Overview

Exploding Kittens is an upcoming card game featuring illustrations by Oatmeal founder Matt Inman that was successfully crowdfunded through a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign in January 2015.

Background

On January 20th, 2015, Inman submitted a Kickstarter^[1] campaign for Exploding Kittens, a multi-player, shedding-type card game designed in collaboration with Elan Lee and Shane Small (shown below). In the game, a group of up to eight players take turns pulling cards until an “exploding kitten” card is drawn, at which point the player is eliminated from the game, unless a special “defuse” card is used. The same day, the website ExplodingKittens^[2] was created with an infographic run-down of gameplay and rules.

Notable Developments

Online Reception

In the first 20 minutes, the Kickstarter reached its goal of $10,000. Within seven hours of launch, the campaign had received over $1 million in funds. By the end of the next day, $2 million had been raised. 48 hours from its creation, Inman released a comic revealing that the game was the 22nd most-funded Kickstarter campaign in history, the 11th most-funded game and the most-funded card game ever (shown below).

By January 23rd, the Kickstarter campaign had received more than $3 million in funding. On January 26th, the creators of the campaign announced that they had received upwards of 100,000 backers and that a stand-alone NSFW card deck would be released for the game. Within the first week, the proposal accumulated nearly $4 million, setting a new record for the biggest tabletop game project on Kickstarter.

News Media Coverage

During the first week of launch, the game’s online success was covered by a variety of news sites, including The Register,^[3] Business Insider,^[4] Forbes,^[5]CNN^[6] and Mashable.^[7]

Search Interest

External References

About

Post-Game Interviews are footage of sports players being interviewed by reporters immediately following a competition. Online, many interviews containing shocking, humrous or confusing statements have circulated on various video-sharing sites.

Origin

The earliest known post-game interviews to widely circulate on the Internet featured a rant delivered by basketball player Allen Iverson about being asked about practicing for competition in May 2002 (shown below).

Spread

Notable Examples

Ronaldo

Ronaldo! is a Brazilian internet meme that spawned out of an interview segment from a popular Brazillian comedy show called Pânico na TV (Panic on TV). Among those interviewed on the show that day was Zina, a young, enthusiastic fan of the FC Corinthians (a well-known Brazilian soccer club) who appeared a tad bit nervous and blank before the camera.

Why You Heff to be Mad?

“Why You Heff to be Mad?:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-you-heff-to-be-mad is a memorable quote said by Russian professional ice hockey goaltender Ilya Bryzagalov in response to a journalist’s question about his fellow Anaheim Ducks teammate Chris Pronger during a post-game interview in 2006.

I Was Almost Coming

“I was Almost Coming” (Japanese: ほぼイキかけました, Hobo ikikake mashita) a catchphrase coined by the Japanese baseball player Ichiro Suzuki. It became to a buzzword shortly after it was uttered in the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

Richard Sherman’s Postgame Interview

Richard Sherman’s Postgame Rant refers to televised taunts uttered by Seattle Seahawks’ cornerback during an interview following his team’s 23-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in January 2014.

About

Ironic Memes are memes that are used satirically, usually by being deliberately humorless, crude, or overused, as a way to both criticize meme culture, which has been considered by some to have become overused and unfunny with time, usually due to The Family Guy Effect, as well as to catch those with less Internet experience off guard. The use of ironic memes often includes intentional overuse of older Internet phenomena, such as 1337 speak or rage comics, as well as the use of the word “meme” as a replacement for some parts of speech, usually nouns or verbs.

Origin

[Researching]

Spread

On April 1st, 2013, the online imageboard 4chan launched the /s4s/^[1] (shit 4chan says) board, an April Fool’s Day joke imageboard created entirely for nonsensical shitposting. Despite this original purpose, the board was kept online after April Fool’s Day. The board, besides hosting said nonsensical posts, also focuses on making “memes” out of things that otherwise would not be considered memetic material.

