The internet has created thousands of memes. Most disappear within a few months. A few become part of online culture forever. Bad Luck Brian is one of those rare memes
The image shows a teenage boy with braces, a red face, an awkward smile and an old-fashioned sweater vest.
The picture became famous because people used it to describe the worst possible outcomes in everyday situations.
Failed tests, embarrassing moments, terrible dates and random disasters were all placed underneath the face of Bad Luck Brian.
So what happened to Bad Luck Brian?
The short answer is that Kyle Craven grew up, built a career in construction and learned how to make the most of an internet accident that changed his life.
Here is the full story of Kyle Craven, the origin of Bad Luck Brian and what happened to the man behind one of the most famous memes of the 2010s.
Also Read: Can Fabio Silva Fill Portugal’s Striker Void?
Table of Contents
Who Is Bad Luck Brian?
Bad Luck Brian is the nickname given to Kyle Craven, an American internet personality who became famous because of a school photograph.1
The image became one of the best-known examples of the Advice Animals meme format.
Advice Animals typically used a recognizable image with text placed above and below it. Each character had a particular personality or theme.
Bad Luck Brian represented extreme misfortune. The joke was simple. Something would go wrong for Brian in an exaggerated and often ridiculous way.
The image became a template that thousands of internet users could understand immediately.
According to Know Your Meme, the original Bad Luck Brian image was posted to Reddit on January 23, 2012 by Kyle’s longtime friend Ian Davies.
The first version used the caption about taking a driving test and receiving a DUI.
The post itself received fewer than five upvotes. Another version posted later that day performed much better and helped the character gain attention. The popularity of the meme grew rapidly.
Soon the face of Kyle Craven was being used for jokes across Reddit and other social media platforms.
The name “Bad Luck Brian” became more recognizable than Kyle’s actual name.
That created one of the strangest situations in early internet culture. A normal school photograph had become an internationally recognized character.
Craven’s story is unusual because his online identity and real-life career developed in very different directions.
While millions of people knew him as Bad Luck Brian, his professional life was connected to construction.
In a 2020 interview with Know Your Meme, Craven said he had graduated from Kent State University with a construction management degree and was working for a construction company.
A later Know Your Meme profile reported that he eventually worked as COO at his family’s construction company.
What Is Kyle Craven Doing Now?
Kyle Craven’s life today is much more ordinary than the Bad Luck Brian character would suggest.
The most recent detailed public profile from Know Your Meme describes him as working in construction while continuing to benefit from his established meme identity.
The article reported that he was serving as COO at his family’s construction company.
His meme career has become more occasional rather than constant. He does not need to post Bad Luck Brian memes every day.
The character already has a life of its own. When a brand wants to use the image or when internet culture becomes nostalgic for the early 2010s, Craven can step back into the role.
That balance has allowed him to maintain a normal professional life while still benefiting from his unusual place in internet history.
– Kyle Craven, “Bad luck, Brian” pic.twitter.com/NAXdTdTDdw
— 👑𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗷𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗵🌴🥥 (@_kingjonah) November 26, 2024
Stats Table
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Real name | Kyle Craven |
| Internet name | Bad Luck Brian |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Bad Luck Brian meme |
| Meme era | Early 2010s |
| Original platform | |
| Meme format | Advice Animals |
| Famous image | School yearbook photograph |
| College | Kent State University |
| Degree | Construction management |
| Career | Construction industry |
| Family | Married with two children |
| Wife | His high school sweetheart |
| Major commercial work | McDonald’s and other brand partnerships |
| Meme debut | 2012 |
| Current identity | Construction professional and meme personality |
How Did the Bad Luck Brian Meme Start?
The story behind Bad Luck Brian begins before Kyle became famous.2
Craven has explained that he and his friends enjoyed taking ridiculous photographs. They were already familiar with internet culture and memes. The goal was not to create a future viral sensation. They were simply having fun.
In his 2020 interview with Know Your Meme, Craven explained that the photograph was taken when he was a sophomore in high school.
He and his friends enjoyed dressing up and taking intentionally ridiculous school pictures. The photograph had all the ingredients that later made it perfect for a meme.
Craven was wearing an awkward sweater vest. His face was red. He had braces.
His expression looked uncomfortable and his smile exaggerated his underbite. The picture was funny before anyone added text.
Craven later explained that he and his friends were deliberately trying to create ridiculous yearbook photographs. He did not expect the image to become famous.
That detail is important because Bad Luck Brian was not an example of someone carefully planning to become an influencer. The meme happened naturally.
