Success Kid

Success Kid's original photo

Success Kid (known as Sammy Griner) is an Internet meme about a baby who is clenching his fist while featuring a determined look on his face. It began in 2007 when the baby's mother posted a picture of her son clenching sand in his fist. The image took off virally, and eventually became known as the "Success Kid" meme. The popularity of the image and its subject has led CNN to declare that the child is one of the most famous babies on the Internet and for the family to be invited to speak at a web culture conference at ROFLCon about the challenges of raising a child and protecting that child's brand at the same time. The meme was used by the White House in order to promote immigration reform, and was used by the family of the child to encourage people to donate to the father's GoFundMe page in order to help him get a kidney transplant.

History

Success Kid (real name Sammy Griner) is an Internet meme depicting a baby who is clenching his fist while featuring a determined look on his face.^[1] The meme originated when the boy's mother, Laney Griner, uploaded the photograph to Flickr in 2007.^[1] According to the boy's mother, the picture shows the boy trying to eat sand.^[2] The meme gained initial popularity and was called "I Hate Sandcastles", and eventually grew into the "Success Kid" meme.^[1]

The style of the meme was that of the "advice animals" meme, also known as an image macro, where someone is put on a background, given a problem, and giving a solution to that problem.^[3] Laney initially disliked the "I hate Sandcastles" meme as she felt it made her son look like a bully, but she embraced the meme when the meme changed.^[1] According to Laney, her son gets embarrassed by his association with the meme.^[4]

After the meme became popular, she opted to license the picture to Getty Images, a stock photo agency.^[5] She was eventually contacted by advertising agencies (including one for Virgin Mobile UK) who wanted to use the picture. She discovered that there were too many contracts involved in the process, so she chose to license it herself instead.^[5] Accordingly a fireworks company chose to feature Success Kid on one of its products without permission, Laney chose to file suit against the company. She took issue both with the fact that they were profiting off of the meme as well as the fact that her son appeared to be endorsing an age-inappropriate product.^[6] Laney had licensed out his image for use by other companies however; he appears in an ad for Vitamin Water as well as billboards for Virgin Mobile in the United Kingdom.^[7] According to the website Search Engine Journal, the cost Virgin Mobile UK paid to license the image for its advertisements was "significant."^[8] In 2013, she hired Ben Lashes, a "meme manager", to represent her son and his likeness.^[7] This deal led to multiple deals with other companies; they signed a deal to have the image put on t-shirts at Hot Topic, it was planned by Radio Shack to have the picture around its corporate offices, and a deal was struck to have him appear on Xbox screensavers.^[7]

GoFundMe campaign

In 2015, the now eight-year-old Success Kid was associated with an initiative by his father Justin Griner, whose wife Laney launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for a kidney transplant. In the first five days of the campaign, the boy's father earned nearly $9,000 from 300 people.^[1] The campaign was started following Justin having discovered his kidney failure right before Sammy's birth, which he dealt with by using dialysis for four hours a day, three days a week.^[1] Initially, Laney was reluctant about the idea of utilizing her son for the campaign, as she wanted the campaign to be able to stand on just the potential donators donating to save her husband's life.^[1] She changed her mind after considering the donations that could come from associating her son with the GoFundMe campaign.^[1] She ultimately found this to be a good idea, and felt that they would not have gotten as many donations as they got without him.^[1]

The GoFundMe campaign has a stated goal of $75,000. As of April 15, the campaign has raised more than $93,000 from 4,496 people in seven days.^[9] The campaign got a significant portion of its money after the campaign was linked to on the website Reddit.^[10] Medicare will cover 80% of the father's kidney transplant cost, and he will need $12,000 of his own money for the first year. To date, he has yet to find a living or dead donor, and is residing at the Mayo Clinic.^[1] The story has been picked up by several news media outlets, including ABC News, CNN, BuzzFeed, and Time, The Huffington Post, and others.^{[1][2][11][12][13]}

Popularity and fame

The boy and his family were invited to ROFLCon to speak on a conference about web culture, alongside other families who had their children become famous through memes (families such as David After Dentist).^[5] The conference was hosted by Arizona State University's Alice Daer.^[5] CNN's Ed Payne suggested that the Success Kid could be the "Internet's most famous baby."^[2] The parents were criticized by people who claimed that they were exploiting their son. The mother replied by saying that she had no control over whether it spread or not as she only posted it on a social media website. She also stated that she was not worried about any backlash because "there are more people getting joy out of the picture than anything else."^[5] In an attempt to raise support from the United States Congress for the immigration reform proposed by Barack Obama and many other Democrats in Congress, Obama staff members posed an image on Twitter of Success Kid that read: "PASS IMMIGRATION REFORM" and "SAVE TAXPAYERS $897,000,000,000."^[14] The tweet included a link to a report that suggested that immigration reform could lead to cutting the US deficit by nearly $200 billion within 10 years.^[14] The usage of the meme was met with mixed reception on Twitter.^[14] The meme was named the fourth-most popular of 2013.^[15]

References