About

Dave On Wheels is the nickname of David Rose, a fictional blogger who writes about living with cerebral palsy. David Rose gained notoriety shortly after The Chive published screenshots of his Twitter account in October 2012, when a tweet message from Rose’s sister was posted on his blog announcing that Rose had passed away. The blog was soon revealed to be a hoax.

Origin

The now-deleted blog Dave On Wheels^[1] was created in August 2012 to chronicle the life of a young deaf man suffering from cerebral palsy^[6], a series of disabling motor disorders. In October 2012, two users of The Chive, Sarah Hill^[2] and Erin Willet^[3] tipped off Chive editor John to Dave On Wheels’ Twitter account^[4], which had 8 followers at the time. On October 8th, 2012, John posted a collection^[5] of screenshots (shown below, left) from Rose’s Twitter, followed by a group photo of Chive staff holding up a sign reading “Chive On, Dave!” (shown below, right). The post was shared on Facebook 1.7 thousand times and garnered more than 180 comments.

Spread

In the first 24 hours after the Chive post, Dave On Wheels gained more than 7500 Twitter followers. The following day, the Chive posted a second set^[7] of his tweets, noting that his sister’s account, NicholeRose85^[8][9] had tweeted that Rose had fallen ill. By October 11th, Rose had allegedly slipped into a coma, as his sister updated his blog to note he may not make it through the night. Later that day, a blog entry titled “Three Friends And A Whole Lot More” was posted, allegedly written by Rose on October 8th in case he passed away from pneumonia.

The day he passed away, there were nearly 1100 mentions of his handle on Twitter.^[11] In the days following, his blog post began circulating the web with stories appearing on Radar Online^[20], the New York Daily News^[12], British tabloid the Mirror^[13], the Huffington Post^[14] and ABC News^[15], where it was later retracted. Reality star Kim Kardashian also tweeted^[10] a quote from his post, which was retweeted 4768 times in a day.

Hoax Revealed

On October 15th, a blogger known as Kristi-Anne launched a blog entry titled Dave-On-Wheels Exposed^[16], noting that they became suspicious after thinking about how Rose would be able to communicate via sign language with cerebral palsy. After doing a reverse image search of a photo of Rose available on his Facebook page, she uncovered that the photos were taken from two separate articles about a man named Hunter Dunn from Danville, Virginia.^[17][18]

45 minutes after the blog post went up, several comments from Nichole Rose’s Blogspot account were posted, in which the person revealed that he was an older man and David Rose was just a character he made up in 2007. He did not expect the character to ever gain internet fans and after he did, the blogger did not want to keep up the ruse. He apologized to the fans he hurt, specifically Sarah Hill and Erin Willet, as well as to Hunter Dunn. The same day, The Chive^[19] published selections from post Kristi-Anne’s findings, noting their dismay with the revelation.

Search Interest

External References

We’re Russian Dancing Men
Ah, yes, we’re Russian Dancing Men
I’m dancing with the Purple Hen
I’ve also got this Ballpoint Pen
We’re Russian Dancing Men
We’re only dancing now and then
We started off at half past ten
Soon we’ll be going home again
We’re Russian Dancing Men
Our favorite Pepper is Cayenne
We’re dancing right next to Big Ben
Come on and see us Bogling
‘cause we’re Russian and we’re dancing
And we always keep spare pants
In case of accidents while Boogieing
‘cause Russians love to Boogie.
And In Russian:
Мы русские танцующие мужчины
О, да, Мы русские танцующие мужчины
Я танцую с Фиолетовой курицей
Я также получил эту Шариковаю ручку (?)
Мы русские танцующие мужчины
Мы только только и делаем, что танцуем
Мы начали в половине одиннадцатого
Скоро мы поедем домой
Мы русские танцующие мужчины
Наш любимый Перец (чувак?) Cayenne
Мы танцуем рядом с Биг Бен
Давай к нам Боглинг
потому что мы русские и мы танцуем
И мы всегда держим запасные штаны
в случае возникновения неудач при Boogieing
потому что русские любят Boogie
There are many remixes on youtube, like 10 hours, sped up, backwards, slowed down, extended, and a pony version (they just had to, didn’t they?)

