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.

To Russia with memes

Khoirul was born and bred in Kaliangkrik, a district on the slope of Mount Sumbing, Central Java.

In an internet flooded with memes of photo-edited comedy, Khoirul’s work does offer some unique quality: it involves real-world elements. He printed the New Year’s rental-date photo, posted it around his area and took a picture of that, somehow creating a meme of a meme.

He has also found internet popularity in other countries, including Russia and Thailand.

“God knows how I was portrayed, but at least I heard they were saying my name in their accent; that was funny,” he said of his memes reaching Russia.

Another one of his pieces was a photo of flip-flops he modified into having high-heels. It was posted thousands of times on Thai discussion boards.

“I was clueless about what they said about it, so I replied ‘good job, good job’ to all of the posts,” he said.

Khoirul doesn’t put much care into any of it, or at least he claims he doesn’t.

“One time, I lost the mood to post because my friend took forever to finish the [graphics],” he said.

The viral man of Mount Sumbing

This all started in 2017. Khoirul was feeling unaccomplished with his life as an office boy in Hartono Mall Jogja in Yogyakarta. So, he came back home and began executing his “weird photography” concepts, which included sleeping on a mattress in the middle of a paddy field and showering in the middle of a field where a village festival was being held.

“Doing weird things in this kind of environment, people say I am crazy. Even my mother thinks that as well,” he told The Jakarta Post.

Khoirul began putting some of his photos online. The few comments he received were negative. He told those who mocked him that he would be on TV one day.

Wisnu Prasetyo Utomo, a lecturer of Communication Studies at Gadjah Mada University, told the Post that such content offered escapism from whatever awful things people saw on the internet.

“People get tired of seeing too much serious news on social media, [which can feel] toxic. In those situations, absurd comedy is an antithesis. Almost all of us can relate to such content because it happens in our everyday lives,” he said.

Khoirul’s first viral photo came in 2018: a video taken with a 20-meter selfie stick, shot while riding a motorbike. It recorded the moment Khoirul's stick hit something, taking the phone down and breaking it. Whether a setup or not, Indonesian internet delighted in seeing such comeuppance happen to this annoying character waving his selfie stick around on the road.

That opened the floodgates of ideas and reposts. There was his conceptual “dandruff trade center”, a supposed kiosk that sold fried rice without the rice and a shop that “sells nothing”.

For the New Year's Eve rental-date post, Khoirul received over 3,000 WhatsApp messages, the dandruff trade center got him 16,000 messages and the shop that sold nothing got him 21,000 messages.

“When I got 21,000 messages, my phone stopped working and I was forced to reset it,” he said with beaming eyes.

Faisal Amin, 27, a meme enthusiast from Kebumen, Central Java, loves Khoirul for sharing funny memes every day on Instagram Stories.

“I find him so relatable. He makes something funny from everything around him; places that remind me of my hometown."

Khoirul’s Insta-fame changed his neighbors’ perception of him. Even his long-lost childhood friend started instant-messaging him. Everyone suddenly wanted to befriend the viral man from Mount Sumbing.

Khoirul has said that he did all of this to meet his childhood hero, Ferdinand “Sule”, a popular comedian. Khoirul had a photo of Sule in his rooming house.

“I was speechless, I just hugged him,” Khoirul recalled being invited to “Ini Talkshow”, a TV program hosted by Sule, last year.

It's not always great

The owner of one of Khoirul's photoshoot locations once asked him for Rp 10 million (US$713.10).

“He thought going viral means money, so he wanted a part of it.”

 Khoirul paid Rp 2 million to avoid further conflict.

“He then acted like we were best friends.”

Khoirul, like many meme-creators, does not know how to capitalize on any of it. He still works as a delivery man in his hometown.

“I tried that endorsement thing once. One brand paid me Rp 300,000, so I created a video, but that’s it.”

I asked him about what he really wanted to do in the future. He answered confidently: “To be Sule’s assistant.”