Cristiano Ronaldo tried his best at ‘breaking the internet’ by releasing a video with YouTube legend Mr Beast on his YouTube channel. The video was meant to have the YouTuber with the most subscribers meet the ‘fastest-growing’ YouTuber in Ronaldo, after the Portugal icon amassed over 68 million subscribers in three months of opening his channel.
The link-up, however, probably wasn’t as smooth as both parties expected it to be. Ronaldo is not an influencer like Mr. Beast and there were a few awkward moments in the video. The Al-Nassr star was mostly just replying to what Mr. Beast had to say rather than ask the YouTuber any questions on his own.
At one point of the video, Mr. Beast started telling Ronaldo about how he’s spent seven days in a deserted island, in Iraq and an underground city – to which the Portuguese star responded ‘Brother, you crazy?’. In his promotional clip for his YouTube video, Ronaldo’s video editors also included the bit where he asks if Mr. Beast believes Ronaldo can surpass his subscriber count on the platform.
Cristiano’s channel reached 60 million subscribers in 20 days, but he’s still over 250 millions subs behind Mr. Beast. In the promo clip, Ronaldo can be heard saying ‘You Think I’m Going To Beat You?’ after which it turns into a ‘Thug Life’ meme with a black glass on Cristiano’s eyes and a song starts playing on the background.
In this case, the ‘Thug Life’ meme has been used to make the Portugal legend look ‘cool’ and to increase the clikatability of the promo. The Thug Life meme is a popular one that was originally creted by a YouTuber named Otis Anderson. They had posted an edited clip from the Penn and Tellar show ‘Bull Shit’, featuring a song and a gray fade out in the final stages of the clip.
The meme itself gained popularity from 2014 onwards. On June 13, 2014, a YouTuber named Lolonym created a video of a nerf gun review named ‘Thug Life’. It shows a young teenage boy trying to review a nerf gun before he ends it by saying ‘I don’t know what it’s called…maybe it’s called f***you’ before the clip ends with a zoom in on his face and a song playing on the background.
The song which is used for the Thug Life meme is actually a pretty popular one. It’s the rap song ‘Where the Hood At’ by American rapper DMX, featuring Snoop Dogg, which gained a lot of popularity in the early 2000s. The song has over 140 million views on its official music video on YouTube and is widely considered as one of the best ‘fight songs’ around.
The ‘Thug Life’ meme is inspired by a popular catchphrase ‘I didn’t choose the thug life, the thug life chose me,’ which is a phrase used to express pride for ‘thug lifestyle’ in not abiding by society’s rules and being a menace in society. The phrase is also often referenced in gangster rap music, which makes DMX’s popular rap song a good fit for the ‘Thug Life’ meme.
This ‘Thug Life’ meme peaked during 2015 when it was often used for memes on social media platforms. The thing is that it’s now a bit of an outdated and isn’t really used by users that much on social media.
That is probably why Ronaldo’s video editors are being mocked for being ‘out of touch’ by using such an old meme to try and hype up his much-anticipated video with Mr. Beast. The promo to this link-up video and the video itself has shown that there are still ways for Ronaldo to go for him to become a highly entertaining YouTuber and reach the heights of the platform like Mr. Beast has.