This entry is about the meme from Greece. Work in progress…

About

“To Poulaki Tsiou” (Greek: Το Πουλάκι Τσίου, English:The Bird Goes Chirp) is a song released by an artist by the same name in November 2012. The YouTube video of the song, uploaded on the 5th of November 2012, has accumulated over 5 million views during the first month. The virality of the song and video has sparked numerous video parodies as well as controversies in greek-speaking countries (Greece and Cyprus).

Origin

The song “To Poulaki Tsiou” has the same video format of the Italian song “Pulcino Pio” (which also roughly translates to “the bird goes chirp”) by artist Il Pulcino Pio. The official YouTube video, hosted in the channel “medita” has been uploaded in 9th of May 2012, and accumulated over 39 million views as of the end of November 2012.

The Greek version of the song has been uploaded in November 5th 2012 and it’s hosted in the channel ToPoulakiTsiouTV, the artist’s official YouTube channel.

The song is a translation of the Portuguese song “O Pintinho Piu”:

Editor’ Note: The original incident by an underage student was never a criminal/court case. To avoid further cyber bullying, this article doesn’t give any mention about his real name.

About

The Colombia Pose, better known as “Answer: Colombia” (Japanese: 答: コロンビア, Kotae: Colombia) or “Colombia” (コロンビア) simply, refers to the victory pose by a Japanese college student who became to a subject of online mockery due to his poor intelligence and careless post on a social network service.

This impressive pose with a smug look is one of the symbolic icons in Japanese online parodies after his incident in 2006.

Origin

The man who gave the name “Colombia” to this pose was a 19-year-old college student, one of the 4 contestants in a Japanese TV quiz show Panel Quiz Attack 25^[1] aired on October 1st, 2006. He performed it at moment of deciding the winning of the game at this question: “What is the South American country of sharing boundaries over land with Panama in Central America?” Yes, the answer is “Colombia”.

Answer: Colombia

Cheating Suspicion

From during on air, he got a much attention among some 2channel users watching the show because he made many wrong answers in spite of easy questions arranged for college students. However, he luckily succeeded to win the game by the help of rules of Panel Quiz and get prizes worth several hundred thousand yen with that smug look.

Some of 2channel users were very irritated to this poor intelligence winner. To mock at him, they searched his personal information on the web by his name and the college’s name which were announced in the show, and they identified his account on a Japanese social network service mixi.^[2] Then, they found out that he made a confession of his cheating in a qualifying test for the show in his diary post which was uploaded on June 19th in that year.^[3]

translation (summary):

I couldn’t answer even half of questions by myself. But someone said in TV “Do anything for win. But if you are defeated, be a good loser.” So, I did…


cheating. lol.


I wanted to win and a thing to talk about. As a result,




I passed the test XD

On the Japanese web in those days, mixi had caught much attention for its dishonorable fame, which was led by many ridiculous user’s diary confessing drunk/no-licence driving, underage alcohol/smoking, or something illegal activities. So, it was also a natural thing that his diary made a headline on there.

His confession to a cheating immediately began spreading through the web via a wiki page for his suspicions launched by 2channel users.^[4] Within a half day after finishing the show, he forced to face a heavy storm of criticism not only on 2channel, mixi and comments in YouTube videos recording his poor performance at the show. Quite a few people sent claims to the TV station and the college he belonged to, and argued he had to return the winner’s prize.

In a reflection of this heavy criticism against him, even gossip newspapers quickly reported this incident.^[5] In those reports, the TV station and the college commented that he claimed to each of them: “it is never true, but just a joke for my friends.”, “I deeply regret my carelessness.” Besides, the college had to promise further investigation because he also confessed to alcohol drinking in another post in his mixi diary.^[6]

His article appeared on the front page of a Gossip news paper Tokyo Sports

However, there was no additional report by news media. And because the TV station decided not to do further investigations believing his claims, People weren’t able to know the sequel of this incident. Of course, no one of them believes his excuse.

Spread

Throughout the incident, his victory pose, holding both of fists with a smug look, gained a much presence among the Japanese internet users. And due to its caption, the pose itself became to be known as the “Colombia” pose.

