• if you still want to participate I’ll open this bad boy open to another round http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/xb7cf/so_my_friends_have_been_doing_th… *

A few weeks ago (as of today August 2012) a friend of mine from Ohio posted a hilarious picture of himself posing next to a monitor with a picture of some un named girl. Before I even had a chance to “like” it he has already taken it down citing “Mal is pissed.”

Much to my delight 10 minutes later there was a picture of his roommate and co-worker posing with a monitor with the original picture. I thought this was so funny that I had to get in the act from all the way in Washington DC. A few more of his co-workers, and a few more of mine later, and we had tapped out our co-worker resources.
We posted this awesome image thread to facebook, and after tapping out our friend resources on facebook, we knew where we had to go with this epic troll. Reddit. A place filled with fun loving people that were equally willing to procrastinate on a lazy friday after lunch.

Less than 24 hours later, we had 55 pictures in the series and 1.8 million imgur views.
We brought this series back to Mal, and her original reaction changed to thinking it was worth it for the laughs, and finished out the series with her last post.

Here’s the final album:
imgur.com/a/nZVQ3

To thank everybody that helped us out on this epic troll, I made the video. A special thanks to my buddy @hodgesmr for being hilarious and thinking up the original idea, Mal for putting up with the ridiculousness, my friends for helping me out with the original batch of pictures, Stephen and Ed for staying after work to help me manage the ridiculous amount of comments and pictures all flying at my Reddit account all at once, and Reddit for the lols.

A lesson on social media? Maybe. A fun time with friends. No Doubt.

music by Girl talk

About

McKayla is Not Impressed is an emerging photoshop meme featuring a photograph of United States gymnast McKayla Maroney wearing a scowling expression during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Origin

On August 5th, 2012, Maroney performed a nearly flawless vault during the 2012 Olympic Games in London, England, leading many to believe she would win the gold medal for the competition. During her second vault, Maroney failed to reach enough height to land on her feet and subsequently fell on her backside.

After receiving a total score of 15.083, Maroney ended up taking the silver medal for the competition. While on the winner’s podium, Bryan Snyder of the international news agency Reuters took a photograph of Maroney making a scowling expression.

Precursor

In July of 2011, designer Sean Bonner created the single topic blog Spock is Not Impressed, which featured photoshopped images using a cut-out of the Star Trek character Spock posing in a cross-armed stance.

Spread

On August 6th, BuzzFeed^[11] compiled a series of AP and Reuters photographs from the Women’s Vault Final event into an article titled “McKayla Maroney Falls, Lets Out Her Inner ‘Mean Girl’.” The post gained more than 170,000 views within the first 48 hours. On August 7th, the Tumblr^[8] blog “McKayla is Not Impressed” was launched to showcase photoshopped images of Maroney’s glare set against historical or spectacular scenes in the background. The same day, a Quickmeme^[9] page titled “McKayla Not Impressed” was created, which featured an image macro with the caption “Hydrox cookies? / I thought you said Oreos” (shown below, left) that was subsequently submitted by Redditor prbentz to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[7] subreddit.

Also on August 7th, compilations of notable examples from the series were reblogged on the Internet news sites Mashable^[1] and What’s Trending^[6], followed by an article in The Examiner^[3] titled “McKayla Maroney’s Vault Fall Goes Viral: Memes of Olympic Moment Spread Fast.” On the following day, additional notable examples were highlighted on the Internet news site UpRoxx^[5] and the sports news blog SB Nation.^[10] Also on August 8th, The Wall Street Journal^[2] published a post titled “McKayla is Not Impressed by This Meme”, which lauded the series as “the Olympics first breakout meme.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, or Seltzerberg, are a pair of writers/directors that collaborate with each other on all of their projects. They make low-budget parody movies.

The pair’s first project was Spy Hard in 1996, and they were part of the writing team for the first Scary Movie, but they did not gang notoriety until Date Movie in 2006, and there later films, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, and Vampires Suck were even more hated, causing an internet hatedom.