Joke Fandoms

Joke fandoms refer to fandoms that have spawned to ironically over-praise material that others would see as humorless, crude and dull. These fandoms were created as a satire of several Internet fandoms that are commonly marked by over-obsession and zealous devotion, as well as a large Internet presence on sites such as Tumblr. Popular joke fandoms include the Shrek and Cory in The House fandoms.

Montage Parodies

Montage Parodies are a series of ironic video remixes that parody actual montage videos made by gamers to show off skill. These videos often rely on generally unexciting footage as a basis, and purposefully overuse dubstep music, special effects, outdated Internet meme references, gamer culture, and stoner culture to remix the video.

Dank Memes

Dank Memes is a phrase usually used in a condescending manner to refer to in-jokes that, to the one who posts it, have lost their comedic value, yet continue to be posted. The use of the word “dank” has its origins in drug culture as synonym for “cool”. ^[2]

Coaxed Into A Snafu

“Coaxed Into a Snafu” refers to a series of poorly drawn rage comic and advice animal character parodies captioned with variations of their associated catchphrases. The illustrations typically mock the percieved incorrect usage of Internet memes, as seen on sites such as 9gag and Reddit.

Meta Usage

Throughout the ironic subculture, it is worth noting that the word “meme” is commonly used to replace parts of speech such as nouns, adjectives and verbs, giving it an universal purpose. Another use of meta ironic memes includes the ironic praise of memes as the highest form of comedy, a way of life, or the answer to philosophical questions.

Search Interest

Note: Because the “ironic meme” subculture is based in the popularity of other memes, a search interest chart on the term or its subsets does not accurately reflect its popularity.

External References.

About

#Blessed is a hashtag widely used on social media to express gratitude for fortunate circumstances in everyday life. It has been also used ironically by those who perceive the hashtag as being too self-gratuitous or humblebragging.

Origin

The exact origin of #hashtag blessed is unknown. On January 5th, 2011, the music blog PigeonsAndPlanes^[1] highlighted a Vice documentary about rapper Lil B and referenced “#blessed” when expressing gratitude for the rapper’s work.

“Personally, I am glad that Lil B exists. I think he is #rare, very #based, and we are all #blessed for his presence.”

Spread

On December 16th, 2012, the college student blog Honestly, Mansbee^[2] published an post titled “I hate when white girls user the hashtag blessed.” On November 25th, 2013, Redditor Xx420_YoLoSwaG_420xX submitted a multi-pane Parks and Recreation comic titled “#blessed,” featuring screen captures from a scene in which the character Tom Haverford reads a “#blessed” tweet (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 2,500 votes (86% upvoted) and 100 comments on the /r/funny^[3] subreddit.

On December 9th, 2013, “#blessed” was featured in a list titled “15 Twitter Jokes We Can Retire Now” on the pop culture blog Complex.^[4] On May 2nd, 2014, The New York Times^[5] published an article about the growing backlash to the hashtag. Over the next two months, several news sites published articles about the hashtag’s online reception, including Slate,^[6] The Huffington Post^[7][8] and Elite Daily.^[9] On September 25th, the men’s interest blog Details^[12] highlighted a photo of rapper Drake with a #blessed prayer hands emoji tattoo (shown below).

On October 19th, BuzzFeed^[10] published a compilation #blessed tweets. On December 12th, a second compilation was featured on the viral content site.^[11]

Search Interest

External References

The entry is researching and in progress.
Currently working on:
- Mega Ultra Epic origin

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▓▓▓▓▓▓█░░░░ Valve, ░░░░░█ 
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h2. About

Valve, Add this please! is a phrase commonly used on ASCII Art featuring Facebook’s like button to spam Steam forums, particularly Steam Workshop ^[1] and Steam Greenlight ^[2].

Origin

‘Valve, Add this please!’ ASCII is created out of 5 unicode symbols including: Light Shade “░” – 0×2591, Dark Shade “▓” – 0×2593, Full Block “█” – 0×2588, Upper Half Block “▀” – 0×2580 and Lower Half Block “▄” – 0×2584. The picture was first used on Steam Greenlight’s 8BitMMO game’s forum, first posted on August 30, 2012 at 4:13pm by user Gregabeast as a simplier version without text on ^[3]. The phrase itself come from McPixel forum on August 30, 3:09pm. It was created by user Melonhead in form of ‘MCPIXEL, STEAMADD IT PLEASEAND IT SHOULD BE FREE TO PLAY!!1’ ^[4].

