About

Fedora Shaming refers to the practice of mocking people who wear the fedora felt hat as a fashion accessory. Since its return to popularity as a vintage fashion trend in the late 2000s, several single topic blogs deriding photos of people wearing the hat have been created on the microblogging site Tumblr.

Origin

Urban Dictionary^[4] user Donottouchthis submitted an entry for “fedora” on January 26th, 2008, which identified those who wore the hat as a “loser who is desperately seeking for a style to call their own.” As of October 8th, 2012, the definition has received 109 up votes and 119 down votes.

The Hat

The hat was named after the play Fédora written by the French author Victorien Sardou. In the play, the character Princess Fédora Romanoff (played by Sarah Bernhardt) wore the signature felt hat, which subsequently became a popular women’s fashion accessory. By the turn of the century, the hat had evolved into a predominately male fashion item closely associated with prohibition-era gangsters in the 1920s..

Spread

On February 17th, 2009, the men’s lifestyle blog Details^[7] published an article titled “Cool or Tool?: The Fedora,” which urged readers to carefully consider incorporating a fedora into their outfits. On July 20th, Urban Dictionary^[5] user Ricky Torro submitted an entry for the word “fedorka,” defining the term as a pejorative for a person attempting to be hip or trendy by wearing the fashion accessory. On March 5th, 2010, Facepunch Forums^[9] member Parakon submitted a thread titled “People who wear fedoras and other such hats,” remarking that wearing a fedora seemed to be a pretentious ploy to appear interesting to others. On March 24th, the North American Subaru Impreza Owners Club Forums^[10] member CoiloverKid submitted a thread titled “Fedora Lounge! aka Stop Wearing Fedoras K,” who mocked several photographs of young men wearing fedoras (shown below).

On April 14th, 2011, a Facebook^[1] page titled “Take that Fedora off, you look like a tool” was created, followed by the creation of the “Stop Wearing Fedoras”^[6] page two weeks later. On April 27th, the Tumblr^[11] blog “Lonely Nerds in Fedoras” was created, featuring photographs of young men and women wearing the felt hat. On March 21st, Redditor MrBradd submitted a post to the /r/pics^[2] subreddit titled “The Truth Hurts,” which featured a What You Think You Look Like image featuring the 1940s actor Humphrey Bogart wearing a suit and fedora juxtaposed with a photograph of a young man wearing the hat with a pull over sweater (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post received over 9,300 up votes and 1,300 comments.

On March 29th, 2012, the single topic blog “Forever Alone Fedoras” was launched on Tumblr,^[12] followed by the creation of the “You Shouldn’t Wear That Fedora” Tumblr^[13] blog on April 17th. On May 22nd, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[8] published a post titled “Fedoras and the Internet: A Torrid Love Affair,” which featured several fedora-related images including a flowchart mocking the hat (shown below).

On July 24th, the Tumblr^[14] blog “Fedoras of OKC” was launched, featuring profile pictures of men wearing fedoras on the dating website OKCupid. On October 2nd, the Internet news blog BoingBoing^[3] published an article titled “Why the Fedora Grosses Out Geekdom,” which identified men who wear fedoras as “forever alone” males desperately trying to escape the “friend zone”.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Pokémon Black and Blue is a Pokémon parody videogame released by the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in order to protest animal cruelty. The campaign asserts that the game highlights mistreatment and exploitation of the creatures by keeping them in Pokeballs, comparing it to how circuses keep elephants chained up except when performing.

Background

On October 8th, 2012, the day after Pokemon Black and White Versions 2^[15] was released in North America for the Nintendo DS, PETA launched a parody of the Pokemon franchise to highlight the game’s supposed glorification of animal cruelty. Titled “Pokemon: Black and Blue”^[1], the flash game features the Black and White starter Pokemon, Tepig, Snivy and Oshawatt, along with game mascot Pikachu, appearing battered and hurt.

Gameplay

Throughout the game, the Pokemon creatures battle against numerous human characters, including a the gym leader Cheren (shown below, left), Professor Juniper, Black and White’s antagonist Ghetsis and the anime’s canonical main character Ash Ketchum, who are portrayed as heartless and uncaring towards the Pokemon, only exploiting them for experiments or monetary gains. The Pokemon, in addition to two of their normal attacks, are each given non-violent offensive moves including “Group Hug,” “Shame” and “Educate” to lower their opponent’s battle statistics. Several memetic phrases are also incorporated into gameplay including I Herd U Leik Mudkips and A Wild Snorlax Appears, with a special appearance of Slowpoke right before the game ends.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