They have a new movie coming up called The Starving Games, that will parody The Hunger Games.

About

Fusking (sometimes known as Fuskering) is a method of extracting photos from private galleries on free image hosting services.

Origin

The word “fusking” stems from a Danish word^[12] used to describe a person who was secretly doing work outside of their established trade. The first code written using this name was created by CarthagTuek, the handle of a Danish man named Mikkel Eriksen, early as 2002. He announced the third version of a script site known as Fusker on his blog Sensible Erection^[2] on March 5th, 2002. The site, which is only now available as an archive^[13], utilized a Perl CGI script that was coded similarly to a UNIX/Linux cURL tool to find a library of similarly named files on any image hosting website.

Spread

On March 20th, 2002, CarthagTuek posted a LiveJournal entry^[14] claiming his site had received 250 megabytes of traffic in one day and was the third top referrer to a lesbian pornography site. When another user asked if he was going to take down Fusker, CarthageTuek stated that he was waiting for a cease and desist.

By September 2006, fusking started to appear on the photo sharing site Photobucket^[16], popular with MySpace users. Even if a user marked their album as private, fuskers could bypass Photobucket’s settings by guessing exact URLs for the images based on common file names, for example IMG, DSCF or PICT. The earliest mention of the tech forum Rohitab^[15] on September 27th, 2008, where a user proved the exploit with screenshots of a locked album.

Five days after the forum post, FuskerFind^[9] was launched, where users could tag previously fusked links to make them searchable. Months later, in May 2007, a thread about fusking was posted on the BodyBuilding forums.^[17] A year later, in March 2008, a Photobucket-specific fusker site, PhotoFusker^[11] was launched. That year, the act was discussed on the paintball enthusiast forum PBNation^[18], hackers.org^[21] and the Nav.Net forum^[19], who also launched a Fusking program^[8] that year. 2008 also marked the first year fusking was discussed in the mainstream news media, when Fox 11 in Los Angeles covered the Photobucket exploit, but did not use the term “fusking” when describing the incident

Over the next three years, threads about fusking were posted on the Black Hat World forum^[22] and eBaum’s World^[5], with an Urban Dictionary^[20] definition added in May 2009. On October 6th, 2011, a subreddit titled Photobucket Plunders^[6] was established as a place for fuskers to post their findings. Buzzfeed^[4] and Gawker^[3] subsequently drew attention to this community, and its companion /r/RequestA Plunder^[7] in August 2012, revealing the simple method to retrieve private photos and Photobucket’s relative ignorance of the exploit.

Search Interest

External References

Origin

An image was posted on 9gag with the title “My friend, call it Motivational Mike” and received over 23,000 likes in less than a day.
It is still too early to write anymore as there are no derivatives at the time, however it is clear this meme will become popular

About

The picture in question features a shirtless man, who is assumed to be Mike, sitting on a chair outside at night. It appears as if Mike has some sort of disease affecting his eyes as despite it being nighttime, he’s still wearing sunglasses. Mike is seen pointing at the camera, as if he’s actually telling the person viewing the picture the hilarious motivational text accompanying the picture.

Examples

More to come

About

Otherkin is a term used to refer to people who believe that their physical bodies do not reflect their percieved “actual” non-human spiritual forms. This perceived entity may range from mythical species like demons, dragons, elves and faeries to wild animals and domesticated pets.

History

The phenomenon of identifying oneself as a non-human dates back to the 1970s when a group of self-idenitifying faeries known as “The Elf Queen’s Daughters” was formed. However, the term “otherkin” was coined decades later in April 1990 with the appearance of the word “otherkind” on the Elfinkind Digest^[2], a mailing list for elves started by R’ykandar Korra’ti in March 1990. The term was used to describe the non-elf non-humans that were subscribed to the list.^[5] Three months later, on July 9th, 1990, a poster known as Torin^[6] became the first to use the term “Otherkin” out of convenience instead of typing out “elf/dragon/orc/etc.-kin.”^[5]

Outside of Usenet, the first definitive FAQ about Otherkin was posted to personal website Astraeasweb.net^[25] in January 2000. That June, Otherkin.net^[10] was established for people to not only find information about the subculture, but also to connect with others who felt similarly. By November, the site put up an Awakening essay^[24] to welcome newcomers who think they may be Otherkin. A year later on March 4th, 2001, a LiveJournal community^[26]was created for users of that site to communicate with like-minded people.