Precursor

In 2011, an ASCII focusing on the same like button became popular on Facebook as “Like ASCII” ^[5].

Spread

Both the phrase and the picture gained popularity on Steam forums. The sentence was reused at 3:42pm by Expand Dongle ^[6]. The ASCII was copied three times by BlueFox, first at 4:15pm and Vimy at 4:18pm ^[7][8]. From 2012 up to now, people created over 25 variantions of ‘Valve, Add this please!’ and wrote over 1 000 related comments.

Derative: Mega Ultra Epic

This ASCII is originating from Steam Workshop. It shortly after leaked out to Steam Greenlight, generally used in combination of ‘Mega Ultra’ and ‘Valve, Add this please! And give me one!’. However, it got bad reception from Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 players ^[9][10].

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Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1]Steam – Workshop

^[2]Steam – Greenlight

^[3]Steam – 8MitMMO:: Comments

^[4]Steam – McPixel:: Comments

^[5]fb-fun.de – coole Pinnwand ASCII Bilder / Posted on 1-19-2011

^[6]Steam – Organ Trail: Director’s Cut:: Comments

^[7]Steam – Towns:: Comments

^[8]Steam – Gnomoria:: Comments

^[9]Steam – What is up with these “SUPERMEGAULTRAEPIC” on the workshop ? / Posted on 10-19-2014

^[10]Reddit – Why do people spam “mega ultra epic” under Workshop admissions? / Posted on 8-9-2014

About

Tendies Stories are green text stories featuring a twenty-something man who lives at his mother’s home and constantly demands “tendies” (chicken tenders) in exchange for “good boy points” he has earned by doing chores and taking care of himself. The stories are often accompanied by images of Smug Pepe.

Origin

In October 2014, posters in the /r9k/ (robot 9000) board on 4chan began submitting green text stories featuring an autistic, overweight son who terrorizes his parents into getting him specific foods and frequently complains about “normies” (shown below).^[1]

On January 19th, 2015, an /r9k/^[7] user submitted a thread asking for posts “putting normies in their place,” to which several users replied with various stories about an adult man who lives with his parents and earns “good boy points” by doing household chores and practicing good hygiene. Other stories contained mentions of the son referring to chicken tenders as “tendies.”

Spread

On January 22nd, a 4chan user submitted a green text story to /r9k/^[6] complaining about his mother cleaning his waifu pillow and raising the price of tendies from five “good boy points” to 10 (shown below).

On January 25th, Mumsnet^[2] user Janice1975 submitted a post to the parenting message board asking for advice on how to deal with her 22-year-old son who exchanges “good boy points” for “tendies.” The post was subsequently deleted. On January 26th, a screenshot of the Mumsnet thread was submitted to the /r/4chan^[3] subreddit, where it gained over 1,000 votes (92% upvoted) and 70 comments in 48 hours.

The same day, a green text story was submitted to the /r9k/ board about a son who urinates all over his mother and her boyfriend in order to acquire tendies (shown below). On January 26th, a screenshot of the post was submitted to the /r/4chan^[5] subreddit, where it received more than 1,300 votes (93% upvoted) in the first 24 hours. On January 26th, an anonymous 4chan user submitted a “Chicken Tendies General” thread to the /ck/^[4] (cooking) board.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Overview

2015 U.S. Northeastern Blizzard, also known as The Blizzard of 2015 or Winter Storm Juno, is a currently active heavy snowstorm moving across the Central and Eastern coast of the United States. Upon its landfall in late January 2015, the storm led to the suspension of thousands of flights and rail services across the country and declaration of snow emergency in at least six states, including travel bans at nighttime in New Jersey and New York City.

