Instagram Star Tank Sinatra on his Career as a Meme Creator

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with George Resch, Meme Creator known as Tank Sinatra on Instagram, to talk about how he started his career and the unique way he has been able to connect with people all over the world through the creation of internet memes.

4/18/18 #2127

Excerpt:

"We are pleased to welcome George Resch, who is a creator he's a meme creator known as Tank Sinatra - that's right, Tank Sinatra, on Instagram... over one million followers. How you doing? I'm great. Thank you. And by the way, can I plug your book? Of course. It is called Happy is the New Rich. Now, how do you go from the memes, which I originally thought was pronounced "mems" - but it's "meems"... and you said, "What, am I French?" Yeah French. In France is it a "mem"? Oui. Oui Oui. It is? Yeah. Yeah. Here in Jersey and New York, it's a "meem" and... [laughter] ...this... is this a bunch of memes? They would... I mean, they'd be like... emotional memes, I guess, of some sort. They're all very short, concise directions or reflections that I've... that I collected over, like, ten years of just trying to, like, figure life out. It wasn't... I didn't mean to write a book. I really had no intention while I was jotting these things down. I just... you know, when you like, think of something, and you don't want to forget it, and you think to yourself, "That's so good. There's no way I'll forget it." And then three seconds later, you have no idea what the thought was? Yeah? I was ahead of that, and I just started writing down everything. So is that where the memes come from? Yeah, yeah it's a very similar process, it's like it's either there or it's not there's no writing. What... what do you mean there's no...? Woah woah woah, what do you mean there's no writing? You do write like you have to write the words but it's not like a comedy writer where you come up with a premise and then you dig into the layers of it and you rewrite and rewrite it's either like in the instant it's there or it's not, so it's very difficult to try and capture that, and to try it's like impossible to force but it's also very difficult for me to stop because when I see a picture I think of a caption, automatically. Okay so we're gonna put up... can we put up some memes? Let's... help us understand... what is this? [laughter] Guess who's son has made up a made up gluten allergy? Her son definitely has... [laughter] ...something made up wrong with him that she's using to keep him inside and safe. Look at her man, she... look, what are you protecting from? What is that? Unless you're in the Nile at a soccer game, that is completely unnecessary. [laughter] Show me..."