About

Dufnering is a photo fad in which participants are photographed slouching against a wall while appearing dazed or exhausted. The fad was inspired by a picture of professional golfer Jason Dufner leaning against a wall and looking subdued while visiting a youth and family center in Irving, Texas.

Origin

On March 28th, 2013, video journalist Christine Lee took a photograph of American golfer Jason Dufner slouching against the wall during his visit to the Salesmanship Youth and Family Center (shown below). The same day, Twitter^[4] user David Watkins tweeted the photograph which was subsequently picked up by the Gawker sports blog Deadspin.^[1]

Spread

On the same day, Redditor chinquentes28 submitted the photo to the /r/funny^[5] subreddit, where it received over 7,300 up votes and 100 comments in the following four days. Also on March 28th, 2013, pro golfer Keegan Bradley tweeted the photo saying “This is the best picture ever.”

Haha I don’t know what to say. This is the best picture ever. #duffdaddytwitter.com/Keegan_Bradley…

— Keegan Bradley (@Keegan_Bradley) March 28, 2013

Bradley’s Twitter followers immediately began tweeting photos of themselves mimicking the slouched pose with the hashtag “#dufnering.” That evening, golf tournament news site Back9network^[6] published a slideshow of notable Dufnering photos. According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[7] by the end of the day, there were more than 17,400 tweets using the hashtag “#dufnering.” On March 29th, Keegan Bradley tweeted a photo of himself and fellow pro golfers Dustin Johnson and Brandy Snedeker sitting on a golf green in Dufner’s slouched pose. In the next several days, the photo fad received additional media coverage from many other golf blogs and news sites, including Deadspin,^[8]ESPN,^[9]The Huffington Post,^[10] American Golf^[11] and CNN.^[12]

#dufnering<a href="https://twitter.com/djohnsonpga">djohnsonpga</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/brandtsnedeker">brandtsnedeker</a> <a href="http://t.co/ktnASZ2aQV" title="http://twitter.com/Keegan_Bradley/status/317616821844996096/photo/1">twitter.com/Keegan_Bradley…</a></p>&mdash; Keegan Bradley (Keegan_Bradley) March 29, 2013

Notable Examples

Dufner Response

On March 29th, Dufner tweeted a photograph of himself slouching in a weight room with the hashtag “#dufnering.”

#dufnering in the Auburn football weight room. Everyday I am Dufnering twitter.com/JasonDufner/st…

— Jason Dufner (@JasonDufner) March 29, 2013

Search Interest

External References

[wip]

About

Hype Train is a slang term for the massive followings of people that get excited when something new from a popular franchise is announced. Typically it would refer to the announcement of a new movie, TV series, or video game that will be coming out in the near future. It can also be said that if the said thing doesn’t live up to the hype, then it can be said the Hype Train has crashed. Images like these are usualy posted in fourms to show the support of the hype.

Origin

[researching]

Spread

The meme is characterized by poorly done drawing and words spelled incorrectly. The design of the meme is often adapted for other iconic characters such as Hitler or Kratos. Meme became popular on Facebook about 2012.

About
Worst Surprise guy, also known as “Worst Surprise”, is an exploitable four panel comic used to convey one’s feeling of dismay after having found something disturbing on the internet.

Origin
The original comic is an excerpt from the opening panel of a short story comic strip illustrated by Jesse Nylund^[2] of Completely Serious Comics^[1], originally uploaded on January 20th, 2011.

Cat Mario (also known as Syobon Action), is a 2D video game notoriously know for doing everything it can to give the player a heart attack from raging. This is because of the many traps that behave differently from what you’d expect them to. Even more, the traps are disguised as harmless objects, which makes the rage be even more “delicious”.

For example, the clouds will kill you if you touch them. After that their graphics will change to a cheesy grin as if saying “Problem?”.

There are invisible blocks that activate only when you hit them. These are usually placed before gaps that you need to jump (as in the picture above). You’d expect to make it to the other side by just jumping over it. Not in this game. The block will activate and send you falling to your death. You will need to time your jumps carefully and think twice when pressing the jump button.

