About

Office Thoughts is an image macro series featuring a stock photograph of a man wearing a white shirt and blue tie reclining in a chair while seated at a desk. The captions typically narrate the man’s inner monologue, which includes thoughts about day dreaming, procrastination and slacking off at work.

Origin

Redditor Wade_W_Wilson submitted a post titled “Office Thoughts”^[1] on August 16th, 2012, which included an image macro with the caption “If I set this building on fire / I wonder which coworkers would escape” (shown below). Within five days, the post received over 9,850 up votes and 150 comments.

Spread

On August 17th, 2012, the Internet humor blog Pleated Jeans published a post titled “Best of the Office Thoughts Meme”, which included 14 notable examples from the series. The same day, the Internet humor site Runt of the Web^[9] published “The Wandering Mind of Office Thoughts.” On August 18th, the Cheezburger site Memebase^[8] posted the same image macro submitted to Reddit by Wade_W_Wilson. On August 20th, the Internet news blog UpRoxx^[4] published a post titled “Meme Watch: We Can Related to ‘Office Thoughts’”, citing Reddit as the origin of the meme. The same day, the meme was reblogged on the Internet humor sites The FW^[5] and Brobible.^[6]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Dogshaming is a single topic blog featuring photographs of dogs with signs displaying transgressions performed by the animal.

Origin

The “Dogshaming” Tumblr^[1] blog was launched on August 16th, 2012, with its first post featuring a photograph of a black and tan dachsund with a sign that read, “I am an underwear eating jerk!” (shown below). Within six days, the post received over 940 notes.

Spread

On August 21st, 2012, the Internet news blog The Daily Dot^[2] published an article titled ""Tumblr’s Dogshaming Documents Dogs Behaving Badly", which featured two notable examples from the blog (shown below).

The same day, the MSN blog Digital Life^[3] reblogged The Daily Dot in a post titled “Pups ‘confess’ their bad behavior on new Dogshaming blog.” On August 22nd, the Dogshaming Tumblr was featured during a segment on The Today Show:

The same day, The Huffington Post^[4] published an article titled “Dogshaming Tumblr Goes Viral As Owners Pan Naughty Pooches”, which included a quote from Tumblr editorial director Chris Mahoney claiming he came up with the idea for the photograph series.

“It was a half-baked joke that I didn’t think would amount to much beyond a few hours’ amusement,” he told The Huffington Post via email on Wednesday. “It came from one reblogged post on my dash that had four doghsaming pics from various sources, so I reblogged the original one and posted all four (with sources) as individual posts.”

Also on August 22nd, Nine MSN^[6] news published an article titled “Dog Owners Publicly Shame Their Naughty Pets”, which speculated that the blog was inspired by parents making their children wear signs in public admitting their transgressions. The Daily Dot^[5] published a followup article the same day, which revealed that Mohney had passed control of the Dogshaming Tumblr over to the creator of the original dogshaming photograph.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not yet available.

External References

Overview

Botched Ecce Homo Painting, also known as “Potato Jesus”, refers to the failed restoration of a century-old Spanish devotional fresco, executed by an elderly amateur art restorer. The result of the botched restoration spawned a photoshop meme, in which the ruined painting was edited on to other famous works of art, or vice versa, it has also had other miscellaneous meme traits, such as captioning, rage comic and dolan duck iterations.

Background

On August 21st, 2012, the Spanish publication Heraldo^[2] published an article about a failed painting restoration performed by an elderly woman named Cecilia Jiménez. Jiménez wished to restore a damaged fresco created by Spanish painter Elías García Martínez named Ecce Homo (“Behold the Man”), which was donated to the Santuario de Misericordia Church in the Spanish town of Borja. According to the church, Jiménez restored the painting without permission, though she claimed the priest had allowed her to do so. After assessing the damage caused by the restoration, the church announced they would be hiring a professional restorer to attempt to undo the botched job, though many in Spain and around the world have protested to keep the painting.

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

On August 21st, 2012, Redditor rolmos submitted a post to the /r/pics^[5] subreddit titled “An old church in Spain needed to restore a worn out painting. They hired the wrong person”, which included photographs of the painting before and after it was altered. Within two days, the post received over 11,000 upvotes and 750 comments. Redditor donosti replied to the post with an edited version of the failed restoration made to appear as if it were an illustration of a lion (shown below, left). On August 22nd, a 4chan thread featured the painting referring to it as “Potato Jesus” (shown below, right), which referenced the I Can Count to Potato image macro series. The thread has not yet been archived.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Colibritany is the nickname given to [future site of this information], who appears in Youtube videos and, because of her popularity, on various social networks and webpages.

