​The Meme from Gosford that went viral ’round the world

The other day someone sent us a meme comprising three images of U.S. President Obama and his wife and First Lady, Michelle, attending Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

In the first frame, Mr Obama is chatting amiably with the Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who may be blonde but is in no way dumb. Mrs Obama, who has picked up on the vibe between them, can be seen off to the right with an expression on her face that our own Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop would kill to have in her own arsenal of death stares.

The rest are pictures that tell a thousand words or more.

Apparently it has gone mega viral. You’ve probably seen it too. If not, scroll down.

It did not surprise us that around 57 million people from around the world have accessed the pics from the facebook page on which they were first published. What did surprise us was that that 57 million pageviews belonged to Sea-FM, Gosford on the N.S.W. Central Coast. It was the brainchild of Breakfast presenter Nath Cera – pictured left with co-host Dani Pola.

Nath latched onto the pics while viewing the one with Obama taking a selfie that has also made news across the planet. He then added the words, “It doesn’t matter who you are, when your wife says switch seats… you switch seats,” and posted the meme on the Sea-FM facebook page from where it was promptly picked up across the SCA network.

At last count around 80 million people have seen the meme on SCA facebook pages. Says Nath, “I saw today that Radio One Lebanon had probably stolen it from us and posted the exact same meme on their page and it got quite a few hits as well. We’re getting messages on our facebook page in Arabic and Spanish.”

If only Nath could earn a cent, or even 0.01 of a cent from each pageview. “That’s the challenge of the moment,” says Nath. “You look at these numbers of 80 million and you think if those were tuning into your show from across the globe, you’d be the biggest radio station the world has ever seen.

I guess the challenge is for people like Clive Dickens (SCA Director of Digital and Innovation) to monetise those big figures. I think we’re on the forefront of that right now,” says Nath.

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