Young Busco, the creator behind the wildly popular “What Are Those!?” Internet meme has died, according to Okayplayer.com via The Fader. He was 31.
The East Bay comic, whose real name is Brandon Moore, became an overnight sensation in 2015 when a video he uploaded to his Instagram account went viral on Vine.com.
In the short video clip, Moore, who is behind the camera, asks a police officer about his shoes, yelling “What are those!?”
The Vine clip was viewed over 38 million times, and his “What are those” meme is often recreated by Instagram users and even in Marvel’s Black Panther film.
Moore was bitter when he heard his famous line uttered by Shuri (Letitia Wright) in Black Panther.
He said the Black Panther scene made him “sick as f-ck” because he failed to copyright the viral meme.
“When I saw [the scene], my girl was trying to record it” in the theater, he told The Huffington Post in an interview this month. “I slapped the phone out of her hand, because I was like, ‘I don’t want to f-cking be a part of this.'”
“For real. Every time I see that shit, I get depressed,” he told The Post.
He added: “I feel good I created something that’ll be with the world forever, but then I feel bad because I didn’t handle my business part correctly.”
Moore was a father-of-5 according to an NBC New affiliate.
