Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal

About

Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal is a series of Vine videos pairing on-screen projections of Ryan Gosling’s emotional acting scenes with a slowly approaching spoon full of cereal held by the videographer.

Origin

On April 22nd, 2013, Vine user Ryan McHenry^[1] began uploading a series of videos titled “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal.” The videos feature various screen projections of Canadian actor Ryan Gosling’s intense acting scenes meanwhile at the end the videographer is approaching his spoon full of cereal.

Spread

On May 6th, McHenry’s parody clips were first picked up on the actor’s fan blog Gosloving^[2], followed by BuzzFeed’s compilation coverage^[3] on May 9th. On the following day, YouTuber bleubonbontv^[4] uploaded a video compilation of McHenry’s Vines, receiving more than 3.6 million views within three months. On May 11th, McHenry^[5] also uploaded his own compilation video with an additional Vine (shown below).

Throughout the week, dozens of other entertainment news outlets including Gawker^[6], Vulture^[7], E! Online^[8], Daily Mail^[9] and The Sun^[10] featured McHenry’s Vine clips, with many hailing it as one of the more notable memes yet to emerge from the platform. On July 4th, 2013, The Fine Bros uploaded a “YouTubers React” episode featuring notable video bloggers reacting to viral Vine videos, including Ryan McHenry’s “Ryan Gosling Won’t Eat His Cereal” videos. In two months, the video gathered upwards of 5.3 million views. (shown below)

McHenry’s Illness

On July 17th, not long after the viral takeoff of his Vine parody meme, McHenry was diagnosed with bone cancer. As a result of the finding, McHenry postponed his production work for his first feature film Zombie Musical and began undergoing chemotherapy and surgery for the removal his tumor. A few days later, McHenry’s close friends and associates launched a fundraising campaign titled “Ryan McHenry Won’t Eat His Cancer” via Indiegogo in order to assist him in paying for the medical bills (shown below). In less than a month, the campaign met and exceeded its initial goal of raising $10,000. In the following months, the story of McHenry’s battle with cancer and the fundraising campaign were soon picked up by numerous internet culture news outlets, including Mashable and The Verge, among others.

On May 3rd, 2015, despite undergoing nearly 20 months of chemotherapy and a series of operations, Ryan McHenry passed away. The death of the meme-maker was quickly met by tributes and messages of condolences from his supporters and friends on Vine and Twitter, including an eulogical video clip of McHenry looking out the window on a train issued by Vine’s official account on the video-sharing platform (shown below), as well as a number of other Vine tributes in remembrance of the 27-year-old Scottish filmmaker.