[Work in progress, help is appreciated.]

ABOUT

Left 4 Dead is a co-op first person shooter game developed by Turtle Rock Studios and published by Valve. It takes place in an apocalyptic world brought about by the “green flu” which causes those afflicted to suffer from grotesque mutations and aggression.

HISTORY

The game was released on November 17, 2008 for Micorsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and Mac OSX.


GAMEPLAY

The game has four game modes:

• Campaign: Up to four players cooperatively play through different stages attempting to make it to rescue with safe points along the way.

• Versus: Two teams, one consisting of the survivors trying to make it to the end of the level, and another consisting of the infected trying to stop them, fight against each other, switching off each chapter

• Survival: Up to four players attempt to survive against an endless hoard of infected for as long as they can.

• Single-player: Identical to the campaign only instead of other players, the other three survivors are Bots.
  
  
  

CHARACTERS

There are four characters in the game refered to as the Survivors.

• Bill: A Vietnam veteran.

• Francis: A biker.

• Louis: A system’s analyst at a information technology company.

• Zoey: A college freshman.

SEQUEL

On November 17, 2009, a year after the first game was released, Valve launched Left 4 Dead 2 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360.

CHARACTERS

In L4D2, a brand new cast of Survivors were featured.

• Coach: A high school football coach.

• Nick: A cynical gambler and con artist.

• Rochelle: A low level productive assistant.

• Ellis: A talkative mechanic who tells stories about his times with his friend Keith.

MEMES

Karma Charger

Karma Charger is a term used to refer to a Charger that attacks lone players while teammates refuse to help, often because the player being attacked was griefing, hence the name karma charger.

Grabbin’ Pills/PEELZHERE

This was created due to Mr. Biddle’s ignorance and unprofessional conduct in his reviews of products, his general tone and his arrogance in commenting.

Hopefully he learns some humility and appreciate the humor that this image intends to share.

It was first presented here http://gizmodo.com/5959912/?post=54221620

It arose from 2 separate articles;

First was his review of the Lumia 920 where he marred the entire review simply because the phone was “too heavy” and the next was from this genius of a thread in another article where he was called out for his double standards and obvious bias by many people.

http://gizmodo.com/5958564/?post=54065288

About

Why is Idiots X is an internet catchphrase used to express a hypocritical sense of wonder in somebody’s thinking, or lack thereof.

Origin

Why is Idiots X originated on the Yahoo Answers “Religion and Spirituality” forum. A humble user made a question titled, “Why is idiots deny koran?” They followed it with a body of “Koran is of ultimates of all books and is most logicing book to ever write.”

This spawned lots of feedback and general mockery of the user, named Wahālan.

Popular Usage

Why is Idiots X began to be used as a joking term to express your disbelief with somebody’s actions or feelings. It is often used in an intentionally hypocritical way, in the context that the question itself is filled with grammatical errors.

Background

The Lance Armstrong Doping Controversy refers to allegations made against American professional cyclist Lance Armstrong^[1] that led to his lifetime ban from the sport in 2012. The allegations date back to 2004, when sports journalist Pierre Ballester and The Sunday Times sports correspondent David Walsh published a French book titled L.A. Confidentiel^[2], containing circumstantial evidence that Armstrong had been using performance-enhancing drugs throughout much of his career. Over the years, he has also been accused by a former employee and several other teammates, with breaking coverage provided by French sports newspaper L’Equipe and American news program 60 Minutes.^[3] In 2012, United States Anti-Doping Agency stripped Armstrong of all of the titles he won from August 1st, 1998 through 2012 and banned him from competition for life^[4], yielding much online reaction.

Notable Developments

August 2012: Titles Stripped

In August 2012, after a lengthy investigation into a doping conspiracy involving the United States Postal Service professional cycling team, the United States Anti-Doping Agency ruled to strip Armstrong of his Tour De France titles and ban him from competing in, coaching or holding any position for any sport that follows the World Anti-Doping Code for the rest of his life.^[15] Despite Armstrong’s denial that he ever was involved in drug use, he chose not to fight the charges.^[14] On October 10th, after the full 202-page report was released, several cycling Twitter users and bloggers began parsing through the information, sharing highlights (shown below) via social networks.^[17]USA Today^[18] engaged Twitter and Facebook users in a discussion on whether or not stripping Armstrong’s titles was fair, yieiding dozens of comments from both sites.

OH but wait!!! <a href="https://twitter.com/johanbruyneel">johanbruyneel</a> gets in on the act. He has Lance's money! How does Michele want it? Oh my <a href="http://t.co/0Cr4w1Zg" title="http://twitter.com/UCI_Overlord/status/256133328225308672/photo/1">twitter.com/UCI_Overlord/s…</a></p>&mdash; Not Pat McQuaid(UCI_Overlord) October 10, 2012

On October 21st, Armstrong gave a speech to participants at the Livestrong annual Ride for the Roses^[21], noting that it had been a tumultuous time for him. That day, he was mentioned on Twitter 119,313 times.^[22] The next day, Uproxx^[19] curated a series of image macros and fan art made in the wake of the scandal. Most of these were originally shared on Tumblr on the Lance Armstrong tag.^[20] Buzzfeed^[23] also shared a series of humorous tweets in response to the scandal.

