After 10 years of obscurity and mystery, the face behind one of the internet’s most famous memes has revealed himself. Connor Sinclair of Northern Ireland is the 10 guy or Really High Guy, the avatar of being so baked out of your skull that all your thoughts are that pleasant mix of profound and silly. Sinclair hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself for years, but now he’s given an interview to Know Your Meme and, much like the woman behind the ‘Disaster Girl‘ meme, is selling an NFT.
We’ve all been there. Stoned out of our minds to the point of incoherence and able to only spout gibberish that sounds profound to us and hilarious to our friends. A puffy face, red eyes, leaned back on a bed with his hand in a box of some unnamed food stuff. He’d say things like “when is the store’s bedtime?” or “to travel forward in time all I have to do is wait.”
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Posters called the meme “10 guy” because he rocketed to fame in the Reddit board /r/trees where marijuana enthusiasts share memes and stories. When you’re a 10 guy you are stoned beyond comprehension. The original Reddit post featuring Sinclair’s face came with the title “Being at a [10] is not always pretty.”
“The meme belongs to everyone who shared it, liked it, etc,” Sinclair told Know Your Meme. “I just happen to be the guy with the sweaty face and the glazed expression who went viral.”
Sinclair hid himself from the public for years because he didn’t want the attention. “To be honest, the meme went viral when I was 18 and just starting University,” he said. “I was a bit nervous about getting too involved, and I wasn’t comfortable about it when I was younger and studying, if it might have affected my career, etc. I don’t think I could have imagined still talking about it 10 years later! But if I reflect, it’s been a great thing. It makes people happy, what’s better than that.”
Sinclair said the photo was taken during a trip to Ibiza, Spain after his high school graduation. After three or four days of constant partying with his friends, Sinclair was worn out and fucked up. He doesn’t remember exactly when during the trip his friend Emma snapped the photograph. “They were just stupid photos of our holiday and definitely weren’t intended to be uploaded anywhere but Facebook,” he said.
A few days after the photo was taken, another of his friends shaved off Sinclair’s eyebrows and he spent the first few days at college drawing them on. He’s glad no one snapped a photo of that. He shared the photo with some friends in college and those friends uploaded it to Reddit. From there, the meme was born. “I remember showing my quite stoic German roommate Jochen and I don’t think he really got it, to be fair I don’t think I did either,” Sinclair said.
People in Sinclair’s friend group knew about his viral fame and on occasion people approached him on the street to take a photo after recognizing him. It’s how he met his current girlfriend. “I don’t think any of her friends really cared apart from her, but she asked for a photo and that was it,” he said. “I got her details, and we started seeing each other from there. We lived just down the road from each other and shopped in the same shops for over a year and had never bumped into each other apart from then. It’s been six years since last month, and we’ve got our house and a dog.”
Sinclair said that people had figured out who he was and approached him over the years about monetizing his viral fame, but he always resisted it. Until NFTs came around. “I’ve never made any money from the meme. The only things I’ve had out of this were like free drinks on occasion, and I’ve never taken a job related to it or anything like that,” he said. “I don’t feel like I’m owed anything, it’s just very fun and interesting. It would be an opportunity that if I didn’t take, I would probably regret.”
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