About

Colibritany is a 15 years old girl from Coyococ, México. She appears to be a steryotypical naca, a uneducated and kind of vulgar person who tends to do ridiculous activities or lifestyle thinking it is cool. She fisrt appeared in her music video “Mi sexy chambelán”, a “Quinces” party preparation parody that was uploaded in Sofia Vergara´s Youtube Channel nuevon. The video had more than 1 million views in his first week and it got 4265706 views as on August 2012. Because of her popularity, another video was uploaded: “El Meikup”, but it was not as famous as his first video, receiving only 231843 and lots of dislikes. Sofia Vergara gave her the oportunity to make her own weekly videoblog.

Spread

Various reaction videos and people singing “Mi sexy chambelán” videos were later uploaded to Youtube.

Search Insights

External links

Colibritany´s official Facebook fan page
Colibritany´s official Twitter account
Terra News about Colibritany
Latin America E! Online News about Colibritany
TV Azteca news about Colibritanyz

About

Daredevil Damien is a series of images that resulted in a meme containing the eponymous Damien doing a number of impossible stunts.

Origin

First posted on Reddit on the 23rd of August 2012,^[1] user soundboy5010 posted an link, titled “My friend, Damien uploaded a picture of himself on facebook from a recent trampolining competition…” to an image that had resulted from friends altering the original image after his friend posted a picture of himself in mid-air after a recent trampolining competition. The page, now also on Imgur, garnered over 500,000 views in under 12 hours.^[2]

Development

soundboy5010 then provided the original image through a Reddit photoshopbattle page, which resulted in hundreds of new images^[3]. A fan page quickly resulted on Facebook, containing the most popular images^[4]. Derivatives and reposts were then found on Epic Lol ^[5] and and on Funny Junk ^[6], with the FJ post garnering over 4000 “Funny” ratings from 84,000 views.

^[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/yox69/my_friend_damien_uploaded_a_picture_of_himself_on/

^[2] http://imgur.com/gallery/BwSX8

^[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/yp697/photoshop_daredevil_damien/

^[4] http://www.facebook.com/Damienexploited

^[5] http://www.epiclol.com/trampoline-guy-is-a-torpedo/

^[6] http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/4035680/Trampoline/

About

Pusheen^[1] is an animated webcomic series that depicts the life and dreams of the titular gray tabby cat.

History

Pusheen was created by artists Clare Belton and Andrew Duff as a character in their webcomic “Everyday Cute”^[3], which was launched in May 2010. Only a few of the older comics were archived^[6], however mentions of additional posts can be found on the site’s Facebook page^[4] and Twitter account.^[5] The comics revolved around the lives of the characters modeled after Belton, Duff, their yellow dog named Carmen and Pusheen, a chubby gray tabby cat based on Belton’s childhood cat. Her name stems from the Irish word “puisin” (“kitten” in English), which was given to the cat after she was adopted from a shelter.

On February 26th, 2011, Everyday Cute announced^[7] the launch of a separate blog for Pusheen animations. The first day, three animations and one static webcomic about the games Pusheen likes to play were posted on the blog. As of August 2012, all of these posts have more than 1500 notes, including an animated GIF post (shown below) which garnered more than 7200 notes.

Reception

Outside of Tumblr, Pusheen has been featured on the sites Catster^[8], the Daily Dot^[9], LaughingSquid^[11], novelty store Archie McPhee’s blog^[12], I Can Has Cheezburger?^[13] and Tumblr Storyboard^[10], where her interview has accumulated 16,400 notes. As of August 2012, Pusheen’s official Facebook page^[14], created in February 2012, has more than 181,000 likes and the official Twitter account^[15] has nearly 30,400 followers. On June 27th, 2012, Pusheen broke 25,000 followers on Tumblr.^[16] Though the current follower count is unknown, in an email to Know Your Meme, the Pusheen creators stated it is more than 350,000.

Notable Images

25k follower announcement

Cracked is an award-winning entertainment and humor website founded by Jack O’Brien in 2005. It is currently the most visited humor website in the world, with over 300 million page views every month.