On the same day, the business news blog Forbes^[3] published an article titled “Animal Rights Group Attacks Pokemon For Promoting Animal Abuse,” which criticized the game as a publicity stunt that misunderstood the message of the Pokemon franchise. In the comment section of the article, a reader identifying herself as “Brittany Peet” replied that the PETA game was meant to be interpreted as satire, to which Forbes writer David Ewalt replied by outing the commenter as a Counsel at PETA Foundation (shown below). Also on October 8th, other news and tech blogs reported on the controversial game, including CNET,^[5] Mashtable,^[7] Kotaku,^[10] Slashdot,^[12] The Escapist,^[14] Joystiq,^[8] Nintendo Life,^[4] The Huffington Post^[13] and the Examiner.^[23]

Online Reaction

Within the first few hours of the game being released, several Facebook groups were made in protest, including “Nintendo Fans Against PETA”^[2] and “PETA couldn’t live in the world of Pokemon.”^[22] On October 8th, The viral content site BuzzFeed^[11] published a post titled “PETA Vs. Pokemon,” which included an embed of the flash game accompanied by several screen captures. Twitter^[20] and Tumblr^[21] users both began discussing the game using the hashtag #Petamon, as well as sharing various fan art illustrations in tribute to the characters from the game.

On Reddit

On the same day, Redditor BEPower submitted a post to the /r/pokemon^[16] subreddit titled “What the hell is wrong with PETA?”, which linked to PETA’s Black and Blue page. Within 24 hours, the post received over 4,300 up votes and 1030 comments. The same day, Redditor TallPerson429 submitted a post titled “Excuse me PETA? What were you lying?”,^[17] including a screen capture from the PETA game accompanied by several screen captures from the animated television series in which the character Ash Ketchum hugs Pikachu (shown below).

On 4chan

On October 8th, a thread titled “PETA Does it Again” was submitted to 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board, which accumulated over 1,550 replies prior to being archived on Chanarchive.^[18] The same day, a link to the game was posted to the /co/^[19] (comics and cartoons) board, receiving over 190 responses prior to being archived.

Search Interest

External Links

About

Yes But No is a single topic blog featuring a series of declarative statements that are intended to disprove various assumptions or preconceived notions surrounding particular ethnic or socio-cultural stereotypes. Since the launch of the original blog in early 2011, it has spawned a number of derivative blogs focusing on specific fandoms or other group identities.

Origin

The original “Yes But No” blog^[1] was created by Tumblr blogger Christine Chen as a personal project on April 19th, 2011. According to the site description, Chen created the blog to “break assumptions and stereotypes that everyone makes about various cultures, genders [and] sexualities.” One of the earliest instances to draw widespread attention was a commentary on the Asians in the Library viral video controversy that erupted a month earlier in March, which went on to gain more than 11,000 likes and reblogs.

In its beginning, Chen focused on addressing various misconceptions that are based on ethnicity and geographic locations, but the scope of the blog was eventually broadened to include gender stereotypes, niche hobbies and social interests. The blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Spread

Chen eventually opened up the blog’s submission feature and began curating custom-generated messages submitted by the readers, which continued to perform well on Tumblr by gaining anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of notes. In May 2011, Chen set up a Facebook fan page^[2] and a Twitter account^[9] for the site, allowing the Tumblr feed to be channeled through additional outlets in the social media. The popularity of the blog reached its first peak between June and September 2011, when a handful of spin-off “Yes But No” blogs were launched for various fandoms including Harry Potter, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sherlock, Glee and One Direction.

In early November, Chen’s blog was covered by the Spanish-language news publication Univision^[7] in a blog post titled “Yes But No goes viral breaking stereotypes.” By December 2011, the first Portugese-language “Yes But No” blog had been created for the fantasy fiction series Percy Jackson & the Olympians. The trend of “Yes But No” blogs continued to persist throughout the first half of 2012, giving way to a large number of other fandom or hobby-specific sites on Tumblr (shown below). In addition to its large-scale presence on the microblogging service^[3], similar examples can be found on image-sharing communities like Pinterest^[4] and Favim^[8] under the tag “yes but no.”

Directory

[this section is currently being researched]

Search Interest

External References

About

“Go Home, You Are Drunk” is an expression used to point out someone else’s failure or misplaced objects, similar to other well-known dismissive statements like You’re Doing It Wrong and Buzzkilling. The phrase is typically featured in image macros in which the subject is performing a task incorrectly or found in an out-of-place position.

Origin

Prior to its appearance in image macros, the phrase has been colloquially used to advise someone against over-drinking or scold him or her for losing self-control, comprable to another English idiom “let’s call it a day.” The earliest known instance of an image featuring the snowclone “Go home X, you’re drunk” was posted to the Internet humor site Natuba^[1] on October 6th, 2008, which included a photograph of graffiti on a bathroom wall (shown below).

Spread

On October 24th, 2010, a similar joke was used in an image macro posted to the “Historic LOLs” Cheezburger^[8] page, which featured a painting of a robed man yelling the phrase “And I banged your mother!” accompanied by an embarassed-looking man saying “You’re drunk dad, go home” (shown below).

