(WIP)

About

Descriptive Noise refers to a line of text used to describe noises in the background of a movie or television show while watching with closed captioning turned on. Screenshots of these captions and the scene they are describing are often found on Tumblr, pointing out of the often absurd nature of these descriptions, similar to YouTube Automatic Caption Fails

Origin

On June 13th, 2011, the single topic blog Descriptive Noise^[1] launched, with a still shot from the History Channel’s show Larry the Cable Guy (shown below). Larry and five teenagers are shown holding up frogs and smiling while the caption reads [indistinct mumbling].

Precursor

Prior to blogs focusing specifically on the way sounds are captioned, on November 7th, 2006, a poster on Fark^[2] started a photoshop thread for users to post fake closed captioned photos (shown below, left). Between December 2011 and September 2012, several series of comically closed captioned photos that may have been due to errors during live captioning (shown below, center) as well as amusing subtitles due to mistranslation (shown below, right) appeared on humor sites including Smosh^[3], Uproxx^[4], World Wide Interweb^[5] and the Chive.^[6]

Spread

Notable Examples

“[Muffled Rap Music Playing in the Distance]”

Search Interest

External References

Researching. Feel free to request editorship

About

Repost means copying the same post on the Internet. An act that often happens on message boards where the reposter will not read far into the archives and will post a link, an image or a story that has already been posted and discussed throughly.
However, it is possible to interest of the repost is more than the OC (original content).

Origin

Researching

Search Interest

Editor’s Note: This entry is currently being researched for additional information. Please request editorship to improve the quality of this article.

About

The Internet Archive is a digital library and archival site dedicated to permanent documentation of and free public access to a wide variety of digital artifacts, ranging rom websites and music to videos and nearly three million books registered under public domain.

History

The Internet Archive^[1] was founded in 1996 by American computer engineer and Internet activist Brewster Kahle^[2], who also co-founded the web crawling service Alexa Internet around the same time. It initially began as Kahle’s personal project to archive the World Wide Web, Netnews Bulletin Board System and other publicly available software and webpages, but by late 1999, its scope had been expanded to include other worthy archive collections like the Prelinger Archives and the NASA Images Archive. Kahle’s collection was largely kept private on digital tape throughout the 1990s, only allowing researchers and scientists to access the database on special occasions. Despite its lack of public access, the Internet Archives was met by press coverage from several U.S. news publications upon its launch, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired Magazine and National Public Radio (NPR).

The database eventually became available for public access on the fifth anniversary of the project in 2001 with the launch of The Wayback Machine^[3], a digital time capsule that allows its users to browse multiple versions of web pages archived over time. According to Kahle^[4], he was inspired to create the Machine after visting the offices of now-defunct search engine service Alta Vista and witnessing the company’s ambitious plan to store and index everything that was on the web. Throughout the 2000s, the Internet Archive continued to expand its collection by merging pre-existing databases as well as building new ones.

On January 18th, 2012, the Internet Archives blacked out its website for twelve hours in protest of the controversial U.S. Internet bills Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, similar to many other resource websites and databases like Wikipedia. In mid-October 2012, the project reached an important milestone^[5] of 10 petabytes (10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) worth of digital materials in preservation, including millions of digital books, music, movies and webpages.

Features

The Internet Archives is mainly comprised of its free online services Wayback Machine and Archive-It, in addition to a number of specialized media collections that have been acquired over time, most notably the Prelinger Archives, NASA Image Archives, Open Library and Live Music Archive. [this section is currently being researched]

The Wayback Machine

The Wayback Machine is the Internet Archive’s “three-dimensional index” service that allows its user to search, browse and access snapshots of the World Wide Web archived through its database over time. Since its launch in 2001, millions of websites and their associated data and media have been archived by the service, which can be used to learn more about what previous versions of certain websites used to look like, to grab source code that have disappeared from websites or to visit websites that no longer exist on the web. Often considered a crucial academic research tool in studying the history of the Internet, its popularity has also led to the synonymous usage of the terms “Wayback Machine” and “Internet Archive” in some online communities.

Archive-It

Archive-It is a web archiving service that enables individuals and organizations to harvest, catalog and preserve specialized collectons of digital media content in the archive format. All of Archive-It partners’ collectons are also made publicly available with full-text search and some of them may be periodically indexed into the Internet Archive’s general archive. As of mid-2011, the service had reached more than 180 partner institutions in 44 U.S. states and 14 countries with over 2.7 billion URLs and 1,534 public collections.

