Where did I AM THE KING OF SPACE come from?

An anonymous poster uploaded it to 4chan's /b/ board on January 23rd, 2007, using a Reuters photo of Escudé taken at Wimbledon on June 26th, 2003.

What does I AM THE KING OF SPACE mean?

It's a mock royal greeting whose humor sits in the mismatch between Escudé's involuntary grimace and the grandiose claim to interstellar rule, delivered as if the tennis player were addressing his subjects.

How do you use I AM THE KING OF SPACE?

Post the mirrored Escudé image with the copypasta, swapping "4CHONS" for the local site's demonym, like "Aspies" on WrongPlanet or "ADMONS" on Illogicopedia.

Is I AM THE KING OF SPACE still popular?

Peak usage ran from 2007 through 2012 across various web forums, and today the copypasta lives mostly in archival meme reference and sports-photo roundups.

I AM THE KING OF SPACE

Q: What is I AM THE KING OF SPACE?

A 2007 4chan copypasta paired with a mirrored, zoomed-in photo of French tennis player Nicolas Escudé bracing for a ball, in which the subject introduces himself as ruler of space.

2007copypastaclassic

Published August 30, 2026

I AM THE KING OF SPACE is a 2007 4chan copypasta paired with a mirrored, zoomed-in photo of French tennis player Nicolas Escudé bracing for a ball to hit his face. Posted anonymously to /b/ on January 23rd, 2007, the greeting spread across forums throughout the late 2000s with its "GREETINGS 4CHONS" opener swapped for whichever site's user base saw the repost, which became the format's defining running joke.

copypasta memes 4chan memes snowclone memes late 2000s memes facial expression memes

Overview

The I AM THE KING OF SPACE format pairs a mirrored, tightly cropped photograph of Escudé's contorted face with a short copypasta that declares him ruler of space and greets the audience by name3. Comedy comes from the mismatch between the involuntary grimace, snapped mid-flinch as a serve arrives, and the grandiose royal address stapled beneath it. Several crops of the base image circulated on /b/, each pushing tighter on the face for extra visual escalation.

The greeting mutates as the copypasta hops sites. Posters swap "4CHONS" for whichever demonym fits the destination board, producing openings like "Greetings Aspies" on WrongPlanet1 and "GREETINGS ADMONS" on the nonsense wiki Illogicopedia2. That plug-in salutation is the meme's central gag and the reason it kept getting reposted through the late 2000s.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

4chan /b/

Creator

Anonymous 4chan user

Date

2007

The base photo shows French tennis player Nicolas Escudé, taken by Reuters photographer Jeff J. Mitchell during the Wimbledon Championships on June 26th, 2003, as a ball flew straight at his face3. Escudé was an active ATP pro through the early 2000s and appeared in the Wimbledon men's draw that year, which is where the shot was captured5.

On January 23rd, 2007, an anonymous 4chan /b/ user posted several UNITIИU-style mirrored versions of the photo, each zoomed closer than the last, and paired them with the "I AM THE KING OF SPACE" copypasta addressed to "4CHONS."

How It Spread

The copypasta jumped off 4chan on April 10th, 2007, when a user on the autism community forum WrongPlanet.net opened a thread titled "Greetings Aspies, I am the King of Space"1. It became a plug-and-play greeting that other communities picked up over the next several years.

Between 2009 and 2012, adapted versions kept surfacing on unrelated boards, each rewriting the salutation for the host community: "GREETINGS ADMONS" on Illogicopedia2, "GREETINGS FLOT EARTHERS" on the Flat Earth Forums, "GREETINGS ROPTURES" on the Rapture General Forum, and "GREETINGS, CITIZENS OF THE INTERWEBS!" on the Sucker Punch forums. Copies also turned up on GameMaker3D, Destructoid, FunnyJunk, and the Battlefield 3 Forums. The Dark Roasted Blend "Moments in Sports" gallery later helped keep the original Escudé photograph circulating outside the meme's copypasta context4.

How to Use This Meme

Post a mirrored, zoomed-in crop of Escudé's face with the copypasta opening "GREETINGS [SITE USERS]," swapping in the local demonym for your forum, then close with the "I AM THE KING OF SPACE" declaration. Chaining several increasingly tight crops of the same shot mirrors the original /b/ post's visual escalation.