About

Hallway Swimming is a video fad in which participants lay on the ground and push themselves back and forth across a freshly buffed floor to give the appearance of swimming from wall to wall.

Origin

The earliest hallway swimming video was created by a group of music students and posted to YouTube by Joe’s Untitled Web Show on May 17th, 2009. As of April 2013, the video has more than 18,500 views.

Spread

On October 13th, 2009, another hallway swimming video was uploaded by Kailyn Jensen^[1], though it is unclear if Jensen had been inspired by the previous video. Between 2009 and 2013, a handful of additional swimming videos were uploaded to YouTube, but none of them garnered any significant level of attention. On April 2nd, 2013, Cole Pugsley uploaded a version (shown below) that was posted to Reddit^[2] later that day, where it gained more than 4,100 upvotes and 2,000 points overall within a week. Within the same time frame, Pugsley’s video was watched more than 2.9 million times.

The video was shared on the Huffington Post^[4] the next day, followed by Geekosystem^[5], Smosh^[6], The Daily What^[7]MSN Now^[8] and Fark^[9] throughout the week. On April 7th, a video of Soulja Boy hallway swimming was posted to World Star Hip Hop.^[10]

Notable Examples

As of April 2013, there are more than 25,000 search results for “hallway swimming” on YouTube.^[3]

Search Interest

External References

About

“You Know Nothing, Jon Snow” is a memorable quote attributed to the Wildling character Ygritte from George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire. Due to its repeated appearance throughout A Storm of Swords and the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, the quote has been regarded by some fans as obnoxious and celebrated by others in the form of fan art illustrations and image macros.

Origin

The quote was originally said by Ygritte in Chapter 15 of A Storm of Swords (page 213, U.S. paperback edition). In the chapter, Ygritte says the line to Jon Snow in anger. This happens because Jon asks why she was crying because of a song about “the last of the giants” when he had just seen hundreds of them.

There were tears on Ygritte’s cheeks when the song ended. “Why are you weeping?” Jon asked. “It was only a song. There are hundreds of giants, I’ve just seen them.” “Oh, hundreds,” she said furiously. "You know nothing, Jon Snow…

In Game of Thrones, Ygritte (played by Rose Leslie) delivers the line once in “A Man Without Honor” (Season 2, Episode 7) that aired in May 2012 and it is expected to make additional appearances throughout Season 3 in accordance with the novel series.

Spread

Similar to Eddard “Ned” Stark’s “Winter is Coming”, the quote soon evolved into a popular catchphrase among the fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. On May 23rd, 2010, the Facebook fan page^[7] titled “You Know Nothing, Jon Snow” was launched. In addition, the quote has inspired a notable collection of fanart illustrations on Deviantart^[2] and Tumblr,^[6] as well as some image macros on Quickmeme.^[3]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

“Liberty 285” is a stock dispatch sound effect that has been used in countless films and television shows.

Where the sound was first used is unclear, but many people attribute it to a shareware game from the 90’s called, “Spiderman Cartoon Maker”.

Screened.com, however, reports that it was first seen on a sound compilation called, “Sound Ideas – Sound Generals Series 6000”, though the first film that it was ever used in has yet to be discovered.

Background

On April 8th, 2013, American country singer-songwriter Brad Paisley released select songs from his upcoming studio album Wheelhouse set to debut on the following day. One of the pre-released tracks was a duet song featuring rapper LL Cool J titled “Accidental Racist,” which attempted to explain why a Southern white man would still wear Confederate flag merchandise despite its stigma associated with slavery.

That same day, the music video for “Accidental Racist” was uploaded to YouTube and subsequently submitted to the /r/Cringe^[3] subreddit on the social news site Reddit. However as of April 10th, the original video and most of the duplicate uploads have been removed or blocked in the United States.

Lyrics

An annotated explanation of the lyrics can be found on Rap Genius.^[10]

Notable Developments

Twitter Reaction

In the hours following the video’s release, Twitter users began speaking out against the song, which amounted to 31,385 mentions^[5] of the phrase “Accidental Racist” on that day alone. Later that day, Mashable^[6] and the NY Daily News^[7]compiled a handful tweets admonishing the songs and the artists for creating it.

LL Cool J & Brad Paisley’s new song marks the first time that country music & hip hop fans have agreed on something: that it’s bad.

— Mark Campbell (@MrWordsWorth) April 8, 2013

Reaction Videos

On YouTube, video bloggers followed suit with reaction videos discussing the covert racism in Paisley’s lyrics as well as LL Cool J’s rap section. As of April 10th, there are more than 2,300 search results for “Paisley Accidental Racist reaction.”^[12]

News Media Coverage

The song was quickly picked up by several music and entertainment news sites like ESPN Grantland^[4], Gawker^[11] and Rolling Stone,^[1] with many authors expressing ambivalence towards the meaning of the lyrics or describing it as “questionable.” On April 9th, editorial pieces on The Atlantic^[8] and TIME^[9] questioned the actual racism behind the song lyrics, citing LL Cool J’s lack of previous political involvement via lyrics. The same day, stories about “Accidental Racist” were shared on NPR^[13], the New Yorker^[14], Fox News^[15] and the Washington Times^[16], among others.