November 2012: Jersey Photograph

On November 10th, 2012, Armstrong tweeted^[5] a photo of himself laying on a large couch in a room with seven yellow Tour De France jerseys from his wins between 1999 and 2005 hanging on the walls with the caption “Back in Austin and just layin’ around…”Within three days, it was retweeted more than 10,600 times, favorited more than 3700 times and the image was viewed more than 522,000 times on its host, Mobli.^[6]

The tweet and accompanying image was featured on several news sites including USA Today^[7] and the International Business Times^[8], Mashable^[10], the Huffington Post^[16] and Forbes.^[11] The New York Daily News^[12] noted that Twitter response was split, with people both supporting and disparaging Armstrong for the photo. On the 10th and 11th, there were nearly 34,000 mentions of Lance Armstrong on Twitter^[13], although this is combined with mentions due to him resigning from his position with cancer research charity Livestrong. Additionally, some Twitter users began photoshopping the image, replacing the framed jerseys with images of drag paraphernalia, as featured on the Daily Mail.^[9]

Back in Austin and just layin’ around… mob.li/_r4zAz

— Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong) November 10, 2012

Related Meme: Livestrong Bracelets

Armstrong’s cancer research foundation Livestrong launched a line of yellow silicone bracelets in May 2004 as a fundraising technique for the charity.^[24] That year, it become a popular fashion statement, with various celebrities, politicians and athletes photographed wearing it. By September, the company had sold 12 million bracelets.^[25] The success of the Livestrong bracelet led to other causes creating their own support wristbands.^[26][32] Following Armstrong’s title loss, several news sites including Gawker^[27], CNN^[28], the Huffington Post^[29] and the Los Angeles Times^[30] published articles on what to do with a Livestrong bracelet now that the cyclist had lost his merit. Gizmodo^[31] hosted a photoshop contest for people to share images depicting the destruction of the wristbands. Additionally, The Onion webstore began carrying a parody bracelet with the words “Cheat to Win”^[33] (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References

About

“2deep4u” is an abbreviation of the phrase “too deep for you," indicating that the content in question may be too profound or obscure in nature for its audience to appreciate. It is often used as an indictment of arrogance and pretension in the hipster subculture, or as a sarcastic defense of a particular genre in music or visual art. The phrase saw a resurgence in popularity following the rise of the related abbreviation “2Spooky” in 2012, correlating with Google Trends results.

Origin

The earliest known use of the abbreviation was in a tag for a blog post^[2] by Blogspot user Posthumous^[1] published on February 13th, 2010, in which he reviewed the album The Happiness Project by Charles Spearin.

Spread

On March 8th, 2010, the abbreviation was used in a thread on the /mu (music) board on 4chan,^[3] in which users created custom album covers based on random Wikipedia articles. On April 27th, the phrase was used as a retort to the insult “you suck in bed” in a thread on the Game Trailers Forums.^[6] On May 21st, LiveJournal^[5] user oddfishstick posted the abbreviation in the comment section of a journal entry titled “Noteworthy People Stare at The MoMA.” On September 28th, an Urban Dictionary^[4] entry for the phrase was submitted by user ImthatAwesome, defining the term as a descriptor for content in which its “artistic value goes beyond a person’s perception.” On June 30th, 2deep4u^[9] was registered as a username on the social news website Reddit. On July 4th, 2011, YouTuber Karl0v submitted a video titled “2Deep4U,” featuring footage of several men competing in a race while wearing penis costumes (shown below).

On February 9th, 2012, the I’m 2Deep4U Tumblr^[8] was launched, which describes itself as “a blog where we mock the stupid, melodramatic, pseudo-intellectual quotes and images that flood the Tumblr feeds of people everywhere,” providing humorous commentary on inspirational photo quote images (shown below).

On March 22nd, a thread titled “2deep4u sharethread” was submitted to 4chan’s /mu^[10] board, urging other users to share music from the avant garde, noise, throat singing, field recordings, lowercase and drone genres. On May 18th, a Meme Generator^[11] page titled “2Deep4U” was created, which featured image macros based on a photo of a person drowning and captions including the abbreviation “2Deep4U” (shown below). On November 10th, a Facebook page titled “2Deep4U” was created, which accumulated over 180 likes within four days.

Search Interest

External Reference

Green elephant – VHS era epic film from director Svetlana Baskova large volumes containing shit, eating shit, blood, and anal sex with the corpse of a male. Due to its very specific content considered a cult among fans of different trash. A remarkable example of Russian art house, with everything you need.

Two rednecks, junior officers, are put into the brig, whose walls are painted a poisonous green. One of them (Sergey Pakhomov) tries to start a conversation with the other, but in a very strange manner, bringing the conversation to a discussion of how to “fuck for the first time,” as he poured “cum”, as well as where he shit, as it for military service almost “made by a fag.” Pakhomov offers to play cards, checkers, Made them out of the mud and paper. Trying to somehow entertain his companion.
Interlocutor (Vladimir Yepifantsev) pretty fun at first, but the hero and all said Pakhomov said. The hero Epifantseva slowly running out of patience stock, and so not a giant. In all this, sorry, resulted, by checking the picture. Includes: cleaning the toilet with a fork, “sweet bread”, fiery dance, blowjob, reinforcing rod for the great justice, suicide and trachea as a way to establish subordination.

About

Seapunk is a music and visual art genre that utilize imagery from 1990s cyberpunk culture, including dolphins, pyramids, bright colors, beach scenes and dreamscapes. The music often incorporates ocean sounds and electronic beats.

