The Greatest Prank You Never Heard Of: The Legend of Jeremy Cosmosis
“This is high school!!!!!” - Jeremy Cosmosis, 2016... and 2017..... and 2018......... and 2019.................
Student council elections in my high school were less about policy and more about who could bribe students with the best baked goods. You could have put it all on stage and made it a Broadway production for how extravagant and flashy students’ campaigns would be.
Juniors would show up carrying beautiful Cricket-crafted posters with extremely clever slogans, snacks, or even full-blown MEALS to hand to students in hopes that they got their vote. Let’s be honest… it was a popularity contest, but I didn’t care because PHEW, those donuts were good.
You could see each candidate’s personality shine through according to the creative choices they made in how they promoted themselves. But there was one boy whose simplicity, determination, and consistency would outperform any candidate, sparkly poster, or sweet treat—one boy who would change everything.
APRIL 2016
I was 15 years old, and for the first time, I had a big decision to make: Who the heck am I going to vote for THE student body president? It could change the school FOREVER, for all I knew!
I walked around the school and admired everyone’s posters—ooooo so fun! One poster stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the colorful, elaborate signs. Other freshmen were looking at it with confusion:
Oh, what’s that? You can’t read the 8.5 x 11 piece of black and white printer paper next to the ginormous colorful posters? Let me blow it up for you:
“If you like osmosis, Vote for Cosmosis”
My mind went blank. “I’m sorry… who?”
Suddenly, an upperclassman friend whipped around to my side and said:
“Aw, c’mon, Hannah! You don’t know Jeremy? Jeremy Cosmosis! He’s such a great kid. I really hope he wins president this year!”
… Jeremy Cosmosis? Uhhm… okay! Never seen him, let alone heard of him. Each class had roughly 200 kids—small enough where you’d know most people but big enough that a few might slip through the cracks. I was only a freshman, so no wonder everyone else in my grade was a bit perplexed as well—Jeremy must not be very well-known amongst the general crowd.
I took a closer look at the flyer. “If you like osmosis” … ? I mean, it’s funny, don’t get me wrong, but could he not think of a clever rhyme or something? At least he’s embracing the high school spirit with his 'This is High School!!!!' comment. Jeremy is simply the underdog—HE HAS MY VOTE!
A few days passed, and it was time for candidates to give their speeches. Each person went through their 3 minute spiel, but there was one problem: there was no Jeremy. Word eventually got around that he was sick with the flu and had to miss school that day, and the rule was that if you can’t give a speech, your name can’t be on the ballot. My best friend’s older brother won president (HUGE win, Kevin! HUGE!), and the school year continued.
APRIL 2017
One year later, I was 16 years old. I was going onto year 4 wearing my braces, and I wanted to pry them off my teeth with some Home Depot pliers :)
It was time again for elections, and the next batch of contenders were preparing their promotional materials. I wasn’t thinking much of it, considering I had learned that the student council didn’t have a real job or impact in the grand scheme of things—I’ll vote for whoever candidate’s mom could think of the funniest slogan and make the best cake pops!
The hallways were covered with fun campaign posters, and I saw a group of freshmen gathered around a specific area, staring at the wall. I made my way over, and there it was with its blue painters tape: It was… the SAME Jeremy Cosmosis, and the SAME flyer?
I hadn’t thought of Jeremy since the last election, and I surely did not run into him at any point. What the—HE DIDN’T EVEN CHANGE THE 2016 CLIPART ON THE POSTER! An upperclassman walked up to the confused freshmen and said:
“He’s gonna get ‘em! Everyone vote for Jeremy for president! Hopefully he doesn’t get sick like last year.”
Confusion ensued. I responded with, “But, isn’t he a senior at this point? He wouldn’t even be able to or want to run.”
”He got held back for missing too much school for being sick all the time. This is his year!”
B R O. What?
When I looked him up on Instagram, I saw this:
Okay, I’ve definitely never seen him before, but it looks like he could work at Dave’s Cosmic Subs? Although, I had gone to Dave’s PLENTY of times and Jeremy had NEVER made me a #8 The Crazy Dave™.
A few days passed, and it was time for the students to give their student council speeches again. And… to my surprise… no Jeremy. I go on Instagram, and I see this:
… hold the phone! So… he got sick last year and missed speeches, got held back, tried running AGAIN, and then got sick… AGAIN?
