When he’s not out there doing it for family, he’s voice-acting for Groot. This time around, Dominic Toretto actor Vin Diesel is back in the spotlight, but for reasons outside of his control.
In a viral tweet, a supposed 3D render done by Princeton University of what the first human being might have looked was shared. Users quickly pointed out the uncanny resemblance to Diesel, and from there, the floodgates were opened.
Originally shared by Alamo Drafthouse NYC, the Vin-Diesel-as-first-man tweet rapidly spread across the Twitterverse, and currently has more than 125,000 likes and 30,000 retweets.
Alamo Drafthouse NYC has since replied that they are “not an academic journal” but the memes cannot be stopped.
But (perhaps needless to say?) there’s no evidence of any such research project at Princeton. As Twitter put it rather clinically in its description of the trending topic, “Vin Diesel becomes the latest celebrity to fall into a meme trend of someone posting a picture of a celebrity or 3D-rendered character for humorous effect.”