About

“What Are Those?" is a video remix and parody series stemming from a short clip of a man loudly asking a police officer “What are those?” while panning to his black work boots.

Origin

On October 2nd, 2011, Urban Dictionary^[4] user JOHNxRYAN95 created an entry for “What Are Those?”, defining it as a question yelled at someone wearing unkempt or off-brand footwear. On June 14th, 2015, Instagram user Brandon Moore (a.k.a. Young Busco) uploaded a video in which he confronts a police officer by loudly asking “What are those?” before panning to his black shoes (shown below). Within three weeks, the video gained over 2,300 likes and 1,200 comments.

Spread

On June 18th, Viner A-RODney King^[3] reuploaded the video to Vine, where it received upwards of 20 million loops, 271,000 likes and 136,000 revines in the following two weeks. On June 20th, 2015, YouTuber Crey Crey^[2] reuploaded a looped version of the original Vine video, garnering more than 210,000 views and 1,700 likes over the following two weeks. On June 27th, the DeboraGrano Vines YouTube channel uploaded a compilation of notable remixes and parodies of the clip on Vine (shown below).

On June 28th, Viner Samuel Grubbs uploaded footage of a man standing at a pulpit before jumping down and asking a seated church goer “What are those?” (shown below, left). The following day, the pop culture blog Complex^[1] published an article about the Vine video series followed by an interview^[5] with the video’s creator. On July 1st, Viner Danny Gonzalez uploaded an autotuned remix of the original “what are those” audio dubbed over a scene from the film Jurassic Park (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the video gathered upwards of 8.9 million loops, 205,000 likes and 110,000 revines.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Tiny Hamster is a cute animal web series on YouTube featuring a “hamster”:/memes/hamsters or other small rodent performing human-like activities in an elaborately constructed miniature environment, like a hamster-sized dining room, all shot in high-resolution and often at a close-up angle.

Origin

The first Tiny Hamster video, titled “Tiny Hamster Eating Tiny Burritos (Ep. 1)” was uploaded by the YouTube account HelloDenizen,^[1] run by the social media marketing agency Denizen,^[2] on April 29th, 2014. As of July 2nd, 2015, the video has received over 10.6 million views.

Spread

The initial tiny hamster video was posted on Reddit in /r/videos the same day it was uploaded to YouTube, where it received 4,917 points (95% upvoted).^[9] From there, it was written about in the Huffington Post, Gizmodo, New York Daily News and many other news outlets.^[3][4][5] Later that year, the video won the Webby Award for best viral video, and to celebrate, the hamster ate tiny Webby Awards.

Other users began creating videos of their hamsters enjoying human-like environments. The account April’s Animals created some popular ones, including “Tiny Hamster in a Tiny Mansion,”(below, top left) which received over 2.3 million views between July 2014 and July 2015.^[7] A current search for the terms “Tiny Hamster” returns more than 43,600 videos on YouTube, although many of them are users uploading videos of their small hamsters, and not hamsters filmed in elaborate environments.^[8]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Leslie Hall is an internet personality, mostly known as being the leader of the band Leslie and the LYs^[1]. She has released multiple viral songs.

Online History

Leslie Hall became active on the internet during the year 2000^[2], when she created a website devoted to her so-called “gem
sweaters”^[3], sweaters she had collected that were decorated with gems.

She and her band (composed of former classmates of hers^[4]) had created their first album, Gold Pants, in 2005, when fans of her gem sweaters reacted positively to a specific outfit on the site that included a pair of “gold pants”^[5]. The music video for Gold Pants Lullaby, which was a song in the album, became a hit on Youtube^[6], encouraging Hall and her band members to make more. Her most popular hit, Tight Pants / Body Rolls, was released in 2010. She and her band continue to produce albums to the present.

Reputation

Hall’s work is often very strange and abstract, as many say that it is located in the weird part of Youtube.. As an extent, she herself is also viewed as weird. Hall is generally considered an activist over certain topics, such as gay rights and fat acceptance. She has gone to numerous conventions to perform for these causes. She also is a very exuberant vegan.^[7]

Related Memes

Tight Pants / Body Rolls

On of Hall’s most famous works, Tight Pants / Body Rolls^[8] became extremely popular on Youtube when it was released. This piece of music is known for its amateur video editing and the seemingly nonsensical lyrics. However, many critics loved it when it was released, calling it “Terrifying, but catchy”^[9] and “Second to none”^[10]. The song revolves around a main character, who is desperate to acquire tight pants, but discovers in the end that she had tight pants all along. The video has gained the notice of other Youtube stars such as The Fine Brothers, who made a react-style video using the music video^[11].

