Obituary

Ken Bone was not a performer or a celebrity. He was an audience member at the second 2016 presidential debate who asked a question about energy policy — and the internet decided he was the night's true winner. The red sweater, the thick mustache, the name that sounded like a comfortable chair: he was the everyman the world had been waiting for. Within days he had a Twitter account, a subreddit, and more fame than he had ever wanted. He leaned in for a while — Reddit AMAs, TV appearances — then sold his iconic sweater at auction for over $80,000, all of it to charity. The meme died in 2017 when he went back to being a normal man with a mustache. The sweater lives on in a museum's storage.

Portrait: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Born

October 9, 2016

Died

2017

Cause of death

Died of sweater weather

Last sighting

An auction, November 2016

Resting place

Section E, Row 11

Category

person