Artists’ Response

As early as 10 p.m. (ET) on April 8th, Paisley began responding to criticisms of the song via Twitter, where he shared^[17] a link to a Tumblr post^[18] containing some positive thoughts about the song. Upon the official release of the album on April 9th, he tweeted a series of messages hoping that the song will “evoke feelings” and “raise questions”^[19] for the listeners while stating that he wouldn’t change a thing about it.^[20] Also on the 9th, Paisley appeared on Ellen (shown below) and stated that Hollywood and talk radio had already covered race relations and it was time for music to have its say.

When asked about the mixed reception of the song in an interview with Entertainment Weekly,^[2] Paisley was quoted as saying that “art has a responsibility to lead the way” when it comes to hard issues and that the song was meant to be an open discussion about a sensitive subject. Meanwhile, LL Cool J told CNN^[21] he was proud of the song, calling it a “bold statement” in a field where artists don’t always push sensitive boundaries. He also defended Paisley for being brave enough to talk about slavery^[22], as he claims no other artist, country or not, is discussing the subject.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Joel Osteen Resignation Hoax was an elaborate Internet prank which aimed to fool people into thinking that American pastor and televangelist Joel Osteen had abandoned his Christian faith.

Background

Joel Osteen is the senior pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, where he hosts the church’s television program reaching 7 million viewers in 100 countries.^[17] He has written two commercially successful books, titled Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential and Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day. Osteen is considered a reputed figure in the Christian community, having been named one of ABC News’ “10 Most Fascinating People” and “Most Influential Christian in America” by The Church Report.^[18][19]

On April 2nd, 2013, the now-suspended fake Twitter account @PastorJoelOsten was created with its first and only tweet reading “I am leaving the Christian faith and I have resigned as pastor. Please visit our site at joelostenministries.com for more info.” The now-defunct website referenced in the tweet looked similar to Osteen’s official site but contained a message announcing his resignation as pastor.

“Thank you for visiting. As many of you may know, and may have heard in the news recently, many of my sermons have deviated from traditional Christian doctrine. I have been accused of altering the ‘message’ to fit my own doctrine and dogma. Others have accused me of preaching ‘feel good Christianity’. I have also been accused of profiting greatly from my ministry, with my books and television deals.”

The same day, the ChristianityNews YouTube channel uploaded a video featuring photoshopped images of news sites reporting that Osteen had renounced his faith in Christianity (shown below).

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

On April 2nd, 2013, Yahoo Answers^[8] member Christianity submitted a post asking if Osteen had rejected his faith, which linked to the ChristianityNews YouTube video and a “Christianity News Texas” Blogspot^[7] post containing a false news report about Osteen’s resignation. On April 3rd, Redditor christiantexas linked to the same Blogspot site in a post submitted to the /r/atheism^[6] subreddit. The post received a majority of down votes, with several comments expressing skepticism in regard to its authenticity. According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[3] tweets containing the keyword “Osteen” reached over 5,000 mentions on April 7th, 2013.

News Media Coverage

On April 6th, 2013, the Christian news blog Christ Culture News^[12] published an article about the fabricated news reports and their questionable authenticity. In the following days, the hoax was reported by several other news sites, including Gawker,^[13] The Daily Dot,^[14]NPR,^[5] Daily Mail,^[11] The Huffington Post,^[15]CNN,^[16] Fox News^[10] and the Examiner.^[9]

Joel Osteen’s Response

On April 8th, 2013, the official @JoelOsteen Twitter account responded to a tweet asking if his resignation statement was true, simply dismissing it as “a false rumor.”

<a href="https://twitter.com/petro6239">petro6239</a> It is a false rumor: Pastor Joel is not leaving the church. -JOM Team</p>&mdash; Joel Osteen (JoelOsteen) April 8, 2013

On April 9th, Osteen appeared on the ABC talk show Good Morning America, during which he proclaimed that his faith remained intact and that he held no ill will toward the hoaxer.

Hoax Creator’s Statement

On April 9th, NPR^[2] published an interview article with an individual claiming to be the creator of the hoax, who answered a series of questions via e-mail and stated his wish that Osteen would “do away with the soft ‘positivity’ and cliche-peppered Sunday messages and use his high visibility to address more serious social issues.” On April 10th, Nevada resident Justin Tribble^[4] came forward as the creator of the hoax and appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to explain his actions (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

Gundam is a popular anime series produced by Sunrise^[1]. Starting with the original anime Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, the series has grown a considerable following worldwide, and becoming one of the most famous and profitable franchises of all time.