On August 6th, 2012, Redditor inquirewue submitted an image macro to the /r/funny^[3] subreddit in a post titled “You are drunk,” which included a photograph of several people running from a crash-landing plane with the caption “Go away plane / you are drunk” (shown below, left). Within one month, the post received over 4,600 up votes and 55 comments. On August 27th, Redditor electrolemon submitted a cinemagraph of a waterfall coming out of the mouth of a rock sculpture in a post titled “Go home Poseidon, you’re drunk!”^[6] (shown below, right).

On September 30th, 9gag user ccodex submitted a post titled “Go home, cow, you’re drunk!”,^[7] featuring a photograph of a cow looking back at a camera while walking in an odd fashion (shown below, left). On October 4th, Redditor danpopo submitted a post titled “Bear go home you are drunk" to the /r/gifs^[2] subreddit, which featured an animated GIF of a bear flailing its arms wildly at another bear (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

“Karma Whore” is a label used to describe someone who seeks to raise one’s social standing within an online community by pandering to the stereotypical prejudices or trends that are widely accepted by its members, which includes activities like reposting popular content and linking to websites with overwhelmingly positive reputation. The phrase can be applied whether someone is posting in this manner on purpose or if other users just assume they are doing so based on their history.

Origin

The term “karma whore” was used as early as January 2nd, 2000^[1] on the tech news site Slashdot in a reposted news story about the filming techniques employed in the 1999 American sci-fi film The Matrix. In the comments, an argument ensued over the authenticity of Slashdotter Signal11’s karma rating after a user under the Slashdot alias Anonymous Coward noted the strange discrepancy between the total count of karma and average scores of his posts.

Karma System

Karma is a unit of measurement used to gauge a community member’s trustworthiness or the degree of positive reputation based on a trust metric. The term “karma” was first introduced by Slashdot in the late 1990s and has been since adopted by many other virtual online communities to encourage group effectiveness and friendly interactions.

Spread

The term was mentioned again on January 14th, 2000 in an off-topic comment titled “The Troll Bill of Rights.”^[3] Ten days later, the phrase was first defined on the online writing community Everything2^[2], where it was noted that Slashdot moderators focus on quality, not personal prejudices. By April that year, “karma whoring” was included in an explanation of the ways people troll on Slashdot.^[4] In July 2000, the phrase was first defined in print by Wired magazine^[5] as “someone who posts messages shamelessly on Slashdot, where karma points are given based on the quality of the post.”

In November 2001, Star Trek: The Next Generation actor Wil Wheaton used the label on his blog^[6] in referring to himself after asking Ben Edlund, the comic book artist of The Tick, if he could appear on Edlund’s show in a Slashdot AMA.^[7] The post received the highest possible rating of 5/5. In 2003, “karma whore” was added to Urban Dictionary^[8] three times, with the last definition declaring karma whores a “dead breed.” Throughout the decade, the term appeared on a handful of forums with karma systems, including the Rooster Teeth forums^[9], the Grand Theft Auto forums^[10], the xkcd forums^[11] and the MyDeathSpace forums.^[12]

On Reddit

The term “karma whore” has been also used to describe similar practices on Reddit as early as February 2009 with a YouTube video criticizing Redditors who repost xkcd comics or share links about Richard Dawkins in the Atheism subreddit.

In April 2010, the website KarmaWhores.net^[13] was registered to track Redditors with the most karma on the site. As of October 2012, the site tracks more than 17,000 users with more than 253 million karma points combined. In April 2011, a single topic blog titled Reddit Karma Whore^[14] was launched, offering several tips on how to gain karma in the /r/pics subreddit ranging from reposting popular content to using advice animal style image macros.

Advice Animal

In August 2012, Redditor tankyoucomeagain posted the first advice animal derivative titled Karma Whore^[15], featuring a women leaning over into a car window and the caption “I’m actually a political moderate but I’m liberal if that’s what you’re upvoting for.” As of October 2012, there are approximately 1500 instances of Karma Whore on Quickmeme^[16] detailing various ways to solicit upvotes on Reddit.

Search Interest

External References

About

Dancing Mad (Japanese: 妖星乱舞, Yousei Ranbu) is one of the popular soundtracks of the J-RPG series Final Fantay.

Similar to Clash on the Big Bridge, The Decisive Battle, Those Who Fight Further and J-E-N-O-V-A, this song is a popular subject of covers by numerous audio and instrumental remixes. The song had also been one of the standard music resources of MAD videos on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Origin

“Dancing Mad” is the theme for the battle with Kefka the final boss in Final Fantasy VI which was first released in Japan in 1994.^[1] As same as other Final Fantasy series songs, it was written by the Japanese video game composer Nobuo Uematsu.^[2] Its full song is 19 minutes long and consists of 4 movements, which is abnormally complex for video game music.

Since it gains a large popularity among fans, its arranged version have been included to several subsequent spin-off titles in the series : Dissidia Final Fantasy^[3] and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.^[4].

