00:00The man behind this meme kept his identity a secret for years before coming out. You may
00:04recognize the red-faced, sleepy-eyed man whose photo became a viral meme about a decade ago.
00:09Often used to depict thoughts people have when they're way too high,
00:12this guy's glazed expression and slight grin became synonymous with being utterly out of it.
00:17The image showing him slumped over cycled through several nicknames like
00:20Really High Guy and Stoner Stanley, but eventually the internet settled on calling him Ten Guy.
00:25He kept his identity a secret all the way until 2021. But where is he now,
00:29and what does he look like after over a decade of internet stardom?
00:32We interviewed Conor in 2021, and he told us his tale. After graduating high school,
00:37Conor and his friends traveled to Ibiza, Spain. They stayed in budget accommodations and spent
00:41their days and nights partying. A few days in, and after some pre-game festivities,
00:45a friend snapped the now-famous photo of Conor.
00:48The Ten in Ten Guy isn't just a random number ā it originates from a chart popular among
00:52members of the subreddit r slash trees, a community for cannabis enthusiasts who refer
00:57to themselves as Ents. The chart is a scale from 1 to 10 used to describe one's level of
01:01intoxication, with 10 being the highest. A few months after his trip to Spain,
01:05Conor saw the photo on Facebook and thought it was particularly amusing,
01:08so he sent it to his friend and neighbor Dave, also known on Reddit as u slash Random Dave.
01:13Unbeknownst to Conor, Dave uploaded the photo to r slash trees in November 2011,
01:18with the caption,
01:18Being a ten is not always pretty.
01:20The internet quickly took notice. Another Redditor added the impact font text,
01:24and thus created the first meme, which goes,
01:26Text the person next to them, I want hopsital.
01:29The misspelling of hospital struck a chord, and the meme began to spread like wildfire
01:33across the web. Overnight, Conor became the face of being overwhelmingly high.
01:37He initially stayed quiet because he didn't want a cannabis-related meme to affect his future
01:41career. Best of all, he actually ended up meeting his girlfriend because his friends bragged about
01:45him being the meme guy to her friends, prompting her to ask him for a photo.
01:49Conor found most of the memes amusing, especially the amount of people who were convinced that he
01:53was Quentin Tarantino. He came out of hiding to mint an official NFT after being convinced by the
01:58creator of Nyan Cat, and now seems pretty cool about his meme fame. He saw it as an opportunity
02:03to finally acknowledge his role in internet culture, and perhaps benefit from it.
02:07Today, Conor lives in England with his girlfriend, Lucy. They've built a life
02:10together, running a food hall and enjoying life away from the internet's gaze. While
02:14he might have missed out on some opportunities, he's happy with how his life has unfolded.
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