History

The original Gundam series, titled Mobile Suit Gundam^[2], was first broadcast on April 7 1979, and finished serialization on January 26 1980. The series is set in a fictional universe in which a nation titled “The Principality of Zeon”^[3] declares independence from the Earth Federation^[4], and soon launches a war of independence. The main plot centers around a newly deployed Earth Federation warship, named the White Base, arriving at a research base to pick up new secret weapon for the Federation. However, they are followed by Zeon forces, who attack White Base, despite orders not to, killing many of the crew and civilians located on the White Base. A citizen named Amuro Ray^[5] finds the Federation’s weapon, named the RX-78 Gundam, and solves the problem. The show then follows the adventures of the boy, as well as the new crew aboard the White Base, and how it effects the war. Although the series was not popular at first, the series eventually received critical acclaim, and garnered a large fanbase, becoming one of the most famous anime of all time. The show’s popularity led it to start a large franchise, including around 31 different animated films and series^[6], a live action film^[7], a number of manga and novelizations^[8], and a number of different video games^[9].

Online Relevance

Gundam has a massive online following, such as on 4chan’s /a/ Anime & Manga^[10] and /m/ Mecha^[11] boards, as well as on Tumblr^[12] and Reddit^[13]. Gundam also has a number of groups on DeviantART^[14], as well as fan sites such as Gundam Seed Net^[15]. There are also multiple Gundam wikis, such as the Gundam wikia^[16], as well as a Gundam Fanon wiki^[17]. There is also a wide variety of fanart and cosplay, linked with the Gundam series.

Fanart & Cosplay

Notable Sub-Memes

We’re Jumping Onto White Base

We’re Jumping onto White Base, refers to a musical remix revolving around a line uttered during the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. After the original video was posted to Youtube on Febuary 11 2008, a number of other parodies were created, utilizing the song.

Cardboard Box Gundam

Cardboard Box Gundam is a meme based of a piece of cosplay originally worn by Gundam fan Paul M. Palgen during Anime Central 2003. Due to the humorous nature of the cosplay, the costume was subject to parody across the web.

Chinese Gundam

Chinese Gundam refers to a robot statue, built at an amusement park in Sichuan, China on December of 2010. Due to the resemblance to that of Gundam, the statue grew in popularity on the Japanese internet, spawning a online fandom and fanart.

Shining Finger Sword

Shining Finger Sword refers to a special move used within the anime Mobile Fighter G Gundam^[18]. Due to the cheesiness and humor of the original scene, the video is often subject to parody.

Zeta Punch

Zeta Punch, is a series of parodies revolving around scenes in the anime Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam^[19], in which the main character punches numerous other characters. The original video was posted to YouTube on March 29 2007, and consisted of these scenes, accompanied by the meme Falcon Punch.

Search Interest

External References

About

The Snickers meme is a six-panel comic featuring a problem being solved with the titular snack, with different celebrities taking the role of the “hungry” and “satisfied” versions of the afflicted.

Origin

Snickers began their “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” campaign during Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, where grumpy people in troublesome situations were portrayed by celebrity actors Betty White and Abe Vigoda. Upon eating a Snickers bar provided by concerned friends, the person would find their mood improved (and their appearance back to normal).

Others featured different celebrities, such as this UK advert with Dynasty stars Joan Collins and Stephanie Beacham in 2012:

This version would be the one sampled in a macro comic featuring prominent Koreans Kim Jong-un and PSY (Park Jae-sang):

About

Sakurafish is a daily dose type image mainly posted on 4chan’s /a/ (anime & manga) and /jp/ (otaku culture) boards. The image shows the character Sakura, one of the main female heroines in the Fate/Stay Night visual novel, forcefully biting into a fish. The idea of the image is to post them on such a regular basis that even those that initially hate it will eventually grow used to it and like it. Due to this threads featuring sakurafish are commonly accompied with the text “I’m going to post this every day until you like it.” Although initially seen as widespread trolling in 2007 and 2008, through 2009 and later opinions about sakurafish became more positive, resulting in the image seeing often usage in photoshops.

Origin

Sakura Matō (shown below, left) is one of the three main heroines in Fate/Stay Night visual novel^[1] developed by Type-Moon, although she only has a more significant role in one of the three possible routes. Fate/Stay Night rapidly became one of the most popular visual novels in history after its release on January 30th, 2004, resulting in a large fan following of the series which also spread to the western web. The earliest version of the image used in sakurafist posts can be traced back to a Sakura collection post^[3] on the South Korean search portal Naver^[5] posted on October 6th, 2006 (shown below, right). The watermark on the image in the post traces the creator back to Naver blogger yoow889.^[4]

The first archived instance of a sakurafish thread dates back to February 7th, 2008, on the online archive, Foolz.^[2] Sakurafish threads were already active on 4chan as early as 2007 and possibly 2006, but have been lost as Foolz does not trace back that far.

