For 13 years, Ryan McKenna was Ryan McKenna – until he became the Super Bowl Selfie Kid.
This nickname has been used to describe McKenna in headlines across the world, after the schoolboy was filmed looking at his phone. He looked at his phone at the Super Bowl, in front of singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake, sure, but that is still all he did. Ryan McKenna looked at his phone and then he became a meme.
When you Chilling with #JustinTimberlake but your mom texts you that it’s Bedtime #selfiekid pic.twitter.com/ZFev5AunUe
— Eric Grochowski (@GrochowskiEric) February 5, 2018
Although McKenna also took a selfie with Timberlake – hence the nickname – this photo didn’t capture the internet’s attention. McKenna was memed because many thought he looked awkward next to Timberlake, while others assumed he was uninterested because he was looking at this phone (the teenager later explained he was simply trying to open his camera app).
When your friend go dancing with strangers at the club and u just don’t know what to do #selfiekid pic.twitter.com/MzH4237Z1y
— Triyoncé (@tribranchvo) February 5, 2018
In the constant coverage of the child’s viral moment (he has appeared on Good Morning America and made headlines on the Guardian, Daily Mail, and BBC’s websites), no one has stopped to think how absurd it really is. A child doing absolutely nothing in a public place has become internationally famous, gained tens of thousands of social media followers, inspired at least a dozen people to steal his identity and run Instagram accounts in his name, and had the address of his school published in an article read by 9,000 people.
In the best case scenario, McKenna will be forgotten about completely in the coming days. In the worst, he will be “milkshake ducked” – villainised and publicly shamed after a problematic aspect of his personhood makes the news.
Just over a month ago, this happened to Keaton Jones, an 11-year-old boy who went viral for his tearful plea against bullying. When it emerged Jones’ mother once posed with a Confederate flag, his troubled family history was shared by international publications, while thousands of social media users gleefully mocked his appearance.
Wonder if his mum’s a racist. pic.twitter.com/EPPUDoNJHR
— Limmy’s Vines TOUR (@DaftLimmy) February 5, 2018
Although memes about McKenna are on the whole harmless, many have also mocked his appearance off the back of his fame (on Twitter, people compare the 13-year-old to the widely detested character Joffrey from Game of Thrones). Thankfully McKenna appears to be in good spirits (“Everyone’s like texting me ‘I’m so jealous, this is crazy’”, he told Good Morning America) but there’s nothing to say another child wouldn’t respond differently to instant viral fame.
And when a child goes viral for doing, in essence, nothing, it sets a scary precedent for any child, in any place, at any time, to become a meme.
It may be a stretch to say McKenna was being laughed at, but he certainly wasn’t being laughed with, and there are potential psychological consequences to this. David Giles, a media psychologist at the University of Winchester, studies the psychology of fame and celebrity. His upcoming book 21st Century Celebrity, which is released later this year with Emerald Press, features an entire chapter on “meme celebrities”.
“I talk about how various individuals have responded to their 15 minutes of meme fame, and it seems that it has a lot to do with how much input they had into actually producing the material that got picked up,” Giles says. He finds that when a memed individual was actually seeking fame – like, for example, the “Overly Attached Girlfriend” who went viral for a video she created – they tend to enjoy their meme status more.
“Others are victims of pranks or had their image appropriated unwittingly,” Giles says, citing the example of 15-year-old Ghyslain Raza who filmed himself in 2002 wielding a golf club as though it were a lightsaber. When the video was stolen, went viral, and became a meme, Raza was exposed to cyberbullies who told him to commit suicide. At school, the bullying became so bad he left and hired a private tutor, and Raza claims he lost many friends. The video has now been viewed over 33 million people, and Raza is permanently branded the “Star Wars Kid”.
When people are memed unwittingly like this, Giles says “they tend to end up badly”: “They did not seek the attention – and the attention is rarely flattering, because memes themselves are rarely flattering to the subject.”
This isn’t to say that no child ever should be turned into a meme. In my series Living the Meme, I have interviewed a handful of children who have become memes – and all have enjoyed at least one aspect of their fame. There’s much money to be made from meme status, and children and their families are offered life-changing opportunities.
Yet Sammy Griner, the child most famously known as “Success Kid”, spoke to me candidly about the difficulties. “I’m tired of it,” he said, of people asking to take his picture. He no longer wants to appear on TV, and would rather be known for much more than just being a meme.
“I’m already famous and stuff,” he told me, “but I think I would rather be known for my art.”
Sammy Griner, then and now.
The Selfie, Success, and Star Wars Kid all have different experiences being memes – but we are ultimately responsible for all of them. When we share something online, we are accountable for the consequences. In the last 15 years since Ghyslain Raza was ruthlessly mocked for simply acting like the child he was, we should have learned to think critically before turning children into memes.
Dr Angharad Rudkin, a child clinical psychologist, explains that even if children aren’t mocked or bullied, becoming a meme can still be damaging.
“Turning young people into memes without their consent is not helpful for their well-being or development, especially if it is because of something they’ve done wrong/inappropriately as it becomes a global mocking event,” she says. “Children are used to making sense of the world by figuring out that A led to B. With something as random as memes, there is little obvious logic to hook their understanding on to, so it can be confusing.” Her advice to parents whose children become memes is to “ignore as much as possible” and avoid further becoming a celebrity.
“It is important for the young person to get support from family and friends through it all and during the inevitable anti-climax after,” she says.
Ryan McKenna isn’t Keaton Jones – but he could have been. To propel another child to viral stardom less than two months after a schoolboy’s viral fame ended disastrously is a careless act – only compounded by the fact McKenna didn’t do anything but appear in a public space next to a celebrity.
In October 2016, when a man named Ken Bone went viral for wearing a red jumper during a televised election debate, it illustrated how we have come to expect, almost demand, memes from national events. When we seek out forced memes, children like McKenna are in the firing line.
“It’s crazy. Everyone thinks it’s so cool,” McKenna said in one of his many television appearances. He’s right, it is – and they do. But perhaps they shouldn’t.
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