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Internet famous: Meme creator Khoirul Anam's moment in the spotlight
With visual humor that is both absurdist and purposefully kitsch, Indonesian meme creators are finding fame online.
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Central Java, Indonesia is part of a growing trend of meme celebrities - people who create humorous images that get shared around the Internet, often creating a comedic persona around themselves. (Khoirul Anam Facebook/Courtesy of Khoirul Anam)
Ikhwan Hastanto
(Contributor/Jakarta)
He’s been on TV, but Khoirul Anam isn’t half as famous as his memes.
The 29-year old is prototypical of internet popularity; someone whose humor-tinted manipulated photos somehow made their way far around the internet that they ceased to have singular ownership. They’re explosive but can be fleeting, so to keep it up, their creator needs to continuously make new memes. They need to constantly recapture the unknown factor that made that first attempt work. They also need to constantly be funny, in-the-moment and “absurd” — a descriptor whose meaning has evolved into capturing anything with self-aware gaudiness.
You’ve likely seen Khoirul’s work somewhere on the internet, as his memes have been reposted millions of times. If you’re not on social media, perhaps someone has forwarded one to you. You thought it was either funny, stupid or both.
Perhaps his most famous meme is a photograph of a man offering his services as a New Year’s Eve’s date. Other achievements include a picture of a store that sells nothing or a staring contest with your ex’s photograph. His work is absurd, even nonsensical; a work of comedy with layers of irony-upon-irony with a kitsch/trash quality that would not have made much mainstream sense at any other time than now.
Khoirul uses manipulated photography to tell his comedy, responding to what’s trending. He markets them with the phrase #SenimanFotoNyeleneh (weird photo artist) on all of his social media posts. He has more than 20,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram — not that much, but at least he’s made his mother and father proud by appearing on TV talk shows as a guest.
