Celebrities, especially world-renowned ones such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Angelina Jolie, and Will Smith, are human beings with life just like the average joe.
They are capable of experiencing happiness, excitement, and surprise, They are also able to feel sad, dejected, and even frustrated, though catching these moments is rare in public, considering their status.
However, one paparazzi found a world-renowned actor that is seemingly experiencing difficulty in life and took a picture of it, giving birth to a meme that is still recognizable to this day because of that actor's popularity.
This was how the sad Keanu meme was born.
Sad Keanu Meme History
The meme began as a simple candid photo of Keanu Reeves. According to Know Your Meme, Splash News photographer Ron Asadorian took four pictures of a sullen-looking Reeves eating a sandwich in 2010. Although these photos captured Reeves' sullen-looking expression, they alone are not enough to make it a trend.
Enter captions, the meme community, and Reddit. On June 3, 2010, Reddit user rockon4life posted one of the pictures in the thread entitled "Keanu. More sadness in comments" and added the caption of Keanu saying, "I really enjoy acting... Because when I act, I'm no longer me."
This post eventually gained enough views for it to reach Reddit's front page, but that was just the beginning of the meme's spread. The next day, sympathy for Reeves was strong enough to have Reddit users agree that he should be made into a meme.
The meme caught on, with the creation of other threads with more derivatives of the picture being posted on Reddit spreading the meme like wildfire.
It even brought on the birth of a Sad Keanu Tumblr going by the name of SadKeanu.com on June 14. Unfortunately, this Tumblr attracted unwanted attention. On June 17, the Tumblr website received a DMCA takedown notice from Splash News, which owns the copyright to the images used for the Sad Keanu meme.
Fortunately, the internet and the meme community are nothing if not resilient and persistent. instead of using the pictures Splash News outright, they photoshopped Reeves from the photos and put him into situations that matches the mood/appearance he was in.
Examples of these are him sitting on the back of a bald eagle, sitting on a barren planet, and even sitting alongside Solid Snake while he's hiding from enemy soldiers.
Keanu Reeves' Reaction
Keanu Reeves eventually caught wind of the memes made with the photo Splash News captured. In an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" to promote "The Matrix Resurrections," Reeves said that he was just eating a sandwich on that fateful day.
"Man, I was eating a sandwich," Reeves said. "I was thinking - I had some stuff going on. I was hungry."
Colbert then asked Reeves why he thinks he is so "memeable," to which Reeves replied that he has no clue on the matter.
