About

Yu Yu Hakusho (Japanese: 幽☆遊☆白書 Yū Yū Hakusho) is a manga series created by Yoshihiro Togashi and was published by Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1990-1994 for nineteen volumes. It has been also called “Ghost Files” or “Poltergeist Report”.

Premise

Yu Yu Hakusho tells the story of a fourteen year old troublemaking student named Yusuke Urameshi who’s life was forever changed after he was killed and struck by a car after saving a young child’s life. After a series of tests presented to him by the son of the ruler of the Spirt World Koenma, Yusuke is revived from his brief death and is appointed the title of “Spirt Detective”. Which he must investigate cases involving demons and apparitions in the human world.

Origin

Yoshihiro Togashi created Yu Yu Hakusho in November 1990 from his interests of Occult & Horror movies all with the influence of Buddhism and martial arts. During his tenure on the series, Togashi deal with a great amount of stress & a lack of sleep for five hours due to demand of the editorial staff from Weekly Shonen Jump, but was later relieved that the series ended in July of 1994. The series later became well known with a anime adaptation produced by Studio Pierrot in October 1992 until December 1994, where it lasted for 112 episodes. A english dub was announced in 2001 & later released in 2002 from Funimation, where voice actor Justin Cook not only served as the Voice director, but also the voice of Yusuke, who was nineteen years old at the time. The series aired on Cartoon Network’s Adult swim block first then later Toonami & early Saturday mornings from 2002-2006.^[1]

Fandom

As of 2014, its Facebook page has over 159,000 likes,^[3] 918 subscribers on Reddit^[2] and over 36,000 results on Deviantart.^[5]

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About

Facebook names is a Twitter page that mocks people’s names, often making them sound like a part of the song.

Origin

The Twitter “Facebook Names” launched on 7/12/14 publishing, it currently has 48 tweets, and over 61,000 followers.

Spread

The Twitter “Facebook Names” appears to be received in a good way by having over 61,000 followers on their official page.

WORK IN PROGRESS

About

Rick Ross pears refers to a series of vines based off the phrase “I eat pears and shit like that” by American rapper RIck Ross regarding an interview about his recent weight loss, the phrase has spawned multiple vines and image shops regarding the barely coherent phrase, often mocking his pronunciation of the word “pear”.

Origin

The original video posted on May 21, 2014 is an interview by Tim Westwood with Rick Ross on the backstage of his London show regarding his weight loss, and his fitness program RossFit, as well as his eating habits.

on Oct 18, 2014^[1], youtube user Spencer Mutsch posted a video highlighting the phrase “i eat pears and shit like that, shoutout to all the pears”, in the next 2 months the video has gathered 537,250 views and 3,708 likes.

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About

Pacific Rim is a 2013 American Science Fiction Monster Film directed by Guillermo del Toro starring Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Robert Kazinsky, Max Martini, and Ron Perlman. The movie follows the story of Jaeger Pilots as they combat the threat of giant monsters known as Kaijus that rise from beneath the ocean.

History

Filming began on November 14, 2011 and continued in Toronto into April 2012. Del Toro gave an update after the second week on filming finished. The film was referred to as Silent Seas and Still Seas during production. On November 28, 2012, the official film website premiered alongside two viral videos--one depicting the initial Kaiju attack as captured by a handheld camera. Blueprints depicting the designs for the Jaeger machines were also released online. Pacific Rim was initially expected to reach theaters in July 2012. However, Warner Bros. decided to postpone the film’s release date to May 10, 2013. In March 2012, it was announced that the film would be released on July 12, 2013. The film premiered in Mexico City on July 1, 2013^[1].

Reception

Pacific Rim grossed $101.8 million in North America, and has had a favorable international release, grossing $309.2 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $411,002,906^[1].

The film received generally positive reviews from critics. The film has a score of 72% on Rotten Tomatoes^[2], 7.0 on IMDB^[3], and 64/100 at Metacritic^[4]. Critics praised the movie for being a solid example of the monster movie genre that had no shortage of brains nor brawn.