Open Library

The Open Library is a free, open-source software project which can be used to create a web-based database for every book ever published and archived. It holds at least 23 million catalog records of books and approximately 1.6 million fully-readable and downloadable books in the public domain.

Traffic

According to its FAQ page and Alexa, the Internet Archives receives approximately 2.5 million daily unique visits and currently stands at the 278th place in U.S. rank and 222nd place in Global Rank.

External References

About

Clock Crew^[2] is a flash crew from Newgrounds.com^[1] and ClockCrew.cc^[3]. This group is ruled by a user name StrawberryClock.

The Beginning

The Clock Crew saga all begin on August 15th, 2001. A Newgrounds user name Coolboyman, age 14, is spamming poorly made flash animations only to piss off Newground viewers and getting blammed. He suddenly had an idea to piss off more Newgrounds viewers, by spamming a flash file with the letter A. But he won’t post it as Coolboyman. Instead, he post it as StrawberryClock, self-claimed king of the portal. The flash file of the letter A is posted and it got a ton of negative reviews plus a blam.

The Birth of “B”

While StrawberryClock laugh at the negative reviews, he thought it would be a good idea to try it again, but this time with the red iconic letter B. Again he got negative reviews except this time something else happened. A week later, Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp awarded the B flash file Turd of the Week.

Gathering Up The Crew

On September 2001, three users related to StrawberryClock’s name appear to get together to start a group. These users/clocks are OrangeClock, RasberryClock, and AppleClock, which OrangeClock is credited for creating the group and making StrawberryClock their king. Together they call themselves The Clock Crew. PineappleClock, joined later after The Clock Crew is created and became one of the original 5 fruit clocks. Later, KnottsberryClock arrive to help the Clock Crew host the Clock Crew website. With the website created, endless clock members follow StrawberryClock’s footsteps and join the Clock Crew, and spam Newgrounds with their flash animations.

Clock Day

Every August 15th, Newgrounds celebrates Clock Day in honor of the Clock Crew to be the first crew to be recognised by Newgrounds. In this celebration, every flash animation is a Clock Crew related flash. Posting it on Clock Day will be voted 5 a lot.

Spin-offs & Rip-offs

In 2003, small groups of Newgrounds users think it’s a good idea to form their own spin-off groups and spam Newgrounds like Clock Crew did. Not only that, but groups like the Lock Legion, the Dock Division and the Glock Group are rip-offs and rivals of the Clock Crew with different faces. Other spin-offs spamming Newgrounds with crappy animations include the Star Syndicate, the Uzi Union, the Block Band, the Barney Bunch, and the Plastic People.

External References

Editor’s Note: Please, don’t use the comments section to debate about WWII and Holocaust.

Work in progress. Feel free to request editorship

About

Adolf Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. He was at the centre of the founding of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Hitler have a notable spread on the Internet, especially on some sites, like 4chan.

Online history

Reputation

Personal life

Hitler was born on 1889 in an Austrian-Hungarian village. On 1919, Hitler joined to the Nazi’s Party, becoming later the leader. On 1924, he tried to make a putsch, but it failed and Hitler went to prision, where he wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle). On 1933, he won the German elections, becoming chancellor.

Search Insights

Chris Bores, better known as The Irate Gamer, is a YouTube personality and video game reviewer who is known for his similarity to the Angry Video Game Nerd, who he clearly draws inspiration from, the dubious quality of his videos, and the disproportionate “Hatedom” that he has gained, consisting of people, dubbed AVGN Nazis, who not only proclaim Bores to be a ripoff (which is, more or less, halfway true) but dislike all of his videos, ridicule him and leave hateful comments to an excessive degree. Many derisive parodies of him have also been made. Chris Bores’ responses to these criticisms have also been controversial and have earned him more haters.

History

Chris Bores released his first “Irate Gamer” video on April 28, 2007. It was about Back to the Future for NES, which was among the games previously reviewed by AVGN. This was followed by several other video game reviews, some of which had also previously been reviewed by the AVGN. Flaws in these videos noticed by many included mediocre humor and a lack of skill displayed by Chris while playing the games, rendering some of his complaints about their alleged difficulty invalid. Minor but numerous factual mistakes also appeared in the videos, showing a lack of research.

Later, Bores launched “Irate Gamer NEO”, a spinoff series in which he reviews modern games, as well as other material such as “Haunted Investigators”, which resembles the television series Ghost Hunters, “IRate the 80’s”, in which he reviews pop culture items from the 1980’s, and History of Video Games, in which he discusses the history of video gaming starting from the very beginning (and at a very slow rate; jokes have been made that the series will take many, many years to complete). These videos have not generated as much attention as the main Irate Gamer videos, though they have spawned a few memes (see below).