Today, Colombia is the magical answer that makes everything funny, and its pose is one of the symbolic icons in the Japanese online parodies. 2channel has many Shift-JIS arts for Colombia made by anonymous users.^[7] There are Colombia Image Generators utilizing the original picture in image macro style^[8] or superimposing “Answer: Colombia” to other images like Brazzers.^[9] And many illustrations with Colombia motifs have been uploaded to the Japanese illustrators community pixiv^[10] and niconico Seiga.^[11]

2channel Shift-JIS Art

Besides, even Google image search suggests his victory pose in the top of search results for the term “コロンビア”.^[12]

Notable Examples

Greetings Are Magic
Suwako from Touhou Project
Cat
Q:Who Are You?
A: Doctor Doom.
A: Chimichanga
Q:What is the stand’s name of Dio?
A: Za Warudo

Among people outside of Japan, probably the most well-known instance of “Colombia” is Cirno’s one in the flash animated video for the very popular Touhou Project remix song Cirno’s Perfect Math Class, which was produced by IOSYS and TETLA-POT in 2008.

For more information about this song, please check the KYM entry for Cirno’s Perfect Math Class.

Search Interest

External References

(WiP)

About

Bump Girl refers to a female character used on 4chan to bump threads, or refresh them for others to see. The character is used in images, often pornographic, with other characters called “Age” and “Sage”. She is depicted as being abstracted and in the nude, and wearing a purple headband and the phrase “bump” on her chest.

Origin

The suspected original artist “volcanomoon” (also known as Rage the Dragoon among other aliases) made Bump Girl/Chan as a means to bribe 4chan users into providing a source for another animated gif. From there, he used Bump Chan (as he refers to her) to continue his search while serving as an impetus to continue doodling. ^[1] Afterwards, the artist went on to create other “waves” in addition to two comics, one of which is currently in progress. ^[2]

Spread

Other artists have created their own versions of Bump Girl/Chan along with creating versions of other characters such as Age Man, Age Girl and Sage Girl/Chan. ^[3] Bump Chan and her variants have documented use on 4chan and other imageboards even through 2012. ^[4]

External References

About

Milking is a video fad in which participants record themselves dumping containers of milk directly over their heads. Similar to cone-ing, the videos are often filmed in public places to include the reactions of bewildered onlookers.

Origin

In an interview with Cosmopolitan,^[3] the fad’s creator Tom Morris explained that he came up with the idea while sitting in a kitchen with a group of friends, who decided to film themselves milking outside of a Starbucks coffee house. After the video was well received on Facebook, the group decided to make a new video. On November 21st, 2012, the MilkingNewcastle YouTube channel uploaded a video titled “Milking Newcastle,” in which several young men are shown dumping entire containers of milk over their heads in a variety of odd locations (shown below). Over the next six days, the video accumulated over 244,000 views and 800 comments.

Spread

On November 24th, the university journalism blog College Media Matters^[9] published a post titled “Milking: Latest Student Viral Video Craze is ‘Legen-dairy’,” noting that the fad was gaining traction throughout Britain. On the following day, The Daily Mail^[2] published an article titled “Is Milking the Most Pointless Internet Craze Yet?,” reporting that the Morris video had accumulated over 30,000 views in less than one week. The same day, The Daily Mail article was linked on the community news website Fark.^[10] On November 26th, YouTuber frampoid uploaded a video titled “Milking Lancaster: Jack Schofield 2012,” which featured several Lancaster University students dumping milk on their heads while urging students to vote for student Jack Schofield for County College Social Secretary (shown below).

The same day, the fad was reported on by several news site, including The Sun,^[1] The Telegraph,^[3] Softpedia,^[4] NineMSN,^[5] Raw Story,^[6]MSN,^[7] The Guardian^[8] and PSFK.^[11] Also on November 26th, Gawker^[12] published an article by staff writer Neetzan Zimmerman titled “Milking: Latest ‘Internet Craze’ May Be Dumbest Yet,” which compared milking to photo fads like planking and owling.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Kim Jong Un is the supreme leader of North Korea who assumed the position in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il.

Online History

While it is widely assumed that Kim has little presence on the state-controlled and heavily censored Internet, a lot of discussions surrounding North Korea’s latest head of state began circulating in the South Korean and Western social media following the death of his father Kim Jong Il and during his subsequent rise to power in December 2012.

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

On December 18th, a parody blog titled Kim Jong Un Looking at Things^[1] launched. It was inspired by a similar blog utilizing state propaganda photos of his father, Kim Jong Il Looking At Things, which launched in October 2010. As of November 2012, the blog is still active.

Hungry Kim Jong Un

The day after Kim Jong Un Looking at Things launched, on December 19th, Redditor GunnieGraves submitted a photo to the Funny subreddit^[2] depicting Kimg Jong Un pointing at something with the caption “Ok so…can I eat this?” (shown below, left). The same day, a Quickmeme^[3] titled Hungry Kim Jong Un was established, with an instance (shown below, right) reaching the front page the same day. As of November 2012, it has more than 220 submissions. Four days after the first Reddit post, a single topic Tumblr titled Kim Jong Un is Hungry^[4] launched, using other photos of the leader with similar food-related captions.

