About

Bad Luck Brian is an advice animal-style image macro series featuring a photo of a blonde teenage boy wearing a plaid sweater vest and braces, accompanied by captions that describe a variety of embarrassing and tragic occurrences.

Origin

On January 23rd, 2012, the original instance of the meme was submitted to Reddit^[5] by Ian Davies, a long-time friend of Kyle since elementary school, using a yearbook photograph of Kyle with the caption “Takes driving test . . . gets first DUI.” The original post received less than 5 up votes. Later that day, another macro was posted to Reddit^[2] with the caption "Tries to stealthily fart in class / shits" (below right) which reached the front page of the /r/adviceanimals subreddit accumulating over 3,300 up votes in less than 2 months.

Spread

On January 29th, 2012, a collection of notable examples were posted on the digital marketing blog Twenty Something.^[11] On March 12th, the series saw a resurgence in popularity when Redditor Very_Juicy submitted a macro to the /r/adviceanimals^[3] subreddit with the caption "Falls asleep in class / wet dream." Within one week the post had received more than 2,900 up votes.

On March 19th, this instance was reposted to humor site 9gag^[8] where it received more than 48,000 likes within 24 hours. The same post was subsequently pinned on the social photo sharing website Pinterest^[10] the same day. Later that month, additional collections were hosted on Buzzfeed^[13] and Funny or Die.^[14]

The series has continued to spread on sites like FunnyJunk^[7], Tumblr^[7] and the /r/adviceanimals^[12] subreddit. As of June 2012, the Quickmeme^[1] page has received more than 104,047 submissions. Several Facebook pages have also been created for the character, with the largest^[15] having more than 29,000 likes and the second^[16] having more than 24,000.

Identity Revealed

On April 11th, 2012, a Redditor claiming to be Bad Luck Brian attempted to do an AMA thread in the Ask Me Anything subreddit, but the thread was removed. The moderator who removed the post left a lengthy comment^[18] explaining why, which received more than 35,000 downvotes, making it one of the most downvoted comments on Reddit of all time. Redditor coyotecarl came back on May 8th with an AMA thread^[17] on the Advice Animals subreddit. The post received 24,722 upvotes and 2017 points overall.

During the thread, he revealed his name is Kyle and the photo was taken as his seventh grade school photo, but the principal made him take it over again because he was under the impression Kyle was making the face on purpose. Over the course of the 3763 comments, Redditors quickly made Bad Luck Brian instances based on stories Kyle told. He also stated that he's had relatively good luck in his life, once winning an XBox 360 and a PSP within two weeks (below left), he was recognized by actor Seth Rogen in public (below center) and played the hand chimes. (below right)

Motif: Incontinence

Like other advice animals Bear Grylls and College Freshman, a caption trend arose in which the text on the bottom remains consistent. After the "Tries to stealthily fart in class / shits" macro was submitted to Reddit, many other derivatives were produced with "shits" as the bottom caption.

McDonald's Advertisement

On October 5th, 2018, McDonald's released an advertisement featuring Kyle Craven. In the commercial, Craven discusses the meme and his connection to Bad Luck Brian in relation to a new contest at McDonald's. Within four days, the video received more than 9,200 views (shown below, left).

The following day, Redditor^[20] Gl00by posted the image of a Reddit post sponsored by McDonald's in the /r/CorporateFacepalm subreddit. The post features testimony from and an updated image macro featuring Craven. It reads, "I'm Bad Luck Brian: the internet's unluckiest man. McDonald's new Trick. Treat. Win! game has 1-in-4 odds of winning great prizes instantly, and more ways to win on our App. With odds like that, not even Bad Luck Brian will need to win. But he might to claim his prize." The image macro reads, "Wins Free McFlurry Instantly / Instant Brain Freeze." The post received more than 1,100 points (95% upvoted) and 50 comments in two days (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Immediately Killed By Shadow People

Immediately Killed By Shadow People refers to the bottom text of a Bad Luck Brian meme featuring top text reading "tries astral projection." The phrase became popular in ironic image macros and shitposts starting in 2019, with a cutout of the bottom text becoming an exploitable over the course of the next two years (examples shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

Search query volume for "bad luck brian" picked up in January of 2012, the same month the first Quickmeme submissions were created.

External References