About

Seibu Keisatsu Part III OP Parodies are a series of videos that imitate the opening of the Japanese television drama Seibu Keikatsu Part III.

Origin

The origin is the opening of the Japanese television drama Seibu Keisatsu Part III, which was aired from April 1983 to October 1984. The song is “Wonderful Guys” written by the Japanese famous classic/pop music composer Kentaroh Haneda. The show was known for its quite ridiculous scenario and nonsense rendition, which are very memorable for Japanese TV viewers. And Seibu Keisatsu is representative of too macho police drama of the 1980s.

Spread

One of the earliest instances which have scored many page views is this video featuring Bandai Namco’s video game Ace Combat 6. It was uploaded to NND on November 29th, 2007.

Notable examples

A good friend of mine took this photo in a hospital waiting room. I guess he was really concerned, tired, ill and irate?

About

Insanity Crow is an image macro series featuring a photograph of a black crow with an intimidating-looking upturned beak. The captions portray the bird as devious, threatening and maniacal, bearing many similarities to the Evil Cows advice animal series.

Origin

On October 15th, 2012, Redditor Glibhat submitted a post to the /r/funny^[1] subreddit titled “I took this picture of a crow yesterday,” featuring a photograph of a black crow with a prominent upturned beak (shown below, left). Within 24 hours, the post received over 23,500 up votes and 700 comments. Redditor CyaSteve replied to the post with a three-pane comic, characterizing the crow as a stereotypical Internet tough guy (shown below, right).

Precursors

The series bear many similarities in theme and composition to a number of animal image macro and advice animal memes, most notably Evil Cows, Soon and Insanity Puppy (shown below, left). Meanwhile, the multi-pane format juxtaposing the animal’s ordinary facial expression with a startled looking one has been seen on Reddit in a /r/funny post^[9] (shown center) submitted by Redditor andybybee on May 13th, 2012 and another post titled “This is how I imagine people that make violence (sic) threats from behind the computer”^[6] (shown below, right)by Redditor Groznyylol on August 15th.

Spread

On October 15th, 2012, Redditor iamwhatiis submitted an image macro of his crow photograph in a post titled “Insanity Crow”^[3] (shown below, left). Within 24 hours, the post received more than 15,000 up votes and 185 comments. The same day, Redditor Praxxus submitted an image macro titled “Insanity Crow Predicts Your Future,”^[4] which received over 13,200 up votes and 175 comments within the first 24 hours (shown below right).

Also on October 15th, 9gag^[7] user grayfront submitted Redditor iamwhatiis’ image macro in a post titled “Insanity Crow,” receiving over 16,000 up votes and 5,300 Facebook shares within the first 24 hours. On the following day, FunnyJunk^[8] user pappalardi re-submitted Redditor Praxxus’ image macro to the Internet humor site.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Overview

Gawker’s ViolentAcrez Expose Controversy refers to the ongoing dispute between Gawker’s staff writer Adrian Chen and community members of Reddit that erupted in October 2012, after the former wrote and ran a feature story exposing the identity of Reddit’s prominent moderator ViolentAcrez and his role as the curator of several controversial subreddit forums including /r/Jailbait.

Background

On October 10th, 2012, Redditor violentacrez, a veteran member of the community known for moderating more than 400 subreddits^[1] including the banned /r/Jailbait, deleted his account after posting a now-removed goodbye thread^[2] in his personal subreddit. Soon after, the link to his farewell message was shared in /r/SubredditDrama^[3], where it received 620 points and nearly 500 comments. Around the same time, /r/violentacrez was taken over by several new users apparently affiliated with the Something Awful forums and /r/ShitRedditSays, reclaiming it as a place to smoke out users who post pedophilia-related commentary.

