Meme of the Week: Bad Luck Brian
Photo credit: knowyourmeme.com
By Jack Gentes, Opinions Editor
Bad Luck Brian is an oldie but a goldie when it comes to memes. It falls within the “image macro” category of memes; this category typically consists of an image with text written in Impact font across the top and bottom of the image. In this case, the image is of a blond, teenage boy with braces wearing a blue button down shirt with a red plaid sweater vest. It appears as though Brian is having his school photo taken, and the primary draw of the image is his now famous awkward smile. The meme is used for expressing awkward, unfortunate, and often ironic situations in which a person would be publicly embarrassed or humiliated. For example, the top text may read “Ringtone goes off at a funeral,” while the bottom text reads “Stayin’ Alive by the Beegees.”
According to KnowYourMeme.com, it was eventually revealed that the image is of a teenaged Kyle Craven, a man from Ohio. The image macro was originally posted to Reddit by a friend of Craven’s, where it slowly gained popularity before being picked up by other websites, such as Buzzfeed and Tumblr. Once the meme was present on multiple websites, it gained a lot of traction. Since then, it has become a mainstay of meme culture and Craven himself has come out and said how much he enjoys the meme. Ironically, Bad Luck Brian has had quite a fair amount of good luck when it comes to being popular on the Internet.