History

The term “seapunk” was coined by Brooklyn-based DJ Julian Foxworth^[3], better known as Lil Internet.^[1][2] He claims the term came to him in a suureal dream, which he tweeted to his followers on June 1st, 2011.The next month, the first seapunk record label, Coral Records Internazionale, established by Los Angeles-based producer Fire For Effect^[11], launched a Bandcamp^[5] page and Facebook fan page^[4] where they shared links of other unaffiliated artists that exemplify the music they wanted to release.

SEAPUNKLEATHERJACKETWITHBARNACLESWHERETHESTUDSUSED TO BE

— @ LILINTERNET (@LILINTERNET) June 1, 2011

One of the earliest releases that specifically was classified as seapunk was Zombelle and Myrrh Ka Ba’s five song EP “Tropicult,”^[6] (shown below) , made available to download for free on July 26th, 2011. That October, Coral Records held the first Seapunk showcase in Brooklyn^[7], coinciding with that year’s College Music Journal Festival, featuring Lil Internet and five other DJs and performers.

Reception

Some of the earliest attention to the trend was a September 2011 post on Mishka NYC’s blog.^[21] The next month, digital marketing consultant Luna Vega^[22] posted an in-depth look at the styles and trends involved in the scene. One of the earliest press mentions of Seapunk occurred in January 2012 with a print aritcle in the British culture magazine _Dazed & Confused^[9] and featured on news websites San Francisco Bay Guardian^[13], the Chicago Reader^[14] and SSG Music.^[15] That February, a seapunk show featuring performances by Zombelle and Starscream was reviewed by the Village Voice.^[16] Three weeks later, seapunk was featured in the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times^[17], where it was billed “a web joke with music.” This led to response articles on Hipster Runoff^[18], Stereogum^[19] and Vice’s music blog Noisey^[20], where the history of the term and scene were laid out via screenshots of tweets and Facebook posts.

Impact

Notable Videos

Rihanna Controversy

On November 10th, 2012, singer Rihanna used a seapunk-inspired background during her musical performance of “Diamonds” on Saturday Night Live (shown below, left). Her out of the ordinary performance was featured on Mashable^[25], the Los Angeles Times^[26], the Hollywood Reporter^[27] and Popcrush.^[28] However, Tumblr and Twitter users spoke out against the performance, comparing the backgrounds to the art and animation work of Jerome LOL^[29] (shown below, right).

In the first four days following the performance, the backlash from the sea punk community was reported on by internet culture and music blogs including Buzzfeed^[30], Uproxx^[31], The FW^[32], the Atlantic^[33], the Examiner^[34], Salacious Sound^[35], Flavorwire^[36], Spin^[37] and the Daily Dot.^[38] On November 13th, a single topic Tumblr titled No Seapunk Rihanna Copyright^[39] launched, compiling GIFs, photoshopped images and edited videos of the perfomance, as well as of rap artist Azealia Banks who was accused of co-opting sea punk musical styles in her June 2012 song “Aquababe.”^[41] Nick Briz created a green screen version of the performance, encouraging artists to create their own backgrounds which he collected on a personal homepage.^[40]

Despite the backlash, on November 11th, 2012, Azealia Banks released the video for the song “Atlantis” which was also sea punk inspired.

Fandom

Fans collect on Tumblr with posts tagged “#seapunk”^[11] and “#sea punk”^[12] As of November 2012, a Facebook fan page^[8] for Seapunk, created in September 2011, has more than 3300 likes. In March 2012, Sea Punk Gang^[23] launched as an online collective to share new seapunk music, posting an exclusive mixtape every month. Their Facebook fan page^[24] has 1670 likes as of November 2012.

Search Interest

External References

[WORK IN PROGRESS]

ABOUT

Above Top Secret is a website founded as a forum for conspiracy theories.

HISTORY

The site was founded in 1999 by Simon Gray. After the September 11th attacks on the world trade center, the site received a dramatic increase in membership and has undergone many changes over the years.

FEATURES

Alongside the forum, Above Top Secret has a weekly online streaming show called ATS Live, and an ATS Video section with videos about recent conspiracy theories and news stories.

Overview

United States Secession Petitions refers to several petitions filed on the government’s “We the People” website by residents of several states to secede from the rest of the country following the reelection of United States president Barack Obama in November of 2012.

Background

Following Barack Obama’s win in the 2012 United States presidential election, a petition was filed on the Whitehouse “We the People”^[1] website asking for the Obama administration to “Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government.” Within seven days, the petition received over 33,000 signatures.

Notable Developments

Additional Petitions

On November 9th, a second petition^[2] was created calling for the Whitehouse to grant Texas secession from the United States, receiving over 100,000 signatures within five days.

The same day, a petitition^[10] to grant a pizza party to the rest of the United States of America if the State of Missouri successfully seceded from the union. Also on November 12th, a petition^[6] was submitted to “deport everyone that signed a petition to withdraw their state from the United States of America,” receiving over 17,000 signatures within 48 hours.

Media Coverage

On November 10th, the political blog Red Alert Politics^[8] published an article reporting that 15 states had issued White House petitions asking for permission to secede. On November 12th, Gawker^[3]published an article by staff writer Neetzan Zimmerman, which noted that secession had been previously ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. The same day, Yahoo News^[9] reported that 20 states had filed secession petitions. On November 14th, the news site WND^[11] published an article reporting that there were a total of 40 state petitions to secede and The Daily Caller^[12] noted that over 675,000 signatures had signed petitions. The same day, the American politics blog America Blog^[15] published a post titled “Let the South Secede,” noting the disproportionate amount of federal money received by states that traditionally vote Republican.

