About

“I’ve Made a Huge Mistake” is an expression indicating that the speaker feels remorse for something that he or she has done. It is often associated with a reaction GIF featuring the character Gob from the television sitcom Arrested Development.

Origin

The phrase is believed to have originated from an episode of the American television sitcom Arrested Development, which ran on the Fox television station from November 2nd, 2003 to February 10th, 2006. In the show, the character Gob would often utter the expression “I’ve made a huge mistake” after realizing he had done something wrong (shown below).

Urban Dictionary^[2] user dogmatica submitted an entry for the phrase on October 1st, 2005, citing Gob’s use of the expression in Arrested Development (shown below).

Animated GIF

On December 26th, 2011, Redditor childofmarvel submitted a post titled “How I feel when my boyfriend doesn’t get my Arrested Development jokes” the /r/gifs^[4] subreddit, which featured an animated GIF of Gob saying the line “I’ve made a huge mistake” from the end of an episode titled “Key Decisions” (shown below).

Spread

On February 3rd, 2012, a Quickmeme^[5] page for “I’ve Made a Huge Mistake” was created, which featured a still image of Gob from Arrested Development with captions describing regrettable actions. The same day, Redditor SamuraiLom submitted a Quickmeme image macro to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[6] subreddit, including the caption “I fucked my chemistry lab partner / it’s the second week of the semester” (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post received over 7,300 up votes and 345 comments.

On April 10th, Redditor berryhill submitted a post titled “Day 2 after shaving my ass” to the /r/gifs^[7] subreddit, which linked to the original Gob animated GIF as the punchline. On April 15th, a page was created for “I’ve made a huge mistake” on the Arrested Development Wiki^[3], citing several times the expression was spoken in the show. As of November 19th, 2012, four Facebook^[1] pages titled “I’ve Made a Huge Mistake” have been created.

Notable Examples

The phrase has been used to caption other image macros in which the subject appears to be distraught.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

#OpIsrael is an Anonymous-led raid to to protest Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense^[1] by taking down Israeli government websites through distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

Background

In early November 2012, the Israel Defense Forces took to Twitter to live-update about the status of the fight in Gaza. On November 14th, IDF killed Ahmed Jabari, the chief of Hamas’ military wing, in an airstrike. Being the highest ranking Hamas official to be killed by the IDF since the 2008 Gaza War, the news of Jabari’s assassination quickly escalated tensions between the two sides.

The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas& Islamic Jihad targets.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

On November 15th, Anonymous-affiliated blog Anon Relations^[2] claimed that Israel’s government had publicly threatened to cut off Gaza’s internet access and called for an attack on the country’s most important websites in retaliation. The post included a “care package” file in both English and Arabic containing the press release, first aid instructions, a proxy to hide the user’s IP addresses, a technical guide on how to get around an internet access ban and a image file of the Anonymous seal.

Notable Developments

On November 15th, a Pastebin file^[5] containing more than 650 web addresses defaced as part of the operation was created by Anonymous Grupo. Additionally, another Pastebin file^[6] was created to collect useful information for those in Gaza, including links to the care packages, cell phone apps, medical information, livestreams, news links and dial-up internet access numbers, among other resources. The same day, a modified version of the previous day’s communique was posted to YouTube by Gigabytedrop and a Twitter account^[3] and Facebook fan page^[4] were launched with the designated hashtag for the movement: #OpIsrael.

In the following days, as many as seven hundreds Israeli websites reportedly experienced temporary shutdowns and defacements on the homepage, including the Bank of Jerusalem, the Israeli Defense Ministry and the President’s official website among many others. On the 18th, it was reported that Anonymous members had leaked the personal information of more than 5,000 Israeli officials.^[15] However, as of 8:30 PM EST on November 19th, the link leads to a 404 page on Engelhardt Consult, a Denmark business site. By the 19th, Israel’s Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz claimed the country had blocked more than 44 million cyber attacks on government websites.^[16]

Israel, all your base are belong to us.

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) November 16, 2012

News Media Coverage

Beginning on the 15th, internet culture blogs and news sites ncluding BetaBeat^[7] and WebProNews^[8] began covering Anonymous’ operation. Over the next four days, additional coverage of the cyberattack appeared on Breitbart^[9], Cnet^[10], Forbes^[11], the Daily Dot^[12], Vice^[13] and Fox News.^[14]

Online Reaction

On November 15th, Redditor twolf1 submitted a post titled “Anonymous warns Israel: ’No one cuts internet on our watch” to the /r/worldnews^[17] subreddit, which received over 5,300 up votes and 780 comments with the next four days. Many commenters criticized the report linked in the post, arguing that Anonymous was a nebulous entity with no central leadership. The same day, Redditor HouseSpeaker submitted a post titled “Anonymous is on it: Israel threatens to cut Gaza off from the Internet, telecommunications, ‘NO ONE shuts down the Internet on our watch’” to the /r/anonymous^[18] subreddit.