Based on my observations, I came to a conclusion. J e r e m y. I s n ‘ t. R e a l.
At this point, I had been convinced for about a year that Jeremy was an actual student who attended my school. I figured it out, but the thing about the whole scheme is that it’s designed to always target at least one whole grade. It’s easy to convince a group of 14/15-year-olds that are new to school that a boy whom they haven’t met before wants to become president but then eventually gets the flu and can’t run. Then, the next year, you just cycle out the target with a new group of unsuspecting students who could easily fall into the trap, ensuring the joke stayed fresh. It’s… genius.
I had an appreciation for the joke and verbally expressed to my friends how I knew he wasn’t a real person. Well, the very few people who initially told me that he was a real person would not admit that he was fake. They’d say things like “Hannah… what are you talking about? Jeremy is real. You just haven’t met him before.” And you know… ha ha ha, very funny, JOKES OVER! But they kept going. People I called my friends were talking about Jeremy to my face as if he was next door in geometry class.
I had a “forget it” mentality and just kept moving forward. After all, I had a Meal Ministry meeting from 3-6 and Fiddler on the Roof rehearsal from 6-9! THERE IS NO TIME FOR SHENANIGANS!
March 2018
I am now an upperclassman, and I am the oldest a child can legally be at the age of 17. My braces were off, but my brain was turned on. I tried blocking out Jeremy Cosmosis from my memory despite hearing subtle mentions of his name.
It was time for elections, and this time, it was my own grade’s turn to run. Lo and behold… I saw the same 2016 flyer with the BLUE STINKIN’ TAPE ALL AROUND THE HALLS AND HOW IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE IF THE CLASSES TWO GRADES ABOVE ME KNEW OF JEREMY COSMOSIS AND HAVEN’T BEEN HERE FOR THE LAST 3 CALENDAR YEARS HOW IS THIS STILL GOING ON?
“CMOOOOON JEREMY! He’s going to make it! He has GOT to stay healthy this year!”
I looked around, and the underclassmen were falling for it: confused, yet convinced. The worst part was that people who knew he wasn’t real but also didn’t know who Jeremy was would just play along with it. They too talked about Jeremy like he was real just… ‘cuz. My friends were feeding into the madness! Have we all gone insane? No… have I GONE INSANE?
I tweeted, and immediately got a repost:
I do think you’re playin’, Jeremy. Remember when I said “No time for Shenanigans” in the last section? What I meant to say was that THERE’S ALWAYS TIME FOR SHENANIGANS!
I knew Jeremy wasn’t real. I knew it. But… something weird happened. The more people talked about him, the more my brain doubted itself. There was this tiny voice whispering, 'What if he is real and you’re just the one idiot who’s never met him?'
If you look up the definition of “gaslighting” on Urban Dictionary, this photo shows up:
And that was the real magic of Jeremy Cosmosis—it wasn't about whether he was real. It was about how many people could convince themselves he was.
At my high school, the “pit” was a big hub in the middle of the library for students to work or have study halls. I just looked to see if there was a picture on Google and found this 3D model of a future-renovated pit that I guess is in the works:
That big red arrow is pointing to where I was standing for 10 minutes waiting for Jeremy, just as he requested. I had my hands out, circling like a gazelle that just realized it's surrounded in the middle of the Serengeti—Jeremy could have been anywhere. I wasn’t looking for the Jeremy that I knew from the three low-quality mirror selfies on Instagram; I would be looking for the person who REPRESENTED Jeremy’s mind. At this point, I knew it had to be one of my friends, but there was no one to be found.
I started going up to tables of freshman who had no idea who I was saying “JEREMY? WHICH ONE OF YOU IS JEREMY?” They were startled, and rightfully so.
The clock struck 8:56, and homeroom ended. All of the students got up from their seats and started gathering their books to be on their way to their next class as if the mystery haunting these halls had been solved. BUT IT HADN’T BEEN SOLVED, YOU IDIOTS! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING?!
It’s important to note that I am not an angry person by any means—I actually feel that I am quite the opposite: understanding, patient, and loving! I think I’ve really only been truly angry twice in my life, both moments being in high school. This was one of those moments.
