The Cocaine GIF That Went Around the World

MAY 15 2021 · 12:30

Måneskin (Damiano David) · "Zitti e buoni (green room)" · Italy · 2021 Language: N/A · Venue: Rotterdam Ahoy · Host: Rotterdam, Netherlands · Type: scandal · Broadcast: streaming era Rotterdam Ahoy green room, 22 May 2021, voting underway. Måneskin's Damiano David leans forward over a glass table. For about two seconds he disappears below the camera line. The movement looks, to many thousands of viewers, like a quick line of cocaine. The GIF travels the world within hours. At the winner's press conference — this clip — Damiano stares down the room of journalists and says 'I don't use drugs, please guys, do not say that... No cocaine, please.' He explains his bandmate Thomas Raggi broke a glass; he was looking at shards. EBU later confirms broken glass was found on the table. A voluntary drug test three days later comes back negative. The story persists for weeks regardless. Context Italy won Eurovision 2021 with 'Zitti e buoni'. Damiano's explanation — that he was looking at a piece of broken glass on the table — was widely ridiculed as implausible. The drug-test result was definitive but arrived after three days of viral pile-on. Måneskin were 22-year-olds catapulted into international superstardom mid-scandal. Legacy The GIF became one of Eurovision's most-circulated moments of the 21st century. Damiano later told Rolling Stone he regretted 'engaging with it at all', and that the frantic public defence amplified the allegation. The negative drug test vindicated the band but the image persists. Måneskin continued as Italy's biggest rock export with world tours sold out through 2024. Mythology Fan forums persist in debating what actually happened at that table — whether the glass existed, whether the camera angle was misleading. The test result closed the legal question but not the cultural one.