2012 Person of the Year Campaign

On November 26th, 2012, users on 4chan‘s /b/ (random) message board began to organize a way to fix Time Magazine’s annual Person of the Year public vote^[9] so Kim Jong Un would take the top prize. Over the next 24 hours, multiple threads were posted to the forum, linking to a Pastebin^[5] with a VBS script for voting as well as a downloadable Java-based program^[6] to help users vote in bulk.

An IRC channel was also set up with the name #OpFuckMorsy^[7], as a reference to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi^[8] who stayed in the lead of the poll throughout November 26th. Within the first day, the 4chan raid of the Time poll was featured on Betabeat^[10], the Daily Dot^[11]and Reddit^[12], where a screenshot of one of the threads earned more than 9182 upvotes and 2148 points overall.

The Onion: Sexiest Man Alive for 2012

On November 14th, 2012, satirical news site The Onion^[13] posted an article naming Kim Jong Un as the site’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012. Five days later, Korean newspaper the Korean Times^[17] published an article on the Onion story. They noted in the Korean version that the Onion article was meant to be satirical, but left that out of the English translation. On November 27th, the official newspaper for the community party of China, the People’s Daily^[14], reported on the story, complete with a 55 photo slideshow of the North Korean leader.

The North Korean newspaper’s misreporting of the Onion article was featured on the Los Angeles Times^[15], the Atlantic^[16], the Guardian^[18], BBC News^[19] and Mashable.^[20] A news article on the subject from the Associated Press was submitted to the World News subreddit^[21]where it earned 13,686 upvotes and 2862 points overall. Following the news coverage, the Onion amended^[22] their article, linking to the “exemplary reportage” provided by the People’s Daily.

Personal Life

Not much is known about Kim Jong Un’s personal life, including his birthday which may have been in either 1983 or 1984.^[23] He attended boarding school in Switzerland under a fake name, where he was said to have had poor grades^[25], but enjoyed skiing, the American NBA and actor Jean Claude Van Damme.^[24] Kim Jong Un married a North Korean woman named Ri Sol-ju in 2009, but this information was not made public until July 2012.^[26]

Search Interest

External References

About

Weev is the pseudonym of Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, an American hacker and Internet troll known for his involvement on the website Encyclopedia Dramatica and in an AT&T data breach that exposed personally identifiable information of 114,000 iPad users.

Online History

On February 4th, 2003, Weev created an account on the social networking blog site Livejournal,^[1] where he gained the reputation of being a prominent troll within the site’s community. On August 1st, 2006, Auernheimer spoke at the ToorCon information security conference in San Diego, California (shown below), during which he claimed to be under the influence of the psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).^[4] In the talk, he discussed various types of Internet crime, including hacking the Firefox browser and trading in online black markets.

On August 3rd, 2008, The New York Times published an article titled “The Trolls Among Us,” which featured interviews with several Internet trolls including Auernheimer as well as Jason Fortuny and Encyclopedia Dramatica creator Sherrod DeGrippo. In the article, Auernheimer is described as a dangerous hacker with access to thousands of social security numbers (SSN), having sent the author his own SSN one month after being interviewed. On February 1st, 2009, Auernheimer began uploading videos to the weevlos YouTube channel, where he would provide sermons on his unique brand of Christianity (shown below).

On April 13th, Gawker^[3] published an article titled “Why it Makes Sense That a Hacker’s Behind Amazon’s Big Gay Outrage,” which reported that Auernheimer had taken responsibility for exploiting a vulnerability in the ratings tool for the online retailer Amazon, causing gay-themed romance novels to disappear from the site’s best-seller lists. The article cited a Livejournal^[5] post in which Auernheimer described the methods used to execute the prank. On October 20th, Auernheimer submitted an “ask me anything” post to the social news website Reddit,^[13] in which he discussed the practice of trolling and his political views. On October 19th, 2012, Auernheimer appeared on The Huffington Post Live web show to discuss his thoughts on trolling in light of the Violentacrez Reddit scandal (shown below).

AT&T Data Breach

On June 9th, 2010, Gawker^[10] published an article titled “Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed,” which reported that the information of CEOs, military officials and politicians had been leaked due to a vulnerability in the AT&T network. The article went on to reveal that iPad subscriber data had been obtained by the hacker group Goatse Security^[11] on AT&T’s website, which was accessible to anyone on the Internet prior to the group’s exploit.