In response to the hate aimed at him, Chris Bores disabled ratings and/or comments on many of his videos, blocked many users, and had many parody videos taken down under copyright claims, including some that didn’t actually use any footage from his channel. Again, this only caused even more criticism.

As of late, Bores’ work has deviated significantly from that of James Rolfe, although many argue that it is still mediocre.

Examples of Hatedom

Parodies

There are several mean–spirited parodies of the Irate Gamer Show on YouTube, including several accounts dedicated solely to hating on Chris. These videos exaggerate the flaws of his videos to ridiculous proportions. An example of this is the “Isuck Gamer Show”. Many other videos depict the Angry Video Game Nerd killing the Irate Gamer.

Nostalgia Critic Mention

In 2008, shortly after the launch of Thatguywiththeglasses.com, the Nostalgia Critic released a video that was part of his faux feud with the AVGN in which he mentions the Irate Gamer. In it, he claims that AVGN has become the “Irate Gamer” to his creative genius. This is followed by canned booing, and the Critic apologizing and saying that that was going too far. Note this this was after the Critic had just called the Nerd an extremely long series of vulgar insults.

James Rolfe Mention

In 2009, at a convention, James Rolfe acknowledged the Irate Gamer for the first time. When asked about him, James said: ’’"I’ll answer that as quickly as I can. Uh, I have no reason to answer it, I mean he pretty much pretends that I don’t exist so why would I even need to say anything about him?"’’

Linkara Parody

In April 2011, Linkara of TGWTG.com released a joke video parodying the Irate Gamer and his flaws, in which he reviewed an issue of the “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers” comic in Chris’ “style”, exaggerating his common mistakes.

Associated Memetic Jokes

Bores n’ Doors

In late 2008, Irate Gamer uploaded his review of the obscure NES cult game “Monster Party”. In the plot of the episode, the Gamer is upset that he has not been invited to a Halloween party that is occurring across the street from his home, and that people are coming to his door thinking that he is hosting the party. Multiple times during the episode, the Irate Gamer’s doorbell rings and he is greeted by strange guests at his door thinking that he is having a party. These scenes spawned the “Bores n’ Doors” video fad, in which various characters from other works, such as SpongeBob SquarePants, are depicted visiting Irate Gamer, usually using scenes in which said characters visit doors.

Breakfast is Ruined!

In late 2007, Chris Bores posted a video in which he ranted about the cereal Lucky Charms and how the marshmallows had changed from the original ones since the cereal’s introduction. To summarize this frustration at this, Chris said “Face it. Breakfast is ruined!” This line has become a small meme unto itself, and is often used in parody videos as a quintessential example of complaints by the Irate Gamer that could be considered irrelevant, exaggerated nitpicking.

About

Ghost Blowjob! is a 4-pane comic about a guy getting head from a ghost, enthusiastically expressing his delight by screaming “Gh-ost Blowjob! Woo Woo Woo!” to the point of the last panel showing his roomate angrily failing to get some sleep in the next room because of the noise. It inspired fanarts of the same comic involving well-known characters from different shows.

Origin

The original comic was made by famous webcomic artist KC Green, in a sub-section, called Droop, of his former blog^[1]. He put all the Droop comics in a file directory at comicwithoutviolence.com along with another section of comics called Bee power^[2]. Because no archive has been made as for now, it is impossible to tell when exactly he drew the 4-pane comic simply titled “Ghost Blowjob”^[3]:

However, one of its earliest repost on the web dates back as far as September 1st 2006 in a WTF.com forum thread^[4].

KC Green

KC Green is an influential webcartoonist whose dark humor has gained cult status among fans, enough to spawn many memes in the form of multi-panes comics. The most notables are Staredad, Dickbutt and I’m OK with this.

Spread

Notable examples

External References

^[1]KC Green’s initial website

^[2]Comic Without Violence

^[3] Comic Without Violence – Ghost Blowjob

^[4]WTF.com forums – Ghost Blowjob

W.I.P.

important things/spread:

-internet meme crossover/mashup
-Real-life “Where’s Wally?” phenomena

About

Don’t Want to Go to Bed? (Japanese: ねないこだれだ, Nenai Ko Dareda) is a picture book for children written by a Japanese picture book author Keiko Sena.^[1] This picture book became to the first icon of the Japanese imageboard site Futaba Channel (2chan), and numerous kind of its photo collages had been created by the users.

