Last time, Pepe the Frog had the spotlight as we covered his historical presence on the internet. Now, Pepe is passing the dank torch of memes to television star Guy Fieri. You’ve probably seen Fieri before, whether it was in his show “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” or his show “Guy’s Off the Hook” which ran for little more than a month. Fieri has gained internet fame because of his distinctive spiky white hair and his typical American mannerisms.
His online fame started in 2011, when the YouTube channel “Collegehumor” created a parody in which Fieri goes to the fictional magic school Hogwarts to try the potions, which was followed up by a video by the same people where a Fieri impersonator responds to a savage roast of his restaurant “Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar.” Eventually, doctored memes started appearing.
A fake picture of a menu for Fieri’s restaurant was posted on the restaurants website, making fun of the ridiculous food names his restaurant has. The menu has food names like Donkamole, Superbowl Bash Bro-Det, Football: The Meal, and the Hobo Lobo Bordello Slam Jam. Someone also edited the description on a TV guide to summarize “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” as “a troll figurine decides to come to life and roams the countryside eating garbage.” The screenshot of this gained immense popularity on Reddit, the self-proclaimed “home page of the internet.”
However, his hair has also sent him into a black hole of internet dankness. His bleached, spiky hair is often compared to hedgehogs, and Collegehumor stated that the reason he doesn’t bleach his hair is so “the other time travelers from 1977 won’t recognize me without my hair.”
Fieri may be a hilarious, over the top, hedgehog head television star now that he’s retired from searching for the most calories in a single sandwich, but his internet presence is unknown to most people, which should be a meme crime.