As if this wasn’t enough, sometimes you will need to activate this invisible blocks so you can jump on top of them to be able to jump over a more difficult obstacle. More often than not you’ll find yourself jumping in the air like an idiot for 15 minutes trying to find that invisible block to jump on.

Mushrooms (similar to those in Super Mario Bros. games) will make you grow to a colossal size breaking the floor underneath you causing you to fall to your death.

Little springs that you’d so very much like to use to jump over a wall, will unapologetically send you flying out of the level and on your way to a fresh run through the level.

Platforms in between gaps, which you intend to land on, will split down the middle at just the right time so that you can bathe in the refreshing lava underneath it.

Over the internet, the game is cited as a gaming parody of the classic Super Mario Bros. game, and for good reasons. Most of the traps are placed in such a way to use the player’s own memories of Super Mario Bros. against them.

About

Actresses Without Teeth is a single topic blog which features photoshopped images of Hollywood actresses without any teeth, in a similar vein to the photoshop meme Celebrities Without Eyebrows.

Origin

The “Actresses Without Teeth” Tumblr^[1] blog was launched on March 26th, 2013, with the first post featuring a photoshopped picture of actress Julia Roberts from the 2009 romantic spy film Duplicity without her upper teeth (shown below).^[2] Within eight days, the post received over 400 notes.

Precursor

The humorous concept of masking a specific facial feature in celebrity photos was introduced through the Tumblr blog Celebrities Without Eyebrows^[10] in December 2009. The earliest known photoshopped instance of a teeth-less celebrity photo was submitted two years later on December 22nd, 2011 to the /r/WTF^[6] subreddit, featuring actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s yelling scene from the 1990 comedy film Kindergarten Cop (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post received over 2,100 up votes and 80 comments.

Spread

The same day the blog was launched, an Instagram feed was created which reblogged each post, receiving over 6,900 followers in eight days. On March 27th, 2013, the blog was highlighted on several Internet news sites, including BuzzFeed,^[5] Laughing Squid^[7] and Mashable.^[8] On the following day, the Internet news blog UpRoxx^[9] published a slideshow of notable examples from the series. On March 29th, 2013, Redditor obie22 submitted an image combining four examples from the Actresses Without Teeth blog to the /r/funny^[4] subreddit, where it received more than 23,800 up votes and 730 comments in the following five days.

Notable Examples

Derivative: Actresses Without Lips

On March 29th, 2013, Redditor relationsheep submitted a photo collage of several lipless actresses to the /r/funny^[3] subreddit (shown below). Within five days, the post gained upwards of 1,400 up votes and 65 comments.

Search Interest

External References

About

Slacktivism, a portmanteau of slacker and activism, is often used with a negative connotation online to describe internet users who will participate in small methods of supporting or protesting a cause that often require little to no effort.

Origin

The term Slacktivism was coined for a 1995 seminar series given by Fred Clark and Dwight Ozard at that year’s Cornerstone Festival, a Christian arts and music gathering, held in Illinois.^[1] The seminars focused on the positive ways young people were making changes in the world, juxtaposed against the idea that most teenagers at the time were lazy and unconcerned with working towards a greater good. Clark noted that they chose to use filmmaker Richard Linklater’s positive interpretation of the word “slacker,” meaning people who choose not to waste their time on things that have “nothing to do with who they are.”^[2]

Spread

In February 2001, Newsday^[3] reported about an email petition that had been circulating for six years, raising awareness about government cutbacks for PBS, National Public Radio and art programs in general by asking people to forward the message to everyone they knew, hoping that after a large amount of signatures had been amassed, the email would get back to the students who would forward it to the government. However, the school shut down the students’ email addresses soon after the email began circulating due to the strain on their mail servers. The Newsday article noted this circulated email, and others like it that flooded the web in the 1990s and early 2000s^[4], were an example of meaningless slacktivism, despite their good intentions.