Spread

Reflecting the popularity, many fan works are created and have been posted to the video sharing services since the middle of 2000s. In particular, the complex melody and irregular meter in the 4th movement is a popular subject of playing covers among pianists, keyboardists, and sometimes ensembles. Besides, it had been sometimes reused in parody videos in the early days of the MAD phenomena on NND. One of the earliest MADs in this series was a derivative of Ronald McDonald’s Ran Ran Ru, which was posted on March 26th, 2008.^[5]

There are hundreds videos related to this song on both NND^[6] and YouTube.^[7]

Notable Examples

<!-- For more videos, check out the <a href=“#videos”>videos</a> section in this entry.-->

Playing Covers / Remixes

Electone^[8]Rock ArrangeChiptune Remix^[9]Miku Hatsune Remix^[10]

MAD Videos

Shuzo Matsuoka^[11]Angry German Kid^[12]【ニコニコ動画】ゲイナルファンタジーⅥ　「森の妖精乱舞　～Dancing Mara～」[NSFW!!] Billy Herrington【ニコニコ動画】学生陰部 Dancing COAT[NSFW!!] A Midsummer Night's Lewd Dream

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.

Overview

#SorryFeminists is a Twitter hashtag that is used to poke fun at preconceived notions about feminist codes and beliefs.

Background

On October 8th, 2012, Deborah Needleman, the newly appointed editor of the New York Times’ T Magazine, tweeted about American feminist author and Slate columnist Katie Rophie’s upcoming appearance at a New York Public Library panel event.

The sexy (sorry, feminists), smart, sassy Katie Roiphe live on stage @nypl on Wednesday night. slate.me/T6IA3g

— deborah needleman (@debbieneedles) October 8, 2012

Perhaps in acknowledgement of Rophie’s reputation as a dogmatic feminist, Needleman included a side note of apology in the tweet for describing Rophie as “sexy,” echoing the view held by some feminists that a woman should not degrade oneself to self-objectification.

Notable Developments

In less than two hours after Needleman’s tweet, mostly female Twitter users began responding with inquiries and criticisms about the apologetic side note, including some feminist authors and columnists.

<a href="https://twitter.com/debbieneedles">debbieneedles</a> Did you wrote that tweet from 1963? Impressive.</p>&mdash; emilynussbaum (emilynussbaum) October 8, 2012

Just came back from a Pilates class #sorryfeminists

— Anna Holmes (@AnnaHolmes) October 8, 2012

What a cute baby. #sorryfeminists

— Irin Carmon (@irincarmon) October 8, 2012

Throughout the day, Needleman’s message prompted a flurry of mixed responses from numerous feminist writers and others on Twitter, some of whom interpreted it as perpetuation of a feminist stereotype while others read it as a sarcastic commentary on the habits of feminist self-policing.

The confusion over the intent of Needleman’s tweet became even more widespread as some male Twitter users began chiming in with overtly insensitive tweets and even misogynist jokes.

I really like blow jobs. #sorryfeminists

— Rob Tannenbaum (@tannenbaumr) October 8, 2012

I put my women on a pedestal cause its easier to peek up their skirts. #sorryfeminists

— RMatthewSonger (@RMatthewSonger) October 8, 2012

By that evening, the satire trend culminated with the launch of the Tumblr blog “Sorry, Feminists!” which featured various examples of #sorryfeminist messages and fitting reaction GIFs. The hashtag meme was covered in real time by The Atlantic, as well as Jezebel and Slate later that same day, followed by similar reports from New York Magazine, Media Bistro and CBC on October 9th.

External References

This article is currently a Work in Progress

About

Alexander Rhodes, also known as Suspicious Onlooker is a Redditor who posted in a thread giving his professional opinion on a technique used in Holocaust movies, providing a link to his IMDb page^[1] along with a link to the movie said technique was used in. Due to IMDb’s ranking of characters due to profile views, Alexander quickly rose to fifth highest on the page of the most recent movie he appeared in, Jack Reacher^[2]. Not satisfied with fifth place, Imgur and Reddit put him on the top of the listing, spurred on by Imgur user challengeacceptedagain’s comment saying “New Challenge: Get him above Tom Cruise. Go!” Within three days, Alexander was second on IMDb’s Most Popular and at the top of the movie Jack Reacher’s character listings.

Background

Currently researching

Notable Developments

Currently researching

^[1] IMDb – Alexander’s IMDb Page

^[2] IMDb – Jack Reacher

About

Train MADs, known in Japan as The Series of Heavy Stopover (大変な途中下車シリーズ), is a series of MADs featuring numerous Japanese trains as the main subject, which are made by reusing announcements in both trains and at stations.

Popularity

Japan has a complex railway system, as well as so many railway companies all over the country. Therefore, there are many kinds of announcements in each company and their train lines. Railways and trains are one of the major hobbies in Japan and there are many rail fans. And because of that, several train simulators (such as Densha De Go!) just driving a train as directed gains popularity, which is one of the reasons why its market is huge in Japan. Therefore, the amount of videos are so many. But none of them has given impact to outside of Japan’s popular video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga (NND). This meme even has a well-written Wikia website.

