• Bodybuilder Mike O’Hearn is taking the web by storm, and there is most likely no actual motive why.
• The “Child Do not Hearn Me” meme has been posted a whole lot of hundreds of occasions in latest months.
• O’Hearn himself is leaping on the meme bandwagon, however has no thought how the pattern began.

Mike O’Hearn’s on a horse. Mike O’Hearn’s getting out of the pool. Mike O’Hearn’s simply standing there.

The web has chosen its newest darling — a 54-year-old bodybuilder going viral for mainly wanting on the digicam. 

O’Hearn has seemingly inexplicably grow to be a meme sensation on a number of social media platforms, with at the very least 1.8 billion views to his identify. And two months in, he is nonetheless going robust.

If you have not seen one but, this is a breakdown of what a typical O’Hearn meme appears to be like like.

There will be an previous clip of him strolling within the park, or placing on a shirt, or flexing — it does not actually matter. A slowed-down model of Haddaway’s 1993 hit “What’s Love” performs. “Child do not harm me,” the German singer’s voice rumbles. 

The punchline is all the time the caption. It needs to be patently silly, and paradoxically performs off O’Hearn’s look of confidence within the clips. 

O’Hearn, beforehand identified for that includes on a whole lot of journal covers, has now appeared on a whole lot of hundreds of TikToks and Instagram reels. Governments and Arnold Schwarzenegger are posting their very own variations of his meme.

So what’s O’Hearn completed to go viral this yr? It is arduous to say. Early variations of the meme exploded on TikTok in March, created by random social media meme accounts.

O’Hearn says he is bought no thought how the memes kicked off, however thinks they’re hilarious. “I do not know the place it began, however it has taken over,” he said in a Twitter video.

His TikTok account, which had round 628,000 followers in April 2022, jumped to almost 1,000,000 followers by March 2023. Now, the bodybuilder has over 2.3 million followers.

O’Hearn posts a video almost on daily basis now, the place he duels Darth Vader and makes protein shakes to the tune of “What’s Love?”

And it is working. Whereas his TikToks hardly ever broke the 100,000 view mark in 2022, he is now hitting thousands and thousands of views in nearly each submit. He sells “Child Do not Hearn Me” t-shirts at $35 a pop.

As memes are likely to do, the O’Hearn joke is evolving. The joke is now usually a horrible pun about youngsters at school with bizarre names. It is somewhat arduous to elucidate.

With “Child Do not Hearn Me” on the web’s mercy, solely time can inform what’s going to grow to be of the meme — and O’Hearn’s on-line legacy.

The bodybuilder posted a severe video in March discussing health merchandise and coaching regimens.

“Child do not harm me,” stated everybody within the feedback.

O’Hearn didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark despatched exterior common enterprise hours.