Sam Griner, now 18, is speaking out about life nearly two decades after a beach photo turned him into one of the internet’s most enduring memes.
The Florida teen and his parents, Laney and Justin Griner, opened up in the outlet video published in June 2025, tracing how a casual family snapshot became the viral “Success Kid” phenomenon. Sam was just 11 months old when his mother captured him clutching a fistful of sand on a Jacksonville beach in 2007.
Laney had recently purchased a new camera and wanted to document her baby and family that day. She uploaded the photo to her Flickr account immediately, where it attracted roughly 300 likes before she largely forgot about it. Within a year, however, she began spotting the image circulating online with various edits applied.
One of the earliest versions she encountered featured a photoshopped child in the background alongside a destroyed sand castle, bearing the caption “I hate sandcastles.” The family, unfamiliar with meme culture at the time, found the phenomenon bewildling and somewhat unsettling. “I realized at that point, there was no getting this picture back. The internet had it,” Laney said in the video.
About a year later, she saw the photograph repurposed with a green and blue background under the title “Success Kid.” The name struck her as particularly meaningful given Sam’s difficult start to life. He was born prematurely and required brain surgery at just six weeks old. “I felt like that was the most appropriate title for him and it was given to him by the internet,” Laney said.
The meme’s reach expanded dramatically from there. The image appeared in advertising campaigns, a Super Bowl commercial, materials from Obama’s White House, and newspapers across the globe. Sam said he has mixed feelings about growing up as a famous baby, noting that fans frequently ask him to recreate the pose or quiz him about how sand tasted.
The family also faced serious medical challenges behind the viral fame. Justin was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and spent six years on dialysis, though he said he could not qualify for a transplant because of the prohibitive cost of anti-rejection medications. Initially reluctant to leverage the meme for personal matters, Justin eventually posted about a fundraiser on Twitter. After several publications retweeted it, the GoFundMe surpassed its goal within the first week.
Sam said he now spends most of his time making art and listening to music, interests he traces back to his father’s creative influence. He expressed a desire to build an identity beyond the infant image that millions recognize. “Interests change and your mindset and your body changes a lot, and you don’t just wanna be known as Success Kid,” he said.
The meme has found unexpected resonance in medical settings as well. The family noted that nurses and doctors use the image to cope with demanding workdays. “I’m very happy that people who save others lives is using my picture when I was doing nothing but eating sand,” Sam said.
Looking toward his future, Sam said he hopes to someday create something that inspires people to the same degree that Success Kid has.