Spread

According to the Wikia, the trigger is this: JR EAST announced the precious thing (beta) (left). It was uploaded to NND on July 13th, 2007. And its complete version (right) was posted on July 21st, 2007. Of course, it’s a derivative of the Touhou song “Marisa stole the precious thing”, the most popular musical resource in the earliest days of MAD video phenomena on NND.

About

Gawker Media is a blog network based in New York City, owned and founded by Nick Denton. The network consists of eight blogs, inlcuding Gawker, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, io9, Kotaku, Jalopnik and Jezebel.

History

[this section is currently being researched]

The original Gawker gossip blog was launched in December 2002 by former British journalist Nick Denton, who ran the website from his apartment in the Soho neighborhood of New York City. The company was first incorporated in Budapest, Hungary, where it maintains a small office with several programmers. In August 2003, Spiers left Gawker to write for New York magazine and her position was replaced by art dealer Choire Sicha. In August 2004, Denton promoted Sicha to the newly created position of editorial director for Gawker Media and hired Jessica Coen, a film studio assistant, to replace Sicha. In mid-2006, Coen left Gawker to work for Vanity Fair and was replaced by Emily Gould. In 2008, an office space was set up for Gawker employees in the Nolita neighborhood of New York City.^[2] On October 3rd, 2008, the Gawker rumor blog Valleywag^[6] published a memo from Denton announcing the layoff of 19 of the 133 editorial positions at Gawker Media.

Spin-off Sites

In late 2002, Gawker’s first sister site Gizmodo was launched as a technology news blog under the editorship of Engadget cofounder Peter Rojas. In November 2003, the sex-oriented blog Fleshbot was launched. In 2004, Denton launched the left-leaning political blog Wonkette, the celebrity gossip blog Defamer, the news aggregator blog Kinja, the car culture blog Jalopnik and the videogame blog Kotaku. In 2005, geek lifestyle blog Lifehacker and the sports news blog Deadspin were launched. In January 2008, the sci-fi blog io9 was launched. According to Wikipedia,^[5] Gawker Media sold the sites Idolator, Gridskipper and Wonkette on April 14th, 2008.

Gnosis Hack

All of the blog network’s source code and over one million of Gawker Media’s commenter accounts were released by the hacker group Gnosis on December 11th, 2010. On December 13th, the computer security blog Naked Security^[35] reported that spammers had compromised “hundreds of thousands” of accounts on Twitter to promote an acai berry diet (shown below). The spam messages were posted by accounts that had been using the same password for both Gawker and Twitter.

Homepage Redesigns

On February 7th, 2011, all of the blogs in the Gawker Media network were updated with a new design and layout (shown below, right). The same day, the news blog Mediaite^[37] published a post titled “Working Out the Glitches: How Are You Feeling About Gawker’s Redesign?”, which quoted several criticisms of the design by notable figures in the tech industry.

:  :    :   :  :  

On February 17th, TechCrunch^[38] published an article titled “Gawker’s Gulp Moment: Big Redesign is Driving People Away,” featuring Quantcast data showing a large drop in traffic following the redesign. On April 20th, The Atlantic^[36] published an article titled “Gawker’s Traffic Numbers Are Worst Than Anyone Anticipated,” which reported that the redesign had cut traffic by more than half. On February 2nd, 2012, the tech news blog The Next Web^[39] published a post titled “Remember That Gawker Redesign? A Year’s Worth of Data Says it Worked,” reporting that the network received a 10 million increase in monthly unique visitors compared to the previous year.

Features

As of October 2012, Gawker Media is comprised of eight daily weblogs specializing in different beats: its flagship blog Gawker, sports blog Deadspin, consumer tech blog Gizmodo, videogame blog Kotaku, software blog Lifehacker, sci-fi and futurist blog io9, automobile blog Jalopnik and women’s interest blog Jezebel.

Daily Content

Gawker Media’s flagship blog typically publishes anywhere from 30 to 50 posts a day, covering a wide range of topics like celebrity and media industry gossip, news media criticisms and other news stories that are relevant to the New York metropolitan area. While most stories are originally written by its staff writers, it also syndicates content from the sister blogs and occasionally features various firsthand reports and tips submitted by its readers.

Gawker Stalker

Gawker Stalker is a weekly round-up of celebrity sightings in New York City submitted by readers. Since its launch in April 2003, the feature has grown into one of the most popular article topics on the site and drawn heavy criticisms for celebrating celebrity stalking. Its notoriety peaked in March 2006 with the launch of an interactive Gawker Stalker map, which provides real-time coverage of celebrity sightings on a custom Google Maps platform.

