Meme History
Today I teach a lesson in everyone’s favourite subject: Meme History. For those not aware of what a meme is, according to the official definition by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, an “idea, behaviour, style or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” In simple terms, memes can take on lots of forms. The most common of these being a picture with text on the top and bottom of the frame, but they can also be videos, songs, GIFS and physical acts. A lot of the times memes are published they’re in reaction to a certain event or idea, but can be manipulated by anyone to fit a certain criteria for a target audience.
In today’s class, we examine a meme that took the world by storm and, while not nearly as popular as it once was in the first year of it coming out, still pops up every once in a while. The meme in question is Success Kid, pictured below:
This is one of the earliest iterations of the meme. When it was first posted online by Sam’s (that’s his name by the way) Mom to her flickr account in 2007, it was just a cute picture. For some reason, users of the internet decided to start using the picture of a strangers kid as their profile pictures on mySpace, Facebook and other various social networking sites. Once it started spreading from these sites, it made it’s way to the numerous classic content producing sites such as Funny Junk and Daily HaHa and from there the world was it’s oyster.
Oddly enough, this was not Success Kids peak of famedom. In 2011, the first “animal style” version of the success kid meme was posted to Reddit.
This is where the picture truly got its fame, being spread around other big sites such as 9Gag, Quickmeme and even Funny or Die. To date, the meme has been shared and altered millions of times, one of the most successful in internet history.
And being your own meme can bring some pretty sweet benefits. Get your face printed on thousands of t-shirts? Sweet. Get to go on Daily talk shows? Not bad. How about hooking your dad up with a new kidney? In April of 2015, Linsey Griner, Sammy’s mom, posted a Go-Fund me page to help raise money for Sammy’s dad’s kidney transplant. After being posted to sites like Reddit and TheDailyDot, even making it into DailyMail and Time.com articles, donators helped raised almost $90 000, ensuring Sammy’s dad could receive a new kidney.
Over the years the meme has died down in popularity, being overtaken by the likes of Pepe the Frog and Bad Luck Bryan, but every now and again it pops back up.