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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Lifestyle
Gino Spocchia

Man out of prison after five years responds to seeing famous memes for the first time

TikTok/Pastlivesllc

A former prisoner has gone viral on social media after he filmed himself reacting to famous memes from the five years he was in jail.

The former prisoner, who identified himself as Morlock, appeared in a TikTok video on Monday reacting to memes including Harambe the gorilla and the fraudulently marketed Fyre Festival.

He told viewers: “I was in prison for the past five years and I’ve been asked to react to the following memes”.

Appearing in front of an image of the left shark from Katy Perry's Super Bowl XLIX half time show, Morlock responded: “Yep, absolutely no. No idea what the hell that is”.

In 2015, the shark became a meme after it appeared to dance out of sync with the shark on the right, and Ms Perry, who was singing her hit song Teenage Dream.

Following that was an image of Harambe, the gorilla whose death in 2016 became the “meme of the summer”, as argued by The Verge.

“Sign language? Gorilla. Nope,” said Morlock in response to Harambe, who was shot by staff at Cincinnati zoo after it carried around a three-year-old child that had entered the gorilla’s enclosure.

Images of Harambe then featured in a variety of memes in 2016, with many ridiculing the injustice of the gorilla’s passing.

Morlock then reacted to the infamous cheese sandwich from Fyre Festival, which in 2017 was ridiculed for being a flop.

“Errr, salad? Sandwich? No”, said Morlock in front of an age of a sad-looking cheese sandwich from the Bahamas festival, which was billed as "the best in food, art, music and adventure", and advertised by influencers including Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.

Festival-goers turned up to find rain-soaked floors, limp food and and baggage thrown around, before the event was cancelled, and turned into a Netflix documentary.

In the TikTok video, Morlock also reacts to the meme of Bernie Sanders from Joe Biden’s inauguration in January.

The US senator immediately became a meme for wearing an outdoors coat and knitted mittens to the ceremony in front of the US Capitol. “Bernie Sanders? Is that it? No”, said the former prisoner.

Morlock, who shared the video on TikTok as @pastlivesllc, set up the organisation as a workshop for former inmates in Oregon, helping them to overcome trauma, according to his social media.

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