On December 29, 2014, an 18-year-old American tourist filmed her guide during a trek near Volcanoes National Park in northwestern Rwanda: the camera pans from the vista to the guide, who responds to her greeting with a shy smile and a single "okay." The guide, named Bizagwira "Marc" and nicknamed "Jackson" by his colleagues, had no idea he had been filmed and, with limited internet access, only learned he was internet-famous months later when someone at a local community center told him.

The clip spread as the #OkayMovement, a wave of remixes that splice the guide's bashful "okay" onto music videos, film scenes and TV footage as a deadpan punchline. The reuse pattern crystallized on February 21, 2015, when Viner xpacNino set the clip to Kanye West's 2012 track "Mercy," a mashup that drew over 23 million loops in a month; the following day the original Vine was reposted to Reddit's /r/videos, pushing it further into mainstream feeds. The original Vine accumulated more than 25 million loops in its first three months.

When a journalist later tracked the guide down, he laughed at the footage and said he was proud of the attention, though he remained bemused by the remixes.