Heba Abolaban, a 26-year-old physician pushing her 9-month-old in a stroller in Malden, MA. 

There seems to be two distinct approaches in these #brofiling jokes. A few of these Tweets use this humorous example to provide a pithy satire of the injustice of racial profiling. Many other posts, however, read more like a post from stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. While this self-derogatory humor works in many contexts, in this case, these Tweets derive their humor by implying how impractical and ridiculous it would be for white bros to be the target of racial profiling. Far from subverting the idea of racial profiling, this instead implies that racial profiling can only be applied to people of color.

Check out 10 examples of #brofiling jokes below, and see for yourself.

1. The FBI is coming for the college bros!

2. Or will it be the stoner bros?

3. Or the middle school locker room bro-juniors?

4. Will the FBI need the cooperation of Dave Matthews Band?

5. Should brofiling be illegal?

6. Hint: not an actual White House official.

7. Or can bros still manage to direct you back to Islamophobia?

8. Preach, Annie Shields, preach.

9. And a bro gets it!

10. Touché.

Spot any other smart, funny or terrible brofiling tweets? Let me know on Twitter: @sbakkila