Meet the NASCAR fan who created the enduring 'It's Gonna Be May' meme

Original source (on modern site) | Article images: [1] [2]

Nine years after he became the subject of one of the internet's most enduring memes, Justin Timberlake logged into his account on what was then called Twitter and wrote: "Now that it's ACTUALLY May, I have to give props where they are due. Look what you started @astro_kianna."

What Kianna Davis started was this: In 2012, as a college student looking at her busy upcoming schedule, she pasted a picture of Timberlake at the end of the April page on her wall calendar, accompanied by the words "It's Gonna Be."

Thus the "It's Gonna Be May" meme, a play on the way Timberlake pronounces the lyric in NSYNC's 2000 song "It's Gonna Be Me," was born, a viral reaction that shocked Davis at the time and has since become a source of pride as it continues to maintain a life of its own 12 years later.

"I just did it to make like 10 of my NSYNC friends laugh," she told The Athletic last week. "I wasn't trying to go viral or anything like that. It was very weird."

You're welcome, internet. #itsgonnabemay pic.twitter.com/CsfznW8QO7

— 👩🏾‍🚀Astro⁷✨ (@astro_kianna) April 30, 2018

Though she's best known for her fandom of NSYNC, which she discovered around 1997, another passion of hers was born in the same year: NASCAR.

Elliott Sadler was making an appearance with a show car at the workplace of Davis' mother, and Sadler left a big impression on the then-elementary school student. Sadler even picked her up and put her inside the car.

That sparked a lifelong fandom of NASCAR, which has progressed to a current rooting interest in Bubba Wallace (her favorite), plus Tyler Reddick, Ryan Blaney and Austin Cindric.

"Until a few years ago, my friends didn't really pay attention to NASCAR because they'd say, 'Well, it's not for us,'" Davis said. But recent pushes toward inclusion, plus Wallace's success, have finally made more of her community take notice.

"I'm very loud about trying to bring more attention to it," she added.

Davis, now a 33-year-old who works as an operations analyst, has also gotten more comfortable about attending races because "there didn't used to be many people who looked like me," which she found frustrating. These days, she's made a "Bubba Squad" friend group through social media and they often try to attend NASCAR events together.

Kianna Davis poses with NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace. (Courtesy of Kianna Davis)

But although Davis has become a notable presence in NASCAR's online community — she's even followed by some 23XI Racing employees, plus driver Brad Perez — many of those who interact with her seemingly have no idea she's responsible for the Timberlake meme.

"It cracks me up," she said. "I can't wait to hear what they say when they find out about this."

Friends in real life often introduce her as the woman behind the meme, but sometimes she has to send articles from places like CNN to prove it's really her. For several years, she was not recognized as the meme's creator, as others on the internet tried to take credit.

Finally, around 2015, enough people had tagged NSYNC's Lance Bass that it got his attention.

"Lance started being the cheerleader for it and was the first one to really recognize it," Davis said.

Bass even had Davis on his podcast in 2020, and Timberlake then acknowledged her as the meme creator in 2021 (and also called Davis "a legend" on the Bass podcast). Since then, Timberlake has invited her to a show in Memphis (she drove 10 hours through snow and ice from her Virginia home), but they have yet to meet. She plans to attend an upcoming Timberlake show in Raleigh, N.C.

Now that it's ACTUALLY May, I have to give props where they are due. Look what you started @astro_kianna 😂 https://t.co/Vl3AIDMqWo

— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) May 1, 2021

This is always a particularly busy time of year for Davis, who gets interview requests and constant notifications on her phone whenever May approaches. Like others, she's spoken with who have gone viral, she said, it seems to happen when the creator least expects it.

That was certainly the case in 2012, which seems like another era of the internet. But by the morning after she'd posted the meme, it had blown up on Tumblr and her phone was popping off all day during her classes at University of Mary Washington.

Even now, it continues to find all sorts of uses. When quarterback Drake Maye was drafted by the New England Patriots last week, the NFL's main account posted: "It's gonna be Maye."

But the greatest joys for Davis are when her passions intersect (she's also a Space Camp graduate who is deeply into all things aerospace). So when Wallace recently had a news conference last month at Talladega with two Black astronauts, she was thrilled.

"When I was growing up, if you had told me there would be a moment where a Black astronaut and a Black NASCAR driver were meeting and taking pictures together, there's no way I would have believed you," she said.

(Top photo of Kianna Davis: Courtesy of Kianna Davis)

Jeff Gluck has been traveling on the NASCAR beat since 2007, with stops along the way at USA Today, SB Nation, NASCAR Scene magazine and a Patreon-funded site, JeffGluck.com. He's been hosting tweetups at NASCAR tracks around the country since 2009 and was named to SI's Twitter 100 (the top 100 Twitter accounts in sports) for five straight years.