No Pants Policy

In 2013, Hall and her band released another music video that became incredibly popular. Called No Pants Policy, it became one of her most liked videos^[12]. The video editing had improved much since Tight Pants, and it was generally much better made. This time, the video focuses on a group of test subjects in a “Pants Deprivation Center”, who are subjected to a video of Leslie performing the song, in which she urges them to take their pants off.

Personal Life

Outside of the internet, Hall often goes on tours with her group. She also has continued to stock her gem sweater collection, which now has over 400 sweaters.^[13]

Search Interest

External References

^[1]IMDb – Leslie Hall Bio

^[2]MTV– Leslie Hall History

^[3]Leslie Hall.com – Leslie Hall’s Gem Sweater Museum

^[4]MTV– “Leslie and the LYs”;http://www.mtv.com/artists/leslie-hall-1/biography/

^[5]MTV– Leslie Hall History

^[6]Youtube – Popular Uploads

^[7]Ecorazzi – Interview with Ecorazzi

^[8]Youtube – Popular Uploads

^[9]Ninja Music Fish – Random Video Thursday

^[10]Las Vegas Weekly – Leslie Hall in Las Vegas

^[11]Youtube – Youtubers React to Tight Pants / Body Rolls

^[12]Youtube – Popular Uploads

^[13]Leslie Hall.com – Gem Sweater Collection

About

Battlestation is an Internet slang term for a desktop computer setup typically featuring high-end PCs primarily used for playing video games.

Origin

Prior to the coinage of the term “battlestation,” photographs of impressive desktop setups were often shared on various websites online. On April 17th, 2008, the tech news blog Nerd Business^[5] published a compilation of notable photographs of impressive home office setups. On November 25th, 2009, the /r/battlestations^[1] subreddit was launched, which features user-submitted photographs of high-end desktop computer spaces. Within six years, the community gained over 167,500 subscribers.

Spread

On June 2nd, 2010, Urban Dictionary^[4] user Proged submitted an entry for “battlestation,” defining it as a slang term for "a desktop computer setup. On July 18th, 2011, Redditor thrillhousevanhouton created the /r/shittybattlestations^[3] subreddit for photographs of poorly designed desktop computer spaces with damaged, cheap or outdated hardware (shown below, left). On January 17th, 2012, Redditor notnyt submitted a photograph of his home entertainment setup to the /r/battlestations^[2] subreddit, where it gathered more than 2,000 votes (94% upvoted) and 430 comments prior to being archived (shown below, right).

On February 4th, 2013, a gallery titled “Battle stations (from 4chan /v/)” was uploaded to Imgur,^[7] containing purported photographs of video game setups posted by members of 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board. On March 2nd, Redditor Jesus Cock submitted a post titled “My Tech Mancave,” containing photos of his PC gaming room equipped with five monitors and a biometric keypad lock. Before the post was archived, it received upwards of 3,200 votes (96% upvoted) and 590 comments on /r/battlestations,^[10] On July 29th, Redditor grey_sky submitted the Imgur gallery to the /r/WTF^[8] subreddit. On September 5th, Redditor GoodAtIt posted several high resolution photographs of his water cooled PC to /r/battlestations,^[6] where it gained over 5,400 votes and 700 comments prior to being archived.

On December 25th, the gaming news blog PC Gamer^[11] published a compilation of desktop computer setups titled “Battlestation showcase: the best of your PCs.” On February 5th, 2015, Redditor Marques-Brownlee posted a photograph of his desktop setup featuring two 4k resolution monitors to /r/battlestations,^[9] where it garnered upwards of 5,400 votes (94% upvoted) and 700 comments. On May 18th, the Gameranx YouTube channel uploaded a slideshow video featuring various high-end PC battlestations (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Grexit, short for “Greek exit,” is a portmanteau term used to describe the potential withdrawal of Greece from the European Union’s currency zone, commonly referred to as the Eurozone, mainly as a result of the country’s financial crisis and unmanageable public debt that first came to light in late 2009 and continues as of 2015.

