ZDMedia is now dedicated to the loving memory of one of our group, and one of my closest friends, Jeff Landry.
Jeff has mostly been well-known online as Ffej, from a span in the 2010’s where he became a minor e-celebrity working with a group of guys who ran some of the most viral well-known meme pages on Facebook. The group called themselves “The Neckbeards”, adopting an insult at the time for the fact they were all large guys with neckbeards, and wearing it proudly. While some of that group have been exposed as using their time in the spotlight to do some less-than-savory things, Jeff often used his influence for the greater good.
Instead of grifting off of his platform to manipulate and use his audience, he chose instead to organize an annual Christmas toy drive. Underprivileged families could message him for help getting their children presents, he would add these requests to an Amazon wishlist, and he would use his platform to help find people willing to fill these requests. Despite the fact he had gained thousands of fans, he never seemed to treat any individual as insignificant. He was as much a fan of his audience as they were of him. Anyone was welcome to message him for a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board to vent to, or always glad to just receive a good meme. He wasn’t just a friend to his audience, but the rare kind of good friend who treated you like you mattered.
I first encountered Jeff early on after creating my Facebook profile. He and his friends ran several meme pages, and the first one I saw him posting on was themed around Adventure Time (either Gentleman Finn or Finn The Human, I forget which). One of his favorite things to do on the pages he ran was to engage with his audience and have discussions in the comments. It was mostly shitposts, but we all got in on the fun to shitpost with him. Talking to him about this years later, I think we all made him laugh as much as he did us. Eventually we talked in private and became friends, as he was as entertained by some of my sarcastic shitposts as I was his.
In 2016, we discovered a very strange phenomenon online. Jeff and I started discussing a series of strange posts from an account that dabbled in the occult. As we started investigating, we uncovered what appeared to be a small cult hiding in the New Mexico desert. They were running indoctrination classes for kids, as well as performing illegal abortions for political reasons and hiding the fetuses in their remote location. While it was one of the strangest things I’ve seen online, this investigation would be the first time we collaborated on a project directly and would lead to us getting to know each other personally. Afterwards, we developed a habit of sending each other some of the strangest things we found online to discuss them.
During the pandemic, Jeff developed an interest in setting up his own media server. At the time I had been dabbling in it for a couple of years myself, so we ended up chatting about it. We put together a plan and collaborated on building a server together to learn more about self-hosting. At this point we were talking daily for hours on end, and in that time Jeff became one of my closest friends. He had so many friends I’m not sure if he would count me the same, but I can say he did make a point to let me know he cared. We built some of the coolest projects together, shared memes and TikToks with each other constantly, and became an almost daily part of each other’s lives.
Jeff had one of the kindest, most caring souls I’ve ever encountered. I’ll miss you so much man. This whole homelab project I’ve built from what I’ve learned collaborating with you, is now dedicated to your memory. Thank you for everything.