Bad Luck Brian

Ever cut your bangs too short the week before picture day? 

Maybe, pop the wrong zit? Or, sneeze at the exact moment the lense snaps your picture?

Sure, all of those are pretty bad but how about taking one so bad it gets you renamed as Bad Luck Brian?

This is precisely what happened to Kyle Craven in 2012, this classic meme first appeared on Reddit when friends of Craven posted the yearbook photo with the caption “Takes driving test…gets first DUI.” 

This first post didn’t attract much attention initially, it wasn’t until other redditors began reposting the photos with their own captions that it began to accumulate a participating audience. 

The meme then proceeded to trickle out and invade other social media platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Buzzfeed, Funny or Die,etc. with its ironic, adaptive, template to be repurposed into new content about Brian’s terrible luck. 

The main purpose of this meme is to make jokes at the expense of the gawky, gangly, yet weirdly endearing boy smiling his heart out for his yearbook photo. Bad Luck Brian is the butt in the idiom, the butt of the joke. 

He even looks the part. In the photo he’s wearing a powder blue button up with plaid sweater vest on top of it. The tacky, purple hazy backdrop radiating behind him compliments the humor of the photo perfectly. It completes its cheesiness. 

But nothing is cheesier than his wide raspberry lips stretched out so far that his left eye is hardly left open. That smile alone speaks for Bad Luck Brian’s reputation and ranking as a classic meme. Unfortunately Kyle Craven will always be remembered as Bad Luck Brian.