On June 11th, The Wall Street Journal^[12] published an article reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had begun investigating the incident. On June 15th, the tech news site Cnet^[15] published an article reporting that Auernheimer had been detained following an FBI search of his apartment, in which several illegal drugs were discovered, including “cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and schedule 2 and 3 pharmaceuticals.” On July 7th, The Register^[20] published an article titled “AT&T iPad ‘Hacker’ Breaks Gag Order to Rant at Cops,” which quoted Auernheimer saying:

“My actions and those of Goatse were not criminal; they were done using industry standard practices as a public service. All the actions of the original author of this exploit were not criminal. Scraping data from a public web server is an extremely common practice amongst lawyers, security researchers and journalists, not to mention web developers.”

On April 9th, 2012, the site Free Weev^[19] was launched, which urged viewers donate to Auernheimer’s legal defense fund. On November 20th, 2012, the tech news site Wired^[16] reported that Auernheimer had been found guilty of “conspiracy to access a computer without authorization” and “fraud in connection with personal information.” The same day, Auernheimer tweeted that he would be appealing the conviction.

Hey epals don’t worry! We went in knowing there would be a guilty here. I’m appealing of course.

— Andrew Auernheimer (@rabite) November 20, 2012

On November 21st, the technology culture blog Motherboard^[17] published an article titled “No More Lulz: Should Weev, the World’s Most Notorious Troll, Go to Jail for ‘Hacking’?” On November 27th, Gawker^[18] published an article titled “The Internet’s Best Terrible Person Goes to Jail: Can a Reviled Master Troll Become a Geek Hero?”, which described Auernheimer’s history and court appearances leading up to his conviction. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post^[8] announced its plan to release an exclusive interview with Auernheimer regarding his conviction on November 28th.

Support of OWS Movement

On October 20th, 2011, YouTuber optikaltekniq uploaded a video in which Auernheimer revealed his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement and explained why he felt federal prosecutors were attempting to put him in jail (shown below). The same day, the video was highlighted on the Internet news site BoingBoing.^[9]

“I’ve had a strong decade of infuriating rich people.”

Reputation

Auernheimer is a controversial figure who has been often described as offensive and bigoted in the media. In several Livejournal posts, podcasts and YouTube videos, Auernheimer has expressed his opinions on a wide range of racial and cultural issues, which earned him the label of being an anti-semite by his critics. CNN^[6] writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt referred to him in an article as “the ugliest computer hacker,” similarly portraying Auernheimer as an anti-semite and a bigot who jokes about the deaths of celebrities and makes disparaging remarks towards Black Americans. Another article in The Australian^[7] described Auernheimer as a “celebrity hacktivist.”

Search Interest

External References

Overview

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, is an annual online-based project in which participants are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.

Background

Freelance writer Chris Baty (shown below) launched National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in July 1999 at the age of 26.^[1] He gathered 20 of his friends around San Francisco, CA, many of whom were not writers, just to see if they could. Of the group, only six participants completed the challenge of writing an entire 50,000 word novel from start to finish, taking the arbitrary word count from a guesstimated word count of the shortest novel on Baty’s shelf, Aldous Huxley’s 1931 sci-fi novel Brave New World.^[3]

Cinder

About

GNNA^[1] (Gay Nigger Association of America) is an online trolling collective known for attacking bloggers, Internet celebrities and prominent websites. Several members of the group later founded the hacker collective Goatse Security which gained notoriety for its involvement in an AT&T data breach that exposed personally identifiable information of 114,000 iPad users.

Online History

The Wikipedia entry^[2] claims that the GNAA was founded in 2002 and was named after the 1992 Danish satirical blaxploitation film Gayniggers from Outer Space. The organization was founded with the intention to “sow disruption on the Internet,” according to the book Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive^[3] by Jodi Dean.

On June 26th, 2004, the Apple product news blog MacRumors^[11] published a post including faked screenshots of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) operating system, which were submitted by two members of the GNAA identifying themselves as “Gary Niger” and “Ron Delsner.” On August 12th, 2005, Wired^[12] published an article titled “Max Hacks Allow OS X on PCs,” reporting that hackers had managed to create a version of Mac OS X for PC processors. The following month, the GNAA released an ISO image claiming to be a version of the operating system and on June 15th, the tech news blog Gizmodo^[13] published an article revealing the file caused a machine to boot to a picture from the Goatse.cx shock site.

Goatse Security

The Goatse Security, sometimes known as GoatSec, is a hacker group that specializes in publicizing security flaws discovered by its members, including Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. The group, which derived its name from the Goatse.cx shock site, gained much notoriety in June 2010 for its involvement in a high profile AT&T data breach in which they obtained personal ID information of 114,000 iPad users.