Background

The Greek government’s sovereign debt crisis began in late 2009, becoming the first of four nations to be affected by the European debt crisis in the turmoil of the Great Recession, which was heavily compounded by the Greek economy’s structural weaknesses and over a decade of public overspending and fiscal mismanagement. In April 2010, as the country’s debt continued to pile up and investors’ concerns escalated, the Greek government requested and received an European Union-International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout loan of €45 billion to avoid defaulting on its public debt. However, following the Greek government’s implementation of fiscally austere policies aimed at reduction of spending, the Greeks’ public opinion and perception of its membership in the Eurozone quickly became divided into two opposing camps and prompted debates on both national and European-wide scales. On February 6th, 2012, the term “Grexit” was introduced by Citigroup’s chief analysts Willem H. Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari in a report titled “Rising Risks of Greek Euro Area Exit.”

Notable Developments

Post-Election Speculations

On January 27th, 2015, the debate was renewed following the formation of a new government under the leadership of Alexis Tsipras of the new Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) coalition party, with several government officials and economists arguing that a default on public debt is inevitable for Greece and any additional monetary aid from the European Union would only worsen the situation in the long term. On February 20th, Eurogroup, the assembly of Eurozone finance ministers, agreed to extend the duration of Greece’s bailout for an additional four months,

News Media Coverage

During this time, speculations of Grexit became extensively discussed across the rest of E.U. member states in the region, particularly among the news media in Germany, France and Italy, Greece’s three biggest creditors, providing a pivotal boost to the rise of the term “Grexit.”

Arrearment in IMF Debt

What ensued in the months after the bailout extension were a series of negotiation attempts between the Greek government and the Eurogroup to work out a mutually agreeable plan for economic reforms in the country, albeit without any fruition as the Eurogroup ultimately refused to further extend the bailout. As a result of the deadlock and the Greek government’s subsequent failure to meet the IMF’s June 30th deadline for repayment of €1.5 billion (approximately $1.7 billion USD),

Greek Bailout Referendum

On June 27th, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras proposed a referendum to decide whether Greece should accept or reject the extended bailout conditions proposed by the EU and IMF. That same day, with the IMF repayment deadline only days away, the Greek government announced a temporary nationwide shutdown of banks, including limitations on ATM withdrawals to €60 per day for each account, as well as the closure of the Athens stock exchange (ATHEX) for a week. The next day, the referendum was ratified by Parliament and the President to be held on July 5th.

Search Interest

External References

About

Facial Recognition Software is a type of computer application designed to identify a person by analyzing the subject’s facial features within a digital image or video.

History

Starting in 1964, the earliest facial recognition systems were engineered by computer scientists Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan and Charles Bisson, who created a database of images that associated each person with a list of computed distances between various facial markers. The technology progressed slowly until 1997, when software was developed by computer scientist Christoph von der Malsburg and several graduate students at the University of Southern California and Germany’s University of Bochum. The system could recognize faces that were partially blocked by a variet of identification impediments, including facial hair, glasses and sunglasses. In 2006, various facial recognition systems competed against one another at the Face Recognition Grand Challenge.^[2]

Online Presence

Facebook

On June 18th, 2012, the Tel Aviv-based facial recognition company Face.com was acquired by Facebook. On October 28th, 2013, NPR^[1] aired a segment on Facebook’s facial recognition systems, which highlighted the various privacy concerns associated with the technology.

Controversies

Nikon Blink Detection

On May 13th, 2009, Taiwanese-American strategy consultant Joz Wang published a blog post^[3] titled “Racist Camera! No, I did not blink… I’m just Asian!” featuring a photo of her Nikon camera mistakenly identifying a blink in her selfie picture (shown below). The photo was subsequently reblogged by Gizmodo^[4] and BoingBoing,^[5] who accused the Japanese camera manufacturer of lacking “tact” and “racial sensitivity.”

