The Creator of The "Chill Guy" Meme is Putting on a Masterclass in Making People Hate Him For No Reason
That's the new meme. The current funniest thing on the internet is a cartoon dog who looks kinda like Arthur standing there with his hands in his pocket. He's a chill guy.
The "creator" of the meme. The person who drew the picture. His name is Phillip Banks. Phillip had the entire internet using his art for jokes. Probably the most successful thing he's done with his entire life. There's a million different directions he could have taken that. I'm not sure what those directions are, but I know when you create something that the whole fucking world is suddenly obsessed with, there's a way to capitalize off that.
Phillip Banks however, being a gigantic idiot, came up with the master plan of, "Tweeting out that I'm going to, like, sue everybody who's using the meme, then run away and hide".
That's all people see. They see one tweet about how he's going to sue everyone + a private account where all you learn about him are that he wants you to know his pronouns are he/him. I can't think of a worse way to ingratiate yourself to the good people of X.com.
So people like me who work on the internet assume that this guy is going to start issuing DMCA's against anyone using his meme for profit. You put Chill Guy in a blog, you're getting sued. You pull up Chill Guy's picture on Mostly Sports or Pardon My Take, you're getting sued. That's what his tweet implies. And since he's gone private, you don't see any other information if you're just scrolling Twitter. Which for a meme is the place people are going to look for that information.
It would be one thing if that was actually the route he was going. I'm sure there's a quick buck to be made in that. Scour the internet for any usage of your art, sue them, get paid out something small. Do that a thousand times and you make a nice little profit. People make a living doing that to Barstool. But this guy isn't even doing that. He doesn't give a shit if people use his meme for profit if they're simply making content. But because of the way he handled it, nobody would know that unless they actually bothered to look into the situation. Which nobody does anymore. But if you actually look into what he's copyrighting his art for, he's not being an asshole at all.
He has another, much harder to find tweet (that nobody can go back and see because he's private) that better explains the copyright.
That actually seems pretty reasonable. If someone is going to make money of "chill guy" merchandise, it should be the guy who created it. I admittedly don't understand the world of meme coins. I just know there's a bunch of money to made. If someone is using your art to get rich off one of those shitcoins, and you're not a part of it, that seems like a reasonable thing to be upset about it. I know someone will probably explain to me why the bitcoin part of the copyright is stupid. And there's probably a way he could have still cashed in on it without taking legal action. But not everybody is in that world. I'm not going to begrudge someone for not wanting to invest in crypto. If someone has made hundreds of thousands of dollars by using his art to create a successful shitcoin, and he can get a small cut of that through a lawsuit, that seems fair enough.
Dexerto - Since the meme started going viral, there has been an alternative crypto coin created called ‘Just a chill guy’ that has reached a market cap of over $400m, which is likely what Banks is referencing.
The point is, what he's copyrighting his art for all seems pretty reasonable to me. Which means it would probably seem pretty reasonable to the average person. Instead he went private like an idiot and let the internet create it's own narrative of, "Wow look at this piece of shit who hates fun". But not suing everybody who's using his meme for fun. He's not going to sue Barstool for this blog, or sue anybody with a YouTube channel who references chill guy. But because he handled it like a moron, you wouldn't know that by simply scrolling social media. Which unfortunately is how most people seem to get their news nowadays.
So justice for the chill guy meme guy, I guess. He's not a dick who hates fun. He just wants to try and make a little money off the most successful thing he's ever done. You can't hate a guy for that. But holy shit brother… you could not have handled that copyrighting any worse.