Governor Reactions

On November 13th, The Dallas Morning News^[13] published an article reporting that Texas Governor Rick Perry did not support the secession petition and that he “believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it.” On the following day, The Times-Picayune^[14] quoted Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal saying the petition to secede was “silly.”

Online Reaction

On Reddit

On November 13th, Redditor magicclubpresident submitted a post titled “A Helpful Chart to Put the Texas Secession Petition in Perspective” to the /r/texas^[5] subreddit, which featured a a pie chart showing the amount of Texans who signed the petition compared to those who didn’t (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor haydennt submitted a post titled “ELI5: what will happen if Tennessee or Texas secede” to the /r/explainitlikeimfive subreddit, which received over 1,000 up votes and 820 comments within 24 hours. Also on November 13th, Redditor skinnymojo submitted a post to the /r/PoliticalHumor^[7] subreddit, featuring a photoshopped image of a “Faux Nooz” reporting Glenn Beck elected as president of a new country made up of seceded states (shown below, right).

Search Interest

Search queries for the keywords “secession united states” saw a significant increase following the United States presidential election in November of 2012.

External References

About

Joan the Silencer is a photoshop meme that utilizes a photo of Modesto, California Republican delegate Joan Clendenin as she appears to be using paper in an attempt to keep Texas delegate and Ron Paul supporter Jeremy Blosser from speaking during the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Origin

The photo of Joan Clendenin and Jeremy Blosser was taken in August 2012 during the Republican National Convention. According to Clendenin, Ron Paul supporters standing near her assigned seat began shouting “point of order” after being upset by a ruling on that day’s state roll call. For fifteen minutes, she was unable to hear or see any of the speeches.^[1] Nearing the end of Paul’s supporter’s objections, she posed for the photograph as Jeremy Blosser stood in front of a microphone that was turned off.^[2]

Spread

The photo was initially shared on several small political blogs in September 2012 including Preserving Freedom^[3], the Republican Coalition of Denton County^[4] and Libertarian Jake.^[5] On November 7th, the photo was submitted to the Ron Paul subreddit^[6], where it earned 87 upvotes and 76 points overall. The next day , it was reposted to Daily Paul^[7] where a commenter shared an exploitable cut out of Clendenin, encouraging others to photoshop it into other images. On the 9th, a Facebook fan page^[8] was started to curate these photoshopped images, accruing 1971 likes in 4 days. Four days later, the photoshop meme was featured on the Daily Dot.^[9]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

[Not Currently Available]

External References

About

Nicole Westbrook’s “Thanksgiving” is a music video by the producers of Rebecca Black’s Friday in which 12-year-old Nicole Westbrook sings about the United States holiday Thanksgiving.

Origin

The patmuzic YouTube channel uploaded a video titled “Nicole Westbrook – It’s Thanksgiving” on November 7th, 2012, featuring a music video in which 12-year-old Nicole Westbrook performs the song “It’s Thanksgiving” (shown below). The video was produced by Patrice Wilson,^[1] previously known for writing and producing the music video “Friday” starring Rebecca Black. Within eight days, the video accumulated over 7.7 million views and 68,700 comments.

Spread

On November 9th, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[2] highlighted the video in a post titled “The Only Thanksgiving Song You’ll Need to Hear,” which included several animated GIFs of Patrice Wilson (shown below).

The same day, the video was reposted on the women’s interest blog Jezebel,^[3] the Internet news blog UpRoxx,^[4] Time^[5] and The Huffington Post.^[6]

Search Interest

External References

About

Mom Was Worried, I Sent Her This Picture is a photoshop meme featuring a picture of a woman pretending to be dangling from the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon. The meme involves superimposing a cutout of the woman to appear as if she is dangling from other objects, buildings and landmarks. The series also inspired some viewers to create their own imitations and share them online.

Origin

Redditor AlphaF submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about my trip to the Grand Canyon, I sent her this picture” to the /r/funny^[1] subreddit on November 15th, 2012, featuring a photograph in which she appeared to be falling to her death off a cliff at the Grand Canyon (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post received over 98,400 upvotes, 94,500 downvotes and 3,300 comments.

Spread

Later that same day on November 15th, Redditor hey_suburbia submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about my move to a high rise apartment, I sent her these pictures” to the /r/funny^[3] subreddit, featuring two photographs of men hanging off the edge of a rooftop (shown below).

Throughout the following day, several Redditors began replying to the thread with photoshopped versions of the original image using an exploitable cutout of Redditor AlphaF. Redditor aeusnd submitted a “[FIXED]”^[12] version of Reddtior AlphaF’s photo, which featured the character Scar from the 1994 animated musical film The Lion King (shown below, left). Redditor chromesitar submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about me moving to L.A. Sent her this picture,” featuring Redditor AlphaF superimposed into a photograph of the room from the adult film series Backroom Casting Couch (shown below, right). Both submissions soon reached the frontpage of the site after receiving 3,200 upvotes and 35,000 up votes respectively.