Later that same day, Redditor POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS^[4] submitted a self post^[5] to /r/SubredditDrama alleging that violentacrez had been doxxed by Gawker writer Adrian Chen, who planned to reveal the user’s personal information in an upcoming story after he had been added as a moderator to /r/CreepShots, a subreddit where users shared scandalous photos of women they had taken without the subject’s knowledge or consent. In chat logs posted by POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS, violentacrez stated that he was concerned a Reddit administrator provided Chen with his real name and a personal photo. On October 5th, violentacrez offered to delete his account in exchange for Gawker to not publicly release his personal details, but it was declined.

Notable Developments

/r/CreepShots Threatened

The same day, Redditor CreeperComforts^[6] reportedly received a private message^[7] (shown below) from a user named HelloJK stating that they knew the users’ identity and he had 48 hours to shut down /r/CreepShots. This message came around the same time Jezebel^[8] published an article about the Predditors^[9] Tumblr which launched in September 2012 to seek out public personal information about /r/CreepShots posters. Though the doxxing of violentacres and CreeperComforts were not explicitly related, the timing led many commenters^[10] to believe these events were tied together. However, a /r/ShitRedditSays post titled "The Admins Sure Doxxed The Ball On This One^[11] alludes to the subreddit being involved in finding CreeperComforts’ identity.

Linking Embargo on Gawker

In response to these two stories, Redditor karmanaut^[17] suggested to the private DefaultMods subreddit^[12] that all moderators temporarily ban links from Gawker network sites to persuade them away from personal attacks on moderators. Multiple subreddits^[13] cooperated including /r/Politics^[14], /r/MensRights^[15], /r/WoW^[16] (World of Warcraft), /r/Borderlands^[17] and /r/Cinemagraphs^[18], among others. On the other hand, /r/CircleJerk^[19] banned any link that was not from the Gawker network. Adrian Chen responded by tweeting^[20] that Reddit is banned from linking to his blog posts, threatening Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedowns. On October 11th, several news media sites picked up on the story including the Daily Dot^[21], Politico^[22], BetaBeat^[23], the Atlantic Wire^[24], the New Statesman^[25] and New York Magazine.^[26]

Violentacrez Identity Revealed

On October 12th, Gawker^[28] published an article titled “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web” by staff writer Adrien Chen. The piece identified Violentacrez as Michael Brutsch (pictured below), a programmer for a financial services company in Texas. The article contained several quotes taken during a phone interview conducted by Chen, in which Brutsch revealed that he was living with a disabled wife with very little savings and that he was fearful of losing his job over the controversy.

On the following day, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[29] published a post which included screen captures of Reddit admins and moderators conversing about banning Gawker and Jezebel articles revealing Violentacrez real name. After admins enacted a site-wide ban against the offending articles, Reddit manager Eric Martin sent BuzzFeed an email saying the ban was a mistake and had been removed. On October 15th, The Daily Dot^[30] published an article reporting that Brutsch had been fired over the weekend from his programming position and was left with little savings and no health insurance for him and his disabled wife.

PayPal Donations for VIolentacrez

On October 12th, the Reddit account mbrutsch^[32], later outed as violentacrez’ “clean” account, shared a link to a game called Tea Break Escape to the Point and Click gaming subreddit.^[33] In the comments, people began to derail the thread by discussing the controversy instead of the actual game.

In comments, Brutsch stated that he only had three weeks of pay left in the bank and could not afford health insurance to care for him and his disabled wife.^[34] In response, members of /r/C1rclejerkers started a campaign titled “His Name Was Michael Brutsch,”^[35] in reference to a line from the 1999 film Fight Club used to honor a fallen hero. Brutsch provided his PayPal email address^[36] to receive donations from Redditors.

That day, he received at least $110 in donations.^[37] A second donation thread^[38] with Brutsch’s personal information redacted was created in /r/C1rclejerkers so the link would not be removed if it was linked to in other places on Reddit. On the 16th, mbrutsch posted in /r/C1rclejerkers^[39] to thank everyone who had donated to him, but did not disclose how much he had received.