Origin

Cracked was started as a humor magazine in 1958 and was known for its conspicious copying of Mad in layouts and style. In early 2005, editor-in-chief Jack O’Brien founded the website Cracked.com as a separate website. Though the magazine discontinued soon after, the website was purchased by Demand Media in 2007, and rapid growth followed.

Cracked.com

In 2007, Cracked reported a few hundred thousand users per month and 3 to 4 million page views. Cracked’s 2,000 to 3,000 word articles, which are published daily, usually are read by over one million users on the day of the upload.

In 2010, Cracked released an iPad application, which allows users access to mobile browsing of Cracked’s articles, videos, and contests. The site’s traffic has doubled each year, and it has become one of Demand Media’s most successful properties. In 2010, Cracked reported over 1 billion page views. As of 2012, Cracked receives over 300 million monthly page views, making it the most popular humor site in the world, ahead of The Onion, CollegeHumor, and Funny or Die.

Features

Cracked features a blog, videos, forums, a writer’s workshop, four weekly Image Manipulation contests called Photoplasty, and small, one-shot articles called “Quick Fixes.”

Web Series

Roughly 30% of Cracked’s content is video. As of 2012, Cracked has 10 web series that are exclusive to the site. They debuted the web series “Agents of Cracked” in 2009, and it generated 20 million views over three seasons. In July 2010, Cracked debuted “After Hours,” a video-debate version of Cracked’s lists. The show has generated over 15 million views. Other shows include “Stuff That Must Have Happened” and “The Katie Willert Experience”.

Cheat Sheets

Cracked, along with Rotten Tomatoes and Movieclips, launched Cheat Sheets in 2011, a comedic, user-generated guide to popular movies.

Book

In 2010, Cracked released its first book, entitled You Might Be A Zombie And Other Bad News. The book features 20 articles previously published on the website, and 18 new ones made for the book.

The book reached #9 on The New York Times’ “Paperback Advice and Misc.” best sellers list, and has sold over 40,000 copies.

Live Shows

Cracked has expanded into live shows. At the 2011 SXSW festival, Cracked hosted Cracked Live, which featured live performances from notable Cracked staff members. In November 2011, Cracked hosted three panels at Comikaze Expo, a multi-media popular culture convention.

Reception

Cracked has been generally well-received on the Internet. Wired Magazine called the site “addictive,” “hauntingly funny” and “terrifyingly well-informed.” In 2010, Cracked won the Audience Choice Award at the second annual Streamy Awards. In 2012, Cracked received a People’s Choice Webby Award for best humor website.

Search Interest

CollegeHumor is a comedy website launched in 1999, created by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen. The site features daily original comedy videos and articles created by its staff, as well as user-made submissions. Site traffic averages around 7 million monthly unique visitors. The site’s Alexa ranking is 2,676 as of August 2012.

Origin

In 1999, the site was created by Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen, along with web developer Jakob Lodwick.

Features

Videos

CollegeHumor produces original comedy videos as well as hosting a large collection of user-submitted videos. The site’s official YouTube channel is one of the most-subscribed channels on YouTube, ranking seventh as of August 2012.

Pictures

CollegeHumor’s Pictures section features user-submitted photographs. Like the site’s videos, the photos of are a bizarre and humorous nature.

Articles

CollegeHumor’s staff posts original writing that spans humorous essays, comics, interviews and weekly columns on sports, video games, college life and dating.

Web Series

CollegeHumor produces several popular Web series under the CH Originals banner. These series include Jake and Amir, Full Benefits, Bleep Bloop, TV RPG, POV, Prank War, CH Live, The All Nighter, Dire Consequences, Very Mary-Kate, Hello, My Name Is…, Nerd Alert, Troopers, Dinosaur Office, Badman, and Soap Box, a collection of one-off original comedy sketches, animations and music.

Television Series

CollegeHumor announced The CollegeHumor Show on December 17, 2008, a scripted comedy that premiered on MTV on February 8, 2009. The half-hour comedy was written by and starred nine CollegeHumor staff members.

Search Interest

This article is a major work in progress. Please request editorship (or join if you are a moderator) if you think you can help out with the entry!

Funny or Die is a comedy website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company, Gary Sanchez Productions in 2006 that contains exclusive material from a number of famous contributors.

