Vsauce Michael Staring

About

Vsauce Michael Staring or Guy Looking At Security Camera is a low-res picture posted to Reddit of a man who looks like, or is, Michael from the well-known YouTube channel Vsauce staring up at a CCTV camera on the ceiling. The image has been used as an exploitable image macro in memes with variations of Michael's signature catchphrase and video opening being used as punchlines.

Origin

On August 29th, 2018, the image of a bald man with the same facial hair and features as Michael (Vsauce) was uploaded to the subreddit /r/Oddlyterrifying by a now-deleted Redditor,^[1] earning over 1,960 upvotes in four years (shown below). The upload itself immediately started to have comments from people recognizing it as either Vsauce Michael or looking like a doppelganger, with comments using his catchphrase to make the "terrifying" image humorous.

Spread

On October 8th, 2018, the fan-made parody account Donimo's Pizza: Pyongyang, Best Korea updated its status to ask its followers who the mysterious man who keeps breaking into their establishment is, uploading the picture of the man staring at the security camera. This status was screen captured and uploaded by Redditor Alman56^[2] to the subreddit /r/PewdiepieSubmissions, a place where people post memes in hopes that Pewdiepie will see them, earning over 4,100 upvotes in four years (shown below).

The meme continued to persist in niche obscurity with a few being posted several months apart until 2020 showed an increase in meme production. On June 8th, 2020, Redditor King_Flowerhorn^[3] uploaded a combination meme in which the picture of Michael had been edited to have the Five Nights At Freddy's overlay on it to make a But Never Zero meme to the subreddit /r/Memes, where it gained over 14,000 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References