Many of these viral emails were archived on hoax-busting Snopes, whose owner Barbara Mikkelson explained slacktivism as “the desire people have to do something good without getting out of their chair” to the New York Times^[5] in May 2002.

Slacktivism was first added to Urban Dictionary^[11] in October 2003, relating the act to signing email petitions. This definition was chosen as the March 28th, 2008 Urban Word of the Day. In June 2008, PR Watch^[12] offered an offline definition of the practice, comparing forwarding emails to buying rubber bracelets and magnetic car ribbons for causes. Later that year, slacktivism was discussed on NPR^[13] for the first time.

Throughout 2009, arguments for and against slacktivism appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald^[14], The Globe and Mail^[15], Foreign Policy Net.Effect^[16], Social Citizens^[17] and the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management.^[18] While the activities often associated with slacktivism do not appear to do anything, the positive arguments asserted that word of mouth played a role in why people actually participate in these online activities, which may result in someone hearing about or participating in a cause they may not have interacted with at first, on and offline. The offline effects of online activism were studied by Henrik Serup Christensen in a paper for the internet culture journal First Monday^[19] in February 2011. His research concluded that while there was no strong correlation between online and offline participation, online activities characterized as slacktivism had no negative effect on a person’s habits.

Notable Examples

Bra Status Updates

In January 2010, Slacktivism was associated with Bra Status Updates, an online survey game that suggested women update their Facebook status with the color of the bra they were wearing to spread breast cancer awareness. After the trend went viral on Facebook, sites including TrendHunter^[6], marketing group MAI Strategies^[7], Sociology Lens^[8] Newsweek^[9] and Jezebel^[10] all confirmed that this influx of Facebook status updates did not positively contribute to breast cancer research in any way.

Facebook Cartoon Profile Picture Week

In November 2010, a Facebook user named Dheepak Krishnamurthy created an event page for Cartoon Character Profile Picture Week, asking other users to change their Facebook photos to a cartoon character for a a week for fun. As it spread to the media in early December, the message got misconstrued as an anti-child abuse campaign. The act was criticized by bloggers who saw these profile photo changes as quickly fleeting moments of activism.^[20] The profile photo campaign also led Psychology Today^[21] to analyze the habits of Slacktivists, noting that people participating in these online campaigns will feel like they have done their part already, leading to causes receiving less donations or volunteers than they would have otherwise.

Kony 2012

In February 2012, the nonprofit organization Invisible Children launched the campaign Kony 2012 to raise awareness about the Ugandan guerrilla leader Joseph Kony for his role as head of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which was notorious for kidnapping children, making females become sex slaves and males become soldiers. The 30-minute video aimed at arresting Kony by the end of 2012 and was followed by instructions on how to support the cause by spreading the video and donating to Invisible Children.

Within 16 days, the first version of the video received more than 7 million views. After it was uploaded to YouTube on March 5th, the video saw more than 43 million views within 72 hours, later becoming marked as the fastest growing viral video of all time. In late February and early March, several hashtags relating to the video began to globally trend on Twitter. The video also instructed viewers to launch real-life protests in an event called Cover The Night, scheduled for April 20th, 2012. Across the globe, these protests fell flat including in Australia, where 25 out of nearly 19,000 Facebook attendees showed up for an event in downtown Sydney. Additionally, many observers online noted that support had dwindled, as no Kony-related hashtags were trending on Twitter.

#ThatAwkwardMoment when #Kony2012 isn’t trending on the day the magic is to happened.. Kind of disappointed, I haven’t even see a poster.

— Bob Fite (@BobFiteSup) April 20, 2012

Following the release of a second video in October, approximately 3000 youths and college students out of 11,000 registrants attended a rally on the White House lawn organized by Invisible Children. As of April 2013, Kony has not been captured.