Background

On January 23rd, 2015, a rapid development of a low-pressure area was detected off the Pacific Northwest, which quickly made its way inward across the Canadian Prairies, then southeastward into the Upper Midwest, before it began approaching northeast towards New England in the typical fashion of a Nor’easter, a macro-scale storm that moves along the upper East Coast of the United States on a recurring basis. By January 25th, official blizzard warnings had been issued in several states along the East Coast, including New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, while meteorologist projected a forecast of a potentially historic storm that could pile up to two to three feet (0.61 meter to 0.91 meter) in the New York City metropolitan area. On the early morning of January 26th, the storm began to sweep across the East Coast and continued throughout the day, covering a 250-mile area between New York City and Boston with up to 25 inches of snow. Later that same day, many roads and public transit services in New York and New England states were shut down in anticipation of life-threatening road conditions.

Notable Developments

Online, #Blizzardof2015 began trending on Twitter and Facebook, while thousands of photographs and videos of the massive snowfall emerged on photo-sharing sites like Instagram. In addition, many news sites ran real-time coverage of the latest developments as the storm made its way across the metropolitan areas off the East Coast. However, by January 27th, many in the social media began mocking the media hype over the storm which turned out to be less severe than the forecast.

Search Interest

External References

About

RPG Maker Crossovers refer to the profound slew of crossover fan arts revolving around protagonists of eerie rpg-horror games. The most prevalent games to be a subject of crossovers are Ib, Mad Father, and Yume Nikki.

Origin

All the games originate from the RPG Maker software which was first released in 1988^[1]. The fact that the games come from this software is one of the factors for the crossovers to be a popular theme for artists. The first game to become famous and to have its own fandom is Yume Nikki by Kikiyama, which was released in 2004^[2].

Spread

By 2011-2012, multiple hit rpg maker games were released such as Ib by Kouri, The Witch’s House by Fummy, and Mad Father by Sen.^[3][4][5] These games were popularized by Let’s Players such as Markiplier and quickly gained a following. The fact that these games are all uncannily similar (all of the protagonists are young female characters and the games themselves are horror-esque in which puzzles riddled with death traps must be solved,) is yet another factor as to why the games are often drawn together.

On April Fool’s Day 2014, animator Mike Enel (popular for the Gravity Falls Anime video,) uploaded a fake trailer crossover of Ib, Mad Father, and The Witch’s House.

An RPG Maker Wiki exists which documents information on any game made in the RPG Maker software. It currently has 216 pages^[6].

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

SuperWhoLock is the name of the fandom that is an inexplicable conjoining of three other large fandoms, namely: Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock. It is infamous on Tumblr for being what is known as what has been the largest most prevalent fandom in the site.

History

Supernatural is a show from CW that begun airing in 2005, while BBC’s Sherlock aired in 2010, and Doctor Who has been around since 1963, but truly began to shine in today’s pop culture when it was relaunched in 2005^[4][5][6].

Reception

The internet news site The Daily Dot wrote an article titled “WTF is Superwholock?” which aptly defined the super fandom as a massive crossover spewing multiple fan-art and fanfiction^[1].

On the April Fool’s Day of 2014, news site Hypable published an article titled “The BBC and CW announce joint ‘SuperWhoLock’ show coming in 2014” which hyped the fans with a fake article about the shows coming together for a 10 episode mini series^[2].

Impact

As SuperWhoLock is a combination of three different fandoms, the three have impacted each other greatly. As a tumblr superpower, it has affected the various fandoms within the site as well. Some of Urban Dictionary’s definitions of the term criticize Superwholock is “the Bermuda Triangle of Tumblr” and the fandom is “nothing more than a bunch of egotistical pricks who think they run Tumblr and try to shove it down your throat^[3].”

Fandom

Tumblr

[W.I.P.]

Notable Examples

Related Memes

[W.I.P.]

Search Interests

External References

Editor’s note: Still might need work

About

Lewd is an adjective often used to describe something of erotic nature, or otherwise obscene or indecent.

Origin

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first known usage of the word can be dated back to 14th century England^[1]. The word lewed, meaning “vulgar”, originated from an Old English word lǣwede, meaning “laical” or “ignorant”.