Google Photos “Gorilla” Label

On June 28th, 2015, Twitter user @jackyalcine^[6] posted a screenshot from his Google Photos app that had incorrectly identified a photo of an African American man and woman as “gorillas” (shown below). In the first week, the tweet gained over 2,800 retweets and 1,400 favorites.

That day, Google spokeswoman Katie Watson released a statement apologizing for the mistake, noting the company had taken steps to remove the possibility of it happening in the future.

“We’re appalled and genuinely sorry that this happened. We are taking immediate action to prevent this type of result from appearing. There is still clearly a lot of work to do with automatic image labeling, and we’re looking at how we can prevent these types of mistakes from happening in the future.”

On June 29th, Google chief architect Yonatan Zunger replied to a barrage of tweets accusing his company of developing racist technology, to which he replied that the software had also commonly mistaken white faces with dogs and seals, adding that “machine learning is hard.”

On July 1st, the pop culture site Fusion^[7] published an article by staff writer Charles Pulliam-Moore, who blamed the problem on the lack of racial diversity at companies like Google.

“Perhaps if the titans of Silicon Valley hired more engineers of color, things like this wouldn’t happen so often. Or, you know, ever.”

Related Memes

NBA 2K15 FaceScan FAIL

NBA 2K15 Facescan FAIL refers to poorly-scanned 3D models of players faces using images captured with the PlayStation Eye or Xbox Kinect in the basketball video game NBA 2K15.

How-Old.net

How-Old.net is a web application developed by Microsoft which uses facial-recognition technology to predict the age and sex of people pictured in photographs submitted to the site. Upon its release in late April 2015, the hashtag #HowOldRobot became a trending topic on Twitter as many users began tweeting about the poor accuracy of the app’s predictions.

Search Interest

External References

Origin

Bad Girls Club Season 2 premiered on December 4, 2007 on Oxygen with a group of women yet again living under the same roof, one of which was Tanisha Thomas, a notable player in this meme and a notable future member of the Bad Girls crew. At the beginning of the episode “Prank Wars Part 3: The Fat Lady Sings!”, (later referred to by fans as “Tanisha Bangs The Pans Of War”) Tanisha, angry at housemates Jennavicia, Cordelia and Darlen for keeping the other girls up the previous night, (after inviting boys over) and angrier still at their refusal to clean up their mess, grabs a set of baking pans and proceeds to stomp around the house. Banging the pans together, she yells to “GETTHEHELL UP!” and “CLEANTHEFUCKINGHOUSE!” with the occasional “I’M TIRED OF THISSHIT!” After previously waking up a crashing member on the living room couch with “LET ME HEARYOUSAYBWOMPBWOMP!”, she makes her way down the brightly-patterned hall to the open bedroom doors, leading to the iconic shot of her screaming a strangely rhythmic, sing-songy “I DIDN’T GET NO FUCKINGSLEEP‘CAUSE OF Y’ALL! YA’LL NOTGONNAGET NO SLEEP’CAUSE OF ME!” whilst banging the pans.

A remix of the song, later featured in the episode, was posted to YouTube by user ciara in 2010, and the notable moment was .gif-ed soon afterwards. Although circulated around some forums and an inside joke by fans of the show, it did not gain much traction as a meme until later.

Spread

Much later, in early 2014, the meme was revitalized by the Vine community, having discovered it much later after it’s original air date. The common format was to layer Tanisha’s pan-tantrum over different music. The earliest instance of this located was a simple camera-recorded vine by user PagonPigeon, seen here.It soon began to become a trend, with some compilation video made towards it. It is still somewhat notable as of recently, although not as widely circulated as before.

Notable Examples

Origin
This was “WelvenDaGreat’s” first success, the same man who later made the famous “Deez Nuts” vine.

Vine (itself)
A man asked Welven “The homies say you don’t got no bitches” in which Welven replied “Who don’t got no bitches?”, in an angry tone. The vine became famous on vine with over 10 million loops

Spread
A famous viner revined the vine after it became famous. After that Viner “WelvenDaGreat” was the new big thing. Over 10 million loops were recorded until the vines delete. Many compliations were made that helped the spread, including other famous people revining it. WelvenDaGreat ended up getting over 100K followers from ONE vine!

About

AMAgeddon is a name given to the mass privatization of many subreddits on the aggregator site Reddit following the firing of the admin Chooter.