Red Equal Sign

On March 25th, 2013, the Human Rights Campaign urged their Facebook followers to change their profile picture to a Red Equal Sign the following day, to show support for same-sex marriage as the United States Supreme Court began to deliberate on its legality. In less than 24 hours, the post accrued nearly 17,000 likes and more than 60,000 shares. Within hours, dozens of celebrities on Facebook including George Takei and at least 13 United States Congress members all changed their photos, with many people and corporate pages across the site using variations on the image to reflect their personal interests or brand, respectively.

Four days later, Facebook revealed that there was a 120% increase in profile photo changes that day, with more than 2.7 million people changing their pictures. Despite this, the profile photos saw some criticism across social networks^[22] from people who saw the support as an empty gesture that would not enact meaningful change.

Keep up the red equal sign postings, I heard the Supreme Court justices are going through and counting all the profile pictures right now.

— Shayn Fernandez (@Shaynislegend) March 27, 2013

Search Interest

External References

Note: Work in Progress. I would really appreciate some help. This is being labeled as an event.

On April 2nd, 2013, Texas Rangers starting pitcher, Yu Darvish blew a perfect game with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Houston Astros. The perfect game was ruined when Astros shortstop, Marwin Gonzalez hit a first pitch base hit that went past Darvish’s legs and into center field after Darvish pitched 111 pitches and took down 26 consecutive batters including 14 strikeouts in a 7-0 Rangers victory. Darvish is only the 11th pitcher in MLB history to blow a perfect game with one out left.

Reactions

When the game ended, sites such as MLB Memes erupted with content involving the blown perfect game. Some memes that were used to describe the moment included High Expectations Father and X And It’s Gone. Other posts focused on Marwin Gonzalez.

Marwin Gonzalez Wikipedia Hack

Moments after the game ended, Marwin Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page was vadelized by Rangers fans. Some examples included calling Gonzalez “ugly face,” saying that he “bats while going to the toilet,” and reporting that he was killed by an angry mob of Rangers fans. Astros fans came back and stated that Darvish committed harikari after giving up the hit. These changes were deleted by Wikipedia although the statement that Gonzalez’s new nickname was “Game Breaker” stayed for a while, but was eventually deleted as well.

Twitter Trends (WIP)

The Bleacher Report has posted Twitter messages from various reporters when it comes to the game.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1590922-twitter-reacts-as-yu-darvish-misses-perfect-game-by-1-out-vs-houston-astros

[this entry is currently being researched; request editorship to help]

About

Crowdfunding (also spelled crowd funding) is an Internet neologism referring to the practice of raising capital for a project idea through donations from a grassroots network of individuals on the Internet.

Origin

[researching]

Spread

[researching]

Search Interest

External References

About

Attractive Convict is an advice animal based on a mugshot of a young woman with captions word playing on her beauty and criminal background, in a similar vein to the advice animal character Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. Prior to becoming an advice animal, the photograph was featured in “sexy mugshot” compilation posts on various websites.

Origin

On July 25th, 2010, Florida resident Meagan Renea McCullough was arrested for driving under the influence. Her mugshot (shown below, left) and arrest information were subsequently uploaded to the arrest record database Arrests.org.^[3] On August 9th, 2012, the photograph was included in a compilation of mugshots featuring attractive women on the men’s interest blog The Chive^[4] (shown below, right).

On August 13th, the pictures were posted on the Japanese news website Daily News Agency.^[7] On August 16th, a “sexy mugshots” gallery was submitted to the /r/pics^[6] subreddit, which contained the McCullough picture. On August 26th, the Japanese pop culture blog RocketNews^[8] reported that the photographs had been posted on the popular imageboard 2chan. On April 3rd, 2013, Redditor vestra submitted McCullough’s mugshot with the caption “Wanted / In 50 states” (shown below) to the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit.^[1] Within 48 hours, the post received over 8,800 up votes and 550 comments.

Spread

As of early April 2013, the “Attractive Convict” Quickmeme page hosts at least 230 instances of the series.