Origin

“Don’t Want to Go to Bed?” has been a long-seller picture book which has been sold more than 2 million copies since it was first published in 1969.^[2] Its story is quite brief and simple: a child who don’t want to go to bed gets taken away to somewhere far night sky by a ghost. Quite a few Japanese people who have read it in their childhood have a strong impression, similar to a trauma, of this book in their memories due to its cruel story and unique artwork made by collage of pieces of colored paper.

Child who don’t want to go to bed must mutate to ghost.
Fly away to the ghost world
Mutate to a ghost and fly away

In the predawn of Futaba Channel, its users began to use the cover art of this book as a sort of a Reaction Face to themselves who didn’t want to go to bed and were chatting on the threads till late in every night.

At that time Futaba hadn’t had the /b/ (Nijiura) board yet. So, “Don’t Want to Go to bed?” is considered as the first fad on Futaba Channel in the history of the Japanese web .

Spread

The development of a photo collage fad for this Futaba’s iconic picture book was led by the rise of the photo collage movment triggered by The Majesty, Waha~ and other earliest fads in the /b/ board in early 2003. In particular, they not only made collages of a ghost in the cover art but also liked to modify its 7-letter title in hiragana characters (Ne-Na-I-Ko Da-Re-Da) to something funny by matching rhyming words.

Those classic works are salvaged in Futaba user’s private archives and tell the atmosphere of good old days of that imageboard site. In addition, this picture book is counted as one of the “Nijiura Magnificent Ten” as same as The Majesty and others because of this popularity.

Notable Examples

Photo Collages

A girl I had sex the other day.
(Ko-Na-I-Da Ne-Ta-Ko_)
I have a sty in my eye.
(Me-Ba-Chi-Ko De-Ki-Ta_)
Nerunerunerune
I’ve got a girlfriend.
(Ka-No-Jo-Ga De-Ki-Ta)
I AM the man who doesn’t want to go to bed!
(Ne-Na-I-Ko O-Re-Sa)
Say NO to Drugs!
(Sha-Bu-Wa Da-Me-Da)

Compilations

Appearance in Other Media

The cover art of this picture book had a cameo appearance in the 15th episode of a Japanese TV anime series for Ken Akamatsu’s manga Negima! Magister Negi Magi^[3] in 2005. This TV anime series is also known for a cameo appearance by Senkōsha in its 1st & 3rd episode.

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Futaba relating websites basically prohibit people from introducing their URLs in the external. Do not write the URLs in articles or comments. Please use search engines.

Hipster Midster Lowster

Stub entry! Somebody take over. Sorry. Don’t have time for this. Why don’t we have an entry on it yet!?!?

This is a snowclone used to describe anonymity on the Internet. References a 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner.

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Bot
NSFW: On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re A Journalist

About

Torg is the name affectionately given to a vested red-haired man with Downs Syndrome photographed in various poses, including appearing to do clerical or data entry work.

Origin

The man’s identity remains unknown, but the earliest seen pictures of Torg were seen posted on the internet comedy/news site FARK as early as 2007.

Spread

Torg is used to represent that the quoted post was written by someone of low intelligence, commonly replacing outcomes or crucial points with potato – a reference to the phrase I can count to potato which also features a person with Downs Syndrome. Torg is quite a charming and knowledgeable fellow, chiming in on various issues, and has been used as an implied representation of a user, commonly in response to an ill conceived or trollish post, sometimes using images of through bubbles to encapsulate the quoted post, making it appear as Torg is thinking what the troll user has posted – insinuating that the person who posted is also mentally deficient. However, Torg is usually used in relation to ridiculous right-wing news site American Thinker. Torg has also been known to weigh in on current events, politics, and currently moderates the FARK.com politics tab. While his knowledge continues to impress, he is quite haunted by his ever-present foe – potato.

Examples

About

Henri, Le Chat Noir is a Tuxedo cat that is well-known on the Internet for starring in a series of YouTube videos in which the narrator discusses his philosophical thoughts in French.

Origin

Henri is the online nickname of Henry, an eight-year-old rescued shelter cat in Seattle, Washington. His human “uncle” filmmaker William Braden created the first short (shown below) for a class project at the Seattle Film Institute. It was shot, edited and narrated in eleven days. Braden chose to use a film noir style with French narration to express Henri’s contempt for humans as well as other cats, especially a nameless white cat who appears in the videos. The name Le Chat Noir^[1] (The Black Cat) is taken from the 19th century Parisian cabaret with the same name, which is best known for its iconic poster of a black cat against a red and yellow background by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. After the project was complete, Braden uploaded the film to YouTube on May 24th, 2007 and it has gained more than 1.6 million likes as of October 2012.

