Drew Scanlon, a resident of San Francisco, said the case was close to him a friend and his mother are afflicted with it

Drew Scanlon, a resident of San Francisco, said the case was close to him as a friend and his mother are affected

The man whose befuddled facial expression on a recorded video live stream in 2013 birthed what the internet collectively dubbed the Blinking White Guy meme has managed to convert his online notoriety into more than $300,000 for multiple sclerosis research, he said in a new interview.

Drew Scanlon explained to ABC News that donating to the US’s National Multiple Sclerosis Society is important to him because a friend of his and her mother both have the chronic, autoimmune disease that attacks people’s central nervous systems.

Scanlon, a San Francisco resident and video producer for the streaming platform Twitch, participates annually in a fundraising bicycle race supporting the MS Society. And once a year, on his rarely used X account, he posts the oft-deployed meme, writes “THIS IS MY FACE”, and requests that his more than 81,000 followers donate to the bicycle race at the online domain BlinkingGuy.com.