Why Did Kyle Craven Make That Face?
The famous expression was not simply an unfortunate photograph.
Craven and his friends were trying to make their school pictures as funny as possible. He wanted the photograph to look ridiculous. That meant the awkward expression was intentional.
The result was an image that looked completely different from the polished school portraits most students had.
Craven has described his school picture days as an opportunity to have fun with his friends.
His parents were reportedly not thrilled because they were paying for school photographs that their son was deliberately turning into jokes.
The funny part is that the image eventually became much more famous than any normal school photograph could have been.
His friends were essentially creating a joke for themselves. The internet later turned it into a global meme.
The Photograph Was Not Supposed to Become Bad Luck Brian
One of the biggest misconceptions about meme celebrities is that they intentionally create viral photographs.
That was not the case with Craven. He already enjoyed Reddit and internet humor. His friend Ian Davies was also familiar with Reddit and eventually uploaded the photograph.
Craven said he initially expected the meme to disappear quickly. That assumption made sense at the time.
The internet moved extremely quickly in the early 2010s. A joke could become popular one day and disappear the next.
But Bad Luck Brian did not disappear. Instead, the meme continued spreading.
Craven told Know Your Meme that he initially thought the phenomenon would last only a week or two.
As it continued growing, however, he realized that something much bigger was happening.
When Did Bad Luck Brian Become Famous?
The first Bad Luck Brian post appeared on Reddit in January 2012. The original post did not immediately become a huge success.
Another version posted later that day gained much more attention. The meme continued growing over the following months.
According to Know Your Meme, one particularly popular version about falling asleep in class and having a wet dream became the center of a major Reddit controversy after a moderator removed it.
The resulting moderator comment reportedly received more than 35,000 downvotes. That incident demonstrated how quickly Bad Luck Brian had entered Reddit culture.
By 2012 the character was no longer just a photograph. It was a recognizable meme identity.
People understood what the face represented without needing much explanation. That is one of the defining characteristics of a successful meme.
Did Kyle Craven Actually Have Bad Luck?
No. This might be the biggest irony in the entire story. Bad Luck Brian was supposed to represent someone who experienced terrible luck.
Kyle Craven’s real life did not match the character. In fact, Craven has shared stories that make him sound surprisingly lucky.
According to Know Your Meme, he once won an Xbox 360 and a PSP within a two-week period. He was also recognized by actor Seth Rogen while eating at a restaurant in New Orleans.
So the man behind Bad Luck Brian was not living the disastrous life represented by the meme. The internet had created a fictional character based on his face.
Kyle was simply Kyle.
Also Read: Amy Beck Bio: Why Noah Beck’s Mom Suddenly Went Viral Again
How Did Kyle Craven React to Becoming a Meme?
Craven’s response to internet fame was different from that of some other meme celebrities. He did not spend years trying to escape the association. Instead, he embraced it.
At first he was surprised by how quickly the image spread. His family also had difficulty understanding what was happening because memes were not yet as mainstream as they are today.
Craven explained that his parents did not initially understand what a meme was.
Eventually his mother realized how famous the photograph had become when a student at her school was wearing a Bad Luck Brian shirt.
That must have been a strange moment. For the family, Kyle was simply their son.
For people online, his face represented terrible luck. The two realities existed at the same time.
Did Bad Luck Brian Make Kyle Craven Rich?
Craven has never publicly presented himself as a millionaire celebrity.3
However, he did manage to make money from his unexpected internet fame. The key was licensing.
Instead of simply allowing companies to use the image for free, Craven and his team learned that the meme could be licensed for commercial products.
That opened the door to merchandise and brand partnerships.
Craven told Know Your Meme that licensing the image became the main way he monetized the meme.
His face appeared on products sold through retailers including Walmart and Hot Topic.
He also said the image was used in board games and other products.
This was an important development because it transformed Bad Luck Brian from an internet joke into a commercial brand.
Bad Luck Brian and Brand Deals
Craven’s meme identity eventually attracted major companies.
One of the best-known partnerships was with Volkswagen. His image was licensed for advertising, including a Super Bowl-related campaign according to his Know Your Meme interview.
Then came McDonald’s. In 2018 McDonald’s released an advertisement featuring Craven himself.
The campaign connected his famous unlucky persona with a McDonald’s contest. Know Your Meme documented the advertisement and Craven’s appearance in it.
Craven later explained that McDonald’s initially approached him for online content before he eventually appeared in the television commercial.
For someone who had never planned to become an actor, it was an unusual career experience. He had gone from taking a joke school photograph to appearing in a national commercial.