Voting System

Funny or Die users are given two options when voting on videos they view: “Funny” or “Die”. The videos are put in either the “Immortal” or “Crypt” sections of the site depending on the total percentage of people who voted the video “Funny.” The Funny or Die staff has the option of “Chosen One,” which can hide voting scores from the public.

Funny or Die Comedy Tour

In February 2008, Funny or Die launched “Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die Comedy Tour,” featuring Ferrell and several notable comedians and members of the Funny or Die staff.

Funny or Die Presents

In June 2008, HBO announced that it had purchased a stake of less than 10% in Funny or Die. Funny or Die will be responsible for developing 10 half-hour episodes for HBO, and the companies may organize future comedy tours together.

Search Interest

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

About

Puts on sunglasses is a joke meme referenceing the TV show CSI: Miami

Origin

In 2002, CSI: Miami, an American police procedural television series on CBS First Aired. In the show, The lead Crime Scene Investigator (who always wears sunglasses) usually makes some horrible pun at the beginning of the show on how the victim died, puts on his sunglasses, and then the theme song (which is Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who) plays, always at the part where the singer goes “YYEEAAHH!”

Spread

Shorty after the show first aired, Certain websites started making fun of his constant puns and making their own, eventually making a template and turning into a meme.

the meme can come in different forms including video of the pun or a comment the following are some examples:

The comment form of the meme uses the snowclone X puts on sunnglasses Y, YEEEAAAH
example:
drive by…
Puts on sunglasses
Miami Style
Yeeeeaaaaahhhh
(somtimes the comment can be revised to to have a face putting on sunnglasses)

on 11/06/2006 Youtube user stewmurray47 uploaded the video CSI Miami – Endless Caruso One Liners the video has 6,147,296 views as of 8/25/2012

Serch interest

according to shearch insite on the meme didn’t start untill 2009

About

The Chosen Four is a fan comic created by an artist known as Darrow. Featured on Starmen.net^[1], the comic is a play-through version of the SNES RPG EarthBound/Mother 2. The plot focuses around the plot of the video game itself, along with some fan-based items added to it.

Origin

Some time in 2008, an artist going under the pseudonym Darrow on the Starmen.net forum^[2], created a forum topic for his new comic called The Chosen Four. The first post featured the cover page and the first and second pages to the comic. Over time, more and more pages were added by Darrow, all being posted on the forum. Starmen.net staff would soon come across these comics and feature them as some of the best fan comics in their collection^[1].

Elements

While the comic is focused on the plot of the video game, there are other items added to it to add more depth, humor, and emotion to the reader, such as breaking the fourth wall and showing the story from a more up-close third person point-of-view.

Current Developments

Darrow is currently still continuing the series. As of August 25, 2012, there have been 675 pages in the series, along with other small pages like chapter titles. The pages can be found on Starmen.net^[1], Starmen.net forums^[2], and on deviantART^[3], where he goes under the name of “milliondollarham.”

External Links

^[1]milliondollarham on deviantART

About

Demon Days is the name of the second studio album by the virtual British music and visual project Gorillaz^[1], released in May 2005. Its cover art is often parodied online due to its highly exploitable layout of four portraits set up in white boxes on a black background.

Origin

Gorillaz is a virtual band of cartoon characters created by frontman of Britpop band Blur Damon Albarm^[2] and co-creator of the comic Tank Girl, Jamie Hewlett.^[3] The band, consisting of four animated members, released their first self-titled album in March 2001, which sold more than 7 million copies and earned them a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Successful Virtual Band.^[4] Their second album Demon Days^[5] was released in May 2005. The album artwork, which was inspired by the Beatles’ 1970 album Let It Be, features the caricatures of four bandmates, bassist Murdoc (shown top, left) vocalist 2-D (shown top, right), guitarist Noodle (shown bottom, left) and drummer Russel (shown bottom, right). The album peaked at #1 in the United Kingdom and France, while reaching #2 in Australia, Germany, Ireland and New Zealand. Online, tracks from the album have been played on Last.FM^[6] more than 35 million times.

The first parody of the cover was created by deviantArt user bundycoot^[8] on August 16th, 2005, replacing the Gorillaz members with characters from the children’s television show Kim Possible.