Spread

Over the course of 2008, the catchphrase “I’m going to post this every day until you like it” made a common appearance as a style of troll posting. Even though sakurafish threads were still the most common amongst the posts, other recurring topics often involved disturibing or aggrevating content such as gore or the King of Get.

[Researching]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Sports Balls Replaced With Cats is a single topic blog featuring photoshopped images in which balls from various sports games have been replaced with pictures of cats.

Origin

The “Sports Balls Replaced With Cats” (SBRWC) Tumblr^[1] blog was launched on April 7th, 2013, with the first posted image featuring a rugby player getting tackled in mid-air while holding a small kitten (shown below).^[2] Within four days, the post garnered over 40 notes.

Precursor: Boozecats

The photoshop meme Boozecats was created by Brooklyn resident Ryan Darrenkamp in July of 2009, featuring photographs in which alcoholic beverages have been replaced with superimposed cats (shown below). Darrenkamp subsequently created the Boozecats^[15] single topic blog to highlight notable examples of the edited images.

Spread

On April 8th, 2013, Redditor Iammattieee posted a link to the Tumblr blog on the /r/funny^[3] subreddit, where it received only 15 up votes in the next 72 hours. The same day, a Facebook^[12] page titled “Sports Balls Replaced With Cats” was launched, which accumulated upwards of 1,800 likes within the same time frame. On April 9th, several notable examples from the blog were posted on the Internet humor site College Humor.^[4] That same day, 24-hour comedy ticker site WitStream^[5] reblogged a SBRWC post of a basketball player preparing to slam dunk a cat (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained more than 590 notes.

In the following days, compilations of SBRWC image posts were highlighted on several news sites and Internet humor blogs, including Mashable,^[6] BuzzFeed,^[7] The Daily Dot,^[8] The Huffington Post,^[10] NY Daily News,^[11] Laughing Squid^[13] and Pleated Jeans.^[14]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not yet available.

External References

Overview

Rehtaeh Parsons was a Canadian teenager who committed suicide in April 2013. Like fellow Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, her death was closely tied to cyberbullying following an X-rated viral photo.

Background

In November 2011, Rehtaeh Parsons attended a house party where she was allegedly gang raped by a group of four boys. One of them took a photograph of the act and distributed it among her classmates and friends at Cole Harbour District High School. Humiliated by the incident and subsequent harassments, Parsons and her family eventually moved to Halifax, where the girl spent nearly six weeks in a hospital after she began contemplating suicide. In November 2012, the police decided not to pursue the case further on the grounds of insufficient evidence and declared the spread of the photos a “community issue.”

Suicide

On April 4th, 2013, after continued harassment, Parsons made an attempt on her life by hanging herself in the bathroom. She remained on life support for three days in the hospital before she was declared brain dead on April 7th. That evening, her mother Leah created a Facebook fan page^[1] to memorialize her seventeen-year-old daughter. Within four days, the page accrued nearly 30,000 likes.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

After the Canadian newspaper Chronicle Herald^[2] ran a front page article about her death on April 9th, the story quickly began circulating in the news media and internet culture blogs including the Huffington Post^[3], the Daily Dot^[4] and the Frisky.^[5] The next day, actress Jada Pinkett Smith^[6] shared a photo of Parsons along with her story on Facebook, where it gained more than 16,000 likes and 2,600 shares. In the following days, Parsons’ story was featured on ThinkProgress^[7], Feministing^[8]. the Daily Dot^[9] and People^[10], who referred to the case as the “Canadian Steubenville.”

Father’s Response

On April 10th, Parsons’ father Glen Canning released a statement about his daughter and her death on his personal blog.^[11] The site quickly became unavailable due to heavy influx of traffic and the piece was re-published on the Huffington Post^[12],CBC^[13] and the Chronicle Herald^[14] later that same day. In his statement, Canning said that he wanted her name to be associated with the positive aspects of her life and not what happened at the end of it, concluding with a plea to the Justice Minister of Nova Scotia to revaluate the “digital trail” of evidence surrounding his daughter’s case and why the police waited months before even interviewing the accused.

I had to write something about this. I don’t want her life to defined by a Google search about suicide or death or rape. I want it to be about the giving heart she had. Her smile. Her love of life and the beautiful way in which she lived it.

I found out this afternoon my daughter saved the life of a young woman with her heart. How fitting.

She also gave someone a new liver, a kidney, a new breath, and a new chance to love. She saved the lives of four people with her final gift of life. She was that wonderful.

Someone out there is going to look at the world with my daughter’s eyes. The most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.

