Unfortunately, we are tasked today with possibly ruining a very good meme.
In recent days, a certain video clip of a man dramatically entering a room and posing for a flurry of snapping cameras has become a juggernaut of a meme. Most recently, you may have seen it put to good use amid the celebratory tweets brought on by the release of Lil Nas X's “Old Town Road” remix with Billy Ray Cyrus.
If the most recently updated version of this crowdsourced breakdown on the meme's rise to ubiquity is spot-on, the madness began with a simple "caption this" request before exploding into more elaborate scenarios of varying degrees of hilarity.
As fate's fucked up sense of humor would have it, the subject of the meme is Jawad Bendaoud, who was sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal last month after being accused of harboring terrorists Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh. Abaaoud and Akrouh were on the run at the time after their involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks, for which ISIS claimed responsiblity.
Per NPR, Bendaoud was acquitted by a French court last year. His sentencing in March to four years behind bars was the result of an appeal filed by the Paris prosecutor's office.
Abaaoud and Akrouh, meanwhile, died during a 2015 pre-dawn neighborhood operation by French investigators when Akrouh set off an explosive suicide vest.
