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A friend of mine from school, Justin Griner, suffers from a hereditary kidney condition which requires a transplant. Same disease killed his mother. Justin is a great guy, and talented artist who is self-employed as a tattoo artist.

I am going to out him now. He is also the father of SuccessKid. That meme you have seen and probably smiled, or laughed at, or posted, or even re-memed. Or maybe you were just annoyed by it, because memes annoy you.

SuccessKid is a photo his wife snapped of their boy Sam that she posted to her flicker account as a public photo, and someone ran with it, and it's gone through hundreds and thousands of variations since. If they had received a penny for every time that meme was reposted, they could have retired by now - but they didn't, and they were very cool with people just using it as a meme. They did stop one fireworks company from using it as a logo, and they did license it once - some European telcom thing wanted to use it for an advert or something. I don't know really - though I have heard that hundreds of companies have used it internally or even in promotion without them finding out about it until it was too late, and really, the last thing they want to do is get lawyered up and then just run around suing people.

Despite Success Kid's success as a meme - it doesn't really bring them financial success. The kidney transplant will wreck them.

So, what I'd like to do is ask anyone here who has a few extra bucks, pounds, euros, or whatever - if you've smiled, laughed at, reposted, or re-meme'd the SuccessKid meme - maybe throw a little donation their way - because without SuccessKid's father, there would be no SuccessKid, and without that, the internet would be a little bit sadder, and less successful place.

Thanks.