Dieunerst Collin, who unwittingly became a meme for his reproachful side-eye as a child, is now a state football champion.
Collin, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment, is now a high school senior and a lineman on the East Orange High School football team, which won the New Jersey championship Sunday.
He paid tribute to his childhood internet fame by giving a disapproving side-eye while posing with the championship trophy.
In what became known as the Terio at Popeyes video, a 9-year-old Collin uncomfortably glances at the camera while the person recording compares him to Terio, a Vine star who's now a rapper. Collin's uneasy side-eye has since become a reaction meme to express disapproval and discomfort.
Popeyes responded to Collin’s tweet Monday, replying, "We tend to attract greatness."
Collin told Sports Illustrated that going viral as a young child made him "sad" and that he would "take it as bullying" whenever someone referred to him as Terio because he didn't know he was a meme.
"A couple weeks later, I figured out it was me based on the video," he said. "I got kind of emotional, cried a little bit. Over the years, I got over it."
Collin said that his meme fame made him a target of bullying from older kids and that as he grew up he had to learn to accept that his virality would precede him.
He coped by being himself around others and showing them that he was more than a reaction image.
"When I was in middle school, I had a couple people say things like, 'You're Terio, you're a meme,' and it was all the high schoolers," Collin said. "People in my class found it very funny, so then I just continued being myself. I got over it once everybody who would randomly come up to me and call me Terio actually met me and learned my actual name and got to know me, that's when I got over it."
He said he found being randomly recorded by strangers "very weird," as he is often recognized in public.