What is Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal?

A 2013 series of six-second Vines by Ryan McHenry that cut a spoon of cereal into famous Ryan Gosling movie scenes so the actor appears to refuse each bite[1].

Where did Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal come from?

Scottish filmmaker Ryan McHenry started posting the Vines on April 22, 2013, using scenes from Gosling films like Drive and Blue Valentine[4].

What does Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal mean?

It is a visual joke about the actor's brooding, refusing on-screen persona and about the punchline potential of Vine's six-second loop, not a real dietary claim[5].

How do you use Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal?

The template is filming a spoon of cereal held up to a screen playing a dramatic acting clip and cutting so the character's head turn syncs with the spoon's approach[1].

Is Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal still popular?

It is treated as a classic early-Vine meme rather than an active format, and it is often revisited when writers cover McHenry's death or Gosling's first Vine[8].

Who created the Ryan Gosling cereal meme?

Scottish director Ryan McHenry created the series in April 2013 as a side project[1].

Did Ryan Gosling ever respond to the meme?

Yes. In an April 2015 BBC Radio 1 interview he said he actually loves cereal, and after McHenry's death in May 2015 he posted his first personal Vine of himself eating cereal[8].

What happened to Ryan McHenry?

McHenry was diagnosed with bone cancer in July 2013 and died on May 3, 2015 at age 27 after nearly 20 months of treatment[1].

Which Ryan Gosling movies appear in the Vines?

The clips drew from Drive, Blue Valentine and Crazy, Stupid, Love among others, using the actor's most emotionally intense scenes[4].

Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal

Q: What was the Ryan McHenry Indiegogo campaign?

Friends launched a fundraiser called "Ryan McHenry Won't Eat His Cancer" that raised more than its $10,000 goal in under a month to cover his expenses and fund his film Zombie Musical[1].

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Published September 25, 2026 · Version 4.0.1

Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal is a Vine series started in April 2013 by Scottish filmmaker Ryan McHenry, who filmed himself offering a spoonful of cereal to a TV playing Ryan Gosling's most anguished acting scenes, only for Gosling to always turn away. The six-second gag became one of Vine's earliest breakout hits and produced a bittersweet coda two years later when Gosling posted his very first Vine, eating cereal, as a tribute to McHenry after his death.

vine memes participatory video memes unwilling celebrity memes early 2010s memes death hoax tragedy memes

Overview

The setup is always the same six-second joke. A television plays a moment of Ryan Gosling doing his signature quiet-anguish acting from films like Drive, Blue Valentine or Crazy, Stupid, Love, and off-screen a hand slowly floats a spoon of what looks like Corn Flakes toward the actor's mouth. Gosling, on cue, turns his head, closes his eyes or walks out of frame, refusing the bite every time1. The perfectly matched timing between the on-screen performance and the real-world spoon is the entire gag, and it worked because Gosling's screen persona was already famous for brooding stillness2.

Creator Ryan McHenry cycled through dozens of Gosling scenes across the series, treating the actor's whole filmography as raw material for one running visual bit3. British and American tabloids ran with the premise straight, joking that Gosling apparently loathed breakfast cereal, which added a layer of fake-news absurdity on top of the video gag4. The Vines were among the earliest examples of using the platform's tight six-second loop as a punchline delivery system rather than as a diary clip, and outlets covering them treated the format itself as newsworthy5.

Origin & Background

Platform

Vine (origin) / YouTube (viral spread)

Creator

Ryan McHenry

Date

2013

Scottish filmmaker Ryan McHenry uploaded the first "Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal" Vine on April 22, 2013, and quickly followed it with more entries in the same format1. Each clip pointed a spoon at a screen playing a Gosling scene and let the actor's performance do the refusing. McHenry was a 25-year-old director at the time, best known within his local film community rather than online, and the Vines were an offhand side project6.

The first outside coverage came from the Ryan Gosling fan blog Gosloving on May 6, 2013, followed by a BuzzFeed roundup on May 9 that pushed the videos into wider circulation1. On May 11, McHenry posted his own compilation Vine of the series with a new clip included, which became the reference version many news sites embedded7.

How It Spread

Within a week of the BuzzFeed writeup, mainstream entertainment press piled on. E! Online called it the reason Vine was invented2, Vulture used it as a case study in why Gosling had become the internet's favorite meme target5, and the Daily Mail wrote a straight-faced article claiming the actor "loathes" cereal based on McHenry's clips4. A YouTube compilation of the Vines uploaded by user bleubonbontv on May 10 pulled in more than 3.6 million views within three months, giving the format legs beyond Vine's own app1.

The Fine Bros. folded the series into a July 4, 2013 "YouTubers React" episode about viral Vines, which crossed 5.3 million views in its first two months and introduced the joke to a much younger audience through familiar reactor faces1. By that point McHenry had said publicly that his only real ambition for the project was to get Gosling himself to respond, telling The Verge, "The only conclusion I can see out of this whole thing is to have Ryan Gosling respond to this. Even if it's just him eating cereal"8.

The story turned in the summer of 2013 when McHenry was diagnosed with osteosarcoma1. Friends launched an Indiegogo campaign called "Ryan McHenry Won't Eat His Cancer" that raised more than its $10,000 goal in under a month to cover his living costs and his in-progress feature Zombie Musical1. McHenry underwent nearly two years of chemotherapy and surgery before dying on May 3, 2015, at age 278. Vine's official account posted a farewell clip of him staring out of a train window, and the following day Ryan Gosling launched his very first personal Vine, a short of himself eating cereal, which drew roughly 250,000 likes and 120,000 revines within 36 hours1.

Fun Facts

McHenry was working on his first feature, a project called Zombie Musical, when he was diagnosed with cancer, and the Indiegogo campaign named after his meme helped fund it1.

In a 2015 BBC Radio 1 interview Ryan Gosling finally admitted he actually loves cereal, prompting a public exchange where he told McHenry on Twitter that he would never forgive him for starting the meme8.

Gosling had never posted a personal Vine until the day after McHenry's death, when his debut clip was, fittingly, of him eating a spoonful of cereal1.

The Daily Mail's May 2013 write-up played the joke completely straight, telling readers not to offer Gosling breakfast cereal if they wanted to impress him4.

The Fine Bros. "YouTubers React" episode built around the Vines pulled in more than 5.3 million views within two months, helping the six-second format cross into a YouTube audience1.

Derivatives & Variations

Follow-up Vines and YouTube edits that swap Gosling for other dramatic actors using the same spoon-to-screen framing[9].

Additional cereal-refusal clips catalogued in the notable examples reel that reuse McHenry's timing trick with different films[10].