Thomas Matthew Crooks’ face has begun appearing in ads for apps on Instagram.
The attempted presidential assassin’s likeness was first spotted by The Dallas Express on the Meta platform on July 23, just ten days after he fired at former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
The ad opens with a picture of Crooks that The Associated Press has reported to be from his driver’s license. Then, the ad shows a scorecard from the app that ranks the quality of his skin, hair, jawline, cheekbones, facial masculinity, and other aesthetic qualities. In each category, Crooks’ features are shown in red, indicating that he is deficient and, therefore, not handsome.
The app then shows a modified version of Crooks’ face, showing him as handsome. The mockup depicts Crooks with clean skin, a square jaw, and a full head of dark wavy hair.
These features are all ranked near the top of their respective scales and lit in green. His skin and jawline scored 84. His cheekbones scored 73, and his masculinity of features scored 72. His overall scores rose from 30 to 81.
The advertisement closes with the words “DOWNLOAD THIS APP. GET A FACE RATING. LEARN HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LOOKS.” It includes an image of the Apple App Store where the app “Umax – Become Hot” is shown as downloaded and ready to open. The title refers to the Gen Z slang term “maxing,” which refers to taking something to its limit. In this context, Umax[ing] would mean making yourself as handsome as possible.
Check out the video ad here.
The poster of the video ad was an account called iblamelookss. Likes were not visible. However, the video had been sent more than 14,000 times, and the thousands of likes on each comment suggested a higher level of engagement. Many commentators found the video to be either funny or a brilliant marketing move. Other commentators said they liked the song used or discussed other handsome people who had committed heinous crimes.
This is not the only video discussing Crooks’ looks that DX has seen in recent days on the social media platform. During the production of this story, another video materialized. This time, the narrator in the video purported to explain why Crooks was not more attractive scientifically.
