If You Start a Blog Post Without Thinking it Through.. Keep Writing… Your Train of Thought Will Take You Somewhere.
Today I will break down the intricate “Roll Safe” meme that has suddenly sprung up everywhere!
According to KnowYourMeme
“Roll Safe is an image macro serious featuring a screenshot of actor Kayode Ewumi grinning and pointing to his temple while portraying the character Reece Simpson (a.k.a. “Roll Safe”) in the web series Hood Documentary. The image is often captioned with various jokes mocking poor decision making and failures in critical thinking.”
On June 1st, 2016, the BBC Three YouTube channel uploaded a mini documentary on the Hood Documentary series, in which the Ewumi is shown pointing to his head and smiling (shown below). Within eight months, the video gained over 1.04 million views and 1,300 comments.
This is the clip where the screenshot originated from. I personally didn’t find his ‘head’ ‘brain’ innuendos to be funny at all. I found that the most genuine part of the clip is when he does the face. I think this is exactly why the meme resonates with soo many people, it’s a genuine expression of a feeling which you can use as a reaction or what not.
I believe that this went viral for the sole reason that the guy makes a funny face. It’s like when a friend looks silly in a picture and you caption it with something. At this point are we making fun of Roll Safe or Kayode Ewumi or are we using his image to project our own thoughts?
I’m not going to lie I can totally relate to some of these memes…
This meme went through the depths of reddit and twitter where it began to popularize and gain meme cred…. it wasn’t until it reached Black Twitter where it fully blew up and spread like wildfire!
