About
How to Kill a Mockingbird is a flash animation parody of Harper Lee’s classic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. It is centered around a child’s book report presentation of that novel. However, because the boy has not actually finished reading the book, he improvises the report by fabricating his own “summary” of the novel. This report starts off as faithful, but quickly devolves into an epic struggle between humanity and mockingbird.
The animation is notable for being one of the earlier viral videos on the internet, being released in 2004 and receiving millions of hits. It is also well known for being very long (12 minutes) and thus gained reputation as an “epic” flash.
The animation famously features the Pirates vs. Ninjas debate – their conflict being an integral part of the book report – and may have helped contribute to the debate’s popularity.
Origin
“How to Kill a Mockingbird” was created by two Stanford undergraduates, Anthony Scodary and Nico Benitez in November of 2004, and was originally hosted at Stanford’s (now defunct) student page for Scodary on the 13th of that November.[1][2] The day after, Scodary and Benitez registered their own website – AwesomeFunny.com[3]– where they linked back to the Stanford page.[4]
Spread
Various wikis[5][6] suggest that the animation originally spread through blogs[7] and e-mail. The video was also often posted as a lighthearted distraction on threads discussing the actual novel.[8] Along with its presence on the original creators’ website – AwesomeFunny – flash sites like “i am bored”[9] and Albino Blacksheep[10] ripped the flash almost immediately after it became public (November 15th and 17th, 2004 respectively), and thus “How to Kill a Mockingbird” received several million hits on these sites taken together.[11] A video copy of the flash was uploaded to YouTube on November 7, 2010.
Because the video features the famous Pirates vs. Ninjas debate, it appears in many threads relating to the topic.[12]
Search Interest
Searches for “how to kill a mockingbird” follow a cyclical pattern, with peaks during the American school year and lows during the summer. However, it is clear that there is a huge spike in searches for the video in late 2004 and early 2005, when the animation was released, that decrease slowly up until 2007 or so as flash animations became less popular.
External References
[1]Wayback Machine – How to Kill a Mockingbird
[2]Stanford – web.stanford.edu/~scodary/tkam.htm
[3]who.is – awesomefunny.com
[4]Wayback Machine – Awesomefunny.com
[5]tvwiki.tv – AwesomeFunny
[6]the full wiki – Pirates versus Ninjas
[7]New Links – How to Kill a Mockingbird
[8]The Literature Network – Help with “To Kill A Mockingbird”
[9]i am bored – How to Kill a Mockingbird
[10]Albino Blacksheep – How to Kill a Mockingbird
[12]Google – Search results for “‘how to kill a mockingbird’ pirates vs ninjas thread”