Spread

As of 2008, the word had already been used in various anime and manga discussions on 4chan’s /a/ (Anime and Manga) and /jp/ (Otaku Culture) boards^[2]. On /jp/, the word would often be associated with pictures of Eiki Shiki from Touhou Project, where she’s shown to criticize certain things for being “too lewd”. This is most likely based of a comic (pictured below, left) where she’s describing Komachi Onozuka’s breasts this way. It has spawned several reaction images, one of the oldest archived ones (picture below, right) being from November 19th, 2008^[3].

In more recent years, the term has spawned many other reaction images, featuring characters from various anime series blushing, being shy, or otherwise spazzing out.

Notable Examples

External References

About

“I Love Living In”, or “I Love Living Near”, is an expression indicating an appreciation for residing in close proximity to a geographic location, which is often used in photo titles submitted to Reddit with the phrasal template“I love living in X because I can take pictures like this half an hour from my house.”

Origin

On January 26th, 2015, Redditor maverick__7 submitted a photo of an elk in front of a mountain titled “I love living in Colorado because I can take pictures like this half an hour from my house” to the /r/pics^[1] subreddit (shown below). Within 48 hours, the post gained over 5,000 votes (95% upvoted) and 1,500 comments.

Spread

The same day, Redditor acourtem posted a screen captured image from the 2014 science fiction film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes titled “I love living in San Francisco because I can take pictures like this half an hour from my house” to /r/pics^[2] (shown below, left). Also on January 26th, Redditor murdering_time posted a photograph of a woman vomiting into a garbage can titled “I love living in Las Vegas because I can take pictures like this half an hour from my house” to /r/funny^[3] (shown below, right). Within 48 hours, the posts gathered more than 3,800 votes (86% upvoted) 4,100 votes (92% upvoted) respectively.

On January 27th, Redditor Striperman submitted a photograph featuring members of the Islamic State (IS) holding pistols and IS flags titled “I love living near Paris, because I can take photos like these 30 minutes from my house” to the /r/ImGoingToHellForThis^[4] subreddit (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor csquaredisrippn posted a screen captured image of a South Park character beating a dead horse titled “I love living near Reddit, because I can take photos like these 30 minutes from my house” to the /r/funny^[5] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 3,700 voted (86% upvoted) in the first 24 hours (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Overview

Super Bowl XLIX is an upcoming Nation Football League (NFL) championship game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots scheduled for February 1st, 2015 at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

Background

Halftime Show

On November 23rd, 2014, the NFL confirmed that pop artist Katy Perry would be performing during the halftime show. That day, the Pepsi YouTube channel uploaded a promotional video for the upcoming performance (shown below).

Season Championship Winners

On January 18th, 2015, the New England Patriots won a landslide victory (45-7) against the Indianapolis Colts at during their American Football Conference (AFC) Championship game. The same day, the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Green Bay Packers (28-22) in their National Football Conference (NFC) Championship game. The winner of each were selected to compete in the Super Bowl to become the 2014 NFL champion.

Notable Developments

#DeflateGate

Following the AFC game, accusations that the Patriots used deflated footballs to gain a competitive advantage over the Colts prompted an investigation by the NFL. In response, many Twitter users posted jokes and photoshopped images mocking the investigation with the hashtag #DeflateGate.

Skittles Commercial

On January 26th, the Skittlesbrand YouTube channel uploaded a commercial featuring Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch answering questions from reporters in front of a Skittles backdrop (shown below). Within 48 hours, the video gathered more than three million videos and 1,400 comments.

Media Day

On January 27th, a Super Bowl media day was held for players to answer questions about the upcoming game at various press conferences. That day, Twitter users joked about Tom Brady’s messy hairstyle worn during a press conference (shown below).

During another press conference, Marshawn Lynch replied to each question with the answer “I’m here so I won’t get fined” (shown below). A video of the conference was subsequently submitted to the /r/videos^[2] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 4,800 votes (93% upvoted) within 24 hours. That day, The Daily What^[1] published a round-up of notable media day incidents.

