A meme can be defined as – “an image, video, a piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.”
Memes have become an integral part of the modern day internet culture where people use them as a medium of entertainment. 4chan, Reddit & 9GAG are some of the sites that have made memes and the people behind them extremely popular.
Let’s have a look at some of the people who became overnight sensation as memes:
1. The College freshman –Â Griffin Kiritsy
When Griffin agreed to do an innocent photo shoot for Reader’s Digest, little did he know that he’ll become an internet sensation. After his snaps got posted, some Redditors got their hands on it and he unknowingly became the face of the famous meme College freshman, who’s a new kid in the college and does most of the things related to freshmen.
2. Success kid – Sammy Griner
After a photo of 11-month-old Sammy Griner was put up by his mother online, little did she know that it will turn out to be an internet sensation. The viral meme, also known as the ‘Success Kid’ is a series of image macros with text that denotes some form of conquest or success.
This ‘Success Kid’ was also able to successfully raise money for his father’s kidney treatment from an online funding campaign. I guess he’s just as successful in real life as he is on the internet.
3. Jimmy Mcmillan – Politician & founder of ‘The rent is too damn high’ party
Yup, you read that right. The Rent Is Too Damn High is actually a political party founded by the politician, Jimmy Mcmillan. The party’s political slogan, ‘the rent is too damn high’ slowly turned into a snowclone “X is too damn high”, which is used to vent frustration about a variety of topics, and went viral as a meme.
4. Skeptical baby- Mason Thomas, Son of Redditor Dave Thomas
Skeptical baby is a popular image macro series with the picture of a baby with raised eyebrows and text that describes various realizations as a baby. The original picture was uploaded by Redditor Dave Thomas, the cute kid in the picture is his son Mason.
5. Sheltering Suburban Mom- Carly Phillips
Carly Phillips is a contemporary romance novelist who is also famous as the face behind the viral internet meme suburban mom. The series of macros consist of jokes about overly protective moms who don’t practice what they preach with Carly as the cover face. Although, Carly didn’t like it at first, she has learned to laugh along. She also claims that she’s nothing like the sheltering suburban mom in real life.
6. Scumbag Steve – Blake Boston
The real guy behind your average high school Dirtbag is Blake Boston. Based on his Myspace pictures which were taken in 2006, the image macro quickly turned into a famous meme. Blake, however, is not so thrilled with his internet fame as he soon became a victim of internet bullying and silly pranks aimed at him and his family. Fame is not always good, I guess!
7. Overly Attached Girlfriend – Laina Morris
Laina Morris is a famous YouTuber and the real person behind the viral meme ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’. She shot to fame with her YouTube video ‘Girlfriend’ in which she can be seen smiling and staring manically into the camera. The Reddit community took note of the video and Laina became an overnight sensation and a viral meme star. Well, this is one girl whom you wouldn’t mind being overly attached to you, would you?
8. Bad luck Brian – Kyle Craven
This meme got famous when a friend of the real Bad Luck Brian- Kyle Craven, posted his hilarious image as a meme on Reddit. The meme became a huge hit with the Reddit community and became viral overnight. Kyle, as Bad Luck Brian became a symbol of hilarious bad luck. Ironically, Kyle has had a pretty good luck in his real life. He’s getting offers from Advertisement companies all over to let them use his face. Also, he made around 15-20,000$ from licensing and T-shirt merchandising deals. Now that’s not so bad for Bad Luck Brian, is it?
9. Doge – Â Such stare, much WOW
This meme got so famous that there’s hardly any netizen who won’t recognize it. The famous meme which can be created by putting nonsensical, grammatically incorrect sentences in comic sans over the photo of a Shiba-Inu, not to forget the “WOW”. The famous dog or “Doge” as we know her is a rescued Shiba-Inu dog called Kabosu who was adopted by a Japanese Kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato.
So if you want to become successful overnight, start uploading your pics online. You can be the next Meme sensation!