Official Response

The same day, Nova Scotia Justice Minister Ross Landry revealed his intention to revisit the rape allegations, saying he hoped to have a meeting with Leah Parsons about the problems she had in pursuing the case. Following this news, spokesman for the Halifax Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Scott MacRae stated that the photo in question was evaluated to see if it would have been considered child pornography, but refrained from confirming any details of Parsons’ allegations. He also noted that the police are concerned with how the social media vigilantism and the “sensitivity of the family” might lead to unforeseen consequences such as spread of misinformation (shown below). Following this statement, Motherboard^[16] examined why the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were failing young girls like Parsons and Amanda Todd, both underage girls who had illicit photos of themselves distributed online against their will.

Anonymous Involvement

Also on April 10th, Anonymous issued a video communiqué (shown below) called #OpJustice4Rehtaeh^[17], calling for the government to move forward with the case and threatening to release the boys’ names to the public if no further actions were taken. They claimed it took them two hours to find the identities of two of the boys in question.^[26] Leah Parsons made a public plea^[18] to keep the names quiet, as she believed her daughter would not want more bullying. Anonymous-affiliated Twitter account @YourAnonNews^[19] responded later that day, asking people not to reveal the boys’ names out of respect for Parsons’ mother. On April 11th, news of the Anonymous operation associated with the case was reported on the Huffington Post^[20], International Business Times^[21], Reddit^[22], the Daily Dot^[23] and Salon.^[24] Following the attention from Anonymous, Premier Darrell Dexter announced that cabinet minister Marilyn More would oversee the response to the girl’s death in an attempt to figure where the government failed her.

Search Interest

[Not Currently Available]

External References

It all started last month in March. What happened? Obama’s Nose happened. A picture was posted of his nose on Google, and now everyone is picking their nose to celebrate the excellency’s nose.

About

America Online^[1], often referred to as its initialism AOL, was a subscription-based online software suite with a walled-garden^[2] community that also offered access to the internet at large beginning in 1991. As of April 2013, AOL continues to offer subscription-based dial-up and high speed internet services^[16] as well as free desktop software that allows users to access webpages at the click of a button along with the embedded chat client AOL Instant Messenger.

History

1980s

The company that would become AOL Inc. was founded as Quantum Computer Services in 1985. The company worked with Apple Inc. on an online service called AppleLink Personal Edition^[3], which Quantum wanted to distribute freely and bundled with new computers in order to reach as many people as possible. Apple did not agree with this method, leading the companies to part ways in 1989.^[4] That October, Quantum rereleased the program for use on Apple II computers under the name America Online.

1990s

In 1991, Steve Case^[5] became CEO of Quantum and officially changed the company’s name to America Online, Inc. AOL offered a graphical user interface (shown below), allowing users of any skill level to easily access features. Over the years, the service worked with a number of nonprofits, magazines, associations and institutions including the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, Scholastic, National Public Radio, and the U.S. Department of Education to provide homework tutoring and other educational services for children and parents. In 1996, Black Bayou^[14] became the first chatroom-based role playing game to exist on AOL. The same year, the site switched from an hourly service fee to a monthly rate of $19.95, driving a large influx of new subscribers. Since the only service offered was through a phone connection, many people ended up canceling their accounts due to busy signals.

2000s

In January 2000, AOL was purchased by media corporation Time Warner. Six years later, the service officially became known as AOL and it was announced that they would be offering web-based email accounts for free. In 2007, more than 80% of paid subscribers had transitioned to the free products.^[15] By 2008, AOL began shutting down a number of services including photo hosting, web hosting and blog hosting. In 2009, Time Warner ened up spinning AOL off into its own digital media company.^[17] The following year, in December 2010, AOL chat rooms were shut down. As of February 2013, the AOL dial-up subscription service is still offered and accounts for approximately $500 million in profits for the company annually^[18], more than the rest of the company makes combined.

Reception

At the height of its popularity in June 2001, AOL had more than 30 million subscribers across the globe.^[19] However, that number gradually declined to approximately 19 million in 2006^[20] and less than 5 million in 2009.^[21] Despite its massive popularity, the service was often criticized^[22] for its policies as well as its years-long postal blast of promotional mailings.

Community Leader Lawsuit

Beginning in the 1990s, AOL used volunteer community leaders to monitor their chat rooms and message boards. In 1999, two of these volunteers, Brian Williams and Kelly Hallissey, filed a class action lawsuit^[23] seeking compensation for their work. This resulted in a complete reorganization of their volunteer system, as well as letting go all volunteers under 18.^[24] The suit was settled in February 2010 for $15 million dollars.^[25]

Impact

You’ve Got Mail

When logged in to the service, the arrival of a new message prompted a soundbyte of American voice over actor Elwood Edwards^[28] saying “You’ve Got Mail!” The verbal notification eventually became a catchphrase of its own, as it was voted the top quote of 1989 by TIME^[27] that year. The phrase was also used as the title of a 1998 romantic comedy film^[29] about two strangers who fall in love after a series of e-mail exchanges, unaware that they were actually real-life business competitors. The phrase is still closely associated with AOL and nostalgia for the heyday of its services.