News Media Coverage

Given the reputation of the two websites as influencers in the world of the Internet culture, the feud between Gawker’s staff writers and the Reddit community was promptly picked up by major U.S. news outlets like the New York Times^[42], The Guardian^[40] and The Atlantic^[41], as well as internet news and tech blogs The Huffington Post^[43], BoingBoing^[44] and Slate.^[45] The news media coverage of the controversy also led to a wide range of varying opinions regarding key issues on digital rights, such as freedom of speech versus privacy and anonymity versus accountability. Slate’s columnist Amanda Hess^[45] defended Chen’s expose for "bringing the Internet’s worst offenders back to reality; BoingBoing’s Rob Beschizza^[44] responded to criticisms against Gawker by questioning other bloggers’ preference of “honest depravity over depravity masked as righteousness”; and The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen^[41] similarly challenged the criticisms by asserting that Brutsch had given no thought to his actions behind the veil of anonymity.

Search Interest

External References

About

Mansplaining is an Internet slang term used to describe condescending and inaccurate explanations that are given under the assumption that the audience is entirely ignorant on the subject matter or topic. The name stems from an online behavior commonly exhibited by male newbies on female-oriented discussion forums, however, any member of either sex can be guilty of mansplaining.

Origin

[researching]

Search Interest

External References

^[1] Urban Dictionary – Mansplain

Background

On October 16th, 2012, the second U.S. presidential debate took place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. During the debate, an undecided voter by the name of Katherine Fenton asked both candidates about pay inequality for women, to which Romney replied with an anecdote about how he sought to form a gender-balanced cabinet during his governorship in Maryland:

“And I said, ‘Well, gosh, can’t we -- can’t we find some -- some women that are also qualified? I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women."

Notable Developments

Near-immediately, image macros captioned with Romney’s “binder” response began circulating on Twitter, as well as the launch of parody blogs Binders Full of Women on Tumblr^[2] and novelty account @RomneysBinder on Twitter.^[3]

Animated GIF by Current.com

Twitter Feed

External Resources

Work in progress; I’ll get some text here shortly.

Why not animated memes? huh? anyone?
need more sources.

Overview

Tan Man is a nickname given to the contestant number 49 in the 2012 Arnold Classic Europe bodybuilding competition, who became the subject of mockery online after a photograph showing his dark bronzed body contrasting with his pale face was published in the news media.

Background

On October 15th, 2012, The Daily Mail^[4] published an article titled “Er, you missed a bit: Bodybuilder’s hilarious fake tan blunder,” which mocked a photograph (shown below) of competitor number 49 from the annual Arnold Classic Europe bodybuilding competition for applying bronzer to only his body.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

The same day, the photograph was reposted by Gawker,^[1] the New York Daily News,^[6] The Huffington Post^[7] and BuzzFeed,^[10] which unisonly mocked the contestant for appearing as if he forgot to tan his face. On October 16th, the photograph was featured by Yahoo Sports,^[9]USA Today^[13] and ABC News.^[14] That same day, International Business Times^[5] published an article titled “‘Tan Man From Arnold Classic 2012 and Other Bizarre Tanning Photos of Bodybuilders,” which quoted BodyBuilding Forums member Tanji Johnson’s explanation on the importance of tanned skin in body building competitions.

The lights used for stage illumination are quite different from that of natural light or the lights we use in our homes. The stage lights are bright and a person’s skin tone will get washed out if not protected with a tanning product. The darker the skin, the easier it will be for judges to evaluate a person’s body conditioning and muscular development when compared to the other athletes on stage."

Online Reaction

On October 15th, member SandEagle of the technology enthusiast AnAndTech Forums^[8] submitted the bodybuilder photo in a thread titled “Bodybuilder With a Fake Tan.” That same day, Redditor firstclassshitposter submitted the bodybuilder’s photograph to the /r/photoshopbattles^[2]subreddit, to which several users replied with photoshopped variations of the image, including a version with the head of United States president Barack Obama (shown below,left). According to the Reddit reverse image search Karma Decay,^[11] the photograph was resubmitted to Reddit 28 times within the first 48 hours of firstclassshitposter’s original post. On October 17th, a photoshopped version of Tan Man with a woman biting the bodybuilder’s leg was submitted to the message board B3ta^[12] with the title “For the last time, I’m not made of chocolate!” (shown below, right).

