Not again Brian!
Meme (n) — an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation; ie a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
Memes. The internet is filled with them. Literally overloaded with; these days you can find a meme for practically anything and everything, whether it’s to express your disdain for midterm season over twitter or slyly throw some #shade at your ex over Facebook, you’ve probably used a meme at least once — and if you haven’t well, just know this is me:
And honestly why wouldn’t you use a meme? A picture is worth a thousand words, and memes do really speak for themselves; let’s be honest, when was the last time you didn’t see one while mindlessly scrolling through any of your countless social media accounts and wasn’t just like:
Along with most millennials, I love memes. But have you ever wondered how they even come up in the first place? How do these images that have practically become a staple in internet culture become so well known and even in second nature in a way? And that’s what I’ll be focusing on during this blog post — the history of one of my favorite internet memes of all time — Bad Luck Brian.
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If you’re unfamiliar with Bad Luck Brian, here he is in all his unwanted, unlucky glory:
So how did Bad luck Brian come into existence as the meme we all know used to convey misfortunes and well, bad luck? Funnily enough, it was on purpose. Kyle Craven, the (now) man we all know and love as Bad luck Brian, wanted his yearbook photo to look terrible as a joke, being the class clown he was; so what else does Craven do but buys a hideous, plaid sweater vest from none other than his local thrift store and rubs his face excessively before the photo was taken, hence giving him the flushed look he has in the infamous meme. Now this awkward photo of Kraven was taken for his 2005–2006 yearbook. Although the picture never made it to print in the actual yearbook, due his principal disliking the photo, it did make it to Reddit, in January 2012, when one fine day, one of Craven’s friends calls him, informing him that he uploaded the original photo as a joke with the caption ‘Takes driving test, gets first DUI’.
And before you know it, Kyle’s an overnight internet sensation and is everywhere from to t-shirts at Hot Topic and paperweights and even stuffed animals — the rest is history.
If you’re super curious as to the actual analytics of when Bad Luck Brian became popular, here’s a graph illustrating the timeline of the meme’s peaks and then steady decline.
And on that note, I couldn’t possibly end this blog post without my own rendition of bad luck brian:
Citations:
(Memes and GIFs) http://giphy.com/gifs/justin-monkey-i-am-disappointed-l3vRhaxVcQ1i0CZlC http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35sg0m http://www.cambio.com/photos/story-behind-people-in-popular-memes/ https://giphy.com/gifs/friends-chandler-bing-joey-tribbiani-26FPGI3ZgduhYYVTa
(Research) https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/being-bad-luck-brian-when-the-meme-that-made-you-famous-starts-to-fade-away/2015/01/05/07cbf6ac-907c-11e4-a412-4b735edc7175_story.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egcl-0GRo00