Spread

Later that year in October 2005, additional spoof images began appearing on music humor site Am I Right?^[7] and continued to be shared on deviantArt^[9], where there are more than 3000 pieces of art tagged “Demon Days.” In 2009, a tutorial video^[10] on how to create these images in Photoshop was uploaded via YouTube. Additional parody images have been shared on 4chan^[11], Feedio.net^[13], Bronibooru^[14] and Equestria Daily^[12], including a mashup of Demon Days tracks set to the soundtrack from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic titled “Discord Days.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

While there is no visible search traffic specifically associated with parodies of the album art, general search interest for the album title “Demon Days” peaked in March 2005.

External References

Background

On August 26th, 2012, major news media outlets in the United States began reporting on the impending arrival of Tropical Storm Issac on the Gulf Coast. During the live coverage of the storm’s predicted trajectory path, the Weather Channel erroneously referred to the state of Mississippi as “the land mass” between New Orleans, Louisiana and Mobile, Alabama.

Coinciding with the anniversary of the deadly Hurricane Katrina which inflicted heavy damages to the state of Mississipi, the on-air gaffe by the weather forecast network instantly led to an outpour of criticisms and mockeries from Facebook users who perceived the label “the land mass” as negligent practice of journalism.

Notable Developments

Within hours of the The Weather Channel’s report, Facebook users began posting angry reactions to the news station’s official Facebook and Twitter, criticizing its use of the term “land mass” as an utter deficiency of basic understanding in the U.S. geography.

Later that same day, an independent Facebook page titled “The Land Mass Between NOLA and Mobile” was launched as a place for Mississippian Facebook users to cope with their state being neglected by the news media. By Monday afternoon, the Facebook page had reportedly gained more than 34,000 likes and accumulated nearly 200 user-generated images poking fun at the awkward phrase.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

[not available]

External References

About

“Shit, I’m Late for School” is a photo fad stemming from a trope in anime in which students are shown rushing to school with toast in their mouths. Participants typically make an exaggerated running motion while carrying something representative of a specific fandom or an ethnic stereotype in their mouth, accompanied by the snowclone caption “Shit, I’m late for X school!”

Origin

On August 6th, 2012, Tumblr user badcgijosh posted^[1] a picture of himself posing as if he was running with a piece of toast in his mouth followed by the caption, “Shit, I’m late for anime school.” As of August 28th, the post has 44,961 likes and reblogs.

Roots In Anime

As early as August 1st, 2010, members of Anime forum Mabinogi World^[2] were discussing the origin of characters depicted as rushing for school while eating toast, noting its popular use in Shoujo^[3] manga written for a female audience. In October 2011, a single topic Tumblr named “Fuck Yeah Animu Toast”^[5] was created to celebrate images of anime characters running with toast. As of August 2012, TV Tropes^[4] lists nearly 50 instances of “running late for school” characters in Anime/Manga and points out that it is so overused, many manga-drawing guides advise against using it.

Spread

The day after the first image was posted by Tumblr user Badcgijosh, Fuck Yeah Anime Toast reblogged the photo^[9] but parodies of this image did not begin appearing until August 27th with one of the first derivatives showing Tumblr user minsterofsass^[10] being late for Canadian school while holding a bottle of maple syrup with his teeth (shown below). That evening, dozens of derivatives began appearing on Tumblr with the tags “late for school”^[11], “shit I’m late for school”^[12], “shit I’m late”^[13] and “late.”^[14] The following day, the Daily Dot^[15] published a collection of eight instances of the photo fad.

On August 27th, Tumblr user Badcgijosh expressed negative feelings^[7] about the photo fad, stating that he does not “like encouraging people to be lazy about their humour … there are things that are exponentially funnier to be said by anyone without using a template I literally spent ten seconds planning.”^[8] That same day, Tumblr artist payface^[6] posted a comic (shown below) to express badcgijosh’s displeasure over people overusing the joke.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

[Not available at this time]

External Links

[If you have more experience about this meme, feel free to request editorship, because OP is a faggot]

WARNING: Don’t watch the images on the image gallery except you’re a 4channer or an adult

About

Onara (english: Fart) is a bait and switch series stemming from 4chan’s /f/-board. Each flash file show different 3D animated female characters from Animes or popular culture looking like they desire to make oral sex with the viewer or the other animated character accompanied with it but ends up farting (them into their faces).