Spread

The video went relatively unnoticed for several years until Henri was quoted on a personal Tumblr^[2] in August 2011. On April 6th, 2012, Braden uploaded a second video titled “Paw de Deux” (shown below, left) which gained more than 6 million views in six months. The following day, Henri’s second video was featured on Jezebel.^[3] Throughout April, Henri’s videos were shared on College Humor^[4], Tastefully Offensive^[5], the Democratic Underground^[6], Buzzfeed^[11], Forbes^[12], The Daily Dot^[13], The FW^[14] and Metafilter.^[7] After seeing his videos take off, Braden set up a homepage^[10], a Facebook fan page^[8] and a Twitter account^[9] for Henri.

On June 20th, 2012, Henri’s third video went live (shown above, right), documenting a trip to the veterinarian. The video was shared on Blame it on the Voices^[19] and the Huffington Post^[20], among other news and humor sites. Nine days later, a love letter to Henri from another black and white cat named Anais Mittens (shown below) was uploaded by YouTuber Lizzie Reid. Her video was featured on Buzzfeed^[15], The Daily Dot^[16], Catster^[17] and Neatorama.^[18]

Golden Kitty Award

In August 2012, Henri’s second video won the Golden Kitty award (shown below, left), the top award at the Internet Cat Video Film Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was chosen by viewers out of 10,136 submissions, beating the Japanese cat Maru “by a landslide.”^[21] William Braden (shown below, right with Lil Bub and his owner) accepted the award, where he was quoted as saying “I don’t think I’ve ever purred this loudly.”^[22]

Book Deal

Shortly after receiving the Golden Kitty award, Braden announced that he had secured a book deal for Henri that would be published on April 30th, 2013 by a Random House imprint.^[23] This announcement was followed by interviews with the Seattle Times^[21], ABC News^[24] and the LA Times^[25] during which he revealed that he makes approximately $1,000 per week through revenues from Henri’s online merchandise store^[26], which allows him to give up his wedding videographer gig to work full time with Henri.

Search Interest

External References

Mike Mozart is a YouTube and the proprietor of Jeepers Media, a channel that mainly reviews toys, mostly “fail” ones. An obese but friendly man with copious facial hair who is usually seen wearing glasses and a hat, he joined YouTube on March 6, 2007 and uploaded his first video, “Britney Spear Epic Fail Hairstyle Suggestions”, that same day. His second video was entitled “Funny Videos: Easter Chocolate Bunny Hilarious Fail Toys Video Review by Mike Mozart of JeepersMedia”. This was the first video done in his current style, in which he reviews poorly–made or poorly thought out toys, which often have “inappropriate” features, accidental or otherwise, such as phallic shapes. Mike Mozart keeps his videos PG, and does not swear, nor does he explicitly state exactly what the inappropriate imagery in certain toys is, though the implication is obvious to anyone who knows what such things are. He has also sometimes reviewed good toys positively, and in cases where the quality of the product is reasonably arguable, he asks the viewers to judge it for themselves with one of his catchphrases, “Is this a WIN, or a FAIL?” Another recurring feature of Mike’s videos is the “Inappropriate–O–Meter”, which he asks commenters to use to rate the inappropriateness of products he reviews on a scale of 1 to 10. However, Mike Mozart’s most well–known catchphrase by far is “I mean, REALLY. What were they thinking?”

Mike Mozart’s most popular video to date is “Batman Dark Knight vs Marvel FAIL Funny Toy Review Video Mike Mozart Hulk,Spiderman JeepersMedia”, in which he contrasts the “WIN” Batman figure from the film The Dark Knight with the “FAIL” Itsy Bitsy Spider Man doll aimed towards young children, which he had previously reviewed and described as an insult to the character. This video has nearly five million views, and altogether all of Mike Mozart’s videos combined have well over 100 million views. His channel also has more than 370,00 subscribers.

Activism

Mike Mozart is also an activist who supports free speech and is against censorship, especially of the internet. He has spoken out strongly against the likes of companies such as Viacom, and against the SOPA and ACTA bills, with videos in which he exposed the corruption of those companies and the people supporting their endeavors to censor the internet, and gave specific advice to viewers on how they could fight back.

About

KnowYourMeme is a site used to document “memes” or popular phrases,images and videos on the internet.As of October 2012, the site consists of three content-based staff members (Brad Kim, Don Caldwell and Amanda Brennan) and one developer (James Wu).The Know Your Meme web site and web series were acquired in March 2011 by Cheezburger Network for an undisclosed seven-figure amount.