Background

Victoria Taylor, better known on Reddit as /u/Chooter, was a Reddit admin most notable for organizing many Ask Me Anything threads.^[1] On June 2, 2015, it was reported that she was fired without notice. Several other mods were unaware of her firing after an AMA participant notified them that she did not get in contact with them.^[2]

Notable Developments

Subreddit Blackouts

Following the announcement of /u/Chooter’s release, /r/IAmA was marked as private in protest. Following this, hundreds of other subreddits took to being marked as private as well, including over half of Reddit’s default subreddits. Subs shutdown include /r/art, /r/askreddit, /r/books, /r/fallout, /r/gaming, /r/gravityfalls, /r/music, /r/pics, and /r/montageparodies.^[3]

(more info as soon as it is available)

Search Interest

Not available

External References

About

Star Wars Rebels^[1] is an American CG series set in the Star Wars universe. The series is set in the time between Episode 3 and Episode 4, approximately 5 years before A New Hope. The series follows a small band of rebel fighters, including two Jedi, as they struggle to fight against the Imperial presence on the backwater planet of Lothal. The series also focuses on the origins of the much larger Rebel Alliance. The series gain instant notoriety when it was announced that James Earl Jones would reprise his role as Darth Vader for the first time since Revenge of the Sith in 2005. ^[2]

History

After Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and Star Wars, the Cartoon Network series, Lucasfilm announced that they would begin “winding down” the Star Wars The Clone Wars series, and was subsequently announced that the series would be cancelled. ^[3] Following this, Lucasfilm announced that a new series would be produced titled Star Wars Rebels. ^[4] When talking about the inspiration for the series, and it’s differences to The Clones Wars, executive producer Simon Kinberg said: ^[5]

We pretty quickly got to this idea that though Rebel Alliance that was such an integral part of the movies, we know next to nothing about the formation of at least in terms of the movies and The Clone Wars. There was nothing in the canon that had delved deep into it. That’s where it started – let’s tell the story of the formation of the heroes in the original movies.

The place we went back to as to a visual template was Ralph McQuarrie, who was one of the original concept artists for the original Star Wars films. His art is softer, a little more figurative, more of a feel of being drawn, less computer generated. The first few movies had a bit of a hand-made quality. We wanted the show to have that. There’s also in the archives where [creator George] Lucas keeps all the original art and props, there’s tons of art that’s McQuarrie’s musing on the Star Wars universe that was never used in the films.

Online Relevance

Star Wars Rebels has a sizable following online, both within and outside of the larger Star Wars fandom. On Tumblr there a numerous posts tagged under the series, ^[6][7][8] as well as specific blogs dedicated to the series. ^[9][10] On Reddit there is a dedicated subreddit that has near 4,000 readers. ^[11]

On YouTube the official trailers for both seasons have over 3.5 and 1.8 million views respectively (both shown below).

Several parodies have been made of Star Wars Rebels by other companies that have ties to Lucasfilm and Disney. On October 4, 2014 the BTV uploaded a video from “Angry Birds”: which was promoting their new Rebels themed levels (shown below, left). As of July 2015 the video has over 1.5 million views. On December 4, 2014 “Lego”: made a parody of Rebels (shown below, right). As of July 2015 the video has over 1.5 million views.

Search Interest

External References

This entry is a heavy W.I.P

About

Five Nights at Freddy’s Fan-games are games with the Five Nights at Freddy’s style that are made by the fandom.

History

Fan-games first started when people started to decompile the game files, and some used it to replace or modify certain characters. The amount of fan-games started to rise when the second game came out, giving people more sources. Some others made their games from scratch to make new mechanics and have their games be as original as possible.

Notable Examples

Five Nights at Fuckboy’s

Arguably the most popular fan-game and the most followed fan-game is Five Nights at Fuckboy’s, a parody of the original Five Nights at Freddy’s made in RPG Maker by Sable Lynn. It later got 2 sequels. It contains some of the most used quotes in the fandom such as “Inhale my dong enragement child.”

One Night at Flumpty’s

One of the most notable and popular fan-games is One Night at Flumpty’s by Jonochrome. It features Flumpty the Egg, Birthday Boy Blam, Grunkfuss the Clown, The Beaver, Redman, and Golden Flumpty. The gameplay is similar to the original Five Nights at Freddy’s with a few details changed in it. The game got a more creative sequel, and was going to get a 3rd installment but ended up being cancelled.

Five Nights at Treasure Island

Another popular fan-game is Five Nights at Treasure Island, which is based off the creepypasta Abandoned by Disney. It was made by AnArt1996 and later picked up by The Purity Sinners. The game features characters from the creepypasta such as Photo-Negative Mickey, but also includes it’s own characters such as Oswald or Undying. In the game you must shut off cams or hide under desks to avoid being killed by the roaming suits and humanoids.

Imgur user IFKTyrantr originally posted a gif of a girl working out on a yoga ball, followed by a cat walking into the frame and sitting in front of the camera.
http://imgur.com/gallery/qBtvSZs

The top comment for this post, written by muthafluffinspidaman, said “Someone needs to edit every NSFW gif and put that cat to censor”. Two users, fabrixxm and bluwoh, both created different transparent versions of the gif, and thus, SFW Cat was born.
http://imgur.com/gallery/M3zbM4X
http://imgur.com/gallery/aMHCksi

Sightings of SFW Cat in the wild:
http://i.imgur.com/LgAK7rD
http://i.imgur.com/5mMsaWD
http://i.imgur.com/5Sf5RUu

About

“We Did It Reddit!” is an ironic statement used when a website or a online community accomplishes something or takes credit for things they did nothing to help.

Origin

Although the origin of the phrase is unknown and some of its uses are dated back to 2012, it increased its populariaty after a campaign by reddit to find the author of the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, framing the college student Sunil Tripathi as the author. Soon, the phrase “we did it, reddit” started being used as victory for finding the author, but the incriminated student wasn’t the author, making the investigation useless.^[1][2][3][4] Since the, the catchphrase has been mainly used ironically.

Percursor

It’s believed that a percursor of the catchphrase could be found on The Colbert Report, hosted by the American writer and actor Stephen Colbert. In the show, Colbert often uses a banner with the phrase “We Did It”.

Spread

The catchphrase inspired the creation of various subreddits, /r/wediditreddit,^[5] created on April 20th, 2013 and with 70 subscribers, and /r/WE_DID_IT_REDDIT/,^[5] created arround the same date and with 61 subscribers, where the posts are unrelated news or images, implying reddit has helped on them. The catchphrase is also used on other websites, like 4chan^[7] or Tumblr,^[8] is similar vein to reddit’s use of it.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

Heavy editing, yes I know.

About

Baka is Japanese word meaning fool usually describing someone doing/being foolish or childish acts and/or style.

Origin

Although the exact origin is unknown,the earliest use of the phrase appear in Japan around 1336-1392. But it is speculated to be used earlier in Chinese literary (the earliest being 246 B.C.). The definition of baka that is used today was thought to be used around 1663-1733, from the Sanskrit meaning “foolish.”

Spread

The word baka became a popular trope in anime, often used by tsundere girls to insult their crush. Also being the name of popular anime and songs; such as Baka to Test to Shōkanjū and Triple Baka.

Usage

Majority of people use the word baka are weeaboos and anime fags who talk shit other people waifus despite theirs being shit also. They can’t conceive the idea of using the English word “idiot” as part of their language. Kappa.

Search Interest

WIP. Feel free to request editorship

About

Mad Max is a post-apocalyptic movie series created by the director George Miller and produced by Byron Kennedy. The series follow the adventures of Max Rockatansky, a police officer of the Main Force Patrol in a future Australia whose civilization is rapidly collapsing due to war and critical resource shortages and degenerates into barbarity.

History

Mad Max: Road Fury

Reception

Online Relevance

Related Memes

Feminist Mad Max

Feminist Mad Max is a single topic blog which posts image macros of screen captures of Max and pairs them with feminist texts in the style of Feminist Ryan Gosling.

You Will Arrive At The Gates Of Valhalla, Shiny And Chrome!