Impact

Pacific Rim is a popular concept to crossover with multiple other fandoms, especially Attack on Titan, since both the movie and the anime bear striking similarities and begun trending at nearly the same time.

Fandom

The movie has an unofficial wiki^[5] with over 400 pages created. The official facebook page has 1,352,154 likes^[6]. The tag ‘Pacific Rim’ at Tumblr is very active^[7] and the same tag on Deviantart^[8] yields 13,878 results.

Related Memes

Jaeger Designer

The Jaeger Designer is an online application created by Warner Brothers to promote the film. Following its release and coverage by various websites in May and June of 2013, many fans used it to generate non-serious Jaegers using a variety of humorous phrases and nationality stereotypes.

Search Interest

External References

About

“I’ll Make A Man Out of You” is a song from the Disney movie “Mulan.” On the internet the song has many covers, parodies, and video edits.

Origins

“I’ll Make A Man Out of You” was made for the movie Mulan by Disney in 1998, written by David Zippel and Matthew Wilder. The song was well received and was considered to be one of the best training montage songs by many. ^[1]

Spread

The song has spread through out the internet, especially YouTube. A search for the song will bring up over 600,000 results. The original version of the song has 42 million views. Many people make covers of the song in different music styles. A mere post of the song on /r/Music board on Reddit got over 1300 up votes. On Tumblr, some posts of gifs and pictures of the song matched with some of the lyrics gain over 72,000 notes.

Notable examples

Covers

Many youtubers, popular and not, have made covers of the Mulan song. Some of the covers have gotten over 500,000 views.

Parodies

Paodies of the song, and the training montage scene with it have parodied. Team Four Stars parodie of has reach over 6,000,000 million views, and others range from 100,000 to over 1,000,000.

<

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External References

About

“My god, it’s full of stars” is a phrase associated with a scene from the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” in which the protagonist David Bowman is traveling through the star gate created by the monolith orbiting Jupiter and the awed expression face that he gives.

Origin

The phrase is not from the movie itself, but from the novelization that screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke wrote at the same time as the screenplay. The book describes the scene in which Bowman is entering the star gate, and he says the following phrase just before losing contact with Mission Control: “The thing’s hollow -- it goes on forever -- and -- oh my God! -- it’s full of stars!” ^[1]

Spread

The expression that bowman makes has become quite popular within the internet and the phrase is often paired with it in various snowclone like parodies.

Notable Examples

External References

^[1]See p. 254 of paperback edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey

About

See? Nobody Cares is a catchphrase derived from pieces of dialogue uttered by character Dennis Nedry (played by Wayne Knight) in a scene from the 1993 science-fiction movie Jurassic Park. On internet, it has become widely used in image macros featuring screenshots from the scene in order to express lack of interest for a token popular trend or as a retort when someone is considered to be trying to get unwarranted attention.

Origin

The peculiar segment from the movie was uploaded to Youtube on July 11th 2009 (shown below). It involves Dennis Nedry (played by Wayne Knight) meeting with Lew Dodgson (played by Cameron Thor) at a terrace of a restaurant and calling him out on his attempt to wear a disguise to appear incognito.

Dennis Nedry: [waving] “Dodgson!”
Lew Dodgson: [sitting down] “You shouldn’t use my name.”
Dennis Nedry: [loudly] “Dodgson, Dodgson, we’ve got Dodgson here! Nobody cares. Nice hat. What are you trying to look like, a secret agent?”

(bold added for emphasis)

The scene became a macro on Memegenerator on November 25th 2012^[1]. From it, the question See? was added to emphasize on the lack of interest expressed in the macro. as of December 2014, the macro ranked #565 on the site and contributed to more than 35 pages of parodies, for over 50 000 pictures made.

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As early as the beginning of 2013, the macro was submitted to Quickmeme^[2], Car-memes.com^[3] and Imgflip^[4].

Examples

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External References

Overview

2014 UK Porn Censorship Protest were demonstrations held outside of Parliament in the United Kingdom (UK) following the announcement that several sex acts would be banned from UK porn websites in December 2014.

