This is the story of how my Leaning Tower of Dallas meme led me to the creator of one of my favorite childhood video games, Rampage!
The Leaning Tower of Dallas has caused quite a stir in Dallas. It has been covered by national and international news. It was comical seeing people react to it, I even did a series of photos of people posing with it. On Monday, Feb 25th, they said they were going to tear the tower down once and for all some time shortly after 9 AM.
I went out there right at 9 AM to watch the Leaning Tower of Dallas finally fall. My former boss, Ray Myers, came out and joined me to watch the spectacle.
After an hour of waiting the demo crew finally hooked up the wrecking ball to the crane. Interestingly, the wrecking ball looked way too small. They began swinging it and hitting the top of the tower. Each hit seemed so puny, barely any sound and no damage.
After about an hour we got word that the demolition company wasn’t going to tear the tower down in one day. They planned on knocking it down little by little, one floor at a time. They said it will take several days to complete. After about an hour of “demolishing,” we both left and went to work.
When I went home I looked over the photos I took of the building that morning and read articles and posts about how people were so disappointed with the extremely slow demolition. It’s now 3 days later and it’s still mostly standing.
The Meme
Then I suddenly remembered the Nintendo video game I played a lot as a kid, Rampage. I wished could tear that tower down with some monsters like in that game. So to be funny, I photoshopped the characters from the game onto the tower and posted it on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit and titled it, “The proper way to demolish a building… 80’s style.
To surprise the posts went viral on all three platforms! Getting thousands of likes and hundreds of shares. It even made it onto the news the next morning!
A Facebook page called Chaz’s Arcade shared the meme not knowing it was me who made it. In the description of the image, they asked who made it, a friend of mine noticed and tagged me in the photo. I told them it was me and they gave me credit. But this is the crazy part, in our conversation about who made the meme another guy commented that he knew who made the original game.. the guy it turned out was the creator of the original Rampage game!!
I could not believe it, I sent him and friend request and he accepted. Because of my viral meme, I’m now social media friends with the creator of one of my favorite childhood video games!! It was a wild and fun 24 hours! He then left this comment on my meme:
