Woman Opens Up About Becoming Meme After Getting Picture Taken With Rihanna
A Rihanna fan has opened up about her experience of becoming a 'meme' after having her photo taken with the pop star when she was a child.
Sammi Smith, who is now 21 years old, won a competition to meet the Umbrella singer after a concert in Madison Square Gardens, New York, and took along her favourite chocolate bar, a Snickers, as a gift for the star.
Sammi attended the event with her mum and was able to take a photo of herself grinning alongside Rihanna afterwards, in which the singer can be seen smiling and holding the Snickers in one hand and wrapping the other around her young fan.
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The competition winner expected that to be the end of it, but she began to get a lot of messages about the photo years later, when she was in high school.
As it turned out, the image of herself and Rihanna had been picked up by a viral meme account, which shared the image alongside the caption: "I met Rihanna and she took my Snickers away from me & said 'you don't need this fatty'."
Though Sammi knew that wasn't at all what had happened, many people who came across the meme believed it to be true, with one person saying they couldn't 'believe' Rihanna had done such a thing while another responded to the image to say: "Throwing away her poster for sure."
In a YouTube video describing her experience, Sammi recalled learning the meme had been made and said she 'smiled but inside [she] was screaming'.
"I opened [my phone] to all these texts and people were tagging me in things on and I had no idea what is going on. I went on Instagram to find out that the picture that I had taken with Rihanna had been made into a meme," Sammi said.
"I hadn't seen this picture since I met her because I was young and I didn't have Instagram or any social media. I think I'd printed it out and brought it into school to show my friends but I didn't have a phone or computer. I kind of forgot the picture existed."
The fan stressed that Rihanna did not fat-shame her, saying that while the meme was 'funny', it was 'not true'.
"That seems obvious to me but a lot of people still ask me if it is," Sammi explained.
The YouTuber explained that the image had ended up online as a way for her to access it after the concert.
Emily Brown