Reception

As of August 2012, there are 297 LiveJournal communities^[27] associated with Otherkin. Tumblr has also seen a flurry of Otherkin activity, both positive and negative, that is collected on the Otherkin tag.^[12] There are two wiki-style reference sites^[11][16] that catalog Otherkin related materials. An Otherkin-identified person known as Orion Sandstorm^[28] has compiled a a book list^[8] of published Otherkin writings, a directory^[9] of other related works and a consistently updated timeline^[5] of the history of the subculture, from the 1970s to present. On Facebook^[7], Otherkin has 1718 likes. In 2009, LiveJournal community Otherkin News^[29] was established to share both online and offline updates about Otherkin and Therianthropes.

Criticism

Otherkin frequently receive heavy criticism from non-participants due to the seemingly eccentric beliefs and behaviors engendered by the subculture. Several message boards have had threads discussing Otherkin in a negative manner, including Straight Dope^[17], Forumopolis^[18] and Gaia Online.^[19] In 2008, the Examiner^[23] published an article expressing skepticism towards non-human identities, labeling them “weird” and suggesting their writings satirize themselves. In 2009, Otherkin was included on Oddee’s^[21] list of 8 Bizarre Subcultures. In 2011, humor site Zug^[20] published an article in which the author attempted to break into the online communities as a troll, pretending to get in touch with his “inner elf.”

Impact

FYIAD (Fuck You, I’m A Dragon!)

On October 17th, 2003, Matthew Finnegan, known as Starblade Riven Darksquall, posted a diatribe about his Otherkin beliefs to the LiveJournal community debate.^[30] Throughout the more than 500 comments, Starblade asserted that he was a dragon and did not take any sass from trolling commenters, brought to the community by LJ Drama.^[31]LJD users interpreted his argument as Fuck you I’m a dragon!.

The argument lead to Starblade being documented on Encyclopedia Dramatica^[32] and Wikifur.^[33] However, in 2010, Finnegan was stabbed to death by his friend.^[34] It was discussed on the LiveJournal community Unfunny Fandom^[35], where the original poster noted that Starblade had been convinced someone was planning his murder.

Search Interest

External Referebces

Work in progress. Feel free to request editorship

About

Hi, I’m X and this is Jackass is a catchphrase from the MTV show Jackass.

Origin

This catchphrase come from the reality series Jackass, featuring people performing various dangerous, crude, ridiculous, self-injuring stunts and pranks. The phrase originally heard in the Jackass opening, by Johnny Knoxville

Hi, I’m Johnny Knoxville and welcome to Jackass

Spread

Notable examples

Search Insights

External Links

About

The Result of X is a series of videos made in Garry’s Mod which typically feature a person/character riding on an object or animal in a seemingly endless ocean. Since the release of the original video, there have been many derivatives. There are currently 44 video responses to the original.

Origin

On February 21, 2010, YouTube user PrawnBoy101 uploaded a video titled “The Result of Boredom”. The 24-second video clip features The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 riding a Wailord through the ocean, with Avast Your Ass playing in the background. In the video’s description, he dared the viewers to make a video response, and he supplied two music tracks he recommended they use (which are “Gang Plank Galleon” from Donkey Kong Country and “Sewer Surfin’” from TMNT: Turtles in Time, respectively).

Within the first 24 hours after it was uploaded, the video generated over 6,000 views. The first video response for The Result of Boredom was “the result of needing a new cheap car” by YouTube user wadloperz, which features the Heavy driving a green car on the ocean before crashing into a boat.