Redditor JimCSF submitted an image^[6] featuring Redditor AlphaF falling into the mouth of a Sarlacc monster from the science fiction film series Star Wars (shown below, left), receiving over 29,000 up votes and 400 comments in 12 hours. Redditor miseryGuts submitted a post titled “Mom was worried about my acid trip, I sent her this picture,”^[7] featuring an animated Droste effectGIF looping into Redditor AlphaF’s mouth (shown below, right).

Redditor Synikul criticized the amount of posts parodying the Grand Canyon image by posting an animated GIF^[8] of a man beating a dead horse (shown below, left). Imgur^[10] user FrictionShliction submitted an animated GIF titled “My mother was worried about my trip to Afghanistan, I sen her this picture,” featuring a scene from the comedy film Team America: World Police" with AlphaF dangling from the back of a jeep (shown below, right).

Redditor TrollingCancerofaMan submitted a photograph of a Grand Canyon Cliff titled “Bad Luck Brian” (shown below),^[11] suggesting that the subject had fallen off the cliff. The Internet news blog The Daily Dot^[2] published an article titled “Daughter Scares Mom With Terrifying Photo at the Grand Canyon,” which highlighted several notable examples from the series.

Notable Examples

In addition to the photoshopped variations of Redditor AlphaF’s Grand Canyon photo, others replied with pictures of themselves dangling from the edge of different cliff faces.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Astronaut Sloth, sometimes known as Space Sloth, refers to a photoshopped image of a sloth’s head superimposed on a space suit. The image gained notoriety through sites like Tumblr and Reddit after users began pranking people in real life by replacing their framed photos or desktop wallpapers with Astronaut Sloth.

Origin

Titled “Sloth on the Moon,” the photoshopped image was created by digital artist Pedro Dionísio and uploaded to his deviantArt^[3] account on January 17th, 2012.

Spread

The day after the photo was shared on deviantArt, Dionísio reposted it to his Tumblr^[4], where it earned a modest number of 112 notes. It was reposted to Tumblr by queenofsloths^[1] on February 8th, 2012, where it was far better received with 9,237 notes over the course of ten months. Two days later, it was shared on the /r/Trees subreddit^[5] with the title “Smoking hash out of my friends bong, how I feel at a [9].” The post earned 3,345 upvotes and 1,170 points overall. On February 17th, the photo was featured as part of a caption contest on Cheezburger’s Animal Capshunz^[6] site. Ten days later, a novelty Twitter account for the sloth^[7] was created. Two Facebook fan pages^[8][9] were created in May and June that same year with just over 100 likes between them as of November 2012. The original photo as well as its derivative instances (shown below) can be found on Tumblr under the tags space sloth^[10], astronaut sloth^[11] and astrosloth.^[12]

On October 29th, Tumblr user alpacalypse^[13] made a post stating that her father got mad at her for changing all of his account photos and device backgrounds to the sloth photo. Thirty minutes later, she noted^[14] that his phone was password protected so she placed a framed photo of the sloth on his desk (shown below, left). The following day, a screenshot of her post was shared on Reddit^[15], gaining 27,581 upvotes and 2,045 votes overall. On November 2nd, another Redditor posted a photo^[16] claiming he switched out his boss’ family photos with Astronaut Sloth (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

The term “space sloth” picked up search volume prior to the image’s first posting due to the single topic Tumblr Sloth in Space^[2], which launched in November 2011. This blog only made ten posts and solely featured images of sloths photoshopped over nebulae.

External References

Overview

Movember is an annual event in which men grow moustaches for the entire month of November to raise awareness about cancers affecting men. The name is a portmanteau of the words “moustache” and “November.”

Background

On November 30th, 1999, the Australian news program Seven Nightly News aired a report about a group of Adelaide residents who coined the term “Movember” after deciding to grow moustaches during the month of November for charity (shown below).

According to an article in The Huffington Post,^[1] the official Movember Foundation^[2] charity began in Melbourne, Australia in November of 2003, when organizers set a goal for 30 men to grow moustaches for 30 days to raise awareness about men’s cancers.

Notable Developments

On November 16th, 2007, The Dominion Post^[3] reported that the Scots College in Wellington, New Zealand had threatened to bar a pupil from taking exams for growing a Movember moustache on the grounds of violating the school’s appearance guidelines. That same year, according to Wikipedia,^[4] the Australian tabloid television program Today Tonight accused the Movember Foundation of spending a disproportionate amount of donations on high salaries for its directors.

On November 14th, 2011, the International Business Times^[7] reported that the Australian airline Qantas had begun painting moustaches on the front of planes in honor of Movember. The same year, the web browser Google Chrome released a video in support of Movember, featuring a montage of websites and videos dedicated to the annual event (shown below, left). The original video has since been made private. On October 30th, 2012, the shoe company Toms Shoes uploaded a video to YouTube titled “United We Grow,” which lauded the moustache as a facial hair style in their support of the Movember campaign^[6] (shown below, right).

Nick Offerman Videos

On October 24th, 2012, a public service announcement parody video starring actor Nick Offerman, known for his role as Ron Swanson in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, was uploaded to YouTube by the men’s interest blog Made Man.^[5] In the video, Offerman lists several tongue-in-cheek methods for growing a moustache in honor of Movember. Within one month, the video accumulated over 904,500 views and 300 comments. On November 13th, Made Man uploaded a follow up video titled “Your Mo Will Get Fuller,” in which Offerman urges Movember participants to keep growing their moustaches (shown below, right), in similar vein to the “It Gets Better” project videos.

