Remember Naive College Freshman? Of course you do. He was arguably a top ten meme of 2011. Well, the actual student, Griffin Kiritsy, is now a senior, and the New Hampshire student newspaper recently caught up with him to get his thoughts on internet stardom as well as provide the world with the very necessary side-by-side above.
They unfortunately didn’t go into interview Colbert-style, refusing to believe the meme wasn’t actually 100% about Kiritsy, like I would have. First question: “How many naked lady posters are currently hanging in your room?” They did gather some interesting info on how you can unexpectedly become an internet meme though:
Kiritsy was interviewed and photographed for an article in Reader’s Digest about technology affecting people’s everyday lives. It was featured in both the print and online version of the magazine. […]
It wasn’t until last summer that Kiritsy’s image was discovered on the Internet and posted on quickmeme.com, a website used for posting memes. […]
As it turns out, the caption used for the online photograph in the Reader’s Digest article was “college freshman.” Kiritsy believes that someone was simply trying to make a college-themed meme and when they searched for college freshman his image showed up.
This is why I tag all the photos of myself on the internet “Michael Fassbender in Shame.”
The article gets into a lot more detail on how the meme has taken on a life of its own on the UNH campus, which is kinda cool, so check it out if you’re into that sort of thing. I’d prefer to leave you with these choice quotes from Kiritsy. They aren’t quite “I don’t even like ice cream that much” good, but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
“The worst part is that 90 percent of those memes don’t apply to me,” Kiritsy said. “I never ran to class.”
“At first it wasn’t a big deal, but now people are coming up to me and are like, ‘hey, you’re that guy.’ It’s really awkward.”
The New Hampshire via Reddit and Robopanda