The same day, Redditor squirrelbo1 submitted an image macro with the caption “Can I have her / cell number” (shown below, left) to the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit.^[5] Within 24 hours, the post gained more than 18,000 up votes and 700 comments. Also on April 3rd, 2013, Redditor Skepstar posted an image macro with the caption “I guess it’s true / looks do kill” to the /r/AdviceAnimals subreddit,^[9] accumulating upwards of 5,900 up votes and 175 comments. On April 4th, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[2] published a compilation of notable examples from the series.

Notable Examples

As of early April 2013, the “Attractive Convict” Quickmeme^[10] page hosts at least 230 instances of the series.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Arrested Development^[1] is an American television sitcom that began airing on the Fox Network in 2003. Despite it’s positive critical acclaim and cult-like fan following, the show was cancelled in 2006 after three seasons. In 2011, Netflix agreed to release an additional fifteen episodes to be exclusively distributed via their streaming service, which will premiere in May 2013.

History

The show was driven by an idea of director and producer Ron Howard^[3], who wanted to create a comedy series filmed with one camera in the style a reality television with an elaborate, over the top comedy script.^[4] Howard and a group of producers met with two writers, including Mitchell Hurwitz^[2] who suggested a family with a “riches to rags” story, in light of the 2001 Enron Scandal.^[5] He was quickly chosen to write a pilot script, which was submitted in January 2003 and filmed that March. The pilot details the events of a party in which the protagonist Michael Bluth is charged with piecing his family’s company back together after his father, George Bluth Sr., is arrested for using company money for his personal gain. It premiered on Fox on November 2nd, 2003 to 7.98 million viewers.

After several years of speculation about the possibility of an Arrested Development movie^[45], Netflix announced^[46] in November 2011 that they would be offering a fourth season of the show exclusively on their streaming service in early 2013. The new episodes began filming in August 2012.^[47] In April 2013, Netflix reported that the entire 15 episode season would be made available at 12:01 AM PST on May 26th, 2013.

Reception

Similar to other cult shows like Community and Veronica Mars, Arrested Development did not have a large audience while it was airing. Over the course of its three seasons, the show had an average of 5.4 million viewers. The final four episodes of the series aired directly opposite the 2006 Winter Olympics, resulting in only 3.43 million viewers. Despite this, the show saw positive reviews from critics between 2004 and 2007 including Entertainment Weekly^[9], The Guardian^[10] and the New York Times.^[11] Additionally, Arrested Development was named one of the greatest shows of the decade on a HuffPost TV^[6] and one of the best shows of all time by TIME^[7] and Empire.^[8]

Accolades

Throughout its time on air, Arrested Development was nominated for 62 awards and won 26 in total^[12], including six Primetime Emmy Awards, three Television Critics Association Awards, one Golden Globe Award and one Writers Guild of America award. Jason Bateman has won three awards for his portrayal of Michael Bluth, including a Golden Globe Award and two Satellite Awards, and creator Michael Hurtwiz has won three Primetime Emmy awards for his work.

Online Presence

In preparation for the new season on Netflix, Arrested Development began to establish social networking accounts, starting with Facebook^[24] on February 22nd, 2013. The page gained more than 1.7 million likes by April of that year. On March 7th, 2013, a Twitter account^[25] for the show was created, but it did not post its first tweet until April 4th, to announce the Netflix season premiere date. Within nine hours, the account had gained more than 15,000 followers. They also used the hashtag #AD2013^[26] to tout the new episodes, which was used nearly 4800 times that day.^[27]

And with one tweet, Arrested Development had more followers than viewers of the original series. #AD2013

— Arrested Development (@arresteddev) April 4, 2013

Fandom

The earliest Arrested Development fan communities convened on LiveJournal, where the first fan group The_Bluths^[13] was created on December 17th, 2003. As of 2013, the journal has accrued more than 1700 members, 2600 posts and 25,000 comments. LiveJournal also hosts fanfiction communities^[14][15], a memorable quotes page^[16] and a now-defunct icon contest.^[17] The first fansite, The Balboa Observer-Picayune^[29] was created in Feburyar 2004, but ceased updating in 2008. In January 2009, an Arrested Development subreddit^[28] was created, gaining more than 70,000 subscribers as of April 2013. The next year, in January 2010, @BluthQuotes^[30] was created, providing quotes and news about Arrested Development cast members via Twitter. The first Tumblr fan blog, The Bluth Company^[18], launched on July 25th, 2010.