AOL Promotional CDs

Throughout the 1990s, AOL distributed hundreds of thousands of promotional AOL floppy disks and CDs, offering hours of free service for new subscribers. The disks cost the company upwards of $300 million dollars over the years^[13] and at one point, caused all other CD production to be halted. The disks were highly criticized for their environmental impact^[26] and as early as October 1996, Usenet members were sharing ideas on how to destroy them.^[6] In 1997, computer software engineer Dave Dyer created a lit Christmas tree^[7] out of 66 AOL CDs. In August 2001, NoMoreAOLCDs.com^[8] launched, encouraging people to mail them their unwanted promo disks. Their initial goal was to gather 1 million of the disks and hand-deliver them back to AOL headquarters. By May 2003, they collected 179,245 disks.^[9] The project ceased on August 10th, 2007^[10] after collecting 410,176 disks.

In 2002, Sparky Haufle launched AOLCollecting.com^[11], both to show off his collection of AOL CDs as well as facilitating trades between other collectors. The following year, The AOL CD-ROM Museum^[11] was established, housing pictures of multiple people’s collections as well as separate exhibits highlighting the different types of disks issued. Well into 2005, collectors continued to share photos of their collections on forums.^[12]

Eternal September

The Eternal September occurred in September 1993 when AOL introduced Usenet access into their interface. Though September had previously been associated with an influx of newbies due to college freshman accessing newsgroups for the first time, the America Online access created an open door for their steadily increasing customers. The term was coined by Dave Fischer on January 26th, 1994 in a post on alt.folklore.computers:

“It’s moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended.”

Search Interest

External References

About

The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a torrent hosting website where users can share files using the BitTorrent protocol. The site has often been criticized by companies in the entertainment media industry for facilitating Internet piracy and copyright infringement.

History

The Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (“The Pirate Bureau”) was established on August 1st, 2003, which aimed to support file sharing on the Internet in opposition to the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. On September 15th, 2003, Piratbyrån members Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij launched the torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay.^[10] In 2004, TPB began accepting donations on the website in order to fund its operations. On April 1st, 2005, TPB posted an April Fool’s Day prank claiming they had been raided by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau.^[1] In 2006, the donate page was removed and the site began running advertisements on the search results page. In May of that year, Swedish reality star Petter Nilsson donated US $4,656 to the torrent site, which was used to buy new servers. In January of 2007, TPB attempted to purchase the micronation of Sealand in a legal maneuver to protect itself from prosecution but was denied by the Sealand government. On June 23rd, 2010, Piratbyrån disbanded following the death of Ibi Kopimi Botani, creator of the Kopimi copyright alternative concept. In January of 2012, the category Physibles was added to TPB, which contained files for objects that could be fabricated using a 3D printer.

Domain Name Change

In April of 2013, TPB changed to a Greenland-based .gl domain after they were warned that Swedish authorities were planning to seize their .se address.^[6] In less than 48 hours, the telecommunications company controlling the .gl domain announced they would block the site for promoting illegal activity.^[7] On April 11th, The Register^[8] published an article about the domain problems, which was subsequently posted to the /r/worldnews^[9] subreddit the same day. Within 24 hours, the post received over 3,700 up votes and 690 comments.

Documentary

On February 8th, 2013, director Simon Klose released a documentary titled “The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard,” which chronicled the early history of the website and its founders (shown below). Within two months, the video had received over 1.77 million views and 7,600 comments on YouTube.

Highlights

Operation Payback

Operation Payback was a series of DDoS attacks organized by users of 4chan’s /b/ (random) board that started on September 17th, 2010 against the entertainment industry websites for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the MPAA. The operation was launched in retaliation for DDoS attacks against The Pirate Bay by the Indian company Aiplex Software.

Kopimism

Kopimism is an online movement espousing the benefits of free file-sharing that is officially recognized as a religious community by the Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency. The concept was created Ibi Kopimi Botani, a member of TPB’s founding group Piratbyrån who designed the movement’s official logo as well (shown below).

Controversies

• In November of 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) unsuccessfully filed a complaint with Sweden to shut down TPB for violating copyright.

• On May 31st, 2006, TPB and several people involved with the site were raided by Swedish police on orders given from Judge Tomas Norström to investigate the alleged copyright violations. As a result, the website was temporarily shut down and several servers were confiscated.

• In September of 2008, torrents containing autopsy photos of two murdered children surfaced on TPB, leading the father Nicklas Jangestig to request that the files be removed from the site.^[4]TPB refused to remove the torrent file from the site, with spokesperson Peter Sunde stating “I don’t think it’s our job to judge if something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet.”