Criticisms

On November 19th, 2012, the tech news blog Gizmodo^[19] published a post titled “Anonymous is Losing its War Against Israel,” comparing the attacks to “egging someone’s house.” The article dismissed the group’s indiscriminate targetting of any website with an Israeli domain, which ended up taking down mostly small businesses, and the leaking of “Israeli supporter” personal information as largely ineffective. The article also included several screen shots from the hacker group’s IRC channel, arguing that the communications were disjointed and chaotic (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

George Takei an author and actor known for playing the character Hikaru Sulu in the science fiction television series Star Trek and his strong online presence in advocacy of LGBT rights.

Online History

On June 2nd, 1999, Takei registered the domain for his personal website GeorgeTakei.com,^[5] which features biographical information, media galleries, a blog and a contact form. On November 1st, 2010, YouTuber significantjay uploaded a video titled “George Takei Calls Out Anti-Gay Arkansas School Board Member,” in which Takei responded to the former Arkansas school board member Clint McCance by calling him a “douche bag” (shown below). Within two years, the video received over 1.54 million views and 8,650 comments.

Takei joined Twitter^[1] on January 13th, 2011 and went onto accumulate over 490,000 followers in less than two years. On March 23rd, the official Facebook^[3] page for George Takei was created, which received over 2.9 million likes within the next 22 months. On May 19th, YouTuber allegiancebway uploaded a video titled “George Takei vs. Tennessee’s ’Don’t Say Gay’ Bill,” in which Takei offered the use of his last name to substitute for the word “gay.” Within 19 months, the video amassed over 1.2 million views and 9,600 comments.

On November 17th, Takei created a Tumblr^[4] blog titled “Are you talking to Meme?”, which features posts containing photographs and image macros (shown below).

“Oh My”

Takei has often been associated with the catchphrase “Oh My,” which originated from Takei’s character in the Disney Channel sitcom Cory in the House according to the Straight Dope Forums.^[2] The phrase was often sampled on the Howard Stern radio show, typically in response to sexual innuendo. On January 18th, 2009, YouTuber Ralph Miller uploaded a video titled “Oh My ‘The George Takei Song’,” featuring the Howard Stern sample mixed with the song “Oh Yeah” by Yello (shown below, left). On April 27th, 2010, YouTuber bigtvshop uploaded a commercial for the television manufacturer Sharp, in which Takei says the phrase “Oh my” (shown below, right).

Reputation

Takei is seen by many as a respected member of the gay rights community and is often lauded for his humorous interactions through social media. The Asteroid 7307 was named after Takei when it was discovered on April 13th, 1994. Takei was presented with the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Emperor of Japan in 2004 for his contributions to US-Japanese international relations. On June 7th, 2012, Takei received the LGBT Humanist Pride Award for gay rights activism. On November 18th, 2012, BuzzFeed^[6] published a post titled “11 Reasons George Takei is the Absolute Best,” which included several screenshots of several notable tweets by Takei (shown below).

Personal Life

Takei was born in Los Angeles, California to Japanese American parents on April 20th, 1937. In October of 2005, Takei revealed that he was in a committed homosexual relationship with partner Brad Altman for the past 18 years in an interview in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender magazine Frontiers. Takei announced that he would be marrying Altman on May 16th, 2008, becoming the first same-sex couple to apply for a marriage license in West Hollywood, California. The two were married on September 14th, 2008.

Search Interest

External References

About

Lunch Bag Art is a single topic blog on Tumblr showcasing the artwork of Derek Benson, who has been drawing intricate designs and character art on his children’s brown paper lunch bags since 2008.

Origin

Derek Benson, a video game developer, launched the blog Lunch Bag Art^[1] on September 7th, 2008, posting eight different lunch bags he had drawn on, featuring charaters from Pokemon (shown below, left), Canadian animated series Total Drama (shown below center) and Spongebob Squarepants (shown below, right).