Web Browser Exploits

On January 30th, 2010, the tech news blog Softpedia^[4] published a post titled “Firefox Bug Used to Harass Entire IRC Network,” which reported that the GNAA had written a script exploiting a vulnerability in the Firefox web browser which would cause visitors to spam the Freenode Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. On March 23rd, Goatse Security member Andrew Auernheimer posted information on how to perform a Safari browser exploit to the Internet culture database Encyclopedia Dramatica,^[6] which would allow the user to access blocked ports by adding the number 65,536 to the port number. Apple patched the glitch in the desktop version of the browser but did not update mobile versions, which could allow hackers to cause harm to Apple’s mobile devices according to Goatse Security.^[7]

2010: AT&T Data Breach

On June 9th, 2010, Gawker^[5] published an article titled “Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed,” which reported that the information of CEOs, military officials and politicians had been leaked due to a vulnerability in the AT&T network. The article went on to reveal that iPad subscriber data had been obtained by Goatse Security on AT&T’s website, which was accessible to anyone on the Internet prior to the group’s exploit. To obtain the emails, Goatse Security used a PHP-based “brute force” script to send HTTP requests with a valid subscriber identity module to the AT&T website, which would in turn reveal the email address associated with the ID. The leak sparked a debate about the proper way to disclose security flaws, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal^[8] in an article titled “Computer Experts Face Backlash” on June 14th. The article quoted former Electronic Frontier Foundation Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick, who defended Goatse Securities tactics:

“I don’t have a problem with what they did. No one was put at a risk as a result of it”

The same day, Tech Crunch^[9] founder Michael Arrington announced that the tech news blog would be giving the group a Crunchie award for public service for exposing that AT&T security flaw. On June 15th, Cnet^[10] announced that Goatse Security member Andrew Auernheimer had been detained after the FBI invaded his home and found illegal drugs. On November 20th, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and identity fraud.

Search Interest

External References

[WiP]

About

Homestuck Alternate Universe (often shortened to Homestuck AU) are alternate universe stories based on the webcomic Homestuck. These stories can vary between simple additions to the original story, to completely original stories in different settings altogether. These settings are often given titles with the suffix “-stuck”. The -stuck suffix has also become a popular feature in tagging alternate universe fanart.

Background

The story of Homestuck centers around a “game” called Sburb, which allows its players to inventorize, level up, and other common elements in role-playing games, in a somewhat similar way in real life. As the story progresses, it is revealed that the fate of the entire human race and eventually the entire universe is determined by the performance of the players in the game.

Homestuck’s story telling style follows the characters as they progress in the game while interacting with their fellow players. The actions the characters take in the story are told and explained through text below the pages, commonly containing chat logs of the characters communicating with each other. Each “page” in Homestuck commonly contains one or multiple images or gifs with text or chat logs below it, but also includes flash animations and interactive games at times. Regularly the actions taking place on a page are being “influenced” by sources who recide in the game, including several self insertions of Andrew Hussie.

The basic premise of the comic has been described as inspired by games like The Sims, Spore and EarthBound. Homestuck was initially supposed to progress by fan contributions, with the fans deciding what actions the characters would take. The creator of Homestuck, Andrew Hussie, was eventually forced to move away from this style when the fandom started to grow significantly, due to fan input become too big and time consuming. Although Hussie now controls the progress of the story, he still visits fan blogs and forums for ideas to add into the webcomic.

Spread

It is eventually revealed that Homestuck takes place in a multiverse, which each of these universes having their own Sburb game client and characters who play it. Within each universe, the concept of “doomed timelines” (alternate timelines doomed to fail) has also been implanted. Both these factors often influence the main storyline of Homestuck, with characters from alternate universes and doomed timelines commonly making appearances in the story and even being of significant influence to its outcome. Due to these factors, alternate universe stories are rather easy to implant into the main story, giving the explanation that it takes place in an unknown timeline or universe of Homestuck’s multiverse.

Search Interest

External References

About

Aircraft Carrier Style (Chinese: 航母style), is a Chinese photo fad that involves extending one’s right hand while kneeling the left knee with the right leg bent. On the English-speaking web, the fad is known as Shootering as it emulates the Shooter’s pose, a military gesture used by navy personnel to signal the release of fighter jets. The fad initially started in late November 2012 on social networking sites following the Chinese navy’s historic fighter jet landing on its first aircraft carrier Liaoning.^[1]

Origin

On November 27th, 2012, a J-15 fighter jet successfully landed on China’s first aircraft carrier Liaoning, marking a milestone for both the military and the country. During the take-off phase of the exercise, two flight deck officers known as shooters were seen giving a hand signal adopted from the U.S. Navy to let the pilot know he was clear for take off.^[2]

Spread

Almost immediately after the news broadcast, Chinese internet users began photoshopping images of the flight deck officers and sharing photos of themselves mimicking the “shooter” pose on Weibo. On November 27th, collections of the so-called “航母style” photos were featured on a variety of Chinese websites including Huanquiu^[4], Dzwww^[5] and 163.com^[6], as well as on English language site Ministry of Tofu.^[2] Weibo also set up an event page^[3] to share photos of people participating in the fad, where people could vote on the user-submitted images. YouTuber Jun Wang Miao uploaded a compilation video of 航母style that night, earning more than 15,000 views in three days.