Background

In October 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to work with broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict access to pornographic websites>.^[1] His initial proposition included an opt-in system where ISPs would automatically filter questionable content unless a user specifically asked to make everything available. In 2012, Cameron was reported to be working on these measures, citing children as young as 11 who had become addicted to online pornography.^[2][3][4] In June 2013, Cameron was interviewed by Sky News (shown below, left), where he claimed ISPS were not doing enough to prosecute pedophiles and remove child pornography from the web. The following month, Cameron announced the creation of a global alliance to remove child pornography and encouraged search engines including Google and Bing to have a blacklist of search terms like “child sex” that would direct users to alternate searches (shown below, right).

In the announcement, Cameron revealed that the opt-in system go into effect for all UK Internet users by the end of 2014. Additionally, “violent” or “extreme” porn would become illegal, including images or video that depict simulated rape.^[5] Free-speech advocates in the UK were angered by the news,^[7] questioning who would decide what content was legal or illegal after the filter’s launch. On July 22nd, “UK Porn” was mentioned more than 36,000 times on Twitter.^[8] On December 1st, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations (AMSR)^[12] went into effect, banning pornographic media depicting acts that could be “potentially life-threatening.”

Notable Developments

#PornProtest

On December 2nd, 2014, sex worker Charlie Rose launched a Facebook event titled “Protest outside parliament against sexist porn law! – old palace yard,”^[13] gathering over 1,100 supporters in the next two weeks. On December 9th, London24 News^[14] published an article about the event, which was later shared on Reddit^[15] where it gained more than 4,600 upvotes in the 72 hours before the protest. On December 12th, 2014, the mass “face-sitting” protest was held outside the Houses of Parliament in central London, which aimed to simulate some of the banned sex acts imposed by the new AMSR.^[9][10] Attendees of the demonstration took to Twitter with the hashtag“#PornProtest”^[11] to share pictures and thoughts on the events, creating over 6,000 tweets within the first hours of the protest. That day, images from the event were shared in a post on the /r/pics^[16] subreddit, where it garnered upwards of 3,000 votes and 420 comments in 6 hours.

Search Interest

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External References

WORK IN PROGRESS

About

Joel Bauer is a marketing expert, speaker trainer and infotainer best known for his over the top personality and his role in the YouTube video Your business card is CRAP!. During the video he has such memorable quotes as “Wow, I’m impressed” and “What do you do guaranteed?”.

Origin

Joel Bauer gained notoriety for his role in the YouTube video Your business card is CRAP!, which was uploaded on December 17, 2008. During the video Joel boisterously points out the flaws in common business cards, feigning interest in what appear to be very standard business cards.

After pointing out the flaws in common business cards, Joel proceeds to enlighten viewers as to what a good business card should look like. The card on display allegedly costs $4.00 per card, is die cut, embossed, foil stamped, and, perhaps most importantly, informs people of the results he generates, guaranteed.

Spread

Since being uploaded to YouTube on December 17, 2008, the original video has been viewed over 2 million times in addition to being re-uploaded and parodied countless more times including Your Holiday Card is Crap!. The original video has had such an impact that Joel Bauer is often asked to critique the business cards of other people.

Search Interest

External References

About

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (Japanese: ボボボーボ・ボーボボ Bobobōbo Bōbobo) is a manga series created by Yoshio Sawai and was published by Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 2001-2005 for twenty-one volumes. Followed by a sequel called True Theory Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo (Japanese: 真説ボボボーボボーボボ Shinsetsu Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo) which lasted for 7 volumes from 2005-2007.