Spread

On November 7th, 2008, exactly two months after the blog launched, Benson’s drawings were featured on Serious Eats^[5], leading to additional coverage on internet culture blogs Urlesque^[6], Neatorama^[7] and Kotaku^[8] in 2008. The next year, more of his lunch bag artworks were featured on My Modern Met^[9], Trend Hunter^[10] and marker company Sharpie’s official blog^[11], which included one of Benson’s first interviews about his Tumblr blog. In this interview, he revealed that he does the drawings on his lunch break or while helping his kids with homework.

Between 2010 and 2012, Lunch Bag Art has been featured on Buzzfeed^[12], Uproxx^[13], the Chive^[14], the Huffington Post^[15] and Smosh.^[16] In July 2012, Benson posted a tutorial^[17] to his blog on how he approaches his lunch bag art. He noted on Twitter^[18]that the process was supposed to take no more than 20 minutes. As of November 2012, Lunch Bag Art has more than 2400 followers on Twitter^[2] and more than 1200 fans on Facebook.^[3] The site also has a store^[4] with shirts featuring some of Benson’s artwork.

Notable Examples

Derivative Artists

Following in Benson’s footsteps, other bloggers began posting their lunch bag artwork. In 2009, Matt Roberts launched Lunch Bag Artist^[19] (shown below, left) to document the bags he would put together for his three children. Over the course of four weekdays, each child would receive a piece of a larger picture, which Roberts would document on the site. The following year, Scott Semegran took to his personal blog^[20] to chronicle the bags he decorated for his two daughters (shown below, right) while they were attending summer camp, a tradition he continued^[21] in 2011.

Search Interest

[Not currently available]

External References

On the 20th November 2012, 4chan, /b/ board users targeted the multi-player online social network website WeeWorld in a manner identical to that of the 2006 “Pool’s Closed” raids.

The event, dubbed “Operation Weeing”, initially focused on the WeeWorld High-Gym and Paris rooms, but later spread to the New User Town, and Lava Lagoon rooms.

[This is an open entry. If you would like to contribute to researching this entry, please request editorship. If all editorships are currently full, head over to the forum thread to further discuss the entry.]

Overview

The Y2K Bug, sometimes known as the Millennium Bug or Year 2000 Problem, was a result of digital storage using two-digit abbreviations for years in their systems. In the 1990s, many people were concerned that the rollover between December 31st, 1999 and January 1st, 2000 would result in mass computer failure.

Background

When computer languages were initially developed, coders opted to drop the “19” in years as a way to save some of the limited space they were given to work with.^[1] This ideology was transferred to COBOL, a language created in 1959, which was used to program many of the world’s personal computers. In the 1960s, an IBM programmer named Robert Bemer was helping a group from the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-Day Saints with a genealogical research project^[3] when he realized the first two year digits were necessary for dates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bemer, who participated in developing ASCII and the process behind the Escape button helped develop a way to use a four digit reference code for years and became an avid proponent of implementing this throughout COBOL. He published warnings about the need for four digit year codes twice in the 1970s.^[4]

The term “Y2K” was not coined until June 12th, 1995 when the Massachusetts-based programmer David Eddy suggested the term on the Year 2000 mailing list in lieu of Year 2000, Century Date Change and Faddle, among others.^[5] By 1997, the mailing list had more than 16,000 subscribers^[6] and was maintained by Peter de Jager, who also ran Year2000.com^[7] as a hubsite for information on the possible bug.

Media Hype

The growing online concern about the Y2K bug garnered attention from the mainstream media, who were reporting more and more on the rapidly expanding internet community. The media’s well-documented penchant for overhyping events fuelled public alarm at the Y2K bug. The media reports fuelled a storm of “prepping”; some members of the public, convinced that the global economy was on the brink of collapse, began stockpiling food and supplies. Some commercial survival kits were even manufactured.^[1][9]

Even some governments decided to set up Y2K-related sites to reassure the public and to publicize contingency plans. Then-U.S. President Bill Clinton even addressed the issue in his 1999 State of the Union address:

“We need every State and local government, every business, large and small, to work with us to make sure that [the] Y2K computer bug will be remembered as the last headache of the 20th century, not the first crisis of the 21st.”

The U.S. Government’s official Y2K site was Y2K.gov^[8]. It first went live in mid-1998, and featured contingency plans, as well as updates about the status of various resources, such as food, gas, and electricity. After it became apparent that the Y2K bug amounted to nothing, the site was rebranded as a clearinghouse for government Y2K-related information.

Search Interest

External References

About

“Trolling Chris Brown” is a single topic blog that is centered around making snarky remarks to R&B singer Chris Brown’s Tweets. It was founded by That Guy With The Glasses resident music reviewer Todd in the Shadows.