Notable Examples

The Result of Me Getting Both Bioshock Games Soon After February Vacation and Finding Both of Them Super Awesome

The Result of too Much AVP

The result of playing too much Half-Life

Gerard Approves is a meme that originated from Youtube and is normally used as a photoshop meme. The words “Gerard Approves” was first used in October 2011 by Youtube user, Jacksfilms. The meme was part of a 4 part video featuring a freeflexor parody (or Wiggledix), HEEEYYYYYY MAAAAAANNN, Bobby The Racist Apple and OOOOO!

The Meme takes form of a person named Gerard, who is supposedly a former pro-athelete, who announces “Gerard Approves” to anything and everything. The first “Gerard Approves” was of was a former marine called Jerrod, who employs “The Flippy-Floppy” on the Wiggledix. The meme continues throughout the video to approve of a tanktop which was bought brand new by Graham (a personal trainer). At the end of the parody section of the video, the voice-over questioned to himself “I sure hope Gerard approves…”., But is cut off before he could finish by the voice over stating that “GERARD ALWAYS APPROVES!”.

After the video was launched, 10 minutes later, the first comm

About

Doomba refers a custom modified version of the autonomous vacuum cleaner Roomba with a weapon or an accessory attached to the top. The name is an amalgamation of the words “doom” and “Roomba”, which is meant to illustrate the machine’s weaponized and deadly nature.

Origin

On March 6th, 2012, Redditor buswork submitted a photo to the /r/pics^[1] subreddit of a Roomba with a kitchen knife taped to the top in a post titled “Home Security.” Within five months, the post received over 23,000 up votes and 550 comments.

Precursor

On February 10th, 2009, the satirical news television series The Daily Show aired a segment titled “Future Shock – Roombas of Doom”, featuring an interview with an engineer who created weaponized Roombas known as “Packbots” for the United States military. During the segment, correspondent Samantha Bee describes the robots as “Roombas of doom. Doombas.”

Also, the popular web comic Questionable Content posted a comic in 2006 in which a Roomba shows the same characteristic as a Doomba, this is possibly the earliest known example of a Doomba

Spread

On March 9th, 2012, the Cheezburger site FAILBlog^[9] highlighted the knife-wielding Roomba photo in a post titled “There I Fixed It: The Doomba.” On April 26th, YouTuber petetweets uploaded a video titled “Killer Roomba”, featuring another Roomba with a knife and a digital camera strapped to the top of its case.

On August 12th, Redditor Dkcub23 reposted the “Home Security” Roomba photo to the /r/funny^[2] subreddit, which reached the front page and received over 9,000 up votes and 225 comments within 24 hours. In the comments, Redditor PhiladelphiaIrish linked an edited photo of the Roomba in a scene from the robot fighting television show Battlebots (shown below, left). The same day, Redditor Skankosaurus submitted a post titled “Doomba 2.0”^[3], which featured a photograph of a Roomba with a handgun attached to the top (shown below, right).

Within the next 24 hours, over 200 Doomba-related Reddit posts were submitted, many of which reached the front page including “Doomba 3.0”^[6] (shown below, left), “Doomba 4.0” (shown below, middle) and “Doomba 5.0” (shown below, right). Also on August 12th, Urban Dictionary^[4] users samwaffleman and The Lord of the Dance submitted definitions for the word “Doomba.” In addition, animated GIFs of Doombas have spread to Tumblr^[5] under the tag “#doomba.”

Notable Examples

Non-Roomba Versions

Several Redditors submitted photos of traditional sweepers and vacuum cleaners with weapons attached.^[11][12]
These variations of the Doomba are typically referred to as a “Poor Man’s Doomba”

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Dub the Dew was an online contest to name a new green apple-infused Mtn Dew drink on the website DubTheDew.com. The contest was raided by 4chan users who flooded the poll with joke names and subsequently hacked the website’s front page.