Origin

The first Onara flash was submitted to 4chan’s /f/-board on February 11, 2011 entitled “[Onara] Cute Stink Fist” by an anonymous user^[1]. The unnamed character stemmed from a picture submitted on sakura.ne.jp^[2].

「シュレー○ィンガーの●ンコその２」
まさかの第2弾！

男の娘か女の子かは●ンコを確認してみるまでは
確率的にしか判断できない！

というわけで
アナタがお好きな方だと思ってくださいな～☆
(*´Д｀)ﾊｧﾊｧ

External Links

^[1] swfchan.com – [Onara] Cute Stink Fist.swf

^[2] www117.sakura.ne.jp – 「シュレー○ィンガーの●ンコその２」

About

“This isn’t even my final form” is a catchphrase commonly associated with image macros or videos depicting oddly shaped or deformed looking characters.

Origin

The phrase was originally uttered by the villain character Frieza in the Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z. During his pinnacle battle scene against the protagonists, Frieza boasts his capacity of strength by saying “You FOOL! This isnt even my final form! Wait until you see my TRUE power! HYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” before morphing into his next level incarnation.

Although unclear exactly when or where the phrase began to gain significance as a popular catchphrase, its earliest known instance can be found in the comments section of a Rule34 post submitted on January 1st, 2011. The post featured an image of a mixed media sculpture that consists of Disney’s Toy Story character Woody and a wall of plastic boobs. The image was captioned with the phrase “this isn’t even my final form” months later and uploaded onto FunnyJunk on September 24th, 2011 (shown below).

Spread

Throughout 2011, the phrase gradually evolved into a caption for image macros depicting oddly shaped or crudely drawn characters in popular culture. There are hundreds of image macros bearing the caption available on well-known image sharing platforms like 4chan, Tumblr and Reddit, as well as internet humor blogs FunnyJunk, Memebase and Memecenter among others. The phrase has been also used as the title of YouTube videos, typically in boasting one’s own skills. Due to its reference to the evolutionary process or metamorphosis, the quote has been also associated with Pokemon and RPG fandom.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

[Very WIP Editors needed]

About

Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP for short, is a trade agreement to liberalize the the economies of Asia-Pacific region.
The law has gained controversial status due to it’s clauses and it’s secret negotiations.
The law tightens the punishment of breaking copyright’s and is said to provide more notable intellectual property restraints than in ACTA.

According to the website Stop The Trap the TPP will:

• Criminalize some of your everyday use of the Internet,
• Force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards, and
• Give media conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use, remove online content including entire websites and even terminate your access to the Internet.
• Create a parallel legal system of international tribunals that will undermine national sovereignty and allow conglomerates to sue countries for laws that infringe on their profits.
  

More:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Strategic_Economic_Partnership
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/dont-let-them-trade-away-our-internet-freedoms

Overview

Bic’s “For Her” Pen is a line of disposable ballpoint pens designed for female consumers, produced and sold by the French manufacturer company Société Bic (BIC). Although the pens were introduced in June 2011, they became a trending topic in the news and blogosphere after tongue-in-cheek customer reviews of the product began to emerge on the online shopping site Amazon, in similar vein to the ironic appreciation of The Mountain’s Three Wolf Moon t-shirt.

Background

In June 2011, a new line of BIC ballpoint pens dubbed “For Her” was introduced on Amazon.^[2] Available in several “feminine” colors like pink and purple, the product was initially released in Europe but became available through online shopping sites in the United States. According to BIC’s product description^[1], the pen’s notable features includes tinted thin barrel for a better handling for women and matching plug and ink colors.

BIC’s release of “For Her” products was initially picked up by women’s gossip blog Jezebel in an article titled “Bic For Her: Finally, a Pen Ladies Can Use”^[4] on March 11th, 2011. Though written in a satirical tone similar to the Amazon reviews that came more than a year later, the product largely remained in obscurity until August 2012.

Notable Development

On August 15th, 2012, Amazon user Happyshopper submitted a customer review of the product in a post titled “The pen for women that lets them KNOW they are women!”^[3] featuring a tongue-in-cheek anecdote of how the pen significantly improved her sense of womanhood and inner femininity.

In the following days, hundreds of other sardonic customer reviews followed suit on the product page, many of which poked fun at the superflous nature of gender-specific writing utensils.

