The name of Zeddie Little meant nothing to the average American but thanks to the power of the internet, today he appeared to the nation on morning TV as 'Ridiculously Photogenic Guy'. This 25 years old guy was running a 10 kilometer race in his hometown, when he turned to smile and wave at a friend.
That spontaneous gesture was photographed and unexpectedly transformed him into the latest internet celebrity: "Ridiculously Photogenic Guy". It all started when photographer Will King posted pictures of the Cooper River Bridge Run, held in Charleston, South Carolina, USA, to his Flickr page and shared them on Reddit at the end of March.
The photograph of Mr. Little eventually went viral, inspired a hugely popular Facebook fan page, Twitter followers, parody photos and more than one million views of the original photograph.
According to Rachel Robbins, who studies face and object recognition at the University of Western Sydney's school of social sciences and psychology, said people were naturally drawn to smiling faces and direct gazes. "He seems like he is quite attractive in having regular symmetrical features, so that probably is why we would say he is photogenic. But the reason that he stands out for us first is probably not that he is photogenic, its probably that he is smiling and looking at us".
Additionally, Sydney Morning Herald photographer Peter Rae also added hat direct gaze was an important feature of a striking image. "People who are photogenic can get a certain emotion across," He added.
Here i attached an interview video with Zeddie Little. Enjoy! =)
Zeddie went viral quickly but also disappear rather fast, in fact i rarely sees his meme anymore. Do you have any idea how to make sure that the meme stays popular? otherwise it can be forgettable quite quickly
ReplyDeleteI would say its quite hard to maintain the popularity as it was a trend on the internet. It is the responsibility of marketers to fully utilize this trend by posting ads into the meme (perhaps). =)
DeleteWow! it seems so easy nowadays to become a celebrity with the help of social media. but I do agree with Iqbal and you, it is quite hard to maintain the popularity.
ReplyDelete