In 2012, visual designer Nathan Romero created the quote generator Bananastand.me^[31] for the show. Fans of Arrested Development have shared fan art and screenshots from the show on Tumblr^[19] and deviantART^[20] and nearly 100 stories about the show have been shared on Fanfiction.net.^[21] Though actress Alia Shawkat has noted^[22] that the fandom is “kind of ridiculous,” Vulture named them one of the 25 Most Devoted Fanbases^[23] in 2012.

Fan Art

Impact

Arrested Development content and characters can often be found in other memetic content, which has been featured on Funny or Die^[32][37], Cheezburger^[33], We Know Memes^[34], Buzzfeed^[35] and the Huffington Post.^[36]

Mash Up Tumblrs

In September 2010, a single topic Tumblr titled Mad Development^[38] (shown below, left) launched, placing Arrested Development captions on screen shots from the show Mad Men, juxtaposing the former’s absurd dialogue with the serious nature of the latter. In May 2011, this format was repeated in Arrested Westeros[39 (shown below, right), which places the captions over screenshots and GIFs from Game of Thrones. As of 2013, dozens of these mashup blogs have been created using content from Breaking Bad^[40], Lord of the Rings^[41], Downton Abbey^[42] and Les Miserables.^[43]

I’ve Made a Huge Mistake

I’ve Made a Huge Mistake was a running catchphrase of Michael’s older brother Gob, who often used it to express a realization that he had done something wrong. In early 2012, the phrase became a popular caption on image macros and animated GIFs, sometimes used in conjunction with a description of the regrettable action.

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket is a photoshop meme that spread on 4chan and Tumblr after a behind-the-scenes photo of actor David Cross wearing a blanket on set was leaked online. A day after the photos were released, Buzzfeed^[44] highlighted a series of photoshopped images based on his strange outfit.

Search Interest

External References

About
Twitter the Comic is a tumblr phenomenon created by Mike Rosenthal, which translates funny, witty, and often popular tweets into 4-panel comic strips.

Origin: On November 19, 2012 the first five comic strips were posted by Mike Rosenthal on the Twitter the Comic tumblr blog. The average post gets thousands of likes and/or reblogs.
Twitter the Comic has received attention on Reddit, BuzzFeed, and from Whil Wheaton via his personal tumblr. To date, the most popular post has received over 20,000 likes/reblogs on tumblr.
Other webcomic and comic creators have participated in Twitter the Comic and have been invited to create their own strips for the blog.

Related Works
Mike also created the webcomic “Our New Electrical Morals” which is now a cartoon on Cartoon Hangover.

Background

In early March 2013, Republic of Korea and the United States began their annual joint field training exercises known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle. Throughout the month, the tension between the two Koreas quickly escalated as both sides continued to deploy heavy military forces along the maritime border and hackers from both Koreas allegedly targeted each others’ Internet infrastructures and servers with malware and DDoS attacks. On March 29th, North Korea’s state-run news agency issued a statement that its leader Kim Jong Un approved military plans for striking American and South Korean targets.

Anonymous Korea

On March 30th, 2013, a contingent of Anonymous-affiliated hackers calling themselves AnonymousKorea^[1] claimed via Twitter that it had launched a DDoS attack against North Korea’s official websites and brought down at least five of them, including the North Korean airline Air Koryo and numerous other state news and propaganda websites.

