The internet’s “Blinking Guy” is trading his meme fame for miles this weekend.
Drew Scanlon will ride 102 miles across the San Francisco Bay Area on Saturday to raise funds for multiple sclerosis research.
Scanlon said his nearly 10-year cycling mission has raised more than $250,000 for the disease, inspired by friends affected by MS.
Despite having one of the most famous faces on the planet, Scanlon said he is not often recognized on the street. His fame comes not from anything he’s posted or said online, but from something intrinsically human: blinking. The meme originated during his time at the video game website Giant Bomb, when a co-worker made a joke during a livestream and Scanlon’s reaction — a simple blink — was captured.
“I don’t know who clipped it out or when or why,” Scanlon told NBC News in a phone interview Friday, the day before the Waves to Wind 2025 charity bike ride in the Bay Area.
“It was actually about a four-year gap between when the video actually aired and [when the] meme took off.”
To say the meme “took off” might be an understatement. One version of Scanlon’s blinking face has been viewed more than 6 billion times on Giphy alone, plastered in chat rooms, text messages and social media posts. “You know when something like this happens It can be kind of bewildering,” he says.
On the road, Scanlon is more known as “the guy who raises all that meme money” for MS, he said.
He and his charity biking group, the Big El West, have focused on raising awareness and funds for the neurological disease, which affects 2.8 million people globally. Women are twice as likely as men to develop MS, which can cause vision problems, weakness and difficulty walking, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“It’s nice to have found this outlet, and it’s great to see that it continues to resonate with people,” Scanlon said.
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