Viral Internet Stars You Didn't Know Died In 2024

Fame is fickle and unpredictable, and it can take on many forms. Some people may train at a craft, profession, or art form for years and become celebrities because they're one of the best practitioners of their thing in the world. Others find themselves accidentally famous, thrust into the spotlight as the subject of a meme or after a small moment of their lives was captured on video and earned the attention, laughs, or hearts of millions when it went viral. This is a very particular, very modern breed of star. In their own way, they're just as famous as A-list actors or rock stars — even if a lot of people don't know their name, just their face or a thing they said once.

The downside of such fame is that their lives become inaccurately encapsulated and defined by one fleeting moment. While everybody dies, these individuals at least left their unique mark on the world, although often inadvertently or in a non-traditional manner. Many stars died in 2024 and no one noticed, particularly viral celebrities and meme inspirations. Here's a look at the lives and recent deaths of some people who were famous online for just a little while.

During widespread COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, when millions of Americans retreated to their homes, MIT-trained engineer Lynn Yamada Davis occupied herself by making instructional kitchen videos. With the help of her videographer son, Davis' numerous, short "Cooking with Lynja" videos, full of valuable cooking tips, recipes for homestyle favorites and pop culture-inspired creations, and silly jokes, populated TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Davis quickly amassed a total of 29.4 million subscribers across all platforms. Among her most popular and most viral videos: a step-by-step on how to make the McDonald's Szechuan sauce popularized by "Rick and Morty" and a Guiness World Record-breaking attempt at making the world's biggest chicken nugget.

In a tragic detail about famous celebrity chefs, Davis died at New Jersey's Riverview Medical Center on January 1, 2024, from the effects of esophageal cancer at the age of 67. "She was the best. So glad you guys got to experience how wonderful of a person she was and that you guys treated her so well," the online star's son and collaborator, Tim Davis, said in a YouTube obituary.

A singer-songwriter with an original approach — classic rock elements mixed with electronic dance music — Cat Janice took control of her rise to stardom, self-releasing her own compositions and performances via social media. Sadly, her most viral hit was influenced by tragic events in her personal life. Janice discovered a lump on her neck in November 2021, and she shared her cancer diagnosis in 2022. After a remission announcement, the cancer came back and was found in her lungs. Her health declined, with the singer entering a hospice program in January 2024. All of this featured in Janice's videos, as did a performance of a final song dedicated to her 7-year-old son, Loren. That tune, "Dance You Outta My Head," hit No. 1 on Billboard's TikTok chart and reached the top 10 of Billboard's dance music list, on its way to 12 million streams on Spotify.

On February 28, 2024, Janice's family used the singer's Instagram account to announce her death: "This morning, from her childhood home and surrounded by her loving family, Catherine peacefully entered the light and love of her heavenly creator." One of the musicians we lost in 2024, Janice was 31.

Carl Weathers was an important part of multiple pop culture franchises, making him one of Hollywood's go-to character actors for nearly 50 years and leading to his inclusion in one of the most memed images of the internet age. In the 2020s, he had a recurring role as bounty hunter Greef Karga on the Disney+ "Star Wars" series "The Mandalorian," which followed a self-deprecating turn as a penny-pinching parody of himself on "Arrested Development." Weathers played on his image as an action star and accomplished actor — he'd starred in four "Rocky" movies as boxer-turned-mentor Apollo Creed and in the 1987 action film "Predator" as CIA agent and alien stalker Al Dillon. A still from that movie would inspire a meme 20 years later. An image of Weathers' character arm-wrestling Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch was given an oil-painting treatment and became a symbol of unity and togetherness, although often in an ironic or tongue-in-cheek manner.

According to the family of the performer, athlete, and meme inspiration, Weathers died while sleeping at his Los Angeles home on February 2, 2024. The cause, per Weathers' death certificate, was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, a form of heart disease. Among the most prominent actors who passed away in 2024, Weathers was 76.

Eva Evans became a viral sensation for her social media posts that explored what it was like to try to build a life in New York City as a young person in the 21st century. Both funny and instructional, Evans' videos got to the heart of the joys and annoyances of New York, with one of her most popular and emblematic clips suggesting a neighborhood based on an apartment-seeker's horoscope. Those short films got the attention of Amazon, which distributed Evans' "Club Rat," a narrative series that referenced the viral fame of its creator (although her character had become an internet sensation after an embarrassing breakup video). Through it all, Evans built an audience of more than 300,000 subscribers on TikTok.

On April 21, 2024, Evans' sister, Lila Joy, broke the news on Instagram that the TikTok star had died the previous day. Family declined to reveal a cause of death for Evans, who was 29 years old; the New York City Medical Examiner's Office later reported that Evans died by suicide.

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In 2008, Atsuko Sato of Sakura, Japan, rescued a dog from a shelter. She named the shiba inu Kabosu, and two years later she posted a photo to her blog of Kabosu sitting on a couch with crossed paws. It hit big on Reddit, and the picture of the curious-looking dog took off across the internet as a meme, usually with people adding their own intentionally choppy ideas of what the dog, or "doge," must be thinking. Known as "Doge," that image inspired Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency touted by influential billionaire Elon Musk.

In what would be her final years, Kabosu was diagnosed with liver disease and leukemia, and those conditions would lead to the death of the famous dog on May 24, 2024. "She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her," Sato wrote on her blog (via BBC). "I think Kabo-chan was the happiest dog in the world. And I was the happiest owner." As Kabosu was adopted after she was fully grown, her exact age is unclear; Sato believes the dog was about 18 years old.