#OpnorthKorea#Tangodownairkoryo.com.kpnaenara.com.kpkorea-dpr.comfriend.com.kpuriminzokkiri.com

— Anonymous_Korea (@Anonsj) March 30, 2013

Notable Developments

@Anonymous_Korea’s #OpNorthKorea tweets were instantly picked up by several Anonymous-affiliated news outlets^[4] on Twitter, including @Data_Overflow, @AnonOpsKorea, @root, @iSPAINonymous @Generati0n_anon, @TheAnonOne and @AnonymousNull. That same day on March 30th, North Korea Tech^[3] and Business Insider^[2] reported on #OpNorthKorea, both suggesting that the latest DDoS attack may have been tied to the hostile threat of war that had been issued by North Korea a few hours before.

On April 2nd, Pastebin user DBLUE uploaded a brief communique^[7] explaining the background of the attack and a list of demands urging Kim Jong Un to resign as the leader and implement reforms towards democracy. The Pastebin document also included some details of two Chinese nationals and three Korean nationals, which it claimed to be part of 15,000 user records that the hackers obtained from the Chinese-hosted North Korean news site Uriminzokkiri.

We demand:

- N.K. government to stop making nukes and nuke-threats
- Kim Jong-un to resign
- it’s time to install a free direct democracy in North Korea
- uncensored internet access for all the citizens!

To Kim Jong-un:

So you feel the need to create large nukes and threaten half the world with them?
So you’re into demonstrations of power?, here is ours:

- We are inside your local intranets (Kwangmyong and others)
- We are inside your mailservers
- We are inside your webservers

However, the group’s claim that it had sucessfully breached North Korea’s local intranets remain unsubstantiated and no official statements have been issued from the North. In the following days, the alleged Pastebin leak was covered by Cyber War News^[5], North Korea Tech^[6] and The Daily Dot^[8], reporting that more attacks have been supposedly scheduled to take place on April 19th and June 25th.

Search Interest

[not yet available]

External References

Adventuring in northeast CT. This what we stumble across. I don’t even know.

A screenshot taken from the 1994 movie “Little Rascals” entitled Sneaky Spanky.

About

Gwiyomi or Kwiyomi (귀요미, pronounced as Kiyomi) is a video craze of various hand gestures in sync with the original song of Korean indie pop singer Hari. Netizens remake Gwiyomi videos to show off their cuteness.

Origin

The original single, The Gwiyomi Song, was released on February 18, 2013. The title of the song, “Gwiyomi” actually means “cute little ear”, but it is always translated simply as “cute”.

On the 24th episode of the Korean MTV show “MTV Diary BTOB”, Korean star Ilhoon Jung first invented hand gestures for the song’s chorus part and after the show was aired, many other Korean artists performed the song on different occassions in order to show off their cuteness.

Spread

The meme circulated in Korea through the mass media, and the original singer, Hari, also made a Gwiyomi video of herself. The trend are also spread to the neighboring regions such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Phillippines, Thailand and Indonesia. With more performances of the Korean stars in foreign television shows, the meme spread even more vigorously. Gwiyomi videos are constantly posted on Facebook and Youtube, some even made variations on the moves.

Notable examples

Variations

Yes, I’m cordial

new meme I made called “Shit its Shaun”

About

Adam Orth’s “Always On” Twitter Gaffe refers to a series of controversial statements made on Twitter by Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth in defense of games that require an Internet connection to play.

Background

On April 4th, 2013, Gawker Media’s video game blog Kotaku^[1] published an article reporting that the next Xbox console might require an active Internet connection to play games. Fueled by the Electronic Arts’s disastrous reception of the SimCity in February 2012, the rumors immediately sparked online debates about “always-on” gaming, with many arguing that gamers shouldn’t be forced to have a stable Internet connection to play games they have purchased. That day, Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth published several tweets expressing his support for always-on games.

Orth then began arguing with Bioware gameplay designer Manveer Heir, posting tweets stating that people without Internet need to “get with the times,” that he wants every device to be “always on” and responded to criticism with a Barack Obama cell phone image macro with the caption “deal with it”.