It was now YEAR 3 that Jeremy was running for school president, and now I, the only one who cares enough to figure this out by taking action and voicing my thoughts, am getting punished? I get it… it was just a joke that I got more invested than most… BUT WHY DOES NO ONE ELSE WONDER WHO JEREMY IS?! MYSTERY INC. IS SCOOBY DOO AND THE GANG—NOT JUST SCOOBY DOO! I WAS BEING TREATED LIKE A DOG!
I stomped to my next class filled with friends who didn’t know who operated the Jeremy scheme but knew I was on a determined quest for official Cosmosis identification. They saw me walk in and said, “DID YOU SEE HIM? DID YOU SEE JEREMY?? WHO IS IT, WHO IS IT?”
“HE DIDN’T SHOW UP!!!!”
I was never meant to be the main target of the Jeremy Cosmosis story—I made the decision to lean in on trying to solve the mystery of who Jeremy was, which meant the brains behind the operation, even if they were a friend of mine, were forced to lean into making me the target. What are they going to do, just reveal who it is? Of course not! Instead, they did what any great prankster would do: they made observations and shifted their approach. They watched a child go insane from afar, stand in the middle of a giant room by herself for 10 minutes, thinking she was going to be confronted by a boy who did not exist.
You may be thinking “But Hannah… did you ever find out who Jeremy was?!?!??”
Oh, I did. And… I don’t remember much about it.
Yep, that’s right. I paid thousands of dollars for a journalism degree to not recall what is the most important part of this groundbreaking, investigative story that everyone cares about so much including you and thank you so much for supporting The Hansan Blog okay back to the story.
Here’s the thing: My blank memory just goes to show how heightened the situation was at the time that I would have had to black out during the part that mattered to me most. They were the fooler, and I was the fooled.
Luckily, after contacting some very important key SOURCES like any good journalist would while writing this story, I was able to gather some information to clear up any fuzziness in my memory. Here is what I remember:
I believe the original Jeremy’s (who had been well into college at this point) were in the know via current Cosmosis representatives enrolled in my high school that I was bashing my head against a wall being the only one willing to crack the Cosmosis Code. I don’t remember what triggered it specifically or how it happened, but soon after the Pit incident, one of the original creators of Jeremy, a girl who was a few years older than me but whom I’ve known since kindergarten, reached out to me personally over text to congratulate me on my efforts in adding some gasoline to the fire that was Jeremy Cosmosis. She revealed that she and her friends were the ones I’ve been looking for.
Jeremy was started in 2016 when the original friend group were juniors—they made the poster and Instagram account, making it easy to pass down once they graduated. By the time 2018 came, it had been passed down to some of my friends, one being the younger sibling of one of the original Jeremy’s.
Out of respect for the Cosmosis lineage, those who founded Jeremy Cosmosis and those who helped me gather information for this blog will remain nameless. But I will say that once I found out who it was, it all made sense, and my appreciation for the joke and its incredible consistency grew by a trillion percent. You know who you are, and I thank you for your contribution to this blog and for creating Jeremy.
It was also in this text that she asked me if I wanted be one of the Jeremy’s for next year’s elections.
APRIL 2019
At this point of my high school career, I was 18 years old, a grown adult, and quite possibly the oldest student enrolled. By April, I had my college commitment figured out, straight As were rolling, and I had all the time in the world to ham around the halls.
I joined forces with Team Cosmosis, and we started printing dozens of “Like Osmosis? Vote for Cosmosis!” posters.
May I present to you the original copy that I found in my Google photos:
Yeah… IN COLOR. I saw this rare copy in PDF form splashed with red and blue, and it felt like it was 1954 and I was watching the first color television broadcast.
I went to the library and printed approximately 40 copies for my friends and I to put around the school. Although I never had any part of the Instagram page, printing alone felt like I was operating within a major, multi-leveled scheme. And it’s because I was. And it was awesome.
I now was a friend of Jeremy, in which I spoke about him as if he was a student enrolled in our school that had now gotten held back not one, not two, but three times. In a way, he was a student, just like the rest of us.
Soon, the freshmen were quickly passing the election posters but spending a little more time looking at Jeremy rather than the beautiful posters made by people who were real and not made-up. I was thrilled beyond belief.