Notable Videos

Many YouTubers have created videos in honor of the annual event, many of which aimed to raise awareness of men’s cancers.

Search Interest

External References

About

Mikudayo- (Japanese:ミクダヨー, Mikudayō) is a nickname given to the human-size mascot/full-body costume of Nendoroid^[1]Hatsune Miku by Good Smile Company (GSC), which was made in 2011. She has gained a cult following from fans as the overbearing creature separated from Miku. Her persona was established by photo collages in Futaba Channel (2chan), and now it’s feedbacked to the official Hatune Miku product lines.

Origin

This costume was first appeared in a video game convention Tokyo Game Show 2011^[2] as a promoting mascot for SEGA’s Vocaloid video game for Nintendo3DS Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project Mirai.^[3] Because this video game featured Nendoroid-style vocaloid characters, this costume was produced in super-deformed style. However, its awkward body shape always leaning forward, thin bunches (Twin Tails) hairstyle like plywood and iris-less eyes, hardly resembled to the original Nendorid. Everyone felt the costume didn’t quite feel like the real Miku.

At the beginning, this costume was called as Kigurumiku (着ぐるミク), a pun for Kigurumi (着ぐるみ, full-body costume) and Miku (ミク), and its poor quality was mocked in the Japanese internet communities. In particular, Futaba users deeply favored it and made many of its parody photo collages.

Then, similar to HOME Haruka and Nonowa, this costume had gained an overbearing personality of her own throughout their works. And around February 2012, she eventually became to be called as a nickname “Mikudayo-” (ミクダヨー) in that imageboard site, which came from Japanese “I am Miku” (ミクだよ, Miku dayo). The reason why it is written as “ミクダヨー” in Katakana character is writing words by Katakana characters explains dubious impression in the Japanese text representation.

Hey, May I start killing from this dude?

Not a few Futaba users call her as Mikudayo-san (ミクダヨーさん) in awe.

Spread

The popularity of Mikudayo- outside Futaba began to be increased quickly in the next March by many affiliate blogs reprinting her photo collages.^[4][5][6] As a result of this, a manager in SEGA’s Hatsune miku project team noticed and tweeted about this on 28th of that month.^[7]

ﾐｸﾀﾞﾖｰって何じゃ？と思ってgoogle先生に聞いてみた。とても申し訳ない気持ちで一杯になった。

— 中の人（１号） (@nakanohito_1go) March 27, 2012

Transcript:

I asked Google “WHAT is Mikudayo-?”. My mind is filled with a sort of apology.

Though this could be seen as a sad tweet, other staffs didn’t think so. When several staffs in GSC and SEGA attended at a Nico Nico Live program broadcasted on April 8th, 2012, they called their mascot as “Mikudayo-”.^[8] Besides, even in online news media reports for events where the mascot attended at, it became to be written as “Mikudayo-”.^[9][10]

At that moment, Mikudayo- already spread widely and it was considered as the half-official name of her on the Japanese web.

Feedback to the Official

On July 29th, 2012, it made a headline on the Japanese web that GSC, the production maker of Nendoroid series, announced the release of Nendoroid Mikudayo- in the next winter at Wonder Festival 2012 Summer.^[11] Moreover, at the launching of the official product page of Nendoroid Mikudayo- on November 5th^[12], it was also announced that Mikudayo- would appears on the package of Fujiya’s Pop Candy from next December as a collaborating campaign with Japanese confectionery maker Fujiya.^[13]

Meanwhile, on October 22nd, it was revealed that SEGA, GSC and Crypton Future Media, Inc. applied for an application for trademark registration of “Mikudayo-” in union on September 24th.^[14] This companies’ decision was basically recieved favourably among internet users though some of them expressed discomfort with a commercial use of Mikudayo-, which might inhibit users free creations.

Photo Collage by the official on Hatsune Miku Facebook Page^[15]

As of the end of November 2012, any continued announcements hasn’t come yet, but their attitude tells that they attempt to franchise “Mikudayo-” products in more various markets.

Mikudayo-2

In August 2012, SEGA prepared a new full-body costume of Hatsune Miku as a promoting mascot for a video game for PlayStation Vita Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F.^[16] Its official codename was “Hatsune Miku Costume No.2” (初音ミクの着ぐるみ2号), but it was usually called as Mikudayo-2 (ミクダヨー2号, Mikudayō Nigou) among fans and media because it gave people the same impression they felt to the first Mikudayo- even though it was a quite different shape from the first one.

She was also known as well as Mikudayo-, but wasn’t utilized in parodies so much.

Notable Examples

Photo Collages

Ahh, I didn’t hear anything. Say that again.
Squirts, Don’t lose your head!!
I WANTSUPREMESUSHISONLY!!
You’re a funny guy. I like you.
That’s why I’ll kill you last.
(Commando Parody)
WHO’S NEXT!?

Compilation

【ニコニコ動画】ﾐｸﾀﾞﾖｰさん

Videos

On Nico Nico Douga (NND), there are many Mikudayo- parody videos mostly utilizing Miku Miku Dance models for her.^[17] Compared to Futaba’s photo collages, NND videos render Mikudayo- as more creepy/scarly monster.