Search Interest

External References

About

Le Toucan is a tropical bird often depicted in ASCII art with the message “le toucan has arrived” in Twitch chat during livestreams of the multiplayer online battle arena game League of Legends, similar to other reaction emoticons associated with e-sports like Franker Z and “ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ raise your dongers ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ”.

Origin

On December 12th, 2013, an ASCII art depiction of a toucan bird was posted in an avian-themed thread on the 4chan /s4s/ (shit 4chan says) board (shown below).^[5]

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The exact origin of the expression “le toucan has arrived” on Twitch is unknown. The earliest known mention was in a DOTA 2 thread on the NeoGAF forums^[4] by member Randdalf, who cited “le toucan has arrived” as his “current favorite Twitch copy pasta.”

Spread

On December 1st, the toucan ASCII art was archived on The Best of Twitch^[1] copypasta site. On December 9th, a thread titled “Le Toucan has arrived” was submitted to the General Discussion board on the League of Legends Forums.^[2] On December 27th, YouTuber and Twitch streamer scarra uploaded a clip from a League of Legends livestream in which he professes his love for viewers that “spam le toucan” (shown below). That day, the video was submitted to the /r/leagueoflegends^[3] subreddit. On January 5th, 2015, the ASCII art was submitted to the TwitchQuotes^[6] archive from user Forsenlol’s stream.

Search Interest

External References

About

Peppa Pig “Grown Up Music” Videos are edited versions of a clip from the children’s show Peppa Pig, in which music played over a radio in the cartoon is replaced with other music, usually of a coarse or bizarre nature.

Origin

Peppa Pig is a British children’s cartoon which began airing in 2004. ^[1] In one episode of the show, which featured a segment where the characters discuss musical preference, Peppa begins playing “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” on a radio in response to being asked what kind of music she likes. ^[2]

On June 8, 2014, YouTuber Phorky Phork uploaded an edited version of this scene in which the radio plays the song “Ass-N-Titties” by DJ Assault. ^[3]

Spread

While the original video was not widely seen, only gaining slightly over 30,000 views, other variations were. On August 30, YouTuber Adam Hamrus posted an edit with the song being replaced by “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj. ^[4] On September 20, YouTuber Homestar1998 created a parody which made the characters out to be radical Islamic militants. ^[5] On September 22, a MontageParody version was created by YouTuber Kek Speckle. ^[6] On November 14, the YouTube account Mamilos Molengas uploaded a parody video which featured the trend. The video later gained over 4 million views. ^[7]

References

About

The term “Selfie Stickheads” refers to the people who take “selfies” with “selfie sticks” in all manner of locations and situations. Often times these ‘selfie stickheads’ look incredibly awkward or obnoxious doing so.

Origin

In response to the explosion of selfie stick users at tourist destinations around the world there were numerous articles posted online during 2014 featuring pictures of people taking pictures of themselves with a selfie stick. The vast majority of these articles were aimed at deriding the user of the selfie stick. In January 2015 the term ‘selfie stickhead’ was coined and the domain name www.selfiestickheads.com was registered.

Spread

On June 24th, 2014 Forbes released an article featuring numerous awkward pictures of people taking photos with selfie sticks^[1]. From here, the selfie stick shaming trend continued on a few other websites. Some calling it ‘the peak of narcissism’^[2] and others linking it to mental disorders^[3]. So large was the backlash against selfie sticks that on November 27, 2014 France24 reported^[4] that in South Korea there could be huge fines or jail times for selfie stick vendors. Then on January 2nd, 2015 a piece appeared on an Australian news site^[5] lamenting the fact that selfie stick users (a.k.a. selfie stickheads) are more interested in taking a selfie than actually appreciating the tourist attraction they are visiting. On January 16th, 2015 famous podcaster Adam Curry (known for his hatred towards the selfie phenomenon) featured the selfiestickheads.com website on his personal blog^[6].

