One of my favorite times of the year is when a new installment of the Fast and the Furious franchise is released. It’s not just because I can look forward to over-the-top stunts, non-stop action, and dramatically punctuated dialogue, but because my proselytizing of Vin Diesel’s Facebook page becomes that much less of an annoyance. With Furious 7 pulling $800 million in worldwide box office receipts, what better opportunity to spread the gospel far and wide?
Currently, Vin Diesel’s Facebook page has over 90 million likes—more than twice as many likes as Barack Obama’s page. Vin also has the fourth most popular celebrity Facebook page, behind athlete Cristiano Ronaldo (102 million), Shakira (100 million), and Eminem (nearly 92 million). What makes Vin’s page stand out amongst these celebrities and qualifies it as the Actual Best Thing is Vin’s sharing of inspirational quote memes that integrate text and photos of himself in highly compelling ways. He shares quotes from great men, including Mahatma Gandhi, the Buddha, Nelson Mandela, and Rumi:
The most inspiring memes, however, are generated by way of quotes from Diesel himself:
Though you were no doubt converted into a follower a few images ago, why not become further convinced by the holiday cheer Vin spreads through text and image design?
And then there are those images that remain just a little confusing, either aesthetically or rationally, but are nonetheless absolutely thrilling to behold:
An important note about these images is that many include signatures which assign proper credit to their creators. Though some are ambiguous in this regard, all of them appear to share a similar text and visual aesthetic, seemingly inspired by the multitude of images Vin shares with his millions-strong fan base. Indeed, Vin’s Facebook community has become his family, a driving idea behind the Fast and Furious franchise.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly a couple of years ago, Diesel explained the evolution of his Facebook presence and confirms his direct involvement with its posts:
So, when I had started my page, the only person that had a million fans was Barack Obama. Because it was first-quarter 2009, and he’d just got elected as President, because of social media. So, when I started talking to the fans, I became the No. 1 page in the world. Over Coca-Cola, over huge companies. And it was only because I said: “Hi, guys, I love you.”
Facebook used to ask me to come up to their office to explain what the fuck I was doing, and why I had so many fans. What was unique was: I never let anyone do a post, I never let anyone post for me in the last four years. My audience knows me so well on the page that if my producing partner’s in the room when I post, they’ll know somebody was around me. That’s kind of cool, that’s how sophisticated they are. Facebook really owes me billions of dollars. But whatever.
I invite you all: Won’t you join our family? We never squabble, and we always have one another’s backs. We radiate positivity. We want to make the Internet a better place. And we’re waiting to welcome you home.
Photo via Vin Diesel/Facebook