External References

About

Worst movie death scene ever was the title of a YouTube video created by british user plantyzombie featuring Ferruh’s death scene (played by Bülent Kayabaş) taken from the 1973 turkish film “Kareteci Kiz” (english: Karate Girl). The video growed into a popular subject for parody videos.

Origin

Before plantyzombie created his edited version, the movie has been uploaded in nine parts by turkish user arabulucu84bjk, who uploaded since 2007 several turkish movies to YouTube. Ferruh’s death scene is mentioned in the eigth part of the film in arabulucu84bjk’s uploads, it was uploaded on November 4, 2008 and it was later recognized by plantyzombie in 2012. The scream was an additional edition by plantyzombie to make it more funny and humorous. He uploaded it then on September 26, 2012 and it received 17.623.909 views, 85.925 likes and 5.293 dislikes until it’s deletion, because of plantyzombie’s re-uploaded videos including third-party claims of copyright infringement.

He did know, that he would be deleted and created another YouTube channel on October 2, 2012 under the same username but with a “The” in the beginning. He then re-uploaded his re-uploaded videos.

Spread

[Request Editorship to fill this section with more infomation]

Nico Nico Douga

The video has also growed popularity in Japan on the japanese video-sharing website “Nico Nico Douga”. The video has been re-uploaded two days after it’s upload but except for the scream, the user “21494053 / 故・ちょびたん❤” replaced the part with a song. The original edited video has been then uploaded to Nico Nico Douga a day later and it received, as of October 17, 2012 over 532.000 views. These parody videos are under the tag “映画史上最悪の死亡シーン” (english: Worst death scene in movie history).

【ニコニコ動画】史上最悪の死にシーンに感動要素をたしてみた
【ニコニコ動画】【グロ注意】映画史上最悪の死にシーン

Please, if you find some mistakes, correct them.
Who are you? Come on, get out of here! (rus. Ты кто такой? Давай, до свидания!) is a catchphrase from Azerbaijanian meykhana action and Russian internet-meme. This is the one year ago-wedding record, where azerbaijanian meykhana singer Intigam Rustamov and his friends tried to sing it in Russian, resulting in a disjointed set of distorted words.

Original video record

Cut

Original lyrics

Ты кто такой? Давай, до свидания! (6 раз)

Жизнь такой, жить надо осторожно,
В нашем Астара есть свой таможня,
Я знаю, по-русски как положено,
Давай, иди гуляй, до свидания.

Ты ребенок, эх, тебе манная каша,
У нас есть мамаша, еще папаша.
И что хочешь от меня ты, Наташа?
Твой рейс, Дубай, до свидания.

…

Translate

Who are you? Come on, get out of here! (6 times)

The live is such, you must live carefully,
We have a custom in our Astara.
I can speak Russian as expected.
Come on, go away and get out of here!

Oh, a kid? Hey, have porridge.
We have mums, also dads.
What do you want from me, Natasha?
Your flight, Dubai, get out of here!

…

Spread

Video recorded in November 2011 has been posted on YouTube by Intigam’s friend – Hilal Mamedov. It won’t become so popular if it hadn’t been reviewed by known Russian viral video reviewer Stas Davidov in May 2012.

Intigam Rustamov and his friend on the famous Russian TV program:

After that, video and catchphrases has become very famous in Russian internet, TV and other media. This catchphrase has become a universal answer to uncomfortable questions and insults.

About

Snow Goose is a popular soundtrack from a Japanese arcade music video game jubeat^[1], which is produced by KONAMI as a part of BEMANI line.

This electric pomp styled song was used in many MAD on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND) in 2009.

Origin

Snow Goose was written by a Japanese composer Mutsuhiko Izumi for the first rhythm game of jubeat, that was released on the Japanese arcade on July 24, 2008.

This song was ported to beatmania IIDX 19 Lincle^[2] together with "I'm so happy" in 2011. And its remixed version was included in Guitar Freaks XG3 & Drummania XG3^[3] in 2012.

