Kyle Craven never took his high school picture day seriously.
One year, the Archbishop Hoban High School graduate managed to get two Kyle Cravens in the yearbook, side by side. The next, he picked a purple background, rubbed his eyes and sported a goofy grin.
When his principal saw the picture, Craven said, she made him retake it. That photo never saw the light of day in the Hoban yearbook. But years later, it took on a life of its own as the meme “Bad Luck Brian” and, to this day, Craven said, he considers the bad luck meme a lucky experience.
Craven, who with two partners is buying Quaker Square from the University of Akron for $800,000, said he has no plans to put a “Bad Luck Brian” museum into the redevelopment plan. But his face is in a Museum of Communication in Switzerland, where he said he’s part of an exhibit on memes.
“If there’s a statue of LeBron [James], I’ll take a statue next to him,” Craven quipped of the prospects for having his likeness in Quaker Square.
An Akron yearbook photo transforms into a meme
Craven graduated from high school in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2012 that his face went viral.
That year, Craven said, friend Ian Davies posted the rejected yearbook photo on Reddit. Craven thought it was hilarious.
He also thought it would just die out, but after three or four months of attention, Craven realized he and Davies had created something “really iconic.”
So Craven capitalized on it. To this day, he said, he makes appearances at conventions with other memes, including Kabosu, the dog behind the Doge meme (it died last year). He receives fan mail, has brands reaching out to work with him, and is recognized in public — including in other countries, like Japan, where one fan approached him at the Tokyo Tower.
“I’ve learned you really take it as it comes,” he said. “I know a fluke when I see a fluke. It’s an organic fluke that exploded into popularity.”
Why ‘Bad Luck Brian’ instead of ‘Bad Luck Kyle’?
Other human memes Craven has met aren’t often as excited as he is by the attention. He said some were serious when they were taking pictures that have since become hallmarks of a cultural conversation. But his photo was always meant to be a joke.
The experience has given him opportunities to travel with Davies, his best friend, and meet a lot of people he wouldn’t get to otherwise. He’s sold a non-fungible token with his face and is involved with the cryptocurrency community (though he said he doesn’t know enough about meme coins to start his own). And there is that museum with his face in it.
The meme is called “Bad Luck Brian” because Davies declared that “Bad Luck Kyle” didn’t roll off the tongue in the same way, Craven said. He thinks the image filled a void in the meme space of a “funny, dopey-looking kid” where people could place their own disappointments.
In his speeches, Craven recounts the story behind the photo and tells listeners some things that seem to be unlucky are really the opposite.
“It’s a great turn of luck,” he said of the meme. “It’s actually very neat, it’s fun. It can be an awesome thing to happen.”