Premise

In the year 300X, the entire world is under the tyrannical rule of the Chrome-Dome Empire, and their ruler, Czar Baldy Bald the 4th. His army known as the Hair Hunt troops captures innocent people’s hair, leaving them bald and their homes in ruins. Standing against the regime is a heroic, but bizarre rebel known as Bobobo-Bo Bo-Bobo. Who fights the Hair Hunt Troops with his powerful Fist of the Nose Hair. His team consists a teenage girl name Beauty, a smelly teenage warrior Gasser, the Hajike leader Don Patch with his former sidekick and Fist of the Key master Hatenko, former Hair Hunt troop leaders Jelly Jiggler, Dengakuman & Torpedo Girl and the calm loner Softon.^[6]

Background

The series is known for having comedy influenced by Japanese manzai humor that uses puns, double-talk, breaking of the fourth wall, visual gags, satirical and pop-culture references. It made it’s first publication from Shueisha via Weekly Shonen Jump in February 2001 until November 2005. Followed by a sequel called True Theory: Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Where it takes place a year after the first series left off. Where the Chrome-Dome Empire was reborn as the New Chrome-Dome Empire, under the leadership of the former ruler, Czar Baldy Bald the III. Where the Hair Hunt troops resume and a new generation of powerful generals are created. Bo-bobo later receives a “True Theory” form of his Fist of the Nosehair, Where he is later reunited with his friends from the first series. A anime adaptation was produced by Toei Animation from November 8, 2003 to October 29, 2005 in Japan. Followed by a English dub that was produced in fall of 2005, shortly before the anime ended in the same season. The English dub first aired on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block from September 30, 2005 to October 13, 2007.^[1]

Fandom

As of December 2014, its Facebook page has 57 likes,^[3] its subreddit /r/bobobo/ has 19 subscribers,^[2] and searching for it yields 1,317 results on Deviantart.^[5]

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(This article is a W.I.P.)

About

Oddworld (known as: Oddworld Inhabitants) is a video game company in the 1995 which was been created by Lorne Lanning and Sherry McKenna^[1]. After when the PlayStation video game Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee^[2] is gave a highly positive reviews from the critics and gamers.

History

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Abe’s Oddysee

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Abe’s Exoddus

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Munch’s Oddysee

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Stranger’s Wrath

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Satirical Hip Hop (often referred to as Ironic rap or Meme Rap) refers to a sub genre of hip hop that is created with the intention of becoming viral, normally as a joke and/or a parody of prominent genres such as Gangsta rap^[1] and trap music^[2]. The satirical nature of an ironic rap song is often intentionally left out of its title, cover image, and description, in order to catch listeners by surprise. Meme rap typically features lo-fi cloudy production, simplistic music videos, lazy rhymes, and intentionally stereotypical lyrics, with humor as the goal.

Origin

Although satirical hip hop music was made with no serious intent or for the purposes of parodying the gangsta genre in the 90’s, meme rap only became mainstream with the success of American rapper Lil B with his single “Wonton Soup” (shown below) released on August 11th, 2010.

The video has received over 12 million views, 50k likes, and 54k comments as of December 2014. it is worth nothing that it also has 30k dislikes, likely due to the stealthiness of its parodistic nature.

The song features lines that would be considered stereotypical of the hip hop genre, as well as poor rhymes and a lazy flow.^[9] The style has become the defining characteristic of Lil B’s body of work as well as meme rap in general.

Spread

After the success of Lil B, many other artists began taking on the same lo-fi self-parodying style of music, one of them being Arizona rapper Yung Lean, who with his associates (named SADBOYS) would become popular after the release of their mixtape Unknown Death 2002 and the release of the single “Hurt” featuring multiple 90’s products and references, as well as 98’s windows screensavers.

The song features the same sloppy delivery that Lil B is famous for.

On Sep 24, 2011, Tyler The Creator,^[4] under the moniker “Young Nigga”, released a song named “Come Through Looking Clean”^[6] which was a parody of mainstream hip hop music. The song draws heavy inspiration from Lil B’s music, who is said to be one of Tyler’s favorite artists.

After a few years the term “Meme Rap” was used as a term to insult rap music and artists; this use was heavy on the 4chan board /mu/ due to the constant spamming of said artists. The term has since become popular outside of the board and is now constantly used to attack popular underground artists.

The hate was normally presented on “essential charts” common on the board. The charts typically featured rappers and albums that were popular on the board, despite not intentionally making music that would be considered ironic.

