31-year-old Brandon Moore, who created the popular "What are those?" meme, has reportedly died. Bay Area news reporter Melissa Colorado, who works for NBC, broke the news on Twitter on Monday. Moore was known online under the name Young Busco, and he was the father of five children.
His cause of death has not been revealed, although he was sharing content on his Instagram as recently as Sunday, Nov. 25. Moore's "What are those?" Vine was viewed almost 38 million times on that app alone following its upload in 2015, and was so popular it even turned up in Black Panther earlier this year. Moore, however, wasn't a fan of the meme's inclusion in the film.
“When I saw [the scene], my girl was trying to record it” he told HuffPost in an interview earlier this year. “I slapped the phone out of her hand, because I was like, ‘I don’t want to fucking be a part of this.’ For real, every time I see that shit, I get depressed. ... I feel good I created something that’ll be with the world forever, but then I feel bad because I didn’t handle my business part correctly.”
The Oakland resident had similar sentiments about the meme the same year he uploaded it, seemingly completely over it by the time he received an interview with Vice, although he was happy about its popularity. "It's not at all frustrating," he explained. "It's actually cool in a sense. Everything I do, I do for the people anyway. That's where my fulfillment comes from. That's how I got my payment."