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

On April 5th, 2013, Redditor MrWill4466 posted a screenshot of Orth’s Twitter exchange with Heir to the /r/gaming^[13] subreddit, which reached the front page accumulating over 50,200 up votes and 8,500 comments in the next 24 hours. In the comments section of the post,^[4] Redditor squirrelmasterzero claimed to have previous worked with the creative director at Fox Interactive and revealed that Orth demanded people call him “Sweet Billy.”

One hour later, Redditor C-Ron submitted another post to the /r/gaming^[2] subreddit, with additional screenshots of Orth’s tweets. Within 24 hours, the post gained more than 9,900 up votes and 1,100 comments. The same day, NeoGAF Forums^[3] member shinobi602 created a thread about the selected tweets, which received many responses criticizing Orth’s support of always-on gaming. After seeing the NeoGaf thread, Heir published several tweets defending Orth, saying they were merely joking with each other.

So <a href="https://twitter.com/adam_orth">adam_orth</a> got NeoGAFed. You should know we are good friends who joke around with one another. Don't read too much into our back &amp; forth.</p>&mdash; Manveer Heir (manveerheir) April 5, 2013

All those tweets you are seeing about the city being superior. That’s him just trolling me. And I fell for it. Don’t bust his balls on that.

— Manveer Heir (@manveerheir) April 5, 2013

Orth followed up by tweeting an apology, saying that he was just trolling Heir. Redditor jbrake posted a screenshot of Orth’s apology and Heir’s defense to the /r/gaming^[6] subreddit, where it received over 2,800 up votes and 440 comments. Orth’s Twitter account was subsequently made private, causing all of his previous tweets to be hidden. Hours later, Twitter user @LynnDawson tweeted at Microsoft Chief of Staff for Interactive Entertainment Business Aaron Greenberg with a screenshot of one of Orth’s tweets, to which Greenberg replied that he did not know who Orth was.

News Media Coverage

Orth’s tweets and the subsequent Internet backlash were reported on by several news sites and gaming blogs, including Forbes,^[7] The Huffington Post,^[8] Kotaku,^[9]CNET,^[10] Joystiq^[11] and Techno Buffalo.^[12]

Image Macros

On April 5th, the “Always Online Adam Orth” Quickmeme^[5] page was created, which featured Orth’s Twitter profile picture accompanied by captions mocking him for his support of always-on games. In less than 24 hours, the page accumulated upwards of 280 submissions.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Pottering is a photo fad that entails photographing oneself leaping in the air with a broomstick tucked in between the legs in reference to Quidditch, a fictional competitive sport prominently featured in the Harry Potter universe.

Origin

In August 2012, Redditor 93tillinfiniD^[1] posted a photo of a man jumping from a window in to a pool while holding a broom between his legs, in order to create the illusion that he was floating on the broomstick. Titled “You’re a wizard, Harry!,” the post gained more than 16,000 upvotes and 1675 points overall, accruing nearly 950,000 views on Imgur within eight months.

Spread

On March 5th, 2013, a group of three Australians launched a Facebook group titled “Public Pottering”^[2], encouraging people to submit photos of themselves mid-air with a broomstick. Within 30 days, the page accrued more than 4800 likes and more than 50 photos. A link to the Facebook page was shared on the Harry Potter subreddit^[3] on March 11th, but only saw 30 upvotes. On March 30th, Australian news site News.com.au^[6] ran a featured story on the fad, calling it a “more innovative” form of planking.

The same day, Redditor jb2386 compiled 23 of the Facebook photos in to an Imgur gallery^[4] and shared it on the /r/pics subreddit^[23], calling it a response to Hadokening. Though the post only gained 38 upvotes, the same gallery was posted to the Harry Potter subreddit^[7] on April 3rd, where it gained more than 2100 upvotes and nearly 1500 points overall. Two days later, Buzzfeed tweeted^[8] one of these photos, calling it “Quidditching.” The tweet saw more than 100 retweets and 80 favorites within two hours.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References