Origin

KnowYourMeme (From now on will be stated as KYM) started in the December of 2007 as a video series on Youtube made by Kenyatta Cheese, Elspeth Rountree, Jamie Wilkinson, and Andrew Baron.The first video was uploaded December 18th 2007

Spread

No clue will work later

Search Interest

About

Son, you’re too young (Chinese:少年，你太年轻了)is an expression used for commenting on idiotic posts on social media. Its aim is to spam the target post and discourage the target user, making the user believe that actually nobody is interested in the post.

Origin and Usage

It is known that the clause originated in some social media in mainland China. However, the very first usage of this expression could not be tracked down. The whole expression is as follows.

少年，你太年轻了。你以为这个论坛上真的有那么多人回复你的帖子？其实都是我一个人回的，不然我换个ID发同样的话给你看。

Son, you’re too young. Do you really think there are that many people responding to your post on this forum? It was all me. Let me change another user ID again and post the same expression here, then you’ll know.

After this expression is posted once on a page, other users will copy the expression and post it as comments in order to create an illusion that all the user IDs are actually of the same person.

Spread

This expression is spread to the Hong Kong internet community. Other than using the expression on forums, the expression can also be found on other social media, especially on Facebook. Various Facebook pages^[1] were also set up for this expression.

Search Interest

Derivations

As this expression is used on different social platforms with different settings and functions, more variations of the expression emerged. For example, the Facebook version for the Likes.

少年，你太年輕了。你以為這裡真的有那麼多人對你的動態讚好？其實都是我一個人讚好的，不然我換個ID讚好給你看。

Son, you’re too young. Do you really think there are that many people liking your status? It was all me. Let me change another user ID and like your status again, then you’ll know.

And this one is for the comments on Facebook.

少年，你太年輕了。你以為facebook上真的有那麼多人回覆你的帖子？其實都是我一個人回的，不然我再換個ID發同樣的話給你看

Son, you’re too young. Do you really think there are that many people commenting on your posts on Facebook? It was all me. Let me change another user ID and post this same expression here, then you’ll know.

The expression is also translated into various languages around the world^[2] while most of them are still being used in the Chinese internet community, especially in Hong Kong.

External references

^[1] Facebook Search Results (Pages) – 少年，你太年輕了

^[2] 百度貼吧 – 少年 你太年轻了 各个版本

About

Nana Gouvêa em Desastres (Nana Gouvêa in Disasters) is a single topic blog featuring photoshopped images of Brazilian model Nana Gouvêa placed into tragic and disturbing scenes, bearing many similarities to the photoshop meme Disaster Girl. The blog was created in response to a series of photos showing Gouvêa posing in front of damaged cars and buildings caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York City.

Origin

On October 30th, Brazilian news site Ego^[1] published a series of photos of Brazilian model Nana Gouvêa^[2] posing with fallen trees caused by the destruction of Hurricane Sandy in New York City (shown below). The photos were supplemented by an interview with the model who said she enjoyed the storm, since it allowed her to spend several romantic days with her husband, music producer Carlos Keyes. Many people in Brazil found the images to be distasteful, saying Gouvêa appeared to be using the disaster as a backdrop for her own beauty.^[6]

The day after the photos were uploaded, the single topic blog “Nana Gouvêa em Desastres”^[3] (“Nana Gouvêa in Disasters” in English) launched on Tumblr. Within 24 hours, the blog posted 45 images of the model photoshopped into various tragedies, including the sinking of the Titanic, the Hindenburg disaster and the September 11th attacks.

Spread

The same day, a Facebook page^[4] titled “Nana Gouvêa em Desastres” was launched, including reposts of many images taken from the Tumblr blog. Within 24 hours, the page accumulated more than 3700 likes. On October 31st, the Internet news blog YouPix^[5] published a post titled “Meme Do Dia: Nana Gouvêa Em Desastres,” which mocked Gouvêa’s apparent narcissism and highlighted several photoshopped images of the model. The same day, the story was reported by the internet culture blog the Inquistr^[7] and the Huffington Post.^[8] On Twitter^[9], Gouvea responded to the attention, retweeting news articles about the photos and the parody blog.

Sobre repercussão das paródias de suas fotos, Nana Gouvêa diz: “Achei hilariamente engraçado’”. opovotafalandoporai.blogspot.com/2012/10/sobre-…

— Nana Gouvêa(@NanaGouvea) October 31, 2012

In an interview on November 1st, Gouvea said that she found the photoshopped images humorous and that the photographs should not be seen in a negative light, as she was fully clothed and was not trying to sexualize the disaster. The same day, the entertainment news blog ThunderTreats^[11] published a post titled “Brazilian Model Nana Gouvea Turns Wreckage from Hurricane Sandy into Props for Photo Shoot” and the Herald Sun^[12] published an article titled “Brazilian Model Nana Gouvea Mocked for Sexy Sandy Photo Shoot.”