<!-- For more videos, check out the <a href=“#videos”>videos</a> section in this entry. -->

【ニコニコ動画】[実写合成]ミクLOVESセブンキャンペーンCM[フィクション]Hatune Miku & FamilyMart Collaborating Campaign Parody【ニコニコ動画】【MMD】スリラー・Thriller【ミクダヨー】
Michael Jackson’s Thriller【ニコニコ動画】【MMD】ｺﾛｶﾞﾙﾖｰ【ローリンガール】
Rolling Series【ニコニコ動画】【MMDホラー】ミクダヨーが迫ってくるだけ【夏なので】
Horror Movie Style

Illustrations

Many illustrations of Mikudayo- are posted to the Japanese illustrators community pixiv^[18] and Nico Nico Seiga, an image uploader section in niconico.^[19]

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Futaba relating websites basically prohibit people from introducing their URLs in the external. Do not write the URLs in articles or comments. Please use search engines.

Overview

On November 16th, 2012, the bakery company Hostess^[1] announced that the company had filed a motion in United States Bankruptcy Court to obtain permission to cease business and sell off their assets. This news came following the inability to settle a workers’ strike occurring in 24 of its 33 baking plants across the US. Online, fans of the brand reacted on social media and began selling the company’s products on auction sites looking to make a profit.

Background

In 1930, the Interstate Bakeries Corporation launched and acquired dozens of other brands throughout the years, including a 1995 deal giving the company Taggart Bakeries, who originally created Wonder Bread and Hostess snack cakes including Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. After recovering from a 2004 bankruptcy, Interstate Bakery rebranded itself as Hostess Brands, Inc. in November 2009. However, just over two years later in January 2012, the company filed for a second Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After some executive changes, the company had to reevaluate their employees’ wages and benefits, attempting to make large cuts in their employees’ pay in order to save their pensions.^[2] However, these talks did not go well and in November, approximately 6,600 employees who are members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union went on strike. During the strike, three plants were closed permanently. On November 16th, Hostess announced that they would cease productions, laying off many of the company’s 18,500 employees. A closure message was put up on their website^[3], directing vistors to a new page^[4] outlining the details of their liquidation.

Notable Developments

On Twitter

As the news broke, Twitter users began tweeting in dismay, with 26,807 tweets mentioning Hostess between 9:15 AM EST and 10:15 AM EST on November 16th.^[5] Tweets about Twinkies, one of the company’s most well-known brands, peaked between 11:14 AM EST and 12:14 PM EST with 20,371 mentions.^[6] Several internet culture blogs and news sites featured stories on the Twitter response to Hostess’ shutdown including Mashable^[7], The Times-Picayune^[8], the Detroit Free Press^[9] and the New York Times.^[10] Politico^[11] compiled a series of tweets from politicians and journalists, including one from Senator John McCain (shown below).

Twinkies maker Hostess closes – what will we do without deep fried Twinkies at the #Iowa State Fair?

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) November 16, 2012

On Tumblr

With the tags Hostess^[17] and Twinkies^[18], Tumblr users expressed their displeasure with the company’s folding via image macros. Additionally, a single topic blog called RIP Twinkies^[20] launched, sharing photos of the cream-filled sponge cake and its mascot, Twinkie the Kid. A handful of posters used content from the 2009 comedic horror film Zombieland^[19], in which Woody Harrelson’s character Tallahassee (shown below) spends most of the film searching for the last box of Twinkies left after a zombie apocalypse.

eBay Auctions

Buzzfeed^[12] published a series of 31 Instagram images of either stock piles of Hostess goods or empty shelves in stores where they would normally be found. As some people began hoarding the snack cakes, others began selling them online via auction sites like eBay. As of 7:30 PM EST on November 16th, there were 3,044 results for “twinkies” on eBay^[13], with the most expensive auction priced at $2,500,000.00. Despite many of the auctions beginning at $0.99, some price gougers sought to sell the products from anywhere from $5000^[14] (shown below, left) to $200,000 (shown below, right).^[15] However, a Hostess spokesperson stated that they plan on selling the brands^[15], hoping they would continue to be produced by other companies.

Search Interest

External References

About:
Kuledud3 is a well know youtuber and Machinima member who make various gaming videos and his loud, high-pitched screams.
Origin:
Kuledud3’s youtube account was created on August 6, 2011. He posts videos of himself playing games such as Minecraft, Guncraft, Amnesia, SCP containment Breach, and other various games.
Spread:
Kuledud3 is well known for his Minecraft “Newbies” videos. Newbies is about two minecraftians, Joe and an unnamed Newbie and their adventures in MInecraft. Joe, who is an “expert” at Minecraft meets a newbie and decides to help him learn the basics of MInecraft. Turns out the Newbie is pretty bad at Minecraft, and usually doesn’t listen to Joe. The Moderator will teleport in to help them out, shouting his catchphrase, “DIDSOMEBODYSAYMODERATOR?” Newbies episodes include: Newbies, Newbies Return, Newbies Night, Newbies Nether, and countless others. Kuledud3 gained a lot of fans (called Sexy Blawks) and popularity from his Newbies videos and is planning on continuing the series.
Kuledud3’s Face:
Kuledud3 posted a video titled MY FACE on July 13th, 2012. Before then, nobody knew what Kuledud3’s face looked like. Now that Kuledud3 had shown his face, he could do vlogs, and facecams. Kuledud3 has also started Splatterday, where he opens fan mail, answers questions, and gives updates on his future videos. Kuledud3 posted other videos with fellow youtubers BurtGasm, BR3TON, and Hot_tub, too.

