Sad Keanu Meme Goes Charitable with kea.nu

If you’ve heard the phrase “sad Keanu,” it’s probably been in the past month, and you’ve also probably also seen a photograph of the actor looking very melancholy as he eats a sandwich all by himself. And now since this is just the sort of image that the photoshop crowd craves, Keanu’s sad a lot now. He’s sad about being eaten by a dinosaur. He’s sad in a cantina. And of course he’s sad that there’s no Flash on the iPhone.

Such is the life of a meme, this one having gotten its start on Reddit in early June. One tumblr site, sadkeanu.com, has already gotten DMCAed by the paparazzi agency that first published the picture (a great example of the little guy not having the resources to assert a fair use defense).

However, one clever journalist has devised a way to use the meme for a good cause – generating money for the charity Stand Up to Cancer. It’s particularly fitting since Keanu himself is actively involved in promoting cancer research. The website is kea.nu, and it’s a URL shortener – so for example, if you want to link here to geeksaresexy, you can just go to kea.nu/gas. Someone visiting your link will get an ad first, but hey, 100% of the proceeds from that ad are going to help find a cure for cancer. Plus if you’re worried about your traffic, the URL is redirected after a couple of weeks. And don’t worry, no intellectual property issues here, since the sad Keanu on the site is a drawing (pictured here) created by a Reddit user.

So go forth and cheer up Keanu with shortened URLs! Here’s one for you, to start: kea.nu/1xf