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

“Never Forget” is an expression and political slogan used to urge others to recall the events surrounding a national tragedy. It is commonly associated with the September 11th, 2001 attacks and is sometimes used ironically in reference to insignificant events.

Origin

According to an article published by NY Mag^[1], the expression was first used in relation to the Holocaust during World War 2:

“Never forget” long ago entered the lexicon, in relation to the Holocaust. It has now been reassigned to 9/11, where it is likely to remain. It has become a mantra and a marketing tool for politicians and merchandise alike.

According to Wikipedia,^[2] a similar slogan “Never forget the class struggle” was introduced by 1st Chairman of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedong in 1962, which subsequently became a popular slogan for the Chinese Cultural Revolution throughout the 1960s.

Precursor

The similar phrase “Lest we forget” originated in the refrain of the poem Recessional,^[5] written by Rudyard Kipling in 1897, in reference to the decline of British imperial power. In the Commonwealth countries, the phrase is commonly associated with World War I, specifically the battles that took place in Flanders. This is thanks to the “Ode of Remembrance,” taken from the poem For the Fallen, written by Lawrence Binyon in 1914.^[6] “Lest we forget” remains in common usage in those countries today, especially around holidays such as Remembrance Day (Nov. 11) and ANZAC Day (April 25).

September 11th Attacks

Following the suicide plane attacks against the United States on September 11th, 2001, the slogan was used to commemorate those who lost their lives. It also became associated with the United States militarism after being adopted by those who supported the subsequent War on Terror.^[7] Online, many September 11th animated GIFs and image macros were created using the slogan as a caption (shown below).

Spread

On January 1st, 2007, Xkcd published a comic titled “America,” which included a timeline with the event “Jimmy Carter attacked by giant swimming rabbit” and the caption “America must never forget” (shown below).

On January 26th, 2009, the webcomic site Dern Werks^[8] published an illustration of an ape from the 1968 science fiction film Planet of the Apes in front of a fallen Statue of Liberty with the caption “Never Forget” (shown below). On September 11th, 2010, Redditor BaudiROCZ submitted a post titled “Am I alone in hating the statement ‘Never Forget 9/11’?”,^[11] which complained about the way the phrase had become a platitude.

On November 3rd, 2011, Redditor martinap submitted a post titled “11/3/11 – Never Forget,”^[10] including an image mocking the public reaction to the Google search Easter egg referencing the “Do a barrel roll” Internet meme. On September 14th, 2012, Redditor robotsongs submitted a post to the /r/pics^[9] subreddit titled “Never Forget: 9/14/11 [NSFW],” featuring several nude photographs of actress Scarlett Johansson that had been leaked in September of 2011. Within one month, the post received over 24,500 up votes and 1,450 comments.

2007 Boston Bomb Scare

On January 31st, 2007, battery-powered LED placards resembling the pixel art Mooninite characters from the Adult Swim animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force were mistakenly identified by the Boston Police Department as explosive devices. The placards had been placed in various locations throughout Boston, Massachusetts as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign by the company Interference, Inc. After police arrested two men who had been hired to install the signs, many responded by calling the arrests an overreaction and holding signs saying “1-31-07 Never Forget” (shown below).

East Coast Earthquake

On August 23rd, 2011, a small earthquake erupted across the east coast of the United States, that resulted in a barrage of social media activity about the underwhelming seismic activity. On the same day, Redditor uncouthsilence5 submitted a post titled “Never Forget” to the /r/pics^[4] subreddit, featuring an image macro of a bald eagle superimposed over a fallen lawn chair with the caption “8/23/2011 / Never Forget” (shown below, left). Prior to being archived, the post received over 26,500 up votes and 990 comments.

Hurricane Irene

After Hurricane Irene hit United States shores n August 28th, 2011, several image macros were created with the caption “never forget” mocking the underwhelming damage caused by the tropical storm (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

Halo is a multi-billion dollar science fiction shooter franchise owned by Microsoft Studios and released by Bungie, Inc. and 343 Industries. It quickly became a critical and commercial success, and one of the Xbox’s most successful franchises.

