Renard Matthews's Wake

Submission 23,062

About

Renard Matthews's Wake is viral news story about a slain teenager, Renard Matthews, whose body was placed in a recliner and posed as if he was playing video games. Online, people have photoshoppped images of the body into various other images for humorous effect.

Origin

On July 8th, 2018, the New Orleans news outlet WGNO^[1] reported that the parents of Renard Matthews, an 18-year-old New Orleans man fatally shot in June 2018, had him dressed in his Boston Celtics jersey and placed in a recliner chair as if he were playing video games for his wake. Additionally, the body was placed in front of a television playing he video NBA2K and next to a bag of Doritos and a bottle of root beer.

That day, the outlet tweeted ^[2] an image of Matthews with the caption "NOLA family chooses unique but loving way to say goodbye to son." The post (shown below) received more than 3,300 retweets and 4,700 likes in three days.

Spread

Over the next three days, several media outlets reported on the story, including Fox,^[2] Vice ^[6] and more.

On July 9th, an anonymous 4chan user posted the image in the /pol/^[7] message board under the thread "This Is America".

The following day, an anonmyous 4chan user on the ^[1] /pol/ board posted a cutout PNG image of the person and asked people to meme it (shown below, left).

The post inspired numerous photoshops, which placed the body in different settings (examples below, center and right).