Controversy

Violentacrez and Adrian Chen

On October 10th, 2012, Redditor violentacrez, known for moderating more than 400 subreddits^[6] including the banned /r/Jailbait, deleted his account after posting a now-removed goodbye thread^[7] in his personal subreddit. Soon after, the link to his farewell was shared in /r/SubredditDrama^[8], where it received 620 points and nearly 500 comments. Around the same time, /r/violentacrez was taken over by several new users, affiliating themselves with the Something Awful forums and /r/ShitRedditSays, reclaiming it as a place to smoke out users who post pedophilia-related commentary.

Later the same day, Redditor POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS^[9] submitted a self post^[10] to SubredditDrama alleging that violentacrez had been doxed by Gawker writer Adrian Chen, who planned to reveal the user’s personal information in an upcoming story after he had been added as a moderator to /r/CreepShots, a subreddit where users shared scandalous photos of women they had taken without the subject’s knowledge. In chat logs posted by POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS, violentacrez stated that he was concerned a Reddit administrator provided Chen with his real name and a personal photo. On October 5th, violentacrez offered to delete his account in exchange for Gawker to not go to press with the information and they declined.

The same day, Redditor CreeperComforts^[11] reportedly received a private message^[12] (shown below) from a user named HelloJK stating that they knew the users identity and he had 48 hours to shut down /r/CreepShots. This message came around the same time Jezebel^[13] published an article about the Predditors^[14] Tumblr which launched in September 2012 to seek out public personal information about /r/CreepShots posters. Though the doxing of violentacres and CreeperComforts were not explicitly related, the timing led many commenters^[15] to believe these events were tied together. However, a /r/ShitRedditSays post subtitled "The Admins Sure Doxxed The Ball On This One^[16] may allude to the subreddit being involved in finding CreeperComforts’ identity.

In response to these two stories, Redditor karmanaut^[17] suggested to the private DefaultMods subreddit^[18] that all moderators temporarily ban links from Gawker network sites to persuade them away from personal attacks on moderators. Multiple subreddits^[19] cooperated including /r/Politics^[20], /r/MensRights^[21], /r/WoW^[22] (World of Warcraft), /r/Borderlands^[23] and /r/Cinemagraphs^[24], among others. On the other hand, /r/CircleJerk^[25] banned any link that was not from the Gawker network. Adrian Chen responded by tweeting^[26] that Reddit is banned from linking to his blog posts, threatening Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedowns. On October 11th, several news media sites picked up on the story including the Daily Dot^[27], Politico^[28], BetaBeat^[29], the Atlantic Wire^[30], the New Statesman^[31] and New York Magazine.^[32]

Traffic

Gawker received more than 20,000 visitors per day and 500,000 page views per month by May of 2003.^[3] In November that year, Denton reported that the site was receiving 30,000 visitors per day and over one million page views per month. By December 3rd, 2007, the site was averaging ten million page views per month. In a memo published by Valleywag^[33] in October of 2008, Denton reported that Gawker received over 274 million pageviews for September that year.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Laughing Joe Biden refers to the U.S. vice president Joe Biden’s constant laughing that became a popular subject of online mockeries during the 2012 United States vice presidential debate in October 2012.

Background

On October 12th, 2012, the vice presidential debate between the Democrat incumbent Joe Biden and Republican nominee Paul Ryan took place at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. In stark contrast to the first presidential debate, the candidates carried on a spirited exchange with an energetic presence and the moderator Martha Raddatz won praise for pressing both for more specific answers. Throughout the 90-minute session, Biden was repeatedly seen wearing a smirk on his face when it was Ryan’s turn to speak, which quickly became a trending topic on Twitter.

Notable Developments

On Twitter

Within minutes into the debate, Twitter parody account @LaughingJoeBiden^[1] was launched at 9:20pm (ET) with the first tweet reading “LOL”, immediately followed by another parody account @BidenSmirk^[2] created at 9:21pm (ET) and the third account @LaughingBiden^[3] at 9:50pm (ET).

lol

— Laughing Joe Biden (@LaughinJoeBiden) October 12, 2012

LMAO.#VPDebate

— Laughing Joe Biden (@LaughingJBiden) October 12, 2012

That matters, Martha. That matters. #BidenSmirk #VPdebate

— Joe Biden’s Smirk (@BidenSmirk) October 12, 2012

During the first hour alone, @LaughingJoeBiden gained nearly 5,000 followers and by the end of the 90 minute debate, the account had gained more than 8,000 followers. In addition, screenshots of Biden’s smirks began making the rounds with hashtags like #malarky, #laughingbiden and #bidensmirk.

Image Macros

By the end of the debate, image macros and photoshopped parodies had spread across Twitter^[17] as well as on Reddit.^[13][14][15]

News Media Coverage

The political blog Politico^[4] was one of the first to write a story on Joe Biden’s smirk, highlighting a collection of tweets from political commentators and columnists. The trending topic was reported on by many U.S. news outlets and blog publications, from The New York Times^[7], Washington Post^[6] and CNN^[5] to The Huffington Post^[8], Mediate^[9], and Gawker^[11] with a wide range of opinions on Biden’s demeanor during the debate. The Associated Press^[12] noted on the smirk by stating “Biden mockingly smiled, wagged his finger and couldn’t seem to stop interrupting Republican running mate Paul Ryan."

