How Minion Jesus was resurrected on TikTok

Remember those Minion memes floating around the internet a few months ago. The one’s made to resemble Jesus Christ on a cross or rising from the dead, co-opted by Christian influencers to preach about Jesus Christ’s crucifixion? Well, now we know who’s behind them. Lost? Let’s catch you up. Earlier this year a number of eerily similar videos started cropping up on TikTok. “One day, an animator was messing around, and he created this picture of a little minion,” one video posted in May starts. “Listen to this,” it continues, “a minion didn’t die for you, but somebody actually did. Jesus actually died for you.” “If you love jesus you’re going to love this,” another also posted in May begins, before recounting the same story of the animator almost verbatim. “But listen, a minion didn’t die for you. A minion didn’t pay the price for you and me to have eternal life. But Jesus did.” The animator they are referring to is Americo Cruz, who created the image of a limp-bodied minion hanging from a wooden cross as an absurdist parody and posted it to his personal Facebook page back in 2021. Minion Jesus went moderately viral at the time and was shared thousands of times across Facebook, X (then called Twitter), Reddit, and Instagram, before the Christian influencers resurrected it earlier this year on TikTok. The resurrection of “Minion Jesus” among Christian influencers on TikTok has puzzled many — that is, until Vox reporter Laura Bullard uncovered the strange story this week. It turns out neo-pentecostal evangelist and self-proclaimed millionaire Taylan Michael Seaman is behind the memes’ resurgence. As well as posting dramatically edited clips of his sermons to his almost 50,000 followers on Instagram, Seaman runs a coaching program.  According to the website, the program helps christians “start and grow their YouTube channels using my Viral Video Framework.” He claims the framework gained him “over 200 million views and 2.9 million subscribers in only 9 months” as well as helping “a dozen others to grow hundreds of thousands and even millions of subscribers in these last 9 months.” A number of students enrolled in the coaching program spoke to Vox under the condition of anonymity. Apparently students are alerted when a particular piece of content — like Minion Jesus — is gaining views online, encouraging them to also jump on the trend. This explains why the videos are often so uncannily similar.  Mystery solved.