Youtube has created a playlist titled “meme rap” featuring an assortment of satirical rappers.^[8] The satirical site Encyclopedia Dramatica includes an article on Ironic Rap.^[11] Other popular meme rappers include Riff Raff,^[3] Die Antwoord,^[5] Das Racist,^[12] Lil Ugly Mane, and Viper the Rapper.

Notable Examples

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About

9+10=21 is a wrong answer math problem that was started on Vine, and quickly became a fad within the Vine community, later reaching to various places on the internet

Origin

The first Vine featuring this was uploaded around July 2014 by an unknown Viner. The content of the Vine features a man talking to a little boy saying he’s stupid. The boy replies that he isn’t, then the man asks him “what’s 9+10?”, and the kid answers “21”. The man then reaffirms his statement by saying “you stupid”.

Spread

After the original Vine gained notoriety in the community, several other Vines came around that featured the use of the audio and phrases in them.

Notable Examples

Other Vines

Other Videos

Images

About

Kaamelott is a French fantasy tv series that ran from 2005 to 2009, spawned comic books, a movie trilogy in the making as well as a cult following among French netizens and it helped launch the career of Alexandre Astier as stand-up comedian, director, actor and composer.

History

Kaamelott is a tv series created by Alexandre Astier, that is composed of short episodes (from 3 minutes to about 7 minutes for the latter seasons except the 6th season) that were broadcast on M6 tv channel on prime time from January 2005 to October 2009, for a total of 6 seasons. This short format was inspired by another popular French tv from the same channel, Caméra Café, which was a sitcom about employees in an office space filmed from the point of views of a coffee machine during coffee breaks.
The plot centers upon King Arthur (Alexandre Astier) and his assembly of incompetent but loyal knights in his fortress of Camelot, experiencing everyday life and epic adventures during the fall of the Roman Empire, the Barbarian invasion and the quest for the Holy Grail. The show loosely follows the traditional medieval tales of the Arthurian mythology and the Round Table with modern humor and dialogue.
While the first seasons were about individual humoristic episodes that didn’t follow any order, a more dramatic story was introduced starting in season 4 featuring a more serious tone in the conflict between King Arthur and Lancelot, his resignation as a king and how chaos ensued. The sixth season broke with the usual format by introducing a miniseries of 40-minute long episodes acting as a prequel to the original series.

Cult following

An archived news article from 2005^[1] about the series accounted for its immediate popularity among the public, stating that more than 3.9 million viewers were already enjoying the first season every evening, surpassing Caméra Café in views. According to the “Wikipedia”: article on the show, it attracted more viewer each season, reaching a record of 5 million views for some episodes^[2].
This increasing popularity translated into the creation of many fan-made websites and forums^[3][4], especially for creating “fanfictions”: and art. Another fan website was also made as a wide encyclopedia on the show^[5].
In addition to the tv series, an ongoing series of comic books were issued starting in 2006 and, as of December 2014, are composed of 7 chapters^[6].
With initial tv series ending in 2009, Alexandre Astier stated that he wanted to make a full feature film as a sequel. In a article from French news site 20 minutes released on October 20th 2014, it is learnt that it is going to be a trilogy and that he is still negociating to start shooting^[7].

Fan Arts

Memes

C’est pas faux

C’est pas faux (roughly meaning You have a point in English) is a catchphrase meant as a filler retort when replying to someone. While already existing as an idiom in French, the series popularized it thought character Perceval who is presented as a not-really-bright illiterate, in episode 28th from the first season, aired on January 20th 2005 (an extract from it is shown below).

!

Perceval learnt the catchphrase from another not-very-smart character on the show, Karadoc as a way of replying to someone who talked to him using complex words without making a fool out of himself. The entire episode shows him comically trying to use it when speaking with various other characters.
The French internet quickly embraced it as a catchphrase.

External References

About

Tarot cards are historic playing cards that emerged from the 15th Century. Online, the major ‘arcana’ that appear in the original deck are often drawn by artists in their own style. In fandoms, characters are often attributed to the major arcana that befits their roles and personalities.