Background

On August 13th, 2012, an anonymous 4chan^[1] user submitted a post calling for others to vote the names “Hitler did nothing wrong” and “Gushing Granny” to the top of the Dub the Dew^[10] contest page. Prior to being archived, the thread received over 550 replies. The same day, the contest page was submitted in a post to the /r/funny^[2] subreddit titled “4chan Names the new Mountain Dew”, which reached the front page accumulating over 11,250 up votes and 1,750 comments within 24 hours.

Notable Developments

Hacks

Shortly after the raid began on August 13th, the name “Hitler did nothing wrong” was voted to the #1 spot and the site was hacked with a scrolling marquee that read “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!”, a video “RickRoll” and a pop up box that read “le 9gag are legion”.

Bronies Join the Raid

Also on August 13th, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic news blog Equestria Daily^[4] published a post titled “Mountain Dew Naming Contest”, which urged readers to vote the name “Applejack” on the contest page. The instructions were reposted to MLP Forums^[5], which soon led to AppleJack reaching the #2 spot in the poll. The same day, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[16] published a post titled “Bronies’ Dew Dreams Dashed”, which reported that 4chan users managed to push Applejack off the top 10 leaderboard prior to the suspension of the contest.

News Media Coverage

The day of the raid on August 13th, the Internet news blog HyperVocal^[17] published an article titled “4chan Trolls Take Over Mountain Dew ‘Dub the Dew’ Campaign”, which compared the raid to other 4chan operations such as the Race Guy Hot Topic online smear campaign.. The same day, Gawker^[7] writer Neetzan Zimmerman wrote an article titled “Mountain Dew Asks Internet to Name Its New Drink, 4chan Happily Obliges”, reporting that Mountain Dew took down the contest page after discovering it had been hacked. Also on August 13th, the story was reblogged by The Huffington Post^[11], Geekosystem^[12] and Mashable.^[13] On the following day, the advertising news blog Ad Week^[14] published a post titled “Mountain Dew’s Soda-Naming Contest Crashed by Pranksters”, comparing the raid to Something Awful’s successful prank involving Walmart Energy Sheets promotion with the rapper Pitbull.

Mountain Dew’s Response

On August 14th, 2012, Mountain Dew responded to a tweet by @AntDeRosa about the contest, admitting it had “lost to The Internet” and the contest was only a local customer program.

@antderosa Dub the Dew definitely lost to The Internet. It was a local customer program, not a Dew one, & we’re helping them clean up

— Mountain Dew® (@mtn_dew) August 14, 2012

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

The Mystery of the Druids is a single player adventure game released in September 2001. The game itself received very poor reviews. The ridiculous box art, however, gained attention on 4chan, the earliest recorded thread appearing in August of 2007.
(NSFW) http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=37885903&x=the+mystery+of+the+druids#37887103

Much of the appeal comes from the fact that the face does not accurately display any human emotion, despite the intensity of the glare.

Since the initial threads, interest will occasionally spark new photoshop threads, both on 4chan and off:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3291841&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1

The hype has largely died down, but the results of it can still sometimes be seen as reaction faces or in You Laugh You Lose threads.

Google insights: http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=mystery%20of%20the%20druids%2Cthe%20mystery%20of%20the%20druids&cmpt=q

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Mystery_of_the_Druids

The 2012 Summer Olympic Games (The Games of the XXX Olympiad) were held in London, UK from 27th of July, 2012 to 12th of August 2012. London won the bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics on the 6th of July, 2005 promising to deliver an environmentally-sustainable Olympics and is the only city to this point to host the Olympics three times. Over 10,000 athletes representing 204 countries took part in the global event and marks the first Olympic Games where all competing teams had a minimum of one female competitor.

Since the evolution of the internet since the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing until now, people have been looking for exploitable moments in the Olympics to create memes from. And so, the London Olympics has had many image macros created after odd or humorous events which has even spawned a facebook page.

