Died / Born / Welcome Back

Confirmed 52,896

Part of a series on Exploitables. [View Related Entries]

About

Died / Born / Welcome Back refers to a meme template that infers the reincarnation of famous people based on what year they died and the year of another celebrity's birth. The most notable iteration depicts former U.S. President Richard Nixon coming back as rapper Ice Spice. The exploitable trended on Instagram and Twitter / X, among other social media sites, in 2023, as meme creators recaptioned it by adding different years and different people or characters.

Origin

The original meme compared former U.S. President Donald Trump to former U.S. General George S. Patton who many thought were doppelgängers.^[1] Currently, the first discovered upload of the image was to /r/forwardsfromgrandma on Reddit^[2] on August 15th, 2016, from Redditor /u/Squiggledog, gaining 396 upvotes in seven years (shown below).

Spread

Going into the 2020s, the infographic was reposted on Reddit^[3] and Twitter / X.^[4] On November 9th, 2023, Instagram^[5] user @fakenewsnetwork posted a notable re-edit of the template, contrasting former U.S. President Richard Nixon and rapper Ice Spice, gaining over 71,300 likes in one month (shown below, left).

The image gained viral reposts on Instagram^[6] soon after and later inspired more iterations. For instance, on November 28th, 2023, Redditor MegaWAH shared an iteration about director Stanley Kubrick to /r/moviescirclejerk,^[7] gaining over 3,100 upvotes in three weeks (shown below, right).

Iterations of the template persisted on social media in December 2023, evident in another meme shared by Instagram^[8] user @fakenewsnetwork on December 8th, that compared John Lennon and Pitbull, gaining over 167,000 likes in 11 days (shown below, left).

On December 9th, 2023, Instagram^[9] user @edgar.allan.cointelpro shared a version comparing Princess Diana and George Santos, receiving over 4,200 likes in 10 days (shown below, right).