One of our earliest supporters wore an SSMM hoodie under his graduation gown and took his entire set of graduation photos in it — cap, gown, tassel, and a brand nobody had heard of hiding underneath. Someone posted the photos with the caption "this boy got a bright future ahead of him," and within days it was circulating across dozens of meme pages, splitting comment sections between people laughing and people genuinely offended on the kid's behalf.

That single post did something I didn't fully understand until later: it turned SSMM into a meme format rather than just a brand people wore. A second person wore SSMM in his yearbook photos, which spawned its own meme. Someone else wrapped their newborn baby brother in an SSMM hoodie and posted it, and the internet did the rest. I didn't write a single one of these memes — the audience did, on their own, unprompted.

Looking back, this is where the meme marketing engine actually started. Not from a campaign I planned, but from fans finding ways to insert the brand into their own lives that were funnier and more absurd than anything I could have scripted. Every future giveaway and meme push was really just me trying to feed that same energy back to the community that had already proven it existed.

Around SSMM's second year, at the peak of its run, I'd had the chance to meet and work with a growing list of names in the underground scene — Pouya, Fat Nick, Ghostemane, Lil Peep, TooPoor (Layla), Rae Sremmurd, and others. Somewhere in the middle of all that, an old childhood obsession resurfaced: I used to collect Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and something about the format stuck with me long after I'd stopped playing.

I pitched an idea to our biggest supporters: free "Clout Card" booster packs inside every order. Each card followed the classic trading-card layout — a candid or funny photo of a rapper, musician, or influencer on the front, with a set of "superpowers" underneath describing, in a hyperbolic and slightly sarcastic tone, what that person was actually known for in real life.

What started as a joke between a handful of superfans grew into a full set — cards for the artists above, plus names like Gary Vee, Tai Lopez, and Ice Poseidon, and eventually cards for people inside the SSMM universe itself: our photographers, our models, and the meme pages that had helped build the brand's early audience. It turned every order into a small collectible moment, gave fans a reason to talk to each other about who they'd pulled, and folded the brand's own community into the same mythology as the celebrities it referenced.

Not every connection worked out, and this one still stings. I'd lined up a meeting with Tycho Burwell, a director who went on to shoot music videos for artists like Nettspend and Trippie Redd. On the drive down, I got a flat tire — and because I was a teenager in the US without a phone plan, I had no way to call Tycho to explain, and no way to call my insurance for help either.

A state trooper happened to stop, realized how far over my head I was, and helped me change the tire himself. He was kind about it, but he also told me straight: don't push on to New York on a spare, turn around and go home. So I did — heartbroken, because there was no way to salvage the meeting from the side of a highway with no working phone.

Tycho took the no-show personally, and understandably so from where he was sitting — we never spoke again. It's a small story in the grand scheme of the brand, but it's an honest one: running something alone means the gap between "almost" and "actually" sometimes comes down to things completely outside your control, like a tire and a phone plan you couldn't yet afford.

My first solo trip to New York City was for a photoshoot. I'd had my driver's license for barely a year, I'd been in the US for less than two, and I drove three and a half hours from a small college town straight into Times Square traffic with two suitcases full of clothes in the back seat. I found street parking on a busy Brooklyn block — next to a fire hydrant, because it was the only open spot. Only later did I find out why fire hydrant spots aren't taken once I saw the ticket.

No food, no water, no local contacts, and a budget too tight to absorb surprises. But I met Alexis Conti, the photographer, and her model — who turned out to be an incredible musician in his own right. Alexis was great friends and the photographer for rising NYC rapper CASHRINA. So, I was quietly starstruck the entire shoot while trying to act like directing a shoot in Times Square was a completely normal Tuesday for me.

Despite every logistical thing working against it, the shoot itself was one of the best days of the brand's run. The photos from that day are still some of the strongest in SSMM's entire catalog — proof that resourcefulness and a good eye can outperform budget, connections, and experience combined.