What it's like to learn from Twitter that your grandpa's become a meme

At any moment in time, whether you want it to happen or not, someone could take a photo of you, post it online, and turn it into a meme for the internet's enjoyment. (This, I assume, is the price we pay for existing in 2018.)

And as one Reddit user recently learned, this applies to everyone — even grandpas. On Thursday, u/manic_unicorn revealed in a post that her grandfather was once the subject of a meme.

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"My cousin was browsing Twitter and came across this picture of our grandpa at the mall with his friends that a stranger took and captioned 'Squad Goals'," she wrote in the Reddit post of the photo, and noting that the image "had been retweeted thousands of times."

In a Reddit direct message with Mashable, u/manic_unicorn (whose name is Brooke) explained how she first learned that her grandfather and his friends were now viral content.

"It all happened during a family get together," Brooke wrote. "It was actually my cousins [sic] girlfriend who first saw the meme circling twitter and she thought it was Pawpaw so she confirmed it with my cousin."

Brooke said she was initially shocked to see the photo, but considered it pretty benign and even humorous. Then her grandfather caught wind of what happened.

"We told him then and there about it but he had no clue what a meme was and was just very angry that a stranger would post a photograph of him on the internet without his knowledge," she wrote. 

Though her grandfather was annoyed at first, Brooke said that once they'd explained the concept of memes and "squad goals," he ended up thinking the whole thing was "pretty funny."

Brooke says the photo's been floating around the internet for four years now, though she's not sure when it first ended up online. It still exists on Twitter, Pinterest, and even 9gag.

Not much has changed since her grandfather became a meme, according to Brooke. He's yet to be recognized in public, though a few people who know him personally have seen the meme online and asked if it was him.

Lucky for Brooke's grandfather, the experience of becoming a meme against one's will hasn't been nearly as irritating as it has been for others, like Dustin Mattson of "Hipster Barista," or romance novelist Carly Philips of "Sheltering Suburban Mom" fame. 

And if you're wondering if Brooke's grandfather and his friends still hang out, the answer is yes. Brooke says they meet at the mall every morning, five days a week.

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