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1]Forbes – The Selfie-Stick Backlash Involves Awkward Photos Of People Using Selfie Sticks Posted on 6-24-2014

^[2]Return of Kings – Have We Reached Peak Narcissism With The “Selfie Stick”?? Posted on 7-17-2014

^[3]Disclose.tv – Selfies Are Linked To Mental Disorders Posted on 12-12-2014

^[4]France24 – Selfie sticks could bring jail time in South Korea Posted on 11-27-2014

^[5]ABC Radio Australia – The scourge of the selfie stick Posted on 1-2-2015

^[6]Curry.com – SELFIESTICKHEADS Posted 1-16-2015

About

Andy Baio is an Internet entrepreneur and blogger best known for his commentaries and analysis on the web culture through his personal website Waxy.org, as well as his involvement in a number of start-up ventures and events, most notably for serving on the board of directors of Kickstarter and co-founding the annual arts and technology conference XOXO.

History

Waxy.org

Baio registered the domain Waxy.org^[1] on June 2nd, 2000. The site contained a placeholder image with the words “Generic Website” until April 14th, 2002, when it was converted into a personal blog.^[3]

On April 29th, 2003, Baio highlighted the “Star Wars Kid” viral video on Waxy.org as one of the earliest websites to spread the footage. On July 16th, 2003, following the video’s mass exposure, Baio and over 400 fans of the video raised $4,334.44 in donations and sent Raza a 30GB iPod, a gift certificate for an electronics store and a “Thank You” letter^[6] (shown below).

Upcoming

On September 19th, 2003, Baio launched the social event calendar site Upcoming.^[4] In October 2005, Yahoo acquired the site for an undisclosed amount, hiring Baio as the technical director for the website. In April 2013, Yahoo announced the site would be discontinued. On May 8th, 2014, Baio created a Kickstarter^[8] campaign to relaunch the site, which successfully raised over $104,900 within the same month, tripling its initial goal of $30,000.

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Supercuts

On April 11th, 2008, Baio published a post on Waxy titled “Fanboy Supercuts, Obsessive Video Montages,” which defined the term “supercut” as:

“(A) genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage.”

On November 1st, 2011, Andy Baio announced the relaunch of the website Supercut.org^[11] into a supercut video database with several different categories where users could upload their own videos.

Kickstarter

In September 2008, Baio became a member of Kickstarter’s board of directors and was hired as the crowdfunding platform’s chief technical officer (CTO) in July 2009. In November 2010, Baio left Kickstarter to work at the non-profit technology incubator Expert Labs.

XOXO Festival

On May 24th, 2012, Baio and co-founder Andy McMillan launched a Kickstarter^[5] campaign for the XOXO Festival, an annual arts and technology conference held in Portland, Oregon. By June 15th, the campaign raised over $175,500 of it’s $125,000 goal.

Reputation

Stance on #GamerGate

On September 16th, 2014, Baio tweeted^[7] about the 4chan ban on GamerGate discussion, noting his amusement that users were speculating founder Christopher Poole was swayed by attending that year’s XOXO Festival (shown below).

On October 27th, Baio released an analysis of the #GamerGate Twitter hashtag on the blog-publishing platform Medium.^[9] In the article, Baio disclosed “a strong anti-GamerGate bias” due to his relationships with Anita Sarkeesian and video games journalist Leigh Alexander. Baio claimed that a majority of #GamerGate tweets came from newly-created accounts, were retweets and that the opposing groups were largely echo chambers (shown below). On November 19th, Baio was added to a Pastebin^[2] document containing a list of people “actively working against GG.”

Defense of Internet Archive

On January 28th, 2015, Baio published an article on Medium^[10] about Google shifting priorities away from archiving the web, which praised the Internet Archive and TextFiles founder Jason Scott for their efforts in preserving Internet content.

Search Interest

External References

About

Sarcastic Bear is an advice animal series consisting of an image of a bear with an irreverent and sardonic facial expression, captioned with a statement that is typically presented in a sarcastic or derisive tone. The nature of the meme is similar to that of Condescending Wonka.

Origin

The series originally began as a post by Redditor RuggedlyHandsome to the /r/funny subreddit on May 28th, 2014, titled “bear looks sarcastic as fuck”,^[1] featuring a photograph of the bear with no captions (shown below).

