Sad Keanu is a photoshop meme based on a paparazzi photograph of seemingly depressed actor Keanu Reeves sitting on a park bench, eating a sandwich by himself. The photograph was taken by the Splash News photographer Ron Asodorian.
It spread initially through 4chan and then to Reddit where it quickly became one of the most popular. throughout June, the phenomenon of Sad Keanu also spread to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, as well as covered on news websites and blogs.
As popular as it was, search traffic surge for the keyword "Sad Keanu" was first seen on June 4th, rising steadily until June 16th.
The viral memes came to a halt when Splash News that owns the copyright material decided to keep their DMCA in place. Since then, posting submissions do not use the bench photo, but instead are silhouettes and other renderings of the image.
And following the intense waves of Sad Keanu photoshopping, a Facebook event entitled "Cheer Up Keanu Day" was organized. It encouraged people to send love letters, gifts, phone messages, cancer donations or mails of any kind in order to make a special happy day for the actor. The event was planned for June 15th.
Sad Keanu became one the most popular celebrity parodies on the web. If influenced more celebrity-based photoshop meme that include Sad Batman, Sad Kanye, Sad Jack White, Sad Bill Murray, and others.
On January 18th, 2011, Reeves at an interview with the
