Every so often an idea catches on and goes viral. When it does it's called a meme, and it's usually a picture or gif, maybe even a short video clip like Keyboard Cat. The latest such meme involves Matrix actor Keanu Reeves.
Like many successful celebrities Keanu's had a rough life. His long term girlfriend drove her car off a cliff while under the influence of cocaine. This happened shortly after their child was delivered still born (Marylin Manson was implicated in the death of Keanu's girlfriend since he is believed to have been the one to supply her with the cocaine. According to some reports he then either sent her home in her car, or called her to come back to his place after she'd successfully made it home.). That's a terrible blow but it didn't stop Keanu from being one of the nicest guys in the business. He bought crew members on the Matrix their own motor bike, for one thing. Still those kind of tragedies have to leave a mark.
Whether or not they left an imprint, the hunky actor has been seen looking sad quite a bit lately. The recent pictures of Keanu on his birthday, shown wandering the streets of New York City looking lost and disheveled, and stopping for a solitary snack of a cupcake, made therounds of the Internet. Since Reeves is one of the genuinely best liked of Hollywood actors, the actor's apparent angst made his many fans uncomfortable. As often happened they responded to the discomfort with black humour. By black humour I mean that a whole bunch of "Sad Kenau" photmanips began showing up on message boards. Here are a few such photomanips that popped up on the Internet's premier celebrity gossip message board Gossiprocks:
Now all y'all can have a portable Sad Keanu!
So what are we to make of this? Making a game out of some one's sadness seems cruel, but it might not be personal. It might just be an attempt to understand the phenomenon by re contextualizing it: putting it in combination after combination after combination in an attempt to gain some feel or insight. It might also be an attempt to deal with our own awkwardness in the presence of that kind of low key "I'd ask 'what's the point is I still gave a damn" malaise (Keanu does seem surreally detached in the original photos and the copies seem to emphasize that). If we can say one thing with relative certainty, it could give birth to new and more dangerous memes, like Prancing Michael Sera or Silly Leo Dicaprio!
Incidentally this whole thing got started with an article reporting that "Sad Keanu talks to himself alone on birthday". So that started people speculating on how rough things were for him. Now it should be pointed out that talking to yourself isn't unusual for people in that profession. Even some of the most grounded Hollywood actors have been known to have an 'off moment', like this!