The subreddit’s commentators promptly predicted that it would spawn a new image macro-based meme, with the first use of the phrase “Sarcastic Bear” appearing in the comments section of the post.^[4] The post also saw the creation of the meme’s first image macro examples.^[5]

Spread

A large number of images related to the meme were created almost immediately after the initial /r/funny post. The most popular of these (shown below, left) was posted to Imgur by ShoopSythe on May 30th, garnering over 300 points.^[2] On September 23rd, user KillerDorin submitted an example of the meme which criticizes people who obsess over whether or not an image is a repost, reaching Imgur’s front page with over 7,000 points.^[3]

Sarcastic Bear images frequently reference Confession Bear, and the two are often used together. On January 31st, 2015, Imgur user omgwhatamidoing made a post^[6] mocking a perceived misuse of the Confession Bear meme using Sarcastic Bear (shown below), reaching the front page of Imgur.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

This entry is a Work in Progress so feel free to request an editorship

Origin

While the date of the first person with an Infantilism fetish is unknown the word itself was created in 1894 by combining the word infantile with the “ism” suffix.

About

A diaper fetish is a sexual fetish in where people are sexually attracted to the act of wearing a diaper or seeing others wearing a diaper. It is also not limited to urinating and defecating in a diaper.

Infantilism

Infantilism is a sexual fetish in where one or more people role-play as babies including infant-like behavior such as: wearing diapers, urinating and defecating in diapers and more infant-like behavior.

Examples

Related

There are only 2 fetishes related to a diaper fetish and those would be watersports and scat/coprophilia

Coprophilia

Coprophilia is a sexual attraction related to being covered by or eating fecal matter. One example of this would be 2 girl 1 cup

Watersports

Watersports is the sexual attraction to being covered by or consuming urine

Search Interest

About

Steam is an internet-based digital distribution, digital rights management (DRM), multiplayer, and social networking platform developed by Valve Corporation. Steam provides installation and automatic updating of games on multiple computers and community features such as friend lists and groups.^[1]

History

Shortly before 2002, Valve began development on Steam. On March 22th, 2002, at the “Game Developers Conference”, Steam was revealed to the public as a solid distribution network. In January 2003, Steam was first made available for beta testing during the beta of “Counter-Strike 1.6”. On September 12th, 2003, Steam was officially launched following a successful beta test period. In 2004, “Half-Life 2” was released and became the first game to require installation of the Steam client to play, even for retail copies. The first third-party games began to appear on Steam in 2005, followed by an announcement from Valve that it had become profitable due to highly successful Valve games.

Features

Steam’s primary service is to provide downloadable games and other software the user possesses in their virtual software libraries to their local computers as game cache files. In September 2007, Valve launched the Steam Community website. As of February 2015, there have been 13 million accounts on the site and 150 games have been made available. In September of 2008, a year later, Valve began support for Steam Cloud, a service that can automatically store saved games and related custom files on Valve’s servers, which can be accessed by users from any machine running the client. Major updates came in late 2011 and much of 2012, such as the additions of the Steam Workshop and Steam Greenlight.

Highlights

There are many running gags and jokes within the Steam userbase. After Valve introduced Steam Reviews, which enabled users to post their reviews and opinions on the game, many satirical user reviews began spreading around the community in 2013. Also noting that none of Valve’s titles have the number “3” included, with the exception of “Half Life 2: Episode Three”, people have started to joke about Valve (or more specifically, Gabe Newell) being unable to count to 3. Even the annual discount events that take place on Steam, in which many prices are temporarily lowered, has become a running gag as many Steam customers tend to overspend and make impulse purchases.

Traffic

On the “Alexa” network trafficking site, the Steam Community website has a global ranking of the 301st most popular site as of February 2015^[2], which also ranks #196 in the United States alone. There are 4.96 daily pageviews per visitor and almost all visitors are male.

Search Interest

External References

WIP. Feel free to request editorship

About

Monster Hunter is a video game franchise developed by Capcom, where you control a hunter who completes quests by hunting monsters.

History

The first game was released on PlayStation 2 on 11th March, 2004 on Japan and the 21st September on the same year for North America.

Fandom

Search Interest

External Links