00:00what happens when your own life becomes a meme and you go viral for all the wrong reasons honey
00:08well our next guest knows all too well because her wedding photo had the internet talking
00:12all about black love marriage and how much neurosurgeons make you heard me correctly
00:17please welcome essence.com love and relationships editor charlie penn to the show hey dana girl hey
00:22girl hey now you're here all the time all the time all the time we're talking about love and
00:26relationships now you're talking about like your real life and you're the star in this whole
00:31potato this whole situation let me read a quick quote to you about who you are okay all right
00:38after the wedding that she paid for keith moves into tamika's house which is supposed to be charlie
00:43she buys him a new lexus to replace his old honda accord and even pays for a two-week honeymoon to
00:48jamaica being that keith is the man is there a problem with their financial arrangement now
00:55okay all right clearly your name is not tamika clearly your husband's name is not not keith but
01:00how did you even find out about your wedding photo becoming a meme in the first place girl to be
01:04honest the tagging it my cousin tagged me first on facebook uh the friday night when it happened i guess
01:10when it was starting to go mini viral or whatever and he was like um someone just stole your wedding
01:14photo because he was there you know he knows it's our wedding photo and i saw it and i was like what on
01:18earth and i looked at it i'm like i can't believe this but then i'm like okay whatever you know it's
01:22weird but whatever then i started searching keith and tamika on facebook and twitter and instagram
01:28and i was like oh how many hits were you how many hits did the photo get i mean it was everywhere
01:32people were reposting and reposting and talking about it and discussing it there were some uh sites
01:37that had thousands of shares and thousands of comments and it was awkward because it was my photo
01:42but it wasn't our story so did you what's the first thing you did did you go tell your husband or
01:46showed him and what did he say well he was embarrassed and mad he was mad and i understand
01:50that because you know we're very different in that way i'm the overshare and he's very low-key
01:54right and he was like what if people don't know that i'm not keith and you're not to me it's painting
01:58him as like a bad guy yeah it's kind of painting and a lot of the commenters were like yeah team
02:02tamika and he came up and it wasn't really awkward you know but i was like babe you know if someone says
02:07your wedding photos went viral usually it's not a your photos are all over the internet usually it's a bad
02:12thing this is not us so have you tried to find out where this came from who started it who created
02:17the story and what have you found out i did a little investigating of course because he's an editor
02:20that's what y'all do okay being the digital journalist that i am what you found out i found out that
02:25there's a guy who makes memes like this all the time but he usually uses stock images so he's a guy
02:30in his basement somewhere who has no life yeah pretty much i mean hey i don't know but maybe i'm not
02:35gonna name any names but he does this a lot but he usually uses stock images so it really made me think
02:40that he thought this was a stock image and so now that you know who this person is and of course you
02:45said you're not going to name any names right are you going to show up at their house are you going
02:48to take legal action what are you going to do you know i thought about all those things i even
02:52contacted our wedding photographer but honestly that's unfortunately this awkward like weird gray
02:57zone we're living in do you know if you can if you can take any i don't my even my wedding
03:01photographer wasn't that concerned you know she was kind of like it's your likeness but it's not you
03:05you know it's like i don't know if i have a case and i don't know i mean they're not making any
03:09money off of it it's just weird and honestly we lucked out because a lot of people didn't even
03:13recognize us now if it was saying something real ratchet like you were a prostitute and he was your
03:17pimp and y'all fell in love then would you feel like you should take more aggressive action probably
03:21yeah definitely especially and also if everyone recognized me gotcha like you know did you know
03:26that was me girl no i i didn't to be quite honest with you so now that you've become a viral meme yeah
03:32has it changed the way that you feel about social sharing memes pictures and things that you find
03:37a little bit um it just really helps me realize that never say that that's not going to happen
03:42to me like know that i now know that every single selfie or oh look at us on the beach whatever
03:48whatever i put out there because you know i share my marriage all the time because i am a love and
03:52relationships editor i just know now that it's someone could use it once i put it out there this
03:56could happen i think that's a really good tip and a really good piece of advice for people out
04:00there you know with our college years right or or those moments out with the girls sometimes you
04:04you know you have it can happen to you yeah it can definitely happen don't say that it won't
04:08don't say that especially now that we're in this world where everybody wants to have like
04:11the funniest meme or the most talked about meme girl when we saw it on the shade room i was like
04:15that's it oh that's too much that's it shout out to the shade room yeah we love you here at
04:19we do and thank you for also covering the real story for covering the real story at the record
04:24and charlie thank you so much for joining us
04:25you
Comments