[WiP]

About

What I Know About X are intentionally low quality slideshow presentations giving bad explanation of what’s supposedly the author’s knowledge about the specific topic if he/she only had a vague resource to rely on, created in the style of the presentation software Microsoft PowerPoint.^[1] On the microblogging social network site Tumblr, these presentations are often used to explain popular subjects present on Tumblr such as fandoms. The presentation commonly contains features such as low quality copy & pasting, randomly placed narration and comic sans.

Origin

[Researching]

Spread

These slideshow presentations are most commonly shared on the microblogging social network Tumblr. They can most commonly be found under tags such as Powerpoint,^[2] What I Know^[3] and What I Know About.^[4] On November 11th, 2012, Tumblr user JinnyMoose created a post titled “What I Know About Tumblr” (shown below), containing a slideshow giving an explanation about Tumblr itself and well know subjects present on the blogosphere.^[5] Within 5 days, the post gained of 33,000 notes and also resulted in JinnyMoose creating a second part earlier on November 15th,^[6] although this version didn’t receive as many notes.

External References

Thefantasio974 and BobLennon, most known as Fanta & Bob, is a duo made famous by their Minecraft, then video games-related Let’s Play and Playthroughs

Online History

TheFantasio974 solo career

TheFantasio974, nicknamed Fanta, started his Youtube Channel Thefantasio974 ^[1] on March, 29 2010, with his series “Le guide pour bien débuter à Minecraft” (Guide to get started with Minecraft), which greatly contributed to make Minecraft popular in francophon countries. Fanta is currently remaking the videos to fit with the current Minecraft version. The first video on the series topped nearly 3 millions views post-hack (explained later)

Besides making the tutorials, Fanta made others video series, like Freestyle Fanta Show ( non-tutorial adventure or server visits) or Fanta vs The Island (adventure map playthrough)

Encounter with Bob Lennon

On the tenth episode of Freestyle Fanta Show, Fanta visited the Minefield server, especially the Azur city

Azur’s mayor is BobLennon, a charismatic player with a strong tyrant gimmick. He’s known for his building skills, equals to his character’s ego. Bob also hosts a humoristic podcast names “Bob Lennon Show”, about the Minefield server.

BobLennon quickly became loved by Fanta fans, some of them saying that he nearly shadows him. Bob will appear on Freestyle Fanta Show 15 and 19 before the definitive formation of the duo.

Career as a Duo and Diversification

Fanta & Bob will host numerous shows, like D&Cube (Minecraft house-making, 3 seasons ) Fight Cube (Minecraft competition with Biloulette and Elarcis, other famous french minecrafters) but most importantly Fanta Bob Show (map and server visiting), which will make the most success.

On march 2011, Fanta’s channel has been hacked, all 80 videos erazed. All the videos were re-uploaded in 2 weeks. On June 2012, the channel will also be hacked, but without any consequences.

On April, 20 2011, the channel Fantabobfriends was created. It purpose is to discover new Minecraft videomakers ^[2].

On June 2011, French website jeuxvideo.com offered them to have a chronicle, similar to Fanta Bob Show, with remuneration. The show, named “Fanta et Bob : Les Aventuriers de Minecraft” (Fanta & Bob : Adventurers of Minecraft) will air during the summer of 2011 ^[3], before the duo decided to not renew the contract.

The 14 of October 2011, the duo opened the FantaBobGames Youtube channel ^[43], to make video games videos, temporary stopping their Minecraft Activities. Among the most influencial videos, the Skyrim Playthrough by BobLennon (nearly 200 episodes), the Batman Arkham City Playthough by Fanta, but also the Tribes Ascend presentation by Fanta, which will make Fanta a “Celebrity Recruiter” in the game, with more than 500 referrals. ( ^[5])

As of November 2012, TheFantasio974 channel had more than 76 millions views and 347 000 suscribers, and FantaBobGames 56 millions and 230 000.

Gaming Gimmicks

Fanta defines himself as a coward and a bad player and failer. However, his game panel is very large, making his viewers discover non-mainstream games, like Natural Selection 2 and Crusader Kings 2. BobLennon, especially on his Skyrim Playtrough, acts as a “Pyrobarbarian” : An violent warrior with an overwhelming ego who loves to burn everyone. On every game, BobLennon is known to be very enthousiastic, accompanying every great move with taunts and shouts.

Personal Lives

Fanta’s real name is Gabriel Chevillard. He lives on La Réunion island, which prevents him to attend as many conventions as he wants on the European continent. On FAQ videos, he likes to show where he lives.

BobLennon real identity is unknown on his demand, which explains that we don’t know much of him IRL. He lives in Grenoble, have 2 cats. His girlfriend is named Kelly.

Search Interests

Parodies

External References

^[1]– TheFantasio974 Channel

^[2]– FantaBobFriends Channel

^[3]– Jeuxvideo.com’s Chronicles

^[4]– FantaBobGames Channel

^[5]– TheFantasio974 Official Referral Award

French Minecraft Wiki Entry for TheFantasio974

About

Understandable in the stealth action video game Metal Gear Solid, the alarm sound is an onomatopoeia and general signature for being detected by enemies. The sound is mostly accompanied with a red exclamation mark. The sound became a popular source for YouTube Poop videos, Metal Gear Solid parody videos and other videos.

Spread

[OP isn’t good at such things. Request editorship]