THE STORY BEHIND THE SUCCESS KID MEME

Take a look at the story behind the viral Success Kid meme.

In 2007, Sam Griner's mother took baby Sam and her husband for a lovely day out to the beach. She also decided to take her brand new camera to capture some memorable moments of her family. The following day she went through the pictures and saw one of baby Sam that she adored! It was a picture of baby Sam lifting a fist full of sand towards his mouth, and she decided to post it to her Flickr account. The picture of Sam, just 11 months old at the time, got over 300 likes in just the first day, soon thereafter, the image went viral.

About a year later, Sam's mother recalls seeing the image appear all over social media, some of which were captioned and edited to give a unique context.

Sam's parents explain that they had no idea what memes were as they were still in their infancy in those years. They were worried because most of the memes at the time of baby Sam were quite negative and had no idea how it may affect Sam's life growing up.

But, a few years later was the first time Sam's parents saw the meme with its official title, called 'Success Kid', which was quite positive. This was an emotional moment for Sam's parents as baby Sam was born prematurely and needed various surgeries to keep him alive.

In 2020, Sam is now 13 years old. He says that he doesn't feel like his life would be any different with or without the meme and fully embraces it. Sam also explains that recently his father had severe kidney failure and needed an urgent transplant surgery, but the family couldn't afford the medical procedure. They decided to run an online fundraiser and mentioned that it was the "Success Kid's" father and, within a few weeks, they raised enough to carry out the procedure which was a blessing for the family.

Take a look at the video below by YouTube channel, BuzzFeedVideo, on the story behind the Success Kid meme.