FRED
I’m sure the majority of us remember laughing at Fred Figglehorn as a kid. Even with his annoying voice and all, we still thought he was funny. For those of you who don’t know who he is: he is a fictional character created by and portrayed by Lucas Cruikshank. His character is supposed to be a six-year-old kid who has a high-pitched voice and anger management issues.
Cruikshank first became aware of his meme status when he obtained hundreds of thousands of views on his YouTube videos and became the first person ever to surpass 1 million subscribers, making him the most subscribed to channel at the time. At his prime, his videos gained millions of hits and everyone from all over were talking about Fred and how funny he was. Cruikshank is a prime example of how someone became aware of their “meme status”, and then capitalized on it. In fact, today he is still capitalizing on what he made 12 years ago.
Cruikshank was able to use the popularity he gained to develop and star in two movies. The first movie he filmed was titled Fred: The Movie, which premiered on Nickelodeon. He later came out with a sequel for the first movie, which was aired a couple years later. Cruikshank even made guest appearances on shows like iCarly. Fred was an incredibly successful character, so much so Nickelodeon believed Fred could turn into a franchise. In fact, they said, “We’ve been tracking Fred for a long time. Our audience seems to be consumed with him. Fred love shows no sign of subsiding.”
Some people reading this may be shocked that Cruikshank was able to become so successful out of this Fred character. Most people assume Cruikshank fell off the edge of the world as he is no longer talked about. However, with his popularity, Cruikshank was able to even take it upon himself to create a YouTube channel to post videos about his life and the things he does. This YouTube Channel is still up and running with more than 2.6 million subscribers, averaging a couple hundred thousand of views per video.
Cruikshank can only be seen as a genius for making so much out Fred, his fictional character. He got his fans to follow him throughout the years, gaining new ones along the way. Lucas Cruikshank was able to build an empire out of a such a simple character. His success can be best looked at as seeing an opportunity and making the most out of it. He was able to leverage his popularity as a piece of online culture and turn it into a large franchise. Although Fred itself can be referred to as a dead meme, Cruikshank was able to develop a successful YouTube channel, where he sometimes still talks about Fred.
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