London 2012 Official Logo

The LOGOC unveiled the official logo which was designed by Wolff Olins, a London-based branding company on the 4th of June, 2007. The logo consists of a rough depiction of an athlete’s body while simultaneously spelling out “2012” with the Olympic Rings in the “head” and the word ‘london’ in the “arm”. The logo was depicted with 4 colors reflecting the city’s impact on modern society. The logo was designed to appeal to young people in it’s unusual shape and explosively-colorful design. But instead, it has seen mostly negative criticism. In a poll performed by the BBC in the UK in June 2007, 80% of all votes strongly disapproved of the logo. Iran threatened to boycott the games, because the logo could spell out “Zion”. (a synonym for Jerusalem)

But the logo had some memetic qualities as well. Many online users had said that the logo looks like Lisa Simpson giving a blow job to Bart Simpson. A quick rearrangement of the colors makes this visualisation easier to understand.

After all, isn’t this the “XXX” Olympic Games?

One Is Not Amused

Full Article

One of the earlier memes to appear from the games was One Is Not Amused, an image macro series of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II at the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony looking bored or disgruntled. The series is similar to the already well-known Lolcat meme, X is not amused.

Olympics or Gay Porn?

Full Article

Olympics or Gay Porn? is a meme based on the men’s high dive events. The score bar at the lower section of the screen would cover the lower-mid section of the competitor’s body. This would leave the impression that the competitor was naked and the screenshot was from a homosexual pornographic film when viewed without context.

McKayla is Not Impressed

Full Article

McKayla is Not Impressed is a photoshop meme and image macro series of US gymnastic athlete McKayla Maroney, with an unimpressed or disappointed expression as she receives a silver medel for the Women’s Vault. It is a derivative of Spock is not Impressed which is basically the same meme, but with Spock from the Star Trek TV series. The meme is usually photoshopped into other photos or is an image macro.

Bolting

Full Article

Bolting is a pose popularised by Usain Bolt after winning the men’s 100m and setting a new world record speed of 9.69 seconds. The pose was originally introduced by Bolt during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but gained popularity in London. Bolting has since become a widespread photo fad, in a similar fashion to planking.

Dangling Boris

Full Article

Dangling Boris is an exploitable photoshop meme showing a picture of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London on a zip line holding two Union Jack flags. Johnson was testing a zip line in Victoria Park, London on the 1st of August, 2012 when the zip line got stuck 10 meters above the ground. Now, the event has spawned many photoshopped images of Jackson during the incident.

About

Nebula GIFs, also known as Galaxy GIFs, are a series of GIF format images in which certain sections of the image are obscured by flashing patterns of nebulae or other galactic scenery. Due to their frequent usage in inspirational photo quotes on Tumblr, Nebula GIFs are associated with hipster stereotypes on the microblogging social network site.

Origin

Stock images of nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope have been circulating on Tumblr^[15] since as early as January 2010, while inspirational photo quotes featuring pictures of nebulae have appeared as early as February 2010.^[10]Single topic blogs dedicated to making fun of this trend were created as early as August 2010, starting with the launch of That’s A Fucking Nebula^[11], followed by Fuck Yeah Text Over Nebulas^[12] and Text in Space.^[13]

Meanwhile, GIFs utilizing images of nebulae began appearing on Tumblr as as early as December 7th, 2010, when Tumblr user VeryCherryPeel^[14] posted an animated GIF showing a silhouette of two people in a sexual position with its foreground obscured by flashing nebulae.

Spread

On January 18th, 2011, Galaxies In Shit^[1] became the first single topic blog solely dedicated to sharing nebula GIFs on Tumblr, followed by Fuck Yeah Nebula GIFs^[2] that was launched on March 30th. The nubulae GIFs are typically shared on Tumblr through designated tags nebula-gif^[3] and galaxy-gif^[4], but also through through more generic tags like space-gif^[5] and hipster-gif.^[6] In addition, tutorials on how to create nebula GIFs can be found on Galaxies in Shit^[7], single topic tutorial blogs like FYTutorials^[8] and FYeahTutorial,^[9] as well as on YouTube, where the earliest tutorial video (shown below, left) was uploaded on May 18th, 2011.