“You Will Arrive At The Gates Of Valhalla, Shiny And Chrome!” is a memorable quote from Immortan Joe, and associated with images of people with silver spray on their mouths. The quote is a reference to the symbolic act portrayed by the War Boys, who sprayed on their mouths to have a glorious death and “get into Valhalla”. On May 23rd, 2015, a picture of a man with the mouth painted with silver spray was posted into /r/WTF (shown bellow), gaining over 4,500 upvotes in less than two months.^[2] The same image was posted two days later on 9gag, gaining over 28,800 points in less than two months.^[1] The catchphrase has also spread on other communities, like Tumblr.^[3][4]

Search Interest

External References

WARNING: This entry contains spoilers and NSFW content, digression is advised.

About

The End of Evangelion is a 1997 animated film which serves as a conclusion to the 1995 anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. As Evangelion has a substantial following online, the film is popular among fans of the seriese and anime in general and has inspired numerous memes.

History

Neon Genesis Evangelion first ran on television from 1995 to 1996. During the course of its run, the studio producing the series, Studio Gainax, infamously ran out its budget for the show before it could finish airing, leading to two highly abstract final episodes for the show’s run. To appease fans who felt unsatisfied with the ending, Gainax created two movies: Death and Rebirth, a recap that contained the first third of the new ending, and The End of Evangelion, the fully finished ending.^[1]

Plot

The End of Evangelion takes place after the 24th episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The film itself is divided into two episodes, labelled 25’ and 26’ to differentiate them from the TV counterparts. 25’ mainly details the attack on NERV headquarters by the Japanese Strategic Self-Defense Force and the deaths that ensue from it, while 26’ focuses primarily on the Third Impact, the name given to the show’s apocalyptic situation, and Shinji Ikari’s internal retrospection on what it means to live.

Reception

Although the film received incredibly polarizing reviews when it was first released, The End of Evangelion has been viewed positively in later years. The film currently has a score of 8.2 on IMDb, an audience score of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a rating of 8.41 on MyAnimeList.^[2][3][4]

Online Presence

Gendowned

Gendowned is a series of edits involving the Evangelion character Gendo Ikari shooting a gun at various subjects. The footage of Gendo is taken from an The End of Evangelion scene in which he murders Ritsuko Akagi for attempting to stop the Third Impact.

Komm, süsser Tod

“Komm, süsser Tod” (“Come, sweet death”) is a song performed by Arianne Cleopatra Schreiber and played during the climax of the film in which the Third Impact takes place. The song is especially popular among fans of the series, especially on the imageboard 4chan, where it has been embedded onto various boards of the website in response to “tragic” events such as the purchase of the Oculas Rift by Facebook and the retirement of moot as the head of 4chan.^[5]

Tang

Tang is a fan name given to LCL, a fictional liquid in the Evangelion series said to be the blood of the angel Lilith. Though LCL does show up in the television series’ proper, its most infamous use comes from the Third Impact scene of End of Evangelion in which the remaining living characters are reverted into the substance. Because of its bright orange appearance in the movie, it is commonly joked among fans to resemble the powdered drink Tang, and those who revert into LCL are referred to as “being tanged”.^[6]

Movie Poster

The poster for End of Evangelion, which features Shinji Ikari and Asuka Langley Soryu facing the giant head of Rei Ayanami following the failure of the Third Impact, has become an iconic image among anime fans and is occasionally parodied.

Search Interest

External References

About

“Dirty” Dan Schneider is a television producer and a memetic pedophile, known for his escapades inside the kids/teens that appear in his shows and their feet.

Origin

Dan “Hold her down, she’s a fighter” Schneider was born on January 14, 1966, and later went on to become a succesful writer/producer for many Nickelodeon shows, bringing him into contact with many underaged girls in the process.

Spread em’ Wider

With him coming into contact with many underaged girls involved with his shows, Dan “Get in the van” Schneider was given ample opportunity to sexually abuse his stars and indulge in his foot fetish

Various Names

Search Interest

About

The Google DeepDream code is an artificial intelligence program created by scientists at Google that generates pictures based on the visualizations of artificial neural networks by spotting details in pictures and attempting to identify them. After Google made the code publicly available, creating custom images, GIFs, and video using the program became popular online.

Origin

On June 17, 2015, Google Research Blog’s post “Inceptionism: Going Deeper into Neural Networks” described how the neural network AI analysis exploits certain features it recognizes and enhances based on images it has already seen, thereby creating figures in the image that Google referred to as neural network “dreams.”^[1]

On July 1, 2015, the Google Research blog released the “DeepDream” code, created by Software Engineers Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah, and Mike Tyka in the Python language, as open-source via GitHub and encouraged users to share their image processing results using the hashtag“#deepdream.”^[2][3] Some users created websites that use the DeepDream code to modify images, so as to create user interfaces for non-programmers or those not familiar with inputting images into Python code.^[4][5]

Spread

Upon the release of the code, which was widely publicized,^[12] users began using the hashtag in droves to demonstrate their use of the tool. Between July 1st and July 6th, 2015, over 10,000 posts on Twitter have used the hashtag “#deepdream.”^[9]

On July 3, 2015, Twitter user “@One_30_One” tweeted a modified version of a poster from the anime series Love Live! using the code (image below, left), with the caption “Oh lord what have I done #deepdream #lovelive @LoveLive_staff”, receiving more than 170 retweets and 110 favorites.^[6] On the same day, The University of Cambridge posted a picture on Instagram of the campus’ famous Corpus Clock modified by Deep Dream (image below, right) with the caption “We ran the #chronophage through Google’s #deepdream algorithm. Is it the first photo to become less surreal after conversion? #CambridgeUniversity #clock” and received over 900 likes.^[7]

It has also become a trending topic on Facebook and Instagram, where more than 1000 posts have been created with the hashtag.^[13] The subreddit r/deepdreams has over 800 subscribers as of July 2015^[10]. Reddit user TheMadStork posted a gif generated using the code on r/creepy and was frontpaged with more than 3000 upvotes and 400 comments^[11].

YouTube user Roelof Pieters ran a scene of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas through the Deep Dream program, and uploaded the clip to YouTube, where it received 27,00 views in three days.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

References

About

Rainbow Dash Saluting refers to an exploitable image featuring the character Rainbow Dash from the Hasbro animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic standing to attention and giving a salute. It is often superimposed on top of images of various flags.

Origin

The original still frame (shown below) featuring Rainbow Dash saluting was taken from the seventh episode of the first season of MLP, Dragonshy.^[1] In the scene, Rainbow Dash performs the gesture in response to a patriotic remark by Twilight Sparkle.

Spread

The first example of the fad to be submitted to Derpibooru, a MLP image hosting site, was uploaded on January 24th, 2012.^[2] It features a communism-themed background with filter effects. Versions of the exploitable image featuring other ponies from the franchise striking the same pose have also been created (examples below).

Various Examples

External References

About

Age of Empires Logic is a series of advice animals that aims to poke fun at some of the logical flaws in the real time strategy game series Age of Empires(Age of Empires II in particular) due to the graphical limitations the game had when it was first developed. The Advice animal consist of an image of the King from the cover art of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings with a blue color wheel background.

Origin

Precursor

On January 31st, 2011, Awkward Zombie released a webcomic titled “Great Wololo Of China (Part1)”^[1] which pokes fun at the villager’s AI in Age of Empires II. A second webcomic titled “Great Wololo Of China (Part2)”^[2] was released on Feburary 7th, 2011.

Advice Animal

On February 10th, 2011, the first variation of the advice animal was submitted to Meme Generator.^[3] The advice animal has since cumulated over 10.600 derivatives in 4 years. The image of the king used in the advice animal originated from the cover box of Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings.

Spread

On December 20th, 2011, FunnyJunk user ifunnyninja submitted an image titled “Age of Empires” which gained over 50.600 views and 1.896 upvotes in 3 years.^[6] On November 3rd, 2013, FunnyJunk user submitted an image titled “Age of Empires” which gained over 64.000 views.^[7]

On an unregistered date, an anonymous 9gag user submitted an image titled “Age of Empires II” which gained over 47.000 upvotes.^[4] On another unregistered date, an anonymous 9gag user submitted image titled “Age of Empires” which gained over 20.500 upvotes.^[5]

Official Acknowledgement

One of the collectible steam trading cards for Age of Empires II HD Edition is called “King of Memes” which is a direct reference to the advice animal.^[8]

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References