Republican Campaign Ad

In the early hours of the following day, the Republican National Committee released a YouTube campaign advertisement featuring a back-to-back montage of Joe Biden’s smirk sequences set to Paul Ryan’s speaking points from the debate. The video gained a quarter million views in the first 12 hours of upload.

Search Interest

[not available]

External References

Work in progress. Feel free to request editorship

Overview

BP Oil Spill refers to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which flowed unabated for three months in 2010. The oil spill and the unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem spawned on Internet as subject of comics, image macros or games.

Background

On April 20th, 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon (leased to BP from 2001 until September 2013) exploded after an eruction of various materials, like mud and methane.

Search Insights

About

Fuck Me, Right? is an image macro series featuring a screen capture of Jonah Hill sarcastically laughing in the 2007 comedy film Superbad. The top caption usually contains a confession about an unpopular opinion or noobish behavior, accompanied by the bottom caption “Fuck me, right?” The expression is meant to convey self-pity and resignation to the way the speaker is perceived by the majority.

Origin

The sarcastic expression was popularized through a scene from the 2007 comedy film Superbad, in which one of the main characters Seth (played by Jonah Hill) attempts to find a bathroom to wash menstrual fluid from his pants, saying “Fuck me, right?” in response to a girl standing in line (shown below). The movie was released on August 17th, 2007.

Seth: “I gotta wash this Merlot off, is this the line?”
Girl in line: “What does it look like?”
Seth: “Fuck me, right?”

Spread

On March 9th, 2012, Redditor dwydwyy submitted an image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[11] subreddit, featuring a screen capture of Jonah Hill in the Superbad scene accompanied by the caption “Tries to make frontpage without a Kony meme / Fuck me, right?” (shown below) in reference to conversations about the Kony 2012 video. Prior to being archived, the post received over 11,800 up votes and 120 comments.

On August 12th, 2012, a Facebook^[12] page for “Fuck me, right?” was created and on the following day, FunnyJunk^[3] user lostfaux submitted an image macro with the caption “I like to watch english dubbed anime / Fuck me, right?” (shown below, left) in referring to the widespread preference of English-subtitled animes over dubbed versions. Within two months, the post received over 49,000 views and 460 comments. On August 29th, 9gag^[4] user n_nobody submitted a post titled “P*rn Logic" featuring a screen capture of adult film star Sasha Grey with the caption “My car broke down / Fuck me, right?” (shown below, right), which is meant to be interpreted in a literal sense. Within one month, the post received over 42,000 up votes and 11,000 Facebook shares.

Notable Examples

As of October 12th, 2012, the same template is being used on several Quickmeme pages, including “fuck me right”^[6]with over 1,400 submissions, “Fuck me right”^[9] with over 790 submissions and “Fuck Me Right”^[8] with over 490 submissions. Additional examples of the meme can be found on the microblogging site Tumblr^[5] under the tag “#fuck me right.”

Search Interest

External References

About

Fuck! I’m in My Twenties^[1] is a single topic blog run by Emma Koenig depicting her life experiences living in New York City through handwritten notes or drawn stories relating to the search for a perfect job, relationships and other coming-of-age woes.

Origin

The “Fuck! I’m in My Twenties” blog launched on May 17th, 2011 with three handwritten entries by Emma Koenig^[4] on being a twenty-something living in Manhattan. The first post (shown below, left) lists five ridiculous answers to questions about one’s profession, the second (shown below, center) illustrates the author’s conception of what it means to live an adult life in New York city and the third (shown below, right) provides a dating scorecard of the author throughout different stages of the relationship.

Spread

One of the first blogs to feature Fuck! I’m in My Twenties was Workbook Project^[2], as part of their Radar NYC section, on May 26th, 2011. Over the next few months, the blog was featured on Hipstercrite^[3], Trend Hunter^[5] and the Urban Outfitters blog.^[6] The first spin-off blog, Fuck! I’m in My Thirties^[19] launched in July 2011, but ceased posting in April 2012. By November 2011, the blog had been offered a book deal^[7] and a $10,000 advance from Chronicle Books. It was published nearly a year later on September 1st, 2012.

On July 26th, 2012, the New York Times^[8] published a profile on Emma Koenig, a 24-year-old aspiring writer who had recently moved out of her parents’ home in Glen Ridge, New Jersey to Manhattan. In the following days, Jezebel^[9], the Huffington Post^[10], the Atlantic^[11] and Forbes^[12] also profiled Koenig and her blog.