The best part? The teacher (We will call her Ms. Disco) who moderated the student council elections was made aware of Jeremy. She was not a teacher I ever had, but I knew that most students did NOT like her due to a poor approach to effectively teaching the students paired with an equally poor attitude. My friends weren’t being little farts—students genuinely didn’t benefit from her in an educational or personal sense… she just wasn’t nice.
Like I said before, the student council didn’t play a large role in the operation of the school, so while my friends would have done a GREAT job making actual positive change during our senior year, they weren’t allowed to do much. Jeremy Cosmosis did not interfere with the actual election process, considering he was, oh I don’t know, NOT A REAL PERSON MS. DISCO?!!??
Well, the day after we put up the posters, an official Cosmosis Insider ran up to me and said “HANNAH HANNAH! MS. DISCO GOT SO MAD THAT PEOPLE WERE PUTTING UP JEREMY POSTERS AGAIN AND SHE WAS LITERALLY RIPPING THEM ALL OFF THE WALLS!”
We had struck teenager prank gold. In that moment, I realized that my whole high school career asking the question “Who is Jeremy Cosmosis?” was worth the patience and mental strain.
PRESENT DAY/FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, I want this blog to be an appreciation piece for long-term and harmless pranks.
Pranks can be cruel—take one look at any prank couple on YouTube and tell me you don’t feel like you just lost 10 IQ points after watching. While their content is so obviously fake and scripted, some of the setups, if done in real life, are ones that would genuinely hurt someone’s feelings or low-key even be physically and mentally dangerous. It relies on shock factor and heightens a target’s emotions to get a laugh or views… NOT COOL!
You see, Jeremy Cosmosis was such a success because it had low stakes, had no intention to upset anyone, and was risk-free. Everyone was involved one way or another, and its stupidity made it automatically hilarious. Did it cause my eye to twitch sometimes? Yes! Did it become a deeply effective psychological experiment? Of course it did! But I would be lying if I said I didn’t have so much fun with it throughout my 4 years of high school, and I think everyone else had fun too. Well, except for Ms. Disco. But it’s all about what you make of it, Ms. Disco! IT WAS JUST GOOD, CLEAN, HARMLESS FUN, MS. DISCO!
And you know what? By my senior year, most people in my grade and the grade below us knew Jeremy was just a figment of our imagination—but did that stop us from talking about him? Absolutely not. Jeremy brought people together. He was a friend to all. He deserved to be talked about.
When I reached out to my one friend who was once Jeremy to ask her questions for the blog, she said: “I cannot express to you how much joy this is bringing me talking about it cause like I haven’t thought about Jeremy Cosmosis in YEARS but it was such a fun thing and SO FUNNY.” She also, 100% in all seriousness, asked me “You like… know Jeremy isn’t a real person right?”
Also, one aspect I was wondering since 2016 up to the writing of this blog was… WHO IS THAT GUY IN THE PICTURES?! SERIOUSLY, WHO IS THAT GUY?! My friend cleared it up: it turns out he was a micro-celebrity musician that the friend group knew no one else would know, so they took his posted pictures from 2012 and called it a day. I am happy to report that “Jeremy” is now an actual, touring musician who was able to succeed despite his inability to win the elections year after year.
Over the last few weeks, a few friends asked me what my next blog would be about. When I told them “Jeremy Cosmosis,” their reaction was “AWH Jeremy! I forgot about him! I wonder what he’s up to nowadays.” Jeremy never won student body president, but he is still remembered.
So, what’s the lesson of this story? 1) The best pranks are harmless, fun, and bring people together. 2) If you ever find yourself caring about something way more than everyone else, lean into it. Your passion and curiosity might just lead you to something unexpectedly great—even if it involves a nonexistent person.
A few days ago, I was on the phone with my best friend and told her I was writing the next blog piece about Jeremy from our high school years. She asked me who that was. My response?
“………….. You know, Jeremy Cosmosis? He was that one boy a few years older than us that would get held back—he always wanted to run for president but kept getting sick?”
And she said: “Oh! Uhhhhhhhmmmmm… I don’t remember him. But that sucks that he got sick so much!”
GOT ‘ER!
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This just made my whole day. The original Jeremy cosmosis student council poster PDF is missing the transparent watermark. Rip to his Facebook. Long live a legend.