Trial

On January 31st, 2008, Swedish persecutors charged Pirate Bay staff members Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde, and Swedish businessman Carl Lundström, with breach of copyright law and claims for damages of US $13 million. On February 16th, 2009, the trial began at the district court of Stockholm, Sweden. During the trial, defense attorney Per Samuelson presented an argument attempting to illustrate how TPB admins had no control over the actions of their users, which would later be known as the “King Kong defense.”

“EU directive 2000/31/EC^[37] says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong… According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia.”

On April 17th, the defendants were found guilty of accessory to crime against copryright law and sentenced to one year in jail and US $3.5 million in fines and damages. Three days later, the ad-hoc group of Internet users known as “Anonymous” retaliated by taking down the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) website with a DDoS attack as part of “Operation Baylout” and called for supporters of TPB to boycott the entertainment industry for the next two months. The verdict was immediately appealed by the defendants, which resulted in an increase of fines for a reduction of jail time. On February 1st, 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to appeal the case, which prompted admins to change the site’s domain name from .org to .se as an attempt to avoid United States copyright laws.

Traffic

On May 31st, 2008, TPB published a blog post reporting that they had grown to over 2.7 million registered users, 2.5 million peers and were ranked as a top 100 website in the entire world. As of April 2013, ThePirateBay.se is ranked 63 in the United States and 74 in the entire world, according to the web traffic analytics site Alexa.^[5]

Search Interest

External References

Note: this entry is currently being researched.

About

Hyperlapse Photography is a filmmaking technique that entails recording video while revolving the camera around a fixed point and then speeding up the footage in post-production. The process incorporates several other well-known photography techniques, mainly time lapse and stop motion photography, as well as tilt-shift and slow motion effects for enhanced results.

Origin

The earliest known use of the term “Hyperlapse” can be attributed to a short video project uploaded to Vimeo by Spanish filmmaker Fran Muradas on December 27th, 2008. Titled “Test Hyperlapse / Timelapse Paseo por Pontevedra,” the clip shows a downtown walking tour of the city of Pontevedra in time lapsed sequence.

Spread

On March 13th, 2009, British visual artist and Vimeo user Theo Tagholm uploaded “Still Moving,” a walking tour video of London’s Victoria Park which he compiled from individual photographs and sped up in post-production. The video was met by positive reception on Vimeo, accumulating more than 96,200 views and 1,826 likes over the span of four years, eventually getting featured as Vimeo’s “Staff Pick” video.

On November 5th, 2009, Japanese stop-motion animator Taijin Takeuchi uploaded a hyper-lapsed video of Tokyo shot in 360-degrees rotation. The video went onto receive more than 116,000 views over three years and even spawned several response videos shot in the same style.

Google Street View Hyperlpase

On April 9th, 2013, Toronto-based digital studio Teehan+Lax released Hyperlapse^[11], a web-based app that enables its users to instantly create motion control time-lapse videos using the image feed of Google Street View. According to the studio’s press release^[12], developers initially sought to make use of the Google Street View as an aid for hyper-lapse photography, but decided to use it as the source material for their product.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Psy is the stage name of South Korean pop singer and entertainer Jae-sang Park who is best known for his 2012 international hit single Gangnam Style. While Psy has been actively performing as a recording artist in South Korea for over a decade, he rose to international stardom in July 2012 following the release of the Gangnam Style music video, which became the first YouTube video to reach the milestone of one billion views in December that same year.

Online History

[researching]

About

Today Is The Day Marty McFly Arrives When He Travels To The Future, often abbreviated as Back To The Future Day, is an internet hoax used in online trolling to make people believe that incorrect dates match up to the date the main character of the Back to the Future franchise, Marty McFly, travels to in the second installment of the films.

Origin

Back to the Future Part II^[1] is a science fiction comedy film first released on November 22nd, 1989, and is the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. In the film, Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly travel from October 21st in the year 1985, to the same date in the year 2015. As was expected, the 30 years have changed the town Marty lived in a lot, now containing various types of highly advanced technology such as hoverboards.

Spread

The highly advanced future as described in the film has become a common milestone expectation of internet users as the actual date grew closer, commonly resulting in assumptions on whether or not the technology used in the film will be available before the actual date of October 21st, 2015, and demanding science to hurry up. Mainly the hoverboards used in the film have become a common target of demand, with image macros being found on various image sharing blogs and websites such as Cheezburger,^[2] WeKnowMemes,^[3] Memerial^[4] and Funny Wall Photos.^[5]

On June 28th, 2012, the single-serving websiteistodaythedaymartymcflyarriveswhenhetravelstothefuture.com^[6] was launched by blogger Richard Haderer, which only shows the message “NO!” in large capital letters as an answer to the question presented if today is the day Marty McFly arrives (shown below). As of April 12th, 2013, the site has received more than 5,000 Facebook likes and 600 Tweets. The single serving site itsbacktothefutureday.com,^[7] created on June 28th, 2012, by blogger Erik Rasmussen, contains a generator which allows you to create a Back to the Future day image for any date possible.

