Has a smirking Kevin James taken over your group chats and social-media feeds? You may be entitled to financial compensation. Okay, not really, but seemingly overnight, a stock image of James as Doug Heffernan from King of Queens has been the latest meme to take over Twitter and Instagram, with Facebook users probably seeing it in about a year or so. It started with a randomly innocuous tweet from a Twitter user, ChampagneAnyone, who captioned the stock image from 1998 with, “me after 1 double rum and diet,†coincidentally one day after the 25th anniversary of King of Queens. It has taken over every corner of the internet, including sneaking into the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce dating-rumor fiasco, as well as being an official statement by Senator John Fetterman on the new Senate dress code.
King James eventually grew an empire online as the memes expanded to the rest of the King of Queens stock-photo cinematic universe.
Queen of King of Queens Leah Remini has fully accepted all of the Kevin James stock-image memes as a part of the King of Queens anniversary celebrations. And James has responded to all the memes by devising a new tour poster.
This post has been updated.