Bape Kid

About

Bape Kid is an image macro depicting a skinny white kid with glasses wearing a Bape, also known as A Bathing Ape, T-shirt and shorts at a sneaker convention in early 2018. Once posted by a photographer from the event on Instagram, the picture was reposted and used in memes that made fun of white people's attempts at being relevant or appropriating hip-hop culture. In 2022, rumors that the Bape Kid had been arrested on a DUI charge in Georgia surfaced on Twitter, spiking interest in the character once more.

Origin

On January 27th, 2018, a sneaker convention called Shoeniverse ATL was held in the Junior Achievement Discovery Center in Atlanta, Georgia.^[1] At the event, a boy named Tighe Russell^[2] traveled from the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia to attend the event. During it, a photographer approached him about his outfit, wanting to take a photo of him. The image taken at Shoeniverse ended up becoming the "Bape Kid" photograph (shown below).

The original posting of the photo is unknown, however, the earliest known repost was made by a since-deleted Instagram^[3] meme page on January 28th, 2018. The original posting and photographer are currently unknown. The aforementioned information about the Bape Kid meme origin comes from a YouTube video uploaded by Bape Kid himself on September 19th, 2018, where it received roughly 10,800 views in three and a half years (shown below).

Spread

On April 1st, 2018, the Bape Kid image was posted by Redditor AyyLoaf to the /r/streetwear^[4] subreddit, captioning it, "[WDYWT] Rocking my new BAPE i just got," and earning roughly 1,300 upvotes over the course of four years. On August 15th, 2018, the photo was tweeted by Twitter^[5] user lightskin25 (since-deleted), earning an unknown amount of likes.

The engagement from the aforementioned tweet inspired increased awareness of the Bape Kid meme, so much so that Bape Kid himself acknowledged it in the YouTube^[6] video he posted on September 19th, 2018. He uploaded another YouTube video on January 9th, 2019, which earned roughly 2,900 views in three years (shown below). Additionally, he linked his Instagram in the video's bio, however, his account has since been deleted.

Meme content using the Bape Kid image increased most notably going into 2020. The majority of the content was posted on Twitter. For instance, on April 27th, 2020, Twitter^[7] user theealexlong captioned the photo with a quote related to the Travis Scott Fortnite Event that read, "Yo that Travis Scott concert on Fortnite went soooo hard!,” earning roughly 6,900 likes over the course of two years (shown below, left). On May 26th, 2020, Twitter^[8] user YZYChris_ captioned the Bape Kid image with, "These are the type of people I lose too on the SNKRS app," earning roughly 14,200 likes in two years (shown below, right).

Towards the end of 2020, McDonald's' release of the Travis Scott Burger inspired multiple memes using the Bape Kid as the primary image. For instance, on September 9th, 2020, Twitter^[9] user Freddychini posted a tweet that received roughly 194,900 likes over the course of a year and a half (shown below).

Bape Kid Arrested on DUI Charges

On June 4th, 2022, the Twitter^[10] page staygroundead posted a tweet that included a screenshot of a mugshot placed side-by-side with the image of the Bape Kid, claiming that the person shown was purportedly him. In accordance with the tweet that earned roughly 88,300 likes in two days (shown below), the Bape Kid had recently been arrested for multiple charges related to an alleged DUI in the state of Georgia.

Through a reverse image search of the mugshot, it's confirmed that the person pictured is Tighe Russell,^[2] also known as the Bape Kid. The mugshot and a police report are accessible on The Georgia Gazette website,^[11] as well as on the Gwinnett County Facebook^[12] page. According to these sources, the original arrest happened on February 18th, 2022.

After staygroundead's tweet^[10] that was posted on June 4th, 2022, multiple reactions to the development surfaced on Twitter going into June 2022. For instance, on June 5th, 2022, Twitter^[13] user FJXSU posted a reply to the tweet reading, "11 on everything cuz fuck 12," earning roughly 19,800 likes in one day (shown below, left). Also on June 5th, Twitter^[14] user 400specs posted a reply that included a side-by-side comparison between the mugshot and rapper Lil Xan, earning roughly 1,700 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References