AAP FactCheck – Multiple social media posts of Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves endorsing causes from Trumpism to gun rights and veterans issues is not a glitch in the Matrix – they are examples of a manipulated photo of the star.
An investigation by AAP FactCheck has discovered a plethora of different versions of a Keanu Reeves meme in which he holds up a T-shirt endorsing a cause, and they are all fake.
Examples include Facebook posts1 featuring Reeves supposedly holding up a T-shirt promoting veterans' issues, gun rights, nationalist causes, anti-vaccine issues, and both US 2024 presidential candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
This Facebook post shares a fake image of Reeves supposedly promoting a US veterans T-shirt. (Facebook/AAP)
The Trump post went viral in the middle of the year and was fact-checked by multiple organisations, such as Yahoo2 and Snopes3, as well as social media users on X4.
The Yahoo article says the Trump Keanu post5 went viral in mid-September 2024, but it actually appeared on Facebook as early as July 22, 2024.
Each of the posts includes a lengthy tribute to Reeves' character, which variously begin with "Happy birthday Keanu Reeves" or "Well worth reading" or jump straight into the tribute, which begins with a story about Reeves waiting in the rain for 20 minutes to get into his own party.
The story6 has been around since 2014.
The original photo that's been adapted for the posts doesn't include a T-shirt at all. It's a simple front-facing picture of Reeves, owned and distributed by Getty Images7.
According to the photo credit, it was taken on November 8, 2017, at the EICMA's8 Milan motorcycle fair. Reeves is wearing the same red and black Arch Motorcycle cap, black suit jacket and black Arch Motorcycle T-shirt.
Keanu Reeves, pictured at the 2016 Australian MotoGP, is a big fan of motorsport. (Tracey Nearmy/AAP PHOTOS)
A YouTube clip9 from the same event shows an interview with Reeves wearing the same outfit.
A TinEye reverse image search10 of the Reeves meme reveals the earliest version of it appears to date back to October 2018.
