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Where Are They Now? Here's How 'Brent Rambo Approves' Came Full Circle 25 Years After His Iconic 'Thumbs-Up' Meme
In the early '90s, a kid with a sharp buzz cut and crisp polo tee gave the most enthusiastic thumbs-up in tech history. Anyone who spent time online around 2010 knows "Brent Rambo," the pint-sized poster child who appeared in a cheesy Apple commercial in the early 1990s.
The little dude's iconic thumbs-up and bold declaration that "Mac rules the world" was reposted to Reddit over a decade ago, and Rambo became an internet legend and meme without even realizing it.
After the nostalgic Brent Rambo clip became one of the internet's go-to reaction GIFs for showing approval, a grown-up Brent Rambo surprised everyone by mimicking his iconic gesture as part of a video for his adult job at Sony Online Entertainment.
Knowing that the kid from Brent Rambo Approves actually ended up with a job in tech was closure enough for most folks, but that wasn't enough for Brent. In 2022, he finally took on a role at the very company that launched him into internet meme fame.
Here's this week's "Where Are They Now," featuring the thumbs-up kid himself, Brent Rambo.
Who is Brent Rambo and How Did He Become a Meme?
Apple's marketing strategies in the early '90s were a masterclass in utopian storytelling, with the "Dear Mr. Sculley" commercial from that era being the quintessential example of how the company visualized its role in the technological future.
Imagine a classroom where kids are using tablet-like devices to study Shakespeare: recreating sword fights, researching medieval weapons and learning dialogue from the play on the fly at their own pace.
This commercial came years before iPads even crossed Steve Jobs' mind. Amid all this was a parade of kids writing fan mail to Apple's CEO John Sculley about how computers were going to change everything.
Last on the scene was Brent Rambo, the commercial's unexpected star. After a montage of children waxing poetic about technology's transformative potential, Rambo delivered his now-legendary line, "Mac rules the world."
His straight-faced and matter-of-fact declaration, coupled with his earnest thumbs-up, encapsulated an entire generation's unbridled excitement about personal computing.
The commercial might have faded into nostalgic obscurity, but the internet had other plans. In April 2011, the ad found its way to YouTube as people started cracking up about Brent Rambo's undeniable swag.
A clip of Rambo even made its way to Reddit's /r/mac in 2013, where Redditor /u/phracker simply wrote, "'Nuff said," marking the earliest use of the meme in GIF form and kicking off countless iterations over the following decade-plus.
How Was Brent Rambo Used In Memes, And What Did He Think About His Virality?
Brent Rambo's enthusiastic thumbs-up became an instant Reddit staple, being used to react to posts or being stitched onto the end of both funny and questionable videos almost immediately.
One of the earliest viral uses of the GIF as a meme was a March 15th, 2013, post by Redditor ToadLicker93 to the subreddit /r/funny, who simply wrote, "Have an upvote!" The Redditor got plenty of upvotes in return, raking in over 13,000 points and 130 comments in a few days.
Have an upvote! by infunny
To be honest, a lot of the early "Brent Rambo Approves" GIFs were pretty suggestive and inappropriate, but the ones that weren't typically ended up on /r/BrentRamboApproves, where five months down the line, a Redditor posted the greatest easter egg of all time — Brent Rambo, now grown up.
On July 11th, 2013, Redditor /u/VenusBlue submitted a link to an episode of "Command Center," a TwitchTV web series that focused on the massively multiplayer online first-person shooter game Planetside 2.
At one point during the clip, a 20-year-old yet instantly recognizable Brent Rambo appears and gives his signature straight-faced thumbs-up move. The caption on the post indicates that Rambo now works for Sony Online Entertainment, which developed and published Planetside 2.
Two days later, Brent Rambo himself made a Reddit account to weigh in on his latest opinions on the Apple Macs vs. PC debate. He talked about how he's a tech junkie who still loves Apple products (albeit using jailbroken versions) and only used his PC for Windows-only games like Planetside 2.
What's Brent Rambo Upto These Days?
Brent Rambo continued to have a pretty illustrious career in tech through the 2020s. After working as an Executive Director in Sony Online Entertainment's gaming operations, he worked as a CTO for a marketing agency and later in Securities and Fraud at Intuit.
But Rambo's final move in 2022 was going from Facebook to working full-time as an Engineering Director at Apple, where he still works to this day.
Working at Apple is a full-circle moment for Rambo, and the crazy odds of the situation aren't lost on him or his coworkers. An interaction from 2022 shows Rambo chucking at how he had no clue about how he would end up as a meme 25 years down the line.
Besides his stellar LinkedIn resume, Rambo seems to be keeping a pretty low profile online, which is pretty on-brand for a tech-adept coder of his capabilities, and there's no doubt that the little guy from the '90s Apple commercial would approve.
For the full history of Brent Rambo, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information. To see the rest of our "Where Are They Now" series, you can find them all here. Stay tuned for next week's editorial!