Over the following 48 hours, additional collections were posted on Yahoo! China^[7] , QQ.com^[8], CQ News^[9], Qianlong^[10], News.cn^[11] and Sina Entertainment.^[12] English language coverage was provided by The Daily What^[13], Global Post^[14] and the Atlantic.^[15]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Dumb Ways to Die is an animated music video created as part of a public service announcement campaign for the Australian suburban railway network Metro Trains Melbourne by the McCann advertising agency. The video used black humor to promote train safety featuring a variety of cartoon characters dying in unusual ways.

Origin

Written by John Mescall and performed by Ollie McGill from the Australian ska and jazz band The Cat Empire, the “Dumb Ways to Die” music video was uploaded via YouTube on November 14th, 2012 and similar campaign illustrations appeared on newspapers, local radio and outdoor advertising throughout the Metro Trains network. The video features cartoon characters killing themselves in a variety of careless and absurd ways (shown below). Within two weeks, the video accumulated over 28.7 million views and 35,000 comments. It is available for purchase on the iTunes^[9] store, where it holds a five star rating as of November 29th, 2012.

Spread

The day after its release, Redditor Mach5Stealthz submitted the music video to the /r/videos^[5]subreddit, where it received over 10,900 up votes and 800 comments within 13 days. On the following day, the advertising news blog Australian Creative^[2] published an article titled “McCann’s dumb ways to die,” which quoted McCann Melbourne’s executive creator director describing the purpose of the campaign:

“This campaign is designed to draw people to the safety message, rather than frighten them away. Especially in our younger segments. We want to create a lasting understanding that you shouldn’t take risks around trains, that the prospect of death or serious injury is ever-present and that we as a community need to be aware of what constitutes both safe and dumb behaviour.”

On November 18th, the video was posted on the Internet humor site 9gag,^[4] where it received over 37,000 Facebook shares and 27,000 up votes within 10 days. On November 19th, The Age^[3] published an article titled “Metro’s tongue-in-cheek transport safety animated video goes viral on social media,” which reported that the song had reached the top 10 on iTunes. On November 22nd, Redditor raeflower submitted a post titled “So many dumb ways to die [FA]” to the /r/RedditLaqueristas^[8] subreddit, which featured several photographs of nail art inspired by the animated music video (shown below).

Notable Examples

On November 29th, The Sydney Morning Herald^[6] published a post titled “Aussie viral video, ‘Dumb Ways to Die’, lives on,” reporting that the video had inspired “more than 65 cover versions, 85 parodies and 170 re-posts on YouTube.”

Cool Things to Find

On November 28th, the LaughPong YouTube channel uploaded a Mars rover inspired parody titled “Cool Things to Find” (shown below). The following day the video was submitted to the /r/videos^[7] subreddit by Redditor kallekro. Within 24 hours, the YouTube video accumulated over 145,000 views and 390 comments and within 9 hours the Reddit post received over 4,500 upvotes and 295 comments.

Search Interest

External References

About

Relevant Steve Harvey is a collection of GIF images depicting the Family Feud television show host Steve Harvey’s most notable reactions. The images are used in thread and forum discussions to illustrate users’ countless reactions to a variety of situations. The post containing the image is always accompanied by a line of text which precedes the image in which the user provides a context for the image. In other instances, text is placed directly onto the image.

Origin

The Relevant Steve Harvey meme first appeared on Facebook displaying the text MY REACTIONWHEN MY GF GIVES ME A BJ WITHOUTASKING on top of a GIF image of Steve Harvey excitedly dancing.

Background

On January 20, 2010, comedian Steve Harvey was announced as the new host for the twelfth season of Family Feud (an American television game show). Since then the show’s ratings have increased by as much as 40%.

not for sale testing water

About
Jon Jafari, commonly known by his internet alias JonTron is a video game reviewer, that first started in 2010. His first video that he made was a Daikatana review.

Game Grumps

On 18/7/2012, JonTron and Egoraptor made a new channel called GameGrumps, where they do video game playthroughs.

WORK IN PROGRESS

More information needed. Request Editorship!

