About

Mike Vining is the name of a retired US Army Sergeant Major, who joined the military in 1968 and served in various capacities. While first serving as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit, he was later one of the first recruits into Delta Force, which made him a legend within the US Army. Starting in 2013, Mike Vining became a meme within military-focused meme groups, such as /r9k/, who would often post him as a way of clowning on younger recruits.

Origin

On July 28th, 2013, an anonymous 4chan user posted an image of Mike Vining without any context given. Upon being prompted about who the portrait is of, another user replied by saying '>being this new' as a way of signaling how important Vining is to the /r9k/ community that anyone who has spent enough time there would be able to identify and already knows about him (shown below).

Spread

Since 2022, Mike Vining began to have his image used as a generic stand-in image. On June 28th, 2023, the Redditor^[1] /u/LordHamburguesa1 uploaded a "That damn smile" meme in which Mike Vining's smile is the that is being used, which earned over 2,200 upvotes in one year in the /r/military subreddit (shown below).

This trend continued into the starting year, with the Redditor^[2] /u/Vohn_Jogel64 uploaded their own version of the meme, in which they used the character of Drago from Rocky IV as an example of an American that Russians are afraid of, earning over 800 upvotes in one month (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References