Origin

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Tarot cards (more formally known as the tarot,) are a pack of playing cards that originated from 15th Century Europe. Initially they were used merely as playing cards for gambling, but by the 18th century until the present they have become a means of fortune telling as well as a map of mental and spiritual pathways^[1]. The earliest known instance of characters being attributed to arcana of the tarot are in the credits of the Cartoon Network show The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy which begun airing in 2003. The credits show the main characters of the show, Billy, Mandy, and Grim, replicating the arcana fool, empress, and death, respectively^[3].

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While Tarot cards have been around for centuries, the attribution of characters to the major arcana of the tarot is popularized by the video game series Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, which utilizes the numerous arcana of the tarot in its gameplay and characters. The tag ‘Tarot’ in Deviantart yields 74,563 results as of December 14, 2014^[2].

Notable Examples

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Search Interests

External References

^[1]Wikipedia – Tarot

^[2]Deviantart – Tarot

^[3]Wikia – The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy

WORK IN PROGRESS

About

“Bite the Pillow, I’m Going in Dry” is an online expression that is typically paired with images of menacing-looking people, animals, and characters. It is similar to, and is often used interchangeably with, memetic expressions such as Prepare Your Anus and You Gonna Get Raped.

Origin

The earliest known example of the meme was first submitted to Reddit by user FenrirIII on February 17th, 2012, under the title “The most disturbing thing I have seen all day”, consisting of an image macro of an Ewok with the caption “Bite the pillow / I’m going in dry” (shown below).^[1] It received 823 points (83% upvoted) prior to being archived.

Spread

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On April 13th, 2013, FunnyJunk member oldspiceuser posted a two-panel variation of the meme featuring an intimidating-looking cat (shown below), receiving a total of 159 net karma as of December 2014.^[2]

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About

Finals Reactions refers to a series of images depicting online reactions to college finals week, such images often show feelings of desperation, stress, extreme despair and/or carefree behavior.

Origin

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Spread

On May 22, 2012 youtuber LifeAccordingToJimmy posted a video titled “Finals Week” (shown below), the video has received 2,161,227 views and 15,504 likes

On April 22, 2013 youtuber FenCheeks posted a video depicting the average behaviour during finals, the video has received 15,504 views and 476 likes.

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About

Drop the cane is a viral video of an elderly man dropping his walking sticks to the ground before overjoyfully dancing. The video was then remixed with various music tracks to fit the man’s ecstatic moves.

Origin

On July 18th, 2014, Facebook user Edgard Eleuterio Daza posted a 3-minute long video to his wall titled “Eternamente joven”, which is Spanish for “Forever young”. A Youtube upload from July 21th can be found below.

It features an elderly man with walking sticks in the middle of a ball, surrounded by middle-aged couples dancing around him to the tune of Bill Haley’s “Rock around the clock”. The man then suddenly drops his sticks and goes on an happy solo dancing before inviting two women to dance with him. As of December 2014, the Facebook post was shared more than 1 850 000 times and reached over 163 000 likes.

Spread

As several reuploads of the video were made on Youtube, each one gaining their fair amounts of views, new sites such as Time^[2], Daily Mail^[3] or even Buzzfeed^[4] sarted reporting on the viral phenomenon as early as July 21th and onward, often commenting on its funny and heartwarming nature.

Remixes

On July 20th, Youtube user Klaypex uploaded a cut version of the video with remixed music in order to promote his song #shutyourtrap (shown below).

As of December 2014, the video has gained more than 2 100 000 views.
While it’s not clear if it was a direct influence, more people joined in to create their own video remixes featuring the dancing old man.

External References

^[1]Facebook – Eternamente joven

^[2]Time – This Video of an Old Man Dancing Will Brighten Your Day

^[3]Daily Mail – From old-folk to old rock! Elderly man shocks fellow wedding guests by throwing down his canes and taking over the dance floor with his nifty moves

^[4]Buzzfeed – Watch This Awesome Old Man Throw Away His Crutches And Dance

Overview

2014 Sydney Hostage Crisis was a 16-hour standoff that took place at a Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney, Australia where Iranian Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis took 17 people hostage in December 2014. The siege resulted in the deaths of Monis and two hostages.