Did Bad Luck Brian Appear in Other Advertisements?
Yes. Craven continued making occasional appearances connected to his meme identity.
A 2024 Know Your Meme article noted that he appeared in a Heinz advertisement in 2023 alongside Rebecca Black.
These appearances show how long the Bad Luck Brian image has remained commercially recognizable.
The original meme may not dominate social media the way it did in 2012. However, the face is still recognizable to people who grew up with early internet memes.
That gives Craven something unusual. He has a digital identity that can return whenever nostalgia for the early meme era becomes popular again.
What Happened to Kyle Craven After the Meme?
Kyle Craven did not abandon normal life to become a full-time internet celebrity. That may be the most interesting part of his story.
He graduated from Kent State University with a construction management degree. He later built a career in construction and continued working in the industry.
In his 2020 interview he described himself as working for a construction company. The 2024 Know Your Meme update described him as COO of his family’s construction company.
So while the internet knows him as Bad Luck Brian, his professional identity has been much more conventional.
Construction is his career. Bad Luck Brian is his unusual side business.
Is Kyle Craven Still Married?
Yes. Craven married his high school sweetheart.
In his 2020 interview with Know Your Meme, he explained that they had been together before the famous photograph was taken. He joked that she did not fall in love with him because of the meme.
The couple also have two children. This is another reason the Bad Luck Brian story is different from the stereotype created by the meme.
The image suggests a fictional character whose life constantly goes wrong.
The real Kyle Craven built a family, developed a career and turned an embarrassing school photograph into a source of opportunities.
Where Does Kyle Craven Live?
Craven has kept his personal life relatively private compared with many modern influencers.
In the 2020 Know Your Meme interview, he said he lived in Broadview Heights, Ohio with his family. His life has largely remained centered around his family and career rather than constant online attention.
That is significant because early meme celebrities did not have the same influencer infrastructure that exists today.
There was no clear career path for becoming a meme personality. People simply became famous.
Craven found a way to benefit from the attention without allowing the meme to become his entire identity.
Does Kyle Craven Still Get Recognized?
Yes. Craven has said that people still recognize him from time to time.
Interestingly, he told Know Your Meme that Chipotle restaurants were among the places where he was recognized most often.
People sometimes looked at him for a while before realizing where they knew his face from.
That reaction makes sense. The Bad Luck Brian image is much younger than the man himself.
Someone who remembers the original meme might recognize the face instantly. But because Craven has grown up, the resemblance is not always immediately obvious.
That creates a funny situation where people may know the meme before they realize they are looking at the person behind it.
Did Kyle Craven Hate Being Bad Luck Brian?
Apparently not. Craven has generally embraced his meme fame.
He has acknowledged that some people become uncomfortable when an old photograph follows them around the internet.
However, his attitude has been to laugh at the situation rather than fight it.
In his 2020 interview he explained that he believed trying to hide from internet fame could sometimes make online attention worse.
His approach was to accept that the photograph was already part of internet history and find positive opportunities in it.
That attitude helped him turn a potentially embarrassing situation into a useful side career.
Instead of pretending Bad Luck Brian did not exist, he treated the meme as something funny.
How Did Bad Luck Brian Stay Popular for So Long?
The internet changes constantly. Memes that were huge in 2012 can seem ancient today.
Yet Bad Luck Brian has survived. Part of the reason is that the joke is universal.
Everyone has experienced bad luck. Everyone has failed at something. Everyone has had an embarrassing moment.
The Bad Luck Brian format turns those experiences into exaggerated comedy.
The face also became strongly associated with the idea of failure. Even people who do not remember the original Reddit posts may recognize the image. Another factor is nostalgia.
People who grew up using Reddit, Facebook and early meme sites now remember the Advice Animals era as an important period of internet culture.
Bad Luck Brian is part of that history alongside other famous meme characters.
What Makes Kyle Craven’s Story Different From Other Meme Celebrities?
Many people who accidentally became viral celebrities struggled with the experience.
Some disliked having their faces permanently attached to jokes. Others tried to disappear from the internet.
Craven took a different route. He understood that he could not completely control what people did with the photograph.
Instead, he focused on what he could control. He could license the image. He could participate in advertising.
He could appear at events. He could tell his own story. And most importantly, he could continue living his life outside the meme.
That is why Bad Luck Brian became more than an embarrassing photograph. It became a business opportunity.
The Irony of Bad Luck Brian
There is a wonderful irony at the center of Kyle Craven’s story.
The internet named him Bad Luck Brian. But the meme arguably brought him good luck.
