Image: AP Photo/Charles Sykes
Reddit is now home to two communities fanatically devoted to a cause. One believes it memed the soon-to-be leader of the free world into office. The other wants to save Brendan Fraser.
The former is, of course, the_donald — one of the largest internet meeting places for Trump supporters which has been systematically gaming Reddit. With help from an associated chat server, users of the_donald employed aggressive brigading tactics to rig online polls, harass dissenters, and dominate the conversation on the site. Borrowing similar tactics, r/savebrendan is trying to save the former star of campy and beloved films like The Mummy and Blast From the Past.
Fraser as Pepe
Although savebrendan is not a new community, it seems to have drawn a flood of interest this week with the majority of its moderators joining within the past five days. Ignoring the persistent images of That Guy From Encino Man, the subreddit is basically indistinguishable from the_donald (and, to that end, a spin-off community called the_brendan has already been created.) Users regularly call on each other to help Make Brendan Great Again.
It’s difficult to tell if the newfound concern over the wellbeing of washed-up actor Brendan Fraser is genuine, a parody of Trump supporters, or if that distinction even matters — Because either way, what savebrendan is doing is working.
IMDB lists the Bedazzled lead as having jumped 149 places on the site’s Starmeter this week, reentering the top 500 for what is likely the first time in decades (I do not have and refuse to pay for an IMDB Pro account.) A week old change.org petition to “please consider Brendan for any upcoming shows/movies that are planned” has topped 33,000 signatures. Moving forward, the community is planning coordinated Twitter actions around hashtags like #savebrendan and #UnfuckBrendansShit.
Brendan Fraser’s career was reduced to this meme for several years
While some of us may have fond-ish memories of watching George of the Jungle, Fraser has been the subject of a long and rich meme history that helps explain some though not all of the recent interest. Several years after a divorce from his wife Afton Smith he made headlines when he petitioned to have his $US900,000 ($1,252,797) annual alimony payments reduced following a major back injury. Notably this event featured a photo of Fraser, bleary-eyed, seemingly unwell, and ripe for meme fodder.
Sad Brendan was — by the magic of Photoshop — given the ugly haircut of an unrelated internet joke, became associated with the phrase “just fuck my shit up,” and a meme version of the Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists lead was born.
Not content to let Fraser be remembered as a sobbing wreck — or using his shattered career as a vessel for Trump-parodying cultural warfare — savebrendan are breathing new life into memes about a man best remembered on screen as a loveable doofus. Whether they’re able to effectively #unfuckhisshit and Google bomb Monkeybone 2 into production though remains to be seen.
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo
Comments
10 responses to “A Plan To Save Brendan Fraser Was Inspired By Reddit’s Trump Supporters”
Soon to be leader of the free world?
A lot of the world is “free”, doesn’t make us part of the US.
Ssh, it’s just one of those cute terms they like to give themselves. Like how having a Canadian team makes their baseball final “the World Series”.
The naming of the series comes from a news paper called The World owning the naming rights at the time. Nothing to do with it being an international competition.
Snopes says “no”… and they would have resold the rights years ago, if it were true.
It’s all fun and games until someone actually makes Mummies on a Plane.
Meme magic. Every part of the rational, scientific brain says “that’s stupid”, but sometimes you just want to believe that the world is a magical place after all.
And Hell, I’d love to see Fraser in the spotlight again.
His Scrubs episodes are amongst the best of the whole show.
“I am the KING of gay chicken”
Does he even want to be saved though?
I’d genuinely love to see Fraser doing more stuff. He had a solid action bent, with plenty of goofy charm, and some well executed comedic timing, which the Mummy movies alone proved. The new one with Tom Cruise just won’t have that Fraser magic.
“””””reddit”””””
lol plz in the year of our lord 2017 and anyone thinks reddit invents anything. everyone who’s anyone knows that all the good memes come from a different, much better website.