Background

At 9:44 a.m. (AEDT) on December 15th, 2014, Monis took 17 hostages at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe at 53 Martin Place in Sydney, Australia. According to eyewitness reports,^[1] Monis was carrying a “blue sports bag” and was armed with a shotgun.

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

On Facebook^[3] and Twitter,^[4] the hashtag“#sydneysiege” began trending worldwide within hours of the events unfolding. On Reddit live-updated thread^[5] was created which had more than 17,000 viewers at peak. A post was also made to /r/worldnews,^[6] which gathered more than 8,200 comments and 4,800 upvotes within six hours. After the attack, some Muslims in Australia expressed fear of retribution for their religion. Twitter user Micheal James retweeted a post by a man who claimed to have protected a Muslim woman wearing a hijab (shown below).

The idea to encouraged others to follow suit and Twitter user @sirtessa launched the hashtag “#illridewithyou” to organize a buddy system and to further show support.

The hashtag soon caught on, and in 3 hours the hashtag had been used over 65,000 times,^[7] causing it to go trending worldwide.^[8]

Australians offer to go with Muslim Australians in public places if they fear racist backlash #illridewithyou So much better than bigotry

— Julian Burnside (@JulianBurnside) December 15, 2014

14 Dec: Australian Muslim youth handed out 2000 flowers and 3600 water bottles to ppl in sydney #illridewithyoupic.twitter.com/22ikQczgnX

— Mina (@mina_ysf) December 15, 2014

Uber Surge Pricing

That day, the Uber_Sydney^[9] Twitter feed announced they would be raising fares in the area to “encourage more drivers to come online & pick up passengers in the area” (shown below).

After many criticized the company for increasing rates during the crisis, Uber published a blog post^[10] announcing that Sydneysiders would be getting free rides out of the area in order to return home safely.

End of Siege

During the 16-hour stand-off proceeded, between 10 and 12 hostages managed to escape the building. At 2:14 a.m. (AEDT), police raided the building, resulting in the death of Monis and two hostages.

Notable Images

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External References

About

Howard Philips Lovecraft was a Science-fiction/Horror author who hailed from Providence, Rhode Island. He is known primarily for his cosmicist stories in which the protagonists are often tormented by visions and interactions with beings beyond the scope human understanding.
While he was only truly recognized posthumously, he changed the course of horror fiction. In the words of Stephen King:

Lovecraft. . . opened the way for me as he had done for others before me…. it is his shadow, so long and gaunt, and his eyes, so dark and puritanical, which overlie almost all of the important horror fiction that has come since.

People have since continued parodying, deconstructing and reconstructing the Lovecraftian mythos.

Notable Memes and Creations

Cthulhu

Cthulhu is a fictional monster created by horror writer H.P. Lovecraft that is often depicted as a large cephalopod-like creature with a tentacled mouth, large wings, clawed hands and scaly skin.^[1]

Nyarlathotep

Nyarlathotep was first introduced in the short story of the same name^[2] and is another reoccurring being in Lovecraftian fiction. While it is not as popular as Cthulhu-- perhaps due to its inconsistent form ranging from a pharaoh to a tangled mess of tentacles-- it still has its place in modern popular culture. Notably, “Haiyore! Nyaruko-san” is a novel and anime series wherein Nyarlathotep takes the form of a silver-haired Japanese school girl.

Azathoth

On H.P. Lovecraft romans, it is described as a god of chaos, which is existed before the creation of the universe and has infinitive amount of powers until its body has sepparated itself from the Nyarlathotep.^[3]

Controversy

While Lovecraft is revered as a writer, he was also highly xenophobic and antisemitic-- supporting organisations like the KKK.^[4] Because of this, his name often sparks discussions regarding “separating the art from the artist”.

Search Interest

External References