Who Is This Saluting Russian Streamer? How The Infamous 'Ozon's Salute' Meme Became An Eternal Internet Favorite

A salute can mean a lot of different things, and there are a lot of memes of people saluting in order to best fit the mood of any joke. Over the years, countless memes featuring saluting celebrities and characters have risen and fallen in popularity.

But there's one in particular that stands out among the rest and has withstood the test of time for the past seven years: Ozon's Salute.

What Is 'Ozon's Salute' And Where's It From?

The man in the meme's image is Andrei "Ozon" Ozonovsky, a Russian streamer. Back in 2017 during a long, supposedly drunken stream, he reacted to a number of clips at once but seemed profoundly impacted by one in particular, which led to the creation of the saluting meme.

While watching the music video for the song "The Cuckoo," which was made for a Russian war film, Ozon cries and raises his hands in a tearful salute.

An image from this stream first started spreading on a Russian imageboard called 2ch.hk, where the image of Ozon saluting became widely used.

How Did The Saluting Ozon Image Become A Meme?

Soon after the 2017 stream, the macro and reaction image became popularized and spread to other countries. By late 2018, it had spread to the United States and other English-speaking countries where it was used in a similar manner to the infamous "Press F to pay respects" meme.

What Are Some Other Saluting Memes?

There are a lot of saluting memes out there. The Big Boss Salute from Metal Gear Solid 3 is another very famous example.

But there's also a saluting cat, a saluting "Rainbow Dash" and quite a few other humans to fall into the category too.

To learn more about Ozon's salute, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.