Spread

The earliest instance in this series had been already uploaded to NND in the 5th Music Rhythm Game MAD contest, a small user-organized online MAD video event mostly dedicated to BEMANI songs in November 2008. It was a derivative of Shuzo Matsuoka.

Meanwhile, the trigger video that led subsequent popularity of this series came from Hammer MADs, an another fad on NND. The video “Hammer Goose” was posted by a legendary MAD editor The Hammer Man on April 11th, 2009.^[4]

By the influence by The Hammer Man, many other MAD editors have been introducing this song into their works since the middle of 2009.

As of September 2012, the amount of videos related to this song is near 300.^[5] And most of them are MAD videos in this series.

On YouTube

Since the late of 2009, tens of YouTube Poop Music Videos (YTPMVs) reusing this song have been occasionally posted on YouTube. The first instance importing this song to YTPMVs was posted by a YT user HTFFan8500^[6] on September 20th, 2009, which featured Happy Tree Friends.

But it seems it hasn’t been able to become a popular music resource for YTPMV creators yet.^[7]

Notable Examples

For more videos, check out the videos section in this entry.

MADs

Shuzo Matsuoka^[8]
Untan^[9]
There's No F**king Seat For You!^[10]【ニコニコ動画】Airmoto GooseHissu Amoto San^[11]

YTPMVs

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
WUBUBU
Billy Mays
MysteryGuitarMan

Search Interest

[Not Available]

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.

About

Doxing, sometimes spelled as Doxxing, is the practice of investigating and revealing a target subject’s personal information, such as home address, work information and credit card numbers, without their consent. The word is derived from “docs,” which is a shortened term for “documents.”

Origin

The term “dox” was first used as a shorthand for “documents” by computer hackers and crackers involved with pirated software^[8] distribution, in describe new updates, cracks or patches. By 2008, the term had been defined as personal information leaked by a third-party on Urban Dictionary.^[9]

Precursors

The act of publicly disclosing another Internet user’s personal information dates back to the 1990s on Usenet, where it became a common practice to post another poster’s personal information (or PI) during arguments and flame wars.^[3] In 1994, scandalous stories about legendary Usenet posters were shared in a four-part compilation via newsgroup alt.folklore.computers,^[4] however, these stories were largely limited to details about sockpuppet accounts and user profile information to expose their online activities outside of Usenet. This trolling tactic eventually came to a head in 1999, when owner of rec.skiing.alpine Scott Abraham^[5] was banned from the newsgroup by a Seattle court order after he had been found guilty of participating in a flame war^[6] and sharing personal information about other posters.

Spread

In October 2006, the group YouTube Vigilantes^[13] was established to seek out personal information of YouTubers deemed hateful or racist in vlog format.^[14] The head of the group, CircaRigel^[16], had all of her personal information leaked online by members of Encyclopedia Dramatica in January 2007 on the security issue newsgroup Full Disclosure^[15], not only including her name and address, but personal posts she had made to the newsgroup alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. “Dox” was added to Wikitionary^[1] in 2011, the same year that Doxbin^[10] launched, a TOR site that hosts dozens of files containing personal information on specific people as well as groups of people. As of October 2012, there are more than 34,100 results for “dox” on Pastebin.^[17]

Notable Instances

January 2007: Hal Turner

One of the first archived doxing campaigns targeted American white nationalist and blogger Hal Turner, who waged a war against Anonymous by disclosing the phone numbers of prank callers that had raided his radio talk show on-air in December 2006. In retaliation, a group of Anonymous members known as Chan Enterprises LLC launched a doxing investigation and managed to obtain Turner’s criminal record, housing details, former locations of residence and detailed personal information such as his home phone number. As a result of the feud, Turner filed lawsuits against 4chan, eBaums World and 7chan in January 2007, although all of the cases had been dismissed by December 2007.

October 2007: Chris Forcand

As early as in October 2007, members of Anonymous approached Chris Forcand, a suspected pedophile, under the pretense of being underage girls to collect evidence of him luring children in chatrooms. During one of these conversations, an Anonymous participant named “Jessica” was able to obtain Forcand’s mailing address, which soon led to uncovering of additional personal information about him. In December 2007, Forcand was arrested by the police after the information was passed on by anonymous tipsters.