Notable Examples

Nebula GIF images have been used by Tumblr bloggers for various purposes, most prominently as a decorative texture in photoshopped images, as a design pattern for accessories and fashion products and also as background images for social networking profile pages or personal blogs.

Search Interest

External References

Dragon Pause is a troll-fictional pokemon move born in the /vp/ (Pokémon) board of 4chan.

Origin

On August 13 of 2012, an user posted a ‘Competitive Pokémon Moveset’, switching ‘Dragon Pulse’ (an actual move) for Dragon Pause. Then, the thread derailed parodying ‘Dragon Pause’ and how the move works. ^[1]

Dragon Pause
Type: Dragon
Category: Status
PP: 5 (max 7)
Power: -
Accuracy: -%
Effect:
The turn Dragon Pause is used, the user pauses. At the first of the next turn, all Dragon type pokémon restore all their HP, but they can’t do any move.

Usage

It is usually used to troll people when they share their movesets, saying things like “Remove that Outrage, use Dragon Pause instead”.

^[1] /vp/ – Original thread:http://m.chanarchive.org/4chan/vp/54316/9899882

“Good Thing I’m a faggot” is a new meme that originated on 4Chan’s /b/ (Random) Imageboard, invoking a large amount of OC and spinoffs such as “Good thing I’m a nigger” and others that I won’t mention here.

4Chan is known for their Trolling and large amount of OC, some may refer to it as a Fountain of Trolls, OC, and “OP is a Faggot”

Background

On August 13th, 2012, NYC-based comedian Matt Fisher^[3] wrote a blog post titled “My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer in Court”^[1] to his Tumblr. In the post, Fisher revealed the story of his late sister Kaitlynn Fisher, who was killed by an underinsured driver in a car accident on June 19th, 2010^[2], and held Progressive liable for the difference between the payment from the other driver’s insurance company, Nationwide, and the value of Kaitlynn’s policy. Fisher further explained that Progressive refused to pay his family and due to a Maryland law that immunizes insurance companies from lawsuits, Fisher’s family had to file a civil suit against the other driver. Instead of settling, Progressive offered to pay approximately 1/3 of the owed amount before letting it go to trial, where Fisher claimed that the other driver was defended by Progressive’s legal team.

Notable Developments

On Social Networks

At 11:00 a.m. (EST) on August 13th, Matt Fisher tweeted a link to his blog post, mentioning the insurance company’s Twitter handle^[5] as well. A few hours after Fisher’s post on Twitter, Wil Wheaton tweeted out the link as well^[7], which led to more than 2,653 retweets. Within 24 hours, Fisher’s Tumblr post gained 10,267 notes and his Twitter message received 1,253 retweets.

My Sister Paid @progressive Insurance To Defend Her Killer In Court: mattfisher.tumblr.com/post/293384782…

— Matt Fisher (@fishermatt) August 13, 2012

That evening, Gawker^[4] also featured a link to Fisher’s blog post and pointed out that Progressive’s Twitter account had used an automated response to those retweeting Fisher’s link, which stated that the company “fully investigated this claim and relevant background, and feel we properly handled the claim within our contractual obligations.” The automated response was reposted at least 16 times before Progressive’s Twitlonger account was banned^[6] and the tweets deleted.

A link to Gawker’s post was later tweeted by comedian and actor Patton Oswalt^[8], which was retweeted 6,336 times. By the end of the day, Progressive had been mentioned at least 6,579 times on Twitter.^[9] At the same time, Facebook users began flocking to both Progressive’s official page^[21] and their mascot Flo’s fan page^[22] to criticize the company’s actions.

