Meme Celebrities
Success Kid: the beach photo that paid for a kidney
Laney Griner photographed her baby son on a beach with a fistful of sand. His triumphant face became the internet's symbol of small wins - and later helped save his father's life.
In 2007 Laney Griner took her son Sammy, not yet a year old, to the beach. He had just grabbed a fistful of sand, and she caught the moment he clenched it with a look of pure determination. On 31 August 2007 she uploaded the photo to Flickr, captioned “Why I oughta…”.
From sandcastles to success
The first popular caption, in 2011, was “I hate sandcastles”, as if he had just smashed one. But people soon read his face differently: not anger, triumph. Success Kid became the meme for life's tiny victories - the bus arriving as you reach the stop, finding money in an old coat.
Success Kid: Success Kid is a photo of a toddler on a beach, clenching a fistful of sand with a determined, triumphant face.
The picture went on to sell everything from soft drinks to phone contracts, and the White House even tweeted it in 2013.
A real success
In 2015 Sammy's father, Justin, needed a kidney transplant the family couldn't afford. They started a fundraiser with a goal of $75,000, and when the internet realised it was Success Kid's dad, donations poured in and passed the goal within days. Justin got his transplant that summer. Laney has protected the picture carefully ever since, and in 2020 objected when a politician used it in a fundraising campaign without permission.
Watch them tell it
I Accidentally Became A Meme: Success Kid (BuzzFeedVideo, YouTube)
‘Success Kid’ Saving Lives 7 Years Later (NBC News, YouTube)
More stories
- What is a meme, anyway? - A word a biologist made up in 1976 now names the internet's favourite kind of joke. How a picture and two lines of text became a language millions of people speak.
- Top text, bottom text: the grammar of a meme - White capital letters with a black outline, one line above the picture, one below. Every part of the classic meme layout is doing a job.
- Advice animals: the colour-wheel years - A dog in front of a rainbow wheel started a whole family of characters, each with one personality and one job. How Advice Dog's descendants took over the internet around 2010.
- Rage comics: when the internet drew itself in MS Paint - Wobbly lines, a handful of faces and one big feeling per panel. The crude comics that gave us Trollface, Forever Alone and Y U No.
- Meme Celebrities: the people behind the faces - A yearbook photo, a stock photo shoot, a day at the beach. Nine ordinary people who woke up one morning to find their face had become a joke the whole world knew.
- From the big screen to the top text - A line from The Lord of the Rings, a smirk from 1971, a beer advert and a squinting cartoon. How film and TV became the internet's favourite raw material.
- Beyond two lines: panels, boxes and captions - Top and bottom text is only one way to caption a picture. The newer formats put words in boxes, beside panels or above the image - and you can make all of them here.
- How to make a meme that lands - Pick the right face, follow its formula, keep it short and be specific. Five rules from the millions of posts made on this site.