About

Sparkling Daydream is a 2012 produced song by female japanese singer and songwriter ZAQ for the Opening, with the same name, of the Anime Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! (original jap. title: 中二病でも恋がしたい！). Both song and Opening became very notable for parody videos, respectively Opening MAD videos on Nico Nico Douga and cover songs.

Song

The song wasn’t released yet until it was featured on the Opening of the first episode of the Anime, which was produced by Kyoto Animation and visible on TV October 4, 2012. On October 24, 2012, it was then released by Lantis Co., Ltd. incl. two other songs モノクロームモンスター and INSIDEIDENTITY (Ending of the Anime) and an instrumental version of Sparkling Daydream.

Opening and it’s MAD parodies

Before the Opening was released on TV, a NND user 1476933 / hidarihidarigogo uploaded a Theme Song Replacement MAD (主題歌差し替えMAD) on October 3, 2012 with the Opening Theme of the mystery horror novel Another.^[1]

Another MAD was released on October 7, 2012, which featured a dance scene of the telugu remake film Shankar Dada MBBS.^[2] This wasn’t the trigger of Opening MAD videos, until NND user 12424218 / ヒバリ recognized the video’s style and tried to copy it’s style using the Anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which received over 318.000 views.^[3] For these Opening parodies, the tag “中二病でもOPパロ” was born and it has currently more than 200 videos.^[4]

Sub-meme: Rikka’s Finger Spin

:http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm19100944

[Work in Progress]

About

Andrew Hussie is a prolific creator of webcomics. The most popular of his creations is Homestuck. Hussie, despite his massive popularity, has managed to maintain a level of privacy; details on his personal life (such as how old he is, for example) are scarce.

Online History

Old Webcomics/Whistles

Andrew Hussie at one point maintained a webcomic site with Cindy Marie. His earlier comics ^[1] are now archived. Notably, one of his works, Whistles ^[2] became a published graphic novel in 2007. Hussie would not produce another novel until the book versions of Problem Sleuth and Homestuck were created.

TNG Edits

Andrew Hussie, working with Jan Van dem Hemel, created numerous parody videos of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their edits, posted to numerous accounts such as Jandrew Edits ^[3], received millions of views. Hussie continued making and releasing TNG pariodies from 2006 to 2009. (Also see: “Star Trek: The Next Generation Parodies → Jandrew Edits”:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/star-trek-the-next-generation-parodies )

MS Paint Adventures

MS Paint Adventures ^[4] is Andrew Hussie’s website and home of his current and most popular project, Homestuck. MSPA adventures began as a host of Adventure Game-style comics Hussie would draw in MS Paint. One notable feature was the use of fan submitted commands; this would eventually be withdrawn in Homestuck.

Problem Sleuth

Homestuck

(See the main Homestuck Page )

Search Interest

External References

About

Safety Instruction Parodies refer to various illustrations and diagrams typically seen in safety instruction manuals accompanied by humorous captions that are generally subversive in nature.

Origin

The website Airtoons^[1] was launched on February 21st, 1999, featuring illustrations from aircraft safety cards accompanied by humorous captions (shown below). According to the site description, the creator came up with the idea for the parodies after viewing a flight card that did not have any captions while traveling on an airline.

Spread

On October 15th, 1999, the black comedy film Fight Club^[6] was released, in which the protagonist placed parody flight cards in commercial aircraft. For promotion of the film, Fox Movies^[7] released images of the flight cards for download off their official website (shown below).

In February of 2003, the United States government launched the Ready.gov^[3] website as a public service advertising campaign to provide information on how to prepare for national emergencies. The site provided various illustrations that were considered ambiguous by many viewers, prompting the creation of the parody site SafeNow.org,^[4] which featured humorous captions alongside original illustrations from the Ready.gov website (shown below). Airtoons subsequently added different parodies of the Ready.gov images under the heading “Additional Government Safety Measures.”

On April 24th, the Titled Forum Project^[2] philosophy board member Gatecrashed posted a thread titled “Parodies of Airplane Safety Brochures,” which reblogged many notable examples from the Airtoons website. On December 27th, 2010, the pop culture blog Unreality Mag^[5] highlighted many of the Airtoons images in a post titled “Funny in Flight Safety Cards a La Fight Club.”

Gym Workout Diagrams

On September 10th, 2010, the Internet humor site College Humor^[8] published a post titled “Realistic Gym Workout Diagrams,” which featured parody workout posters for exercising specific muscle groups (shown below).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Actual Advice Mallard is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a male wild duck accompanied by captions containing life hacks and other useful information.

Origin

Redditor Releasethedreadknot submitted the first instance of Actual Advice Mallard to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[1] subreddit on June 19th, 2011, which featured an Associated Press^[2] photograph of a mallard duck with the caption “Push in the sides of your tin foil package / it will keep the roll from falling out” (shown below). This post largely went unnoticed, receiving only 16 up votes and 0 comments prior to being archived.