However, they were met by the same canned response issued by the company. While the debacle had little effect on Progressive’s total number of Facebook likes, the volume of chatters about Flo’s Facebook fan page drastically increased on the 13th.^[27]

Blog Coverage

On the same day Fisher posted his story, his blog post was linked on the internet culture blogs Gawker^[4] and Death and Taxes^[10], as well as the Inquisitr^[11] and the New York Observer.^[12] The following morning on August 14th, the story was featured on various blogs and news sites including Business Insider^[13], Thought Catalog^[14], the Daily Dot^[15], Uproxx^[16], the Huffington Post^[17], New York Daily News^[18], the Frisky^[19] and Mashable.^[20] Many of the news articles covering the scandal not only linked to Fisher’s original post, but also included screenshot images of Progressive’s automated Twitter response, and critiqued their lacking efforts in personal interaction.

Progressive’s Official Response

At 2:00 p.m. (EST) on August 14th, Progressive Claims General Manager Chris Wolf issued an official statement^[23] regarding Fisher’s case. Wolf claimed that the defendant in the case was represented by a lawyer from his insurance company, Nationwide. However, as of August 14th, Nationwide has not confirmed or denied any involvement in the case.

I’d like to take this opportunity to explain Progressive’s role in this complex case. First and foremost, our deepest sympathies go out to Kaitlynn Fisher’s family.

To be very clear, Progressive did not serve as the attorney for the defendant in this case. He was defended by his insurance company, Nationwide.

There was a question as to who was at fault, and a jury decided in the Fisher family’s favor just last week. We respect the verdict and now can continue to work with the Fisher family to reach a resolution.

Chris Wolf
Claims General Manager
Progressive

Fisher’s Follow-Up Post

In response to Wolf’s statement, Matt Fisher posted a follow-up blog article^[24] recounting his experience in the courtroom, where he witnessed the attorney identify himself as Jeffrey R. Moffet, a representative of Progressive Advanced Insurance Company. According to Fisher, Moffat conferred with the defendant, cross-examined the plaintiff’s witnesses, questioned the defense’s witnesses during direct examination, made objections on the defendant’s behalf and gave a closing argument where he argued that Kaitlynn Fisher was responsible for the accident.

Fisher also provided a link to the case information^[25] provided by the Maryland state court system, which lists Jeffrey R. Moffet as an “interested party” representing the law offices of Progressive Casualty Insurance. Gawker^[26] also pointed out that these documents include a motion filed on May 19th, 2011, allowing Mr. Moffet to intervene for the defendant and Progressive was granted all rights as if they were one of the original parties to the case.

Search Interest

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External References

About

Kill Yourself, also known in plural as Kill Yourselves (if more than one person is involved), depicts a man dressed in a suit and giving off a “stop” gesture with his hand. The meme is commonly used in chat rooms and social networking sites in response to incompetent and/or pathetic remarks, statements, or images, with the purpose of telling those who it is directed at that they should just kill themselves for having said or done something so pathetic.

Origin

The exact origin of the meme is currently unknown, however it is believed that it began through this image:

The image depicts a young teenager proposing to his girlfriend with a pair of sneakers, with the added captions “will you swag me?” and “omg yolo”, clearly poking fun at the use of the “Swag” and “YOLO” memes. The image was uploaded onto Facebook on several pages, predominantly “sick jokes” ones, where they obtained thousands of likes and comments.

Spread

If the image above is indeed the first instance of the meme being used, the use of it on Facebook increased rapidly, with one early example being a status update by one “Stif Benitez”. In the status, Stif describes how he would have intercourse with a woman. Having 103,038 subscribers at the time, the individual who placed the Kill Yourself meme below it also added the caption “103,038 people subscribed to this c*nt?” above the “Kill Yourselves.” caption.

A forum or image board trolling technique tricking users into posting on a thread with claim that they will win a prize or other reward for being the ‘last poster’ on the thread.

This, however, is impossible for most forums, as there is typically no limit to the amount of replies a thread receives, unless a site moderator or administrator ‘locks’ the thread so users are no longer able to post. This often results in the punishment of the original poster of the thread by the moderators and possible lulz.

A macro image of a photoshopped version of Bad luck Brian in an African American form. He presents black racial stereotypes in the form of Bad Luck.
For example:
“Goes to KFC, Gets hit by a Koolaid truck.”