Meaning
What does Bad Luck Brian mean?
The person no one wants to be.
Bad Luck Brian is the most unfortunate, hopeless person there is.
There is nothing poor “Brian” can do about it, he was just born this way. At least that’s what the “Bad Luck Brian” memes prove to us over and over again.
The image macro features an unfortunate photograph of a young man with bright bowl-cut hair, braces and a grandpa-style vest.
It is generally paired with a short text describing tragic and embarrassing scenarios that would only happen to someone who is as unlucky as “bad luck Brian”.
via MEME
Origin
What's the origin of Bad Luck Brian?
The person in the photograph is in fact named Kyle Craven, and became an internet celebrity due to the widespread meme.
He himself stated that the photograph was intentionally made ‘ridiculous’, and was originally meant to be a funny High School yearbook photo.
However, the photo took an exciting turn when Craven’s friend Ian Davies posted the image on Reddit in 2012, starting its journey as a world-wide internet meme.
Turns out “Bad Luck Brian” isn’t really that unlucky after all.
Spread & Usage
How did Bad Luck Brian spread?
The meme to start it all had the caption “Takes driving test… Gets first DUI”. Sadly this original meme received very little attention.
However, later the same day, another person took the image and added the caption “Tries to stealthily fart in class… Shits”, then posted it in the subreddit r/adviceanimals, receiving thousands of upvotes and making it to the front page.
After hitting it off on Reddit, the meme template made it to meme-site 9GAG and received close to 50K likes within one day.
Within a year, the photograph of Kyle Craven has circulated the majority of social platforms and humor sites on the internet, captioning nearly every unfortunate scenario possible.
External resources
- Know Your Meme – Bad Luck Brian
- Pinterest – Best Bad luck Brian meme images