Meme Celebrities
Bad Luck Brian: the yearbook photo that went wrong on purpose
Kyle Craven pulled a goofy face for his school picture in Ohio. Seven years later a friend posted it online, and the unluckiest boy on the internet was born.
Kyle Craven grew up near Akron, Ohio, and in his junior year at Archbishop Hoban High School he decided to ruin his yearbook photo. He rubbed his face with his sweater until it went red, put on a plaid sweater vest and gave the camera the most awkward grin he could manage. The principal made him retake it - but Craven and his friend Ian Davies kept a scan of the original.
One post, one night
On 23 January 2012, Davies posted the picture to Reddit with a caption about a driving test gone horribly wrong. By the time Craven woke up the next morning, strangers all over the world were writing new disasters under his face. The formula was instantly clear: the top line is a perfectly normal thing to do, the bottom line is the worst possible way it could end.
Bad Luck Brian: Bad Luck Brian is a school yearbook photo of a smiling teenager in a plaid sweater vest, braces and awkward haircut.
Making the most of bad luck
Craven took it with a sense of humour that the meme itself never had. He licensed the picture to Walmart and Hot Topic for T-shirts, appeared in adverts for McDonald's and Volkswagen, and in 2021 sold the original photo as a digital collectible for about $36,000. He studied construction management at Kent State and works in his family's construction company - a quiet life for a man the internet decided could never catch a break.
Watch him tell it
I Accidentally Became A Meme: Bad Luck Brian (BuzzFeedVideo, YouTube)
Kyle Craven aka Bad Luck Brian - Faces of Kent State (Kent State University Alumni, YouTube)
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