The sudden influx of customer review parodies was once again reported via Jezebel on August 27th, followed by other Gawker Media-affiliated blogs like io9^[5] and Gawker^[6], as well as the viral culture news site BuzzFeed^[7] on August 28th. The phenomenon also drew attention from major news outlets like ABC^[8] and advertising industry blogs, including AdAge^[9], AdWeek^[10] and eConsultancy.^[11]

Search Interest

External References

Researchers needed!

Cult of the Dead Cow, also known as CDC, is an American computer hacking and DIY media organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. The group maintains a weblog on its website, featuring thoughts and opinions of the group’s members. Two offshoot groups, Hacktivismo and Ninja Strike Force, have since been formed.

Origin

At a slaughterhouse in Lubbock, the group was founded in June 1984 by three BBS SysOps.

“Loadsamoney” is the name of a character and a song created by English comedian, actor, writer and director Harry Enfield . Both the character and the song have both been the subject of parodies across various different sites.

Origin
In 1985, the show Saturday Live was broadcast on the British television channel, Channel 4 . The show was comprised of various comedians performing stand up acts or skits, along with music performances as well. It was heavily inspired by the American show, Saturday Night Live .One of the comedians who performed on the show was Harry Enfield. He didn’t perform skits or stand up as himself, instead creating characters for him to act and tell jokes as. The most notable and popular of these characters was Loadsamoney.

Harry Enfield performs stand up as Loadsamoney

Harry Enfield performs a skit in the countryside as Loadsamoney

Loadsamoney’s character was an obnoxious plasterer from the South of England. He spoke in a thick Cockney accent and would always be seen with a pile of pound notes in his hand. Loadsamoney’s act was based around him boasting about his wealth and how much money he had. Harry Enfield and Loadsamoney were a huge success, being regulars on the show and continuing to appear on the follow up to Saturday Live, Friday Live.

In 1988, Harry Enfield recorded a song named after the character, with the full title “Loadsamoney (Doin’ up the house)”. The song was also a big success, making it to number 2 in the UK music charts. Loadsamoney was also performed on Friday Live and Top of the Pops .

Music Video for Loadsamoney (Doin’ up the house).

Harry Enfield performs Loadsamoney (Doin’ up the house) on Top of the Pops.

Spread
While Harry Enfield and Loadsamoney were highly popular and successful in the UK, neither of them reached popularity on the Internet until the release of the Co-op First Person Shooter Killing Floor created by Tripwire Interactive in 2009. The game takes place in Southern England, where a group of Cockneys must fight their way through various different locations that have been infested with various strange experiments known as “Specimens”. The game was a big hit that achieved positive reviews.

One of the more notable parts of the game is the voice acting. All the voice actors are Cockneys who speak using their own accents and slang. Every playable character uses these voices. Some of these voice responses include money responses, as killing specimens will award the players with money they can use to buy and upgrade weapons. You can also drop your money on the ground for your teammates to pick up. When this happens, various different voice responses can play, including the infamous “Loads of Money!” line.

Head to 5:50 on the video for the money responses.

Players soon found out about Loadsamoney and the popularity skyrocketed. Before Killing Floor’s release, the original Loadsamoney (Doin’ up the house) video had less than 100,000 views. Since then, the video has gotten over a million views, with many different KF fans commenting on the video with quotes and jokes. Fans also took a liking to “Dosh”, a British slang term for money.

Since the release of Killing Floor, many different Loadsamoney parodies have appeared. It has also gone beyond Killing Floor, spreading to other games like Team Fortress 2 and Defence of the Ancients 2.

Killing Floor parodies of Loadsamoney as part of the Gmod Musical Collab (Go to 33:24 to see both of them)

Killing Floor parody of the “In the countryside” skit

Team Fortress 2 parodies of Loadsamoney

Defence of the Ancients 2 parody of Loadsamoney

Tribes Ascend parody of Loadamoney

Harold Lott

On the 5th of July 2012, Tripwire Interactive released a new DLC character called Harold Lott . Heavily based around Loadsamoney, his back story indicates he won the lottery at 17 years old and invested the money into various businesses. Now owning three multinational companies and a money themed porn channel, he joins the other cockneys to take out the specimens. He leaves a trail of money behind when he moves and carries a pile of pound notes in his hand when he uses a one handed weapon. Both of these are cosmetic features and they do not effect gameplay.