Notable Examples

Sitcom Adaptation

In October 2012, it was announced that a sitcom pilot based on Fuck! I’m In my Twenties^[13] was being developed for NBC. The half hour comedy would follow the exploits of a twenty-something female character living in New York City and would be co-written by Koenig and Jeff Lowell.^[14] News of the sitcom deal was posted on the Huffington Post^[15], the Daily Dot^[16], Deadline Hollywood^[17] and Brokelyn.^[18]

Search Interest

External References

Background

On December 14th, 2010, the tech news site Tech News Daily^[2] published an article titled “Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Phishing Scam Hits Facebook,” which reported that a phising scam was using promises of an adult video as bait. The scam aimed to trick users to click a link to view a sex tape featuring the pop singer-songrwriter Miley Cyrus. The link would take users to a phishing site meant to collect their Facebook account information, that would in turn post more spam messages to their Facebook pages.

Notable Developments

October 2012 Resurgence

In October of 2012, a new spam message claiming to be “Breaking news” began circulating around Facebook with a faked screenshot of Miley Cyrus (shown below, left). After clicking the link, the viewer would be taken to a new page instructing the user to paste a URL into their address bar (shown below, right), which would in turn give the scammers access to the user’s Facebook account.

Search Interest

External References

Two Steps From Hell is a production music company based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Nick Phoenix and Thomas J. Bergersen on 14 February 2006,^[1] the company produces music for movie trailers. In particular, the group’s music has been used in trailers for such films as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Star Trek, The Dark Knight, The Fighter, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Tron: Legacy, Anna Karenina, No Country for Old Men, 2012, Captain America: The First Avenger, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Super 8, Inception, Drive Angry, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Hugo, John Carter, The Town, Priest and Prince of Persia, as well as video games such as Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Killzone 3, and Star Wars: The Old Republic and television shows such as Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Revolution, Homeland and Merlin, and during the 2012 London Olympics. They have released three public albums, Invincible and Archangel. Illusions, formerly known as Nemesis II, was released publicly under Bergersen’s name.^[2]

Their album Nero was released officially on October 1, 2011.

Their song Heart of Courage was also used in the beginning of UEFA Euro 2012 matches and in the beginning of the London 2012 Olympic games athletics finals. This song also appeared at various moments in the World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, and is used, along with other tracks, more and more in videos from events, homemade films, etc.

Two Steps From Hell’s main graphical artist is Steven R. Gilmore,^[3] who created covers for every promotional and public release, including the logo of the company. Only for the 2009 DVD release of their library, the cover was created by Paul Zeaiter.^[4]

On June 4, 2012 a Two Steps From Hell app was announced for iOS and Android, containing 20 tracks of unreleased music in a compilation called “Demon’s Dance”,^[5] as well as excerpts from their upcoming album Skyworld.^[6] The app was officially released on June 26, 2012 for iOS,^[7] followed by the Android release the next day
Public albums
Invincible (2010)
Illusions (2011) [Thomas Bergersen album, formerly named Nemesis II]
Archangel (2011)
Demon’s Dance (2012) [Compilation of unreleased music]
Halloween (2012)^[10]
Skyworld (2012)^[11]
Sun (2013) [Thomas Bergersen album][12

Work in progress. Feel free to request editorship

Overview

Amanda Todd was a teenager who was reported dead in October of 2012. Like other simmilar deaths (Amanda Cummings or Mitchell Henderson) her death was used as subject of various jokes and image macros.

Search Insights

About

Is This The Start of an Epic New Meme? is a satirical phrase often used on 4chan’s /v/ board as an ironic response to meme-filled comments or stupid responses.

Origin

[Researching]

Originated on 4chan’s /v/ board as another form of Reddit Hate, as a meta comment about meme forcing.

Spread

[Researching]

On October 9th 2012, the sun published an article claiming that 6 yobs/thungs tried to rob Amir Khan (the british Pakistani boxer) who subsequently proceeded to knock the 6 thugs out, following this allegedly one of the thugs posted a vidoe on youtube under the account name Tony Montana titled Amir Khan the real truth in which he claims to have beat up amir khan and robbed some of his property.

By the way this is a very recent mame and is evolving quite quickly.

First Article: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4579097/Amir-Khan-KOs-six-yobs-trying-to-steal-his-100000-car.html

The thugs first youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw2xNe1Lxtg&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fuploaded%3Dw%26search_type%3Dvideos%26uni%3D3%26search_query%3Damir%2Bkhan%2Bthe%2Breal%2Btruth&has_verified=1

On the 12th of October 2012 the sun reports the thugs tuants:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article4584980.ece

Following are all mames (not in any order)

Amir khan Real Truth Spongebob Response
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJZDKx_W0Fw – uploaded by username: Hanna Montana

Amir Khan (Samba Dance Remix) #SambaDanceRemix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWbEiRQF7_4

Amir Khan the real truth (mame)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn0kP6P0fQI

Episode 17 – Truth About Amir Khan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvx7oTeakz8 (By GrimeComady)

[[researching]]