Spread

On the following day, Redditor Releasethedreadknot submitted another Actual Advice Mallard image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[6] subreddit, which recommended leaving important items on shoes to remember them the next day (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post received over 460 up votes and 15 comments. On August 31st, 2012, Redditor ZorkmidSC submitted an image macro with the caption “Get the fuck off the computer” (shown below, right),^[5] which received over 10,000 up votes and 180 comments within three months.

On the following day, the Internet humor site 9gag^[4] reposted Redditor ZorkmidSC’s image macro, receiving over 4,600 up votes and 1,200 Facebook shares within the next three months. On December 1st, Redditor Gonten submitted an image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[7] subreddit, which recommended microwaving pizza with a glass of water to prevent it from becoming spongey (shown below). The post reached the front page, receiving over 16,600 up votes and 900 comments within 48 hours. The same day, the Internet humor blog Pleated Jeans^[3] posted a compilation of notable examples from the series.

Notable Examples

Malicious Advice Mallard

On December 2nd, Reddit TEmpTom submitted a post to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[9] subreddit titled “Malicious Advice Mallard,” featuring a photoshopped version of Actual Advice Mallard with a red-colored head with the caption “Want to replcae a broken game console? / buy another one, put the broken console in the new one’s box, and return it” (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor redvelvetmock submitted an image macro with the caption “Need to dry off your pet after a bath? / microwave” (shown below, right).^[10] Within 24 hours, TEmpTom’s post received over 11,500 up votes and 565 comments and redvelvetmock’s post received over 12,200 up votes and 250 comments. As of December 3rd, 2012, the “Malicious Advice Mallard” Quickmeme^[8] page has received over 240 submissions.

Search Interest

External References

((Work In Progress. Will add pictures later))

About

The Hawkeye Initiative is a drawing movement where ridiculously posed comicbook heroines are replaced with Hawkeye.

Origin

On December 1st, 2012, webcomic artist Noelle Stevenson posted her solution to the Strong Female Character pose on her Tumblr. ^[1] Shortly afterwards, fellow artist Jennifer, better known as Blue or “hoursago”, redrew a cover of an issue of “Hawkeye and Black Widow” where the poses and positions of the two titular characters are switched. ^[2] The post quickly gained thousands of notes within the first few hours of posting.

Spread

Other artists shortly followed suit and started drawing their own versions of an “empowered Hawkeye”. The blog “The Hawkeye Initiative” was made as a result, adding a rule called “The Hawkeye Test” ^[4]

Precursors

While the redrawing of female poses with male forms isn’t a new phenomenon, The Hawkeye Initiative and The Hawkeye Test gave the practice a more memetic reach. The act of Rule 63, in some cases, also brings attention to this, as shown on the blog The Liberation of Manfire. ^[5]

((researching))

External Links

^[1]Tumblr – How To Fix Every Strong Female Character Pose In Comics – gingerhaze

^[2]Tumbr – hoursago

^[3]Tumblr – The Hawkeye Initiative

^[4]Tumblr – The Hawkeye Initiative – The Hawkeye Test

^[5]Tumblr – The Liberation of Manfire

About

Weber Cooks is a local cooking show that originally aired on Weber State News^[1], a student-run television station out of Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. The show is hosted by Steven Reed and is intended to instruct college students on creating simple meals with a microwave.

Origin

The videos were uploaded to YouTube sometime prior to October 31st, 2012, when a GIF animated excerpt of an episode showing Reed preparing chili and cheese nacho dip was posted to Tumblr.^[4] Though the original linked version has since been taken down, a duplicate version reuploaded on November 28th, 2012 earned more than 280,000 views in less than a week.

Spread

On November 4th, 2012, the same chili and cheese nacho dip episode^[2], as well as a new Rice-A-Roni episode^[3], were submitted to the /r/NotTimandEric subreddit, which prompted a discussion on the resemblance between Weber Cooks and Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s comedic skits,^[5] such as Reed’s unkempt appearance, awkward pauses and heavy breathing.

Reed’s videos gained a wider audience after the internet culture blog Nothing To Do With Arbroath^[6] shared a LiveLeak^[7]version of the chili cheese nacho dip video on November 27th, 2012. The same day, several Weber Cooks episodes were posted on Gawker^[8], Laughing Squid^[9], Screen Crush^[10] and Los Angeles Magazine.^[11] Over the next several days, the chili cheese dip video was featured on Reddit^[15], Viral Viral Videos^[12], I Am Bored^[13] and MSN Now.^[14]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References