While several earlier Sad Keanu sightings have been reported on ephemeral message boards such as 4Chan, the first concrete use of the meme occurred on June 3, , when Reddit user rockon4life45 created a thread titled " Keanu. More sadness in the comments.
The thread is helmed by the now instantly recognizable photo of the star, along with the caption "I really enjoy acting. Because when I act, I'm no longer me.
The thread instantly took the internet by storm, garnering , views and rocketing straight to the front page of Reddit.
After experiencing explosive popularity on Reddit, Keanu memes began popping up all over the internet in the summer of By the second week of June, online news outlets such as Buzzfeed began documenting the phenomenon. Some fans even planned out " Operation: Happy Reeves ," which aimed to cheer up the actor, and which attracted over 14, supporters to its Facebook event. On June 10 , the Tumblr account " SadKeanu " was launched, creating a space for meme makers across the globe to come together and share their work.
The joke reached an apparent critical mass on June 14, when the website SadKeanu. Whenever a meme goes viral on the internet, imitators do everything in their power to capitalize on the original's prestige. This was certainly the case for the Sad Keanu meme, as the internet was flooded with copycat images, mere days after the joke's rise to fame.
The first notable spinoff meme was titled " Sad Keanu in a Helmet ," and featured Reeves sitting down to enjoy some juice while also wearing a helmet. The Matrix and its sequels were long over. Reeves was working on an independent project that was destined to never really pop for him. At some point that spring, a photographer named Ron Asadorian took a photo of him in a V-neck and blazer sitting on a bench, cheap coffee on the street below him, sandwich in hand, staring at nothing in front of him.
Then in June of that year, a Reddit user named rockon4life45 posted the photo to the site. Most news organizations looked to the front page of Reddit to determine what the internet was talking about any given day. From there, the meme found life mostly in the form of photoshopping Reeves next to things that could be making him sad, like a slumped panda or 30 to 40 cats. He seemed to take it well. It sounds conceptually funny. The galaxy of conceptually funny was expandable, essential for any meme, which is what Sad Keanu swiftly inspired.
Any man caught looking sad could be a sad man, and any photo of a sad man could be photoshopped into near infinite situations. There was a Weird Al version from an airport , and a Joe Biden version , in which the former vice president stared out the Oval Office windows as Barack Obama met with—get this—the then president of Ukraine But this was a parody -- if there was anything I'd love to see a celebrity do when they get memed, is somehow set a legal precedent that this kind of parody is fine.
Before Sad Keanu, there was Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, a meme that is exactly what its name suggests: a collection of photo mash-ups of "Magnum P.
Greg Szmurlo, creator of SelleckWaterfallSandwich. Selleck did not respond to requests for comment. Perhaps he was too busy laughing at the photo of his "Three Men and a Baby" character trying to shield an infant from a Monte Cristo threatening to tumble down a waterfall? Perhaps he was eating a Monte Cristo sandwich? Point being, he let the meme ride on. Bea Arthur scored similar attention from the blog bea arthur mountains pizza. And as he does, I get an insight into what it takes to be Keanu Reeves.
We are meeting today to discuss his latest film, John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum. Yet Wick, a stylish, brooding, ultraviolent revenge fantasy, was an unexpected hit with critics and audiences, and is now a mega-million dollar franchise, giving Reeves his first mainstream hits since the Matrix movies. Part three — sorry, Chapter 3 — is larkier than its two predecessors, including one incredible scene in which Reeves offs some bad guys using an actual horse as a weapon rest assured: the horse escaped unharmed.
She died at the beginning of the first John Wick film, from that terrible terminal disease, Convenient Plot Device. So thank you. If you are imagining this is one of the times I giggled at him, you are correct. The famous photo of him on a New York bench sparked what became known as the Sad Keanu meme, but it only struck a chord because the assumption already existed that Reeves — then in a career slump — was, well, a bit sad.
Sample exchange. One other big reason the public perception of Reeves shifted from comedy stoner to faintly tragic figure was because, in , his long-term girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, gave birth to their daughter Ava, who was stillborn.
The couple broke up soon after, and two years later Syme was killed in a car accident. Reeves has never married, had any other children or even been reliably linked to other romantic partners since. He has also never spoken publicly about their deaths, and who can blame him?
But given that the heart of the Wick films is about him mourning a lost love, the resonance is hard to ignore. Did he bring his experience of bereavement to the role? What is it about grief that interests him?
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