The Crazy True Stories Behind Viral Memes You Love
Senior Freshman
We all remember the meme about the elderly lady in the college classroom. This wasn’t a staged picture – Nola Ochs did in fact attend college at the ripe age of 94. She attended Fort Hays State University together with her granddaughter, Alexandra. They both graduated as bachelors at the age of 97 and 21 respectively, and Nola even gained her Master of Liberal studies degree the next year.
Nola is currently the world record holder as the oldest college graduate, and she even started working on her PhD credit after obtaining her master’s degree. Sadly, Nola’s amazing story wasn’t meant to last particularly long. She passed away in December 2016, aged 105. She claimed and proved that it’s never too late to chase your dreams, and I think that’s a valuable lesson we can all learn from Nola’s life.
Star Wars Kid
The greatest Jedi Master to ever live and grace the wonderful world of YouTube, Star Wars Kid reached instant fame because of his – somewhat amateuristic – video of him pretending to be a Jedi and doing some lightsaber flicks. His movements were erratic at best and his physique didn’t make them any more graceful either, but the guy sure had a lot of enthusiasm. But the footage of his Jedi moves were actually uploaded without his permission.
The then 14-year old Ghyslain Raza was bullied online and had his footage used in many parody videos – they even inserted him into Star Wars scenes and did spoofs of him in American Dad and South Park. Ghyslain got so low he had to leave school for a while. He now is an avid campaigner against cyber bullying, being on of its first serious victims.