May 2008: Linden Lab Staff

In May 2008, members of a group named DiSSENTiON posted a YouTube video (shown below) stating their plan to attack Second Life users and release information on Linden Lab staff members in retaliation for treating users poorly.^[11] Members of the SLUniverse forum discussed the attack, where one of the users received a message stating “you fail at releasing dox” after attempting to leak information on someone’s fake name.

Search Interest

External References

About

Give Her The Dick is a catchphrase most commonly used as a comment and reply in online conversation as a non-serious advice saying that the person it’s directed to should engage into sexual intercourse with a specific female who was most likely previously mentioned. The catchphrase and variations of it are commonly associated with a portrait of the French philosopher René Descartes.

Origin

The catchphrase was made popular through a series of comments on the adult video website Pornhub, by user Ross53545. Ross53545’s commenting style commonly consisted of using elements precent in the video through the usage of bro slang. His profile picture of French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes is commonly associated with his comments and the popular catchphrase. The original portrait of Decartes was painted in 1648 by the Dutch painter Frans Hals.

Spread

[Researching]

Search Interest

External References

About

Cicada Block is a series of artworks featuring characters trapped in a corner by another character holding themself up by pressing their hands and feet against the wall.

Origin

The earliest known posting of a Cicada Block image was posted by Tumblr^[1] user Rabulen130 on October 16th, 2012, which featured an illustration of a Pokemon character pinning another character into a corner by holding himself above the ground with his hands and feet against the wall (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post received over 280 notes.

Spread

On the following day, Tumblr^[2] user Fideo published a post titled “If anybody’s wondering where the meme came from,” featuring an illustration of several different poses in which a character can be blocked in a corner (shown below), labelling the fourth illustration as a “cicada block.” Within the first 24 hours, the post received over 14,300 notes.

The meme has continued to spread on Tumblr and DeviantArt under the tag “#cicada block.”

Notable Examples

External References

About

“There’s No Time To Explain” is an expression typically found in image macro captions used to alert someone of an unplanned event or destination that requires immediate attention. It is often used on photos of animals or people in odd poses, wearing absurd attire or sitting in strange looking vehicles.

Origins

Prior to its use in image macros, the phrase “There’s No Time to Explain” was a common phrase in movies and television shows to explain a sudden jump between locations or storylines. Between 1980 and 1990, the phrase appeared in episodes of Doctor Who^[4] and Star Trek: The Next Generation^[5], as well as Woody Allen’s 1991 black-and-white crime film Shadows and Fog.^[6] In April 2009, it was also used in an episode of Charlie the Unicorn (shown below).

One of the earliest known uses of the phrase as an image macro caption was posted on I Can Has Cheezburger^[3] on November 3rd, 2009, showing an orange cat sitting on what appears to be a backpack with the caption “there’s no time to explain, but we are out of cough syrup and the cops are on the way.”

Spread

A TV Tropes ^[1] page about the phrase’s use in media was created in February 2009.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Menacing Josh Romney is an image macro series based on a screen capture of Josh Romney, the son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, staring intently at the camera during the 2012 U.S. presidential debate in October 2012. Largely due to his possessed-like facial expression, the image of Josh Romney became a target of mockeries on the web.

Origin

Shortly after the broadcast of the second round of 2012 U.S. presidential debate on October 16th, BuzzFeed Tumblr posted a muti-pane image macro featuring the face of Mitt Romney’s second oldest son captioned with SOON (shown below, left). The post instantly went viral on Tumblr, gaining more than 53,200 notes in less the first 48 hours.

On the following day, Redditor acore8604^[2] submitted the first image macro instance with a reference to Darth Vader’s quote from the 1980 space film Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. (shown below) In the first 24 hours, the image received more than 22,800 up votes 21,070 down votes.