Orgin

The blog was formed in March of 2012 by music reviewer Todd in the Shadows, who has shown in the past that he’s not a fan of Brown and has previously reviewed two of his songs. Around the same time, he posted an episodes of his “Pop Song Reviews” show where it was made to look like he was going to review Brown’s most recent single “Turn Up the Music”. However, he later mentioned it was just another club dance song, and instaed talked about how it’s ridiculous that his fans think he’s perfect despite his infamous domestic abuse episode with his ex-girlfriend Rhianna. At the end of the video, he mentions that he created the blog originally for laughs, but then it turned into serious business when he kept seeing how stupid the Tweets got.

Original Episode

Examples of Tweets

Spread

Background

On September 26th, 2012, American child actor Cole Sprouse^[1], best known for his work with his twin brother Dylan in the Disney Channel sitcom series The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, launched a Tumblr blog titled “Coleture Concept.” He tweeted about it twice that day^[2][3], asking his followers on Twitter to use his blog as a platform to “discuss things that matter.” In its beginning, Sprouse featured some of his own photography works^[4] on the site, but soon became pre-occupied with answering fan questions.

Notable Developments

The same day that Sprouse unveiled his Tumblr blog, the child actor’s fan site Sprouseland^[5] linked to the blog in a post. Throughout October, Sprouse continued to interact with his fans on the blog by answering user-submitted questions and even posting photos and audio of himself per request. On October 23rd, Livejournal gossip blog Oh No They Didn’t!^[6] posted screenshots of Sprouse’s blog posts, which was positively received with more than 300 comments from the LiveJournal community. On the following day, celebrity news site Crushable^[7] reported on Sprouse’s blog, detailing his witty reactions to being discovered as a celebrity and citing a post in which Sprouse stated he loved Tumblr’s likes and reblogs “in the same way I love a nursery filled with kids who defecate on themselves.”^[8]

Account Deletion

On November 18th, Sprouse published his last Tumblr post^[9] featuring a photo of himself with his hair over his face, one hand over his heart and the other in a two-fingered salute, along with the text explaining that he had accomplished his goal of running a social experiment through the microblogging platform and that his account would be removed. The post gained nearly 18,000 notes in the first 72 hours. This announcement was followed by a series of tweets (shown below) further explaining his project as a way to see how people would react to the idea of being observed.

Though Sprouse’s tweets were soon deleted, he left one^[10] post intact with a link to George Michael’s 1984 hit single “Careless Whisper.” (shown below)

youtube.com/watch?v=izGwDs…I did this for us, I never meant to hurt you, bby I still love you

— Cole M. Sprouse (@TheOleKingCole) November 19, 2012

Shortly before the deactivation of his Tumblr account, the blog Coleture Concept Archive^[13] was created by his fans to archive every post Sprouse had created. Following its removal, an unknown Tumblr user picked up the same URL and continued to field questions from Sprouse’s fans while impersonating his character. More discussions about his blog and reactions to its deletion can be found under the Tumblr tags Cole Sprouse^[11] and ColetureConcept.^[12]

On November 19th, Oh No They Didn’t!^[14] published a follow-up post explaining the context of Sprouse’s Tumblr experiment, which generated more than 400 comments in the first 48 hours. The same day, Sprouse tweeted an image macro of a small gray animal sitting in a box of pastries with the caption “Do what you must, I have already won.” The tweet utilized the hashtag #TumblrOzymandias, referring to Percy Byssshe Shelley’s 1818 poem “Ozymandias”^[15] that focuses on how all leaders and empires fall over time. It was retweeted more than 375 times and favorited nearly 550 times in the first 48 hours.

#TumblrOzymandiastwitter.com/TheOleKingCole…

— Cole M. Sprouse (@TheOleKingCole) November 20, 2012

Search Interest

External References

(WIP)

Background

Operation Pillar of Defense^[1] is an operation launched by the Israel Defense Forces after the murder of Ahmed Jabari, chief of Hamas’ military wing in Gaza. The goals of the operation are to both halt rocket attacks launched from Gaza against civilian targets and to disrupt the actions of militant organizations.

Notable Developments

November 14th: Announcement

Instead of formally declaring the attacks via a press conference or traditional news outlet, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) took to their Twitter account @IDFSpokesperson^[2] to announce the campaign.

The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas& Islamic Jihad targets.

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012

IDF also took to Facebook^[3], Flickr^[4] and their personal blog^[5] to share news and updates about the attacks. Additionally, they created the IDF Ranks Game^[6] where users could earn points and badges for sharing official IDF content online.

