Face of Unemployment
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About
Face of Unemployment refers to a series of exploitable memes, reaction images and jokes made about a CNN article that used an image of a man named Tyler Johnson in an article about rising unemployment in America. After Twitter user @Lifekillable used the image as his own display picture and replied to the article saying, "Why are yall using my pic? Pls delete this," memes about him becoming the unfortunate "Face of Unemployment" began to proliferate on the internet. The image is also sometimes used to express one's current unemployment or lack of money in a comical referential manner.
Origin
On January 10th, 2021, news network CNN posted an article to their official Twitter[1] page titled, "Nearly 4 million Americans have been out of work for at least six months." The tweet was accompanied by a selfie of a black man named Tyler Johnson who was interviewed for the article. Soon after the tweet was posted, a Twitter[2] account by the name Lorenzo and the handle @Lifekillable posted a reply that read, "Why are yall using my pic? Pls delete this." The latter tweet gathered over 80,000 likes in a month (seen below).
Spread
On January 10th, 2021, Twitter[3] user @JasmineLWatkins quote tweeted the aforementioned interaction with the caption, "Imagine logging on twitter and you the face of unemployment," gathering over 480,000 likes in three years (seen below).
Various people soon began to make memes using the man's face as a stand-in for the concept of being unemployed or being broke. On January 12th, 2021, Twitter[4] user @rubbaband_grant posted a tweet using the image as the punchline, gathering over 7,000 likes (seen below, left). On January 13th, Twitter[5] user @robfrfr used the image as a punchline as well, gathering over 96,000 likes (seen below, right).
On December 23rd, 2021, Instagram page Rap TV posted an update on Tyler Johnson, saying that he has gotten a "full-time job as an Autopsy Lab Assistant‼️🔥" The post gathered over 250,000 likes in two years (seen below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Internet Archive – Twitter CNN
[2] Internet Archive – Twitter Lorenzo
[3] Twitter – JasmineLWatkins
[4] Twitter – rubbaband_grant
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