History

The original Halo game, titled “Halo: Combat Evolved” was released on November 15, 2001.^[1] It stars a super-soldier named The Master Chief^[2], and follows his attempts to discover the secrets of the ring-shaped artificial world known as Halo. The game was critically acclaimed, with many heralding it as the Xbox’s Killer App.^[3] Due to is popularity, the video game was followed with two sequels, released in November 2004^[4] and September 2007^[5], respectively. There have also been several spin-off games, such as Halo: Reach^[6], set as the prequel to the original trilogy, and Halo 3: ODST^[7], set between the events of Halo 2 and 3. At E3 2011, Halo 4 and Halo CE: Anniversary^[8], an HD remake of the original title, were announced.

Halo 4 is set to dive deeper into the personal stories of both Master Chief and Cortana, his AI companion.^[9] It is slated for release on November 6, 2012, and is to be the first in a new trilogy known as the Reclaimer trilogy. In preparation for Halo 4, Microsoft commissioned “Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn”^[15], a live-action series designed to draw in new players to the Halo universe, as well as explain details of the Halo 4 story. Halo 5 and Halo 6 have been announced by the production team at 343 Industries, but there has been no specified release date for either of these titles.

Online Relevance

Halo has a large presence on sites like 4chan’s /v/^[10] board, Tumblr and Reddit’s gaming subreddit^[11]. Halo is also popular in Rooster Teeth productions, as well as Machinimas in general, with many popular series spawning from it. Halo also has a dedicated fansite, named Planet Halo^[12], as well as its own wiki^[13].

Red vs. Blue

Red vs. Blue is a Machinima series created and owned by Rooster Teeth Productions. It has become one on the pioneering an most influential machinimas as a whole. The story of Red vs. Blue is separate from that of the main Halo franchise, and is said to take place in “that moment when you throw the controller at the wall,” as stated by Rooster Teeth CEO, Burnie Burns. It tells of two factions of soldiers known as Red Team and Blue Team. The two teams know nothing more than the fact that their objective is to kill the other team. However, their incompetence usually prevents this from occurring, and more than often, the two teams wind up joining sides to combat a common enemy.

Arby ‘n’ the Chief

Arby ‘n’ the Chief^[14] is a machinima/live-action series produced by Jon CJG. The story chronicles the lives of two living action figures, Master Chief and the Arbiter. The running gag in the series is that the two toys are polar opposites from their in game counterparts. For example, Master Chief in the Halo series is the brave hero of humanity who slaughters thousands of aliens and always puts the safety of others above everything else, whereas the Chief toy in Arby ‘n’ the Chief is an immature, selfish, coward who will only do things for others if it helps him in the long run. The duo spend most of their time either playing Halo or wallowing in their own miseries. While playing Halo, they usually end up finding and stopping any number of hackers who are trying to destroy _Halo_’s mulitplayer mode.

Related Memes

Tea-bagging

Tea-bagging is a term used in video games to describe a player their character over a corpse and crouching up and down repeatedly. It is often used during online multiplayer games in an attempt to troll the user who’s character has just been killed, and make their death more humiliating. It is thought to have originated from the online mode in Halo: Combat Evolved, and grew in popularity before spreading to other games.

Pretty Cool Guy

Pretty Cool Guy is a snowclone, used to show approval to something. The first notable usage, was on 4chan’s /v/ board, when a user made a post in reference to Master Chief, saying:

I think Halo is a pretty cool guy. Eh kills aleins and doesnt afraid of anything.

Search Interest

References

With a record-shattering storm pounding the northeast, 54 million Americans are now dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  The toll – in disrupted or lost communities  - was staggering.  More than 40 lives lost while 90% of New Yorkers were left in the dark. The tri-state area has never seen before a storm quite like Sandy. 

New York’s subway network suffered the most damage in its 108 year history while the New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days, breaking a 124 year-record since its last closing in 1888.  President Obama approved disaster declarations for New York and New Jersey, making them eligible for federal assistance. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie stated these devastations were simply “incalculable”.  

In result of Hurricane Sandy, these past few days have shifted a new course of direction for both Presidential Candidates just before next Tuesday’s elections. President Obama has rescheduled his trips to Wisconsin and Ohio, the two battleground states in order to help with immediate relief efforts to aid victims. Mitt Romney stepped up for the American people, creating a funny yet harmless, entertaining music video with his good friend Gordon Gekko.  As Governor Romney puts it:  "Sandy wiped out many of the ‘sick-ass’ homes that only existed because of the colossal failure for issuing  ’no-doc’ loans”.  

SEE ROMNEY’S STATEMENT HERE -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw6KQKL_6LA

As for Election Day, which is just around the corner, many Americans will recognize Mitt Romney’s admirable effort to console the American people during this difficult time. Time will only tell on exactly how many Americans will recognize his wit.