The photograph led to international recognition. It created opportunities to travel. It brought commercial deals.
It connected him with celebrities and brands. It provided additional income and gave him a unique story that very few people can claim.
Craven himself has described the meme as life-changing while also emphasizing that it does not define his entire life.
That distinction is important. Kyle Craven is not simply Bad Luck Brian. Bad Luck Brian is one unusual chapter in Kyle Craven’s life.
What Happened to Bad Luck Brian’s Original Photo?
The original photograph remains one of the most recognizable images from the early Advice Animals era.
The picture was originally a school photograph. Craven and his friends had created it as a joke. His friend Ian Davies later uploaded it to Reddit.
Once it became popular, copies spread across the internet. The image eventually became a reusable template.
People no longer needed to know the story behind the photograph. They only needed to recognize the face.
That is the moment when a photograph becomes a meme. The original context becomes less important than the character people create around it.
Is Bad Luck Brian Still a Meme in 2026?
Bad Luck Brian is no longer as dominant as it was during its peak in the early 2010s. That does not mean the meme has disappeared.
Know Your Meme’s current entry continues to document the character and lists hundreds of images associated with the meme.
The site’s entry was updated as recently as 2025. The style of memes has changed dramatically since 2012.
Modern memes often rely on short videos, screenshots, reaction images and rapidly changing formats. The classic Advice Animals style is much less central to online humor.
Still, Bad Luck Brian remains recognizable. It has become part of the history of internet memes.
What Can We Learn From Kyle Craven’s Story?
The Bad Luck Brian story offers an interesting lesson about internet fame. Virality cannot always be planned.
Craven and his friends were simply trying to make each other laugh. They did not know that the photograph would eventually be seen by millions of people.
Once it happened, Craven made a smart decision. He did not let the joke control his entire life.
Instead, he treated it as an opportunity. He continued his education. He developed a career. He built a family. He worked in construction.
At the same time, he licensed the image and accepted advertising opportunities. That balance is probably the biggest reason his story ended positively.
The internet gave him a strange nickname. Real life gave him a career.
View this post on Instagram
FAQ’s
Who is Bad Luck Brian in real life?
Bad Luck Brian is Kyle Craven, an American who became famous after a school photograph of him went viral online in 2012.
What is Kyle Craven doing now?
Kyle Craven has continued working in the construction industry. A 2024 Know Your Meme profile described him as COO of his family’s construction company.
Is Bad Luck Brian actually unlucky?
No. The Bad Luck Brian character is fictional. Craven has shared several examples of good fortune in his real life. He has even joked about how different his real life is from the meme.
How did Bad Luck Brian become famous?
His friend Ian Davies uploaded Craven’s school photograph to Reddit in January 2012. The image was turned into an Advice Animals meme and quickly spread across Reddit and other websites.
Did Kyle Craven make money from Bad Luck Brian?
Yes. Craven and his team licensed the image for merchandise, games and advertising. He has discussed deals involving companies such as Walmart, Hot Topic, Volkswagen and McDonald’s.
Did McDonald’s use Bad Luck Brian in an advertisement?
Yes. McDonald’s released an advertisement featuring Kyle Craven in 2018. The campaign used his famous Bad Luck Brian identity to promote a McDonald’s contest.
Is Kyle Craven married?
Yes. Craven is married to his high school sweetheart. The couple have two children.
Does Kyle Craven still get recognized?
Yes. He has said that people still recognize him from time to time. He particularly mentioned being recognized at Chipotle restaurants during his 2020 interview.
Did Kyle Craven plan to become a meme?
No. He and his friends were simply trying to create funny school photographs. The photograph was not created as a planned attempt to become internet famous.
Conclusion
The story of Bad Luck Brian and Kyle Craven is one of the more positive examples of accidental internet fame.
A teenager took a deliberately ridiculous school photograph with his friends. His friend later uploaded the image to Reddit. The internet gave the photograph a name and a personality. Bad Luck Brian was born.
That approach allowed him to enjoy the benefits of meme fame without allowing the meme to completely take over his identity.
Today, Bad Luck Brian remains a recognizable piece of early internet history. The face may remind millions of people of failed tests, embarrassing moments and terrible luck. But behind that face is Kyle Craven, a construction professional who managed to turn one awkward school photograph into a surprisingly successful chapter of his life.
In the end, the man behind Bad Luck Brian may have had the last laugh.
The internet called him unlucky.His real life turned out pretty well.
Also Read: Bhad Bhabie: Bio Career, Health Battle and Life in 2026
