I Hate Sandcastles / Success Kid

About

Success Kid is an image of a baby with a sand-filled fist and defiant facial expression. He has spawned several different image macros.

Origin

The original photo was taken by Laney Griner on August 26th, 2007 and posted to Flickr account^[1]. It was also shared on GettyImages.^[6] The photo was titled “Why I oughta…,” featuring her then 11 month old son, Sammy.

Spread

In early 2008, the photo of Sammy began appearing as users’ avatars on MySpace, Bebo, Blogspot and other social networking sites with the phrase “Ima fuck you up” photoshopped in with an embossed effect.^[2]

The second iteration of the photo appeared with the superimposed text changed to “I hate sandcastles.” These were popular on StumbleUpon and MySpace^[3] around January 29th, 2008. In May of that year, the image was freely made available on Pyzam.com.^[4] However, in this version, a second child was photoshopped in to the background

Many of the derivatives can be traced to Russian-Language social news site Yaplakal.com^[5], where he became known simply as Прикольный пацан or Cool Kid in April 2008.

The “Success Kid” Advice Animal Variant

In this version of the image macro, the text relates to something awesome happening, and the success it has attained.

Success Kid Now

Laney Griner has continued to post photos of Sammy on her Flickr^[7] through the years. He is now four.

Search Trends

External References

^[1] Flickr – “Why I Oughta…”

^[2] Google – Image search results

^[3] All4MySpace – I Hate Sandcastles MySpace Layout

^[4] Pyzam – Sand Castle

^[5] Yaplakal – Fotozhaba: I’ll show you!

^[6] Getty Images – Little boy at the beach eating sand

^[7] Flickr – Laney G’s Photostream