In 2021, 28-year-old Dr. Kimberley Nix was in the midst of her last year of residency before she became a fully practicing physician. Around that time, she received a diagnosis of metastatic sarcoma — a form of cancer that developed in her soft tissue — and she decided to chronicle her treatments and health concerns on TikTok and Instagram. Her intimate, honest videos and advocacy messages won her a following, with more than 137,000 TikTok subscribers and others watching her videos more than a million times. Dr. Nix's most-seen and most viral video, with more than 9 million hits, was intended to be her last post. Recorded in case she died from cancer, Dr. Nix struggles to maintain composure as she says goodbye to her followers and marks the end of her cancer journey and brief life.

Three years after receiving her cancer diagnosis, Dr. Nix died in Calgary, Alberta, on May 8, 2024. The doctor was 31 years old.

Too young to have her own social media accounts, Bella Thomson became a TikTok sensation through videos posted by her mother, Kyla Thomson. Throughout childhood, Bella – or "Bella Brave," as she became known on the internet — faced serious health problems, including the bowel disorder Hirschsprung's disease as well as severe combined immunodeficiency. The Thomsons' videos attracted more than 245 million views, and most of them depicted Bella Brave's many medical appointments, surgeries, and hospital stays, or just trying to act like a normal kid despite her daunting physical limitations. The most viral clip of all, with 106 million views: Bella listing all the things she'd included in her cat-shaped backpack in advance of a trip to Walmart.

After a bowel transplant failed to correct some of Bella's health issues, doctors placed the child in a medical coma in July 2024 to help her recover from a lung-based viral infection. On July 14, 2024, Bella died at the age of 10. "Our brave girl left her legacy here on earth to dance on streets of gold," Kyla Thomson captioned a tribute video on TikTok. "Bella passed peacefully in our arms."

Aanvi Kamdar was an accountant by trade but followed her passion for travel with the Instagram account @theglocaljournal. She posted pictures and videos of her travels to luxurious beaches, important historical sites, and natural wonders in Asia, primarily in her home country of India. Kamdar amassed more than 320,000 followers on her Instagram account full of photos, clips, and travel tips. In July 2024, she visited the Kumbhe waterfall with a group of seven friends.

Tragically, Kamdar died in the pursuit of the content that made her travel-based account so popular. While filming a video at that waterfall in the state of Maharashtra in western India, Kamdar misjudged a surface, slipped, and fell nearly 350 feet into a gorge adjacent to the waterfall. Rescue crews were able to locate Kamdar, but couldn't save her from the serious injuries sustained in the fall. The travel influencer was pronounced dead at the age of 27.

Australian man Jack Karlson was minding his own business, enjoying a meal at a Brisbane restaurant in 1991, when police burst in, nabbed him, and pulled him out of the building and into a waiting patrol car. Authorities thought Karlson was a Hungarian criminal wanted for robbing restaurants around the world, but they got the wrong man, and Karlson went verbosely apoplectic as police dragged him off. "What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?" he rhetorically asked arresting police (according to The New Zealand Herald). Among the other choice lines delivered: "Get your hand off my penis!" and "Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest. Have a look at the headlock here."

A quirky news story at the time of its origination in 1991, the clip of Karlson's ranting went viral around Australia and in the rest of the world when it re-emerged in 2009. Karlson again captured headlines when his niece, Kim Edwards, started a Go Fund Me drive in June 2024 to pay for her uncle's prostate cancer treatments and cataract surgery. Karlson died just two months later. He was 82 years old.

Jack Palmer was one of those people who became viral stars because they lost it on camera. In 2012, Jack and Sonja Palmer were enlisted to appear in a TV commercial for Dysart's, a truck-stop diner in the Bangor, Maine, area. Jack Palmer was supposed to deliver a simple line praising the restaurant's chicken pot pie for its "buttery, flaky crust." But no matter how hard or how often he tried, he just couldn't get it right. A two-minute-long blooper reel full of Palmer botching the line hit the internet and racked up more than 9.6 million views. The video captivated online audiences due to a combination of Palmer's silly-sounding flubs, background giggles, and Sonja Palmer's increasing, palpable annoyance with her husband. The Dysart's ad blooper reached such cultural prominence that it inspired a "Saturday Night Live" sketch about a disastrous diner commercial shoot.

"Thank you, Jack, for making millions of people laugh and smile," Ric Tyler, the commercial's director and leaker of the blooper reel, wrote on Dysart's Facebook page announcing Palmer's death in August 2024. The accidental viral star was 86 years old.

A major force in the club-based Houston rap scene of the 21st century, BeatKing (also known as Justin Riley) produced and collaborated with big names like Bun B, T-Pain, Ludacris, and 2 Chainz. He found national attention in his own right in 2010 with the organically spreading hit "Crush" and then went viral again 10 years later. In 2020, his single "Then Leave" became a national hit, going to No. 3 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart, popularized by voluminous use on TikTok. What would ultimately be BeatKing's last album, "Never Leave Houston on a Sunday," saw release in July 2024, just before the musician's unexpected death.

BeatKing's manager, Tasha Felder, announced via Instagram on August 15, 2024, that her client had died, joining the list of rappers who died tragically. "He has produced and worked with so many artists, that his sound will forever live," Felder wrote. "He loved his daughters, his music and his fans. We will love him forever." Riley was 39 years old; the cause of death was a pulmonary embolism.