Spread

Throughout October 17th, the series spread across Tumblr^[3] and Twitter^[4], while nearly 500 instances were uploaded to Quickmeme^[4] and more than 69 image macros were submitted to Reddit’s /r/adviceanimals subreddit^[6], including four instances that have gained more than 1,500 upvotes in the first 48 hours. By October 18th, the “Menacing Josh Romney” meme had been featured on the Huffington Post^[7], Buzzfeed^[8], Uproxx^[9] and the FWD.^[10]

Notable Examples

External References

About

Weird Twitter refers to a loosely connected group of Twitter users who are known to experiment with spelling, punctuation and format for humor or poetry. The style of writing can be considered surrealist by participants in the group, with subject matter ranging from creating absurd scenarios to attempting to describe abstract feelings by choosing words for their “verbal aesthetic appeal.”^[17] However, many of the accounts are grouped together by the same desire to reinterpret the “realness” of life in ways people do not always get to experience.^[16][18]

Origin

One of the earliest Twitter accounts associated with these types of tweets belongs to Jon Hendren, a writer for Something Awful^[2], who created his account @fart^[1] in March 2008. As of October 2012, dozens of his tweets have been favorited or retweeted hundreds of times.^[3]

i saw an ad on craigslist once that said “free firewood, u collect it” so i wrote the guy and said “bud you just wrote an ad for the woods”

— jon hendren(@fart) May 26, 2012

The term “Weird Twitter” was coined as early as March 2012 by @regisl^[19] in a caps lock tweet.

DESTROY NON-WEIRD TWITTER

— REGIS (@regisl) March 2, 2012

Spread

In March 2011, Jon Hendren began cataloging his favorite tweets on Something Awful in a series called “Twitter Tuesday.”^[8] Though the phrase “weird Twitter” was never used to describe these tweets, many of the Twitter users he quoted would later be included in the group. In August 2012, PhD student Sebastian Benthall posted his first hypothesis about the phenomenon to his personal blog, Digifesto.^[4] He argued that he saw the tweets similar to the spam poetry found in the Twitter account @Horse_ebooks, despite no interaction between eBooks Twitter accounts and this community, and that members valued the favoriting statistics provided by Favstar.^[5]

On October 3rd, 2012, a question inquiring about weird Twitter was posed to the Q&A website Quora,^[6] where an anonymous user described it as “the Twitter equivalent of /b/,” 4chan‘s random board notorious for its outrageous content. Screenshots of this Quora page, along with Sebastian Benthall’s blog post, were tweeted out by @Mobute^[7] on October 16th to nearly 10,000 followers. That day, “weird Twitter” was mentioned more than 1000 times^[9] across the platform, followed by many users who typically post in this style complaining about the use of the term.

Thank you for ruining everything, nerds. i.imgur.com/mgPTm.png i.imgur.com/tN3WR.png

— Mobutu Sese Seko (@Mobute) October 17, 2012

Also on the 16th, Benthall posted a follow-up article on his blog^[11] with a compilation of angry tweets from Twitter users who had perceived the concept of “weird Twitter” in a negative light. (example shown below). Two days later, Benthall posted a third article^[10] explaining his academic interest in the study of online communities and his fascination with the amorphous “Weird Twitter community.” He also noted that he was attempting to troll the community with the two previous posts, overusing scientific language to stir up controversy on purpose, which did lead to a large influx of hate messages.

help help the academics discovered us, we are a Thing now. get ready for the Gawker expose and the Huffington Post image gallery

— wreal wrad wraith (@bugbucket) October 17, 2012

On October 17th, a Twitter account named @WeirdTwiterTxt^[15] was launched to parody stereotypical “weird” tweets associated with the community. The following day, @tropikoala^[14] uploaded a map of 75 “Weird Twitter” users (shown below) that he felt reflected the many circles and sub-groups that existed within the small part larger community he had come in contact with. The image was intended to show just a portion of the vast co-existent universes within this type of tweeting. Also on the 18th, Slacktory^[12] posted a collections of the staff’s favorite Weird Twitter tweets. On October 19th, Uproxx^[13] posted a similar article with more examples of tweets.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References