If you ever doubt that the internet is a wild place, consider Dr. Adrian Smith's story. A biologist specializing in social insect chemical communication, Dr. Smith is the head of the Evolutionary Biology & Behavior Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and an Assistant Research Professor at North Carolina State University. Earlier this week he ran across a childhood photo of himself in someone's Instagram story. His research into why his 3rd grade school picture was being used in that post led him down an insane meme rabbit hole.
Smith says he remembers uploading the photo around 2008 to a jokey tumblr blog about laser backgrounds in 80s and 90s photos. He never gave it another thought, but the photo lived on. At some point, the meme page Teenage Stepdad ran across the picture and turned 3rd grade Adrian into Grayson, the fictional Teenage Stepdad's fictional third favorite stepson. Since at least 2017, "Grayson" has had a whole internet life as the star of countless memes. He's been Photoshopped into all kind of outfits and hairstyles, even turned into a Chia Pet. You can buy Grayson Fan Club t-shirts and one of Teenage Stepdad's Patreon tiers is named after him.
Probably very weird for him, but Smith is being a really good sport about the whole thing. He lays it all out in the Twitter thread below. Warning, some of the language gets pretty NSFW in those Teenage Stepdad memes. Dr. Smith also spoke to Slate about the experience if you want more info on what this was like.
Photo: Twitter/Adrian Smith