[Researching]

Search Interest

External References

Craap

’Let’s Fly To the Castle’ is a popular quote from a toy from the My Little Pony merchandise which has been used in tons of parodies, remixes and images.

Origin

The company Hasbro along with their My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic merchandise released a toy of Princess Celestia with an included sound file saying “Let’s Fly to the Castle”

On Feb 13, 2013, the YouTube user IMMATOONLINK uploaded the video: LET’S FLY TO THECASTLE which involved the Princess Celestia doll to say “Let’s Fly to the Castle” then the user threw the toy into a toy castle, knocking it over.

Then on Feb 21, 2013 the YouTube user EileMontyVA dubbed over the original video while saying “Let’s Fly To Castle HOLY S***”

Popularity

Both videos gained over 100,000 views and the dubbed video has sparked a number of videos upon Youtube including remixes and pardoies.

This character appeared in the social network Tuenti by 2009. It all started with a simple profile called Sentencer of Crime in which the person who was behind him posing as a vigilante.

Not much is known about who was its creator but it is rumored that most of the images have been created by a user called Jef01 Deviant Art. Notably, the most important drawing this character was created at the hands of Dark Emo Scene, a user who had added to Tuenti Sentencer of Crime and apparently, it asked him to draw a picture based on the traits that gave .

Began in the Spanish social network Tuenti with the idea to make their ideals based on absolute justice and hatred of criminals. Added to make it known to people and try to convince her to help him do the same as well as exchange views on many issues almost all based on morals.

It is rumored that his real intention is to inspire someone with the media, physical skills and enough money to fight crime so try to change the world.

Currently has spread like images but not much but if you type in Google sentencing crime (but only in Spanish) will appear on this character results with a skull-headed goat.

It really does not become an internet phenomenon or anything just something that nobody pays attention and is not known by many people.

About

Shodan is a search engine that indexes servers, webcams, printers, routers and other devices that are connected to the Internet, which is often used as a tool to discover vulnerable systems that could be compromised by hackers. The engine was named after the artificial intelligence villain in the 1990s cyberpunk role-playing games System Shock and System Shock 2.^[9][10]

History

In November of 2009, computer programmer John Matherly hosted an early version of the Shodan computer search engine on the website Sutri.^[3] On November 25th, Intern0t Forums^[4] member s3my0n created a thread about Shodan, which sparked a discussion about whether it would be abused by malicious hackers known as “script kiddies.” On February 18th, 2010, the engine relocated to the domain ShodanHQ.^[1] On February 23rd, Matherly submitted a link to ShodanHQ in a post titled “search engine for hackers” on /r/netsec subreddit,^[2] where it received over 150 up votes and 35 comments. On April 24th, cyber security researcher Ruban Santamarta tweeted that he had located a control system for a particle-accelerating cyclotron by using Shodan.

SHODAN 1 – Berkely National Labs 0. Seems its B88 Cyclotron: http://tweetphoto.com/19795092 I’ve already contacted US-CERT

— Ruben Santamarta (@reversemode) April 24, 2010

On February 24th, 2011, YouTuber softgens uploaded a video presentation about Shodan, which demonstrated its ability to discover vulnerable computer systems (shown below).

Trendnet Webcam Exploit

On January 10th, 2012, a hacker using the handle “someLuser” published a blog post^[5] about a security vulnerability he discovered in the firmware of Trendnet home surveillance webcams, which would allow Internet users to anonymously access video feeds using a URL. The exploit was turned into a script utilizing Shodan search to discover other vulnerable cameras connected to the Internet. On February 3rd, the tech news blog The Verge^[8]published a post about the security flaw, noting that links to compromised video feeds were being shared on sites like Reddit and 4chan. On February 7th, The BBC^[6] published an article about the controversy reporting that Trendnet had immediately addressed the issue by releasing an updated version of the firmware.

On January 22nd, 2013, The Verge^[15] published a followup post about the security flaw, noting that many cameras remained vulnerable and included a screenshot of Google Maps app^[14] giving access to various Trendnet cam streams (shown below). As of April 2013, the map has since been disabled.

Reception

On August 21st, 2012, YouTuber vissago uploaded footage of a presentation by Dan Tentler at the hacker conference Defcon, in which he showed how to use Shodan to access web cameras and power control systems (shown below). Within eight months, the video gained more than 20,000 views and 40 comments.

On April 8th, 2013, CNN^[11] published an article about the search engine, noting the troubling discoveries made by Tentler and other cyber security researchers. The same day, the article was submitted to the /r/technology^[12] subreddit, where it received upwards of 730 up votes and 120 comments within the next 24 hours.

Search Interest

Search query volume for the keywords “shodan search” increased dramatically in February of 2012 after the Trendnet webcam exploit was publicized.

External References