Search Interest

External References

About

Lulu and the Lampshades Cups Covers are videos in which the subject performs a cover of the song “You’re Gonna Miss Me” by the band Lulu and the Lampshades using a plastic cup to create a beat.

Origin

YouTuber TheShelteredLife uploaded a video titled “Tutorial: Hot do do the Cup Beat/Clap” on January 27th, 2008, which demonstrated how to use a plastic cup to perform a beat (shown below).

On June 8th, 2009, YouTuber Lulapinga uploaded a video in which Lulu and the Lampshades members Luisa and Jemma perform an adaptation of the 1937 song “Miss Me When I’m Gone” by Mainer’s Mountaineers^[2] hitting two plastic cups on a table to create a beat (shown below). As of November 21st, 2012, the video has accumulated over 1.67 million views and

Spread

The Lulapinga video remained relatively unknown until October 7th, 2009, when it was submitted by Redditor Gargae_Dragon in a post titled “Two Girls, Two Cups.”^[1] Prior to being archived, the post received over 160 up votes and 45 comments. On June 8th, 2011, YouTuber Anna Burden uploaded a video titled “You’re Gonna Miss Me (Cups),” in which she mimicked the original Lulu and the Lampshades video (shown below). In the next 17 months the video received over 2.37 million views and 5,700 comments.

On July 7th, Redditor MoonDaddy submitted the Anna Burden video titled “I think I love her” to the /r/videos^[3] subreddit, receiving over 11,950 up votes and 1000 comments prior to being archived. The same day, The Huffington Post^[7] published an article titled “Amazing ‘Cups (You’re Going to Miss Me)’ Covers,” which featured several different YouTube covers of the song. On July 8th, Burden created a Facebook^[5] fan page for herself, which accumulated over 6,400 likes in the next year. On September 28th, 2012, Redditor evilpeanut reposted the video to the /r/videos^[4] subreddit, receiving over 4,800 up votes and 300 comments within the next six weeks. On October 4th, actress Anna Kendrick performed a version of the song with a cup on The Late Show With David Letterman (shown below). On November 20th, Redditor funshei submitted a video of the performance to the /r/videos^[6] subreddit, receiving over 13,200 up votes and 1,200 comments within 24 hours.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

This entry is about the meme from Greece. Work in progress…

About

“To Poulaki Tsiou” (Greek: Το Πουλάκι Τσίου, English:The Bird Goes Chirp) is a song released by an artist by the same name in November 2012. The YouTube video of the song, uploaded on the 5th of November 2012, has accumulated over 5 million views during the first month. The virality of the song and video has sparked numerous video parodies as well as controversies in greek-speaking countries (Greece and Cyprus).

Origin

The song “To Poulaki Tsiou” has the same video format of the Italian song “Pulcino Pio” (which also roughly translates to “the bird goes chirp”) by artist Il Pulcino Pio. The official YouTube video, hosted in the channel “medita” has been uploaded in 9th of May 2012, and accumulated over 39 million views as of the end of November 2012.

The Greek version of the song has been uploaded in November 5th 2012 and it’s hosted in the channel ToPoulakiTsiouTV, the artist’s official YouTube channel.

The song is a translation of the Portuguese song “O Pintinho Piu”:

About
Bump or “bumping” refers to the practice of posting a blank response to a discussion thread for the sole purpose of raising its profile. The action command “bump” is most commonly used on discussion forums and imageboards with a large volume of active threads, which results in re-summoning the targeted thread to the top of the forum or index page.
Origin
The precise use of bumping threads appeared circa mid-1990s with the birth of web-based forums and then the first systems of threads classified by dates that could change and back up to a new position if new posts were added. While there are no archived threads available from the early days of BBS and forums, a glimpse at the first Internet netiquette^[1] guidelines published in October 1995 suggests that the concept of “bumping a thread” had not become widespread on Usenet groups or mailing lists prior to 1995.
One of the earliest instances and references to “bumping” can be found in a StraightDope forum thread titled “Bumping Threads”^[2] posted in 2000. Because of how the post is written, as well as the answers, it remains clear that the “bump” slang seemed to already be rather known and used among internet communities.
Urban Dictionary
The first Urban Dictionary^[3] entry for “bump” was submitted on February 12th, 2003:

BUMP: to bring up somebody’s post typically by posting the word “bump” on a message board. Can also stand for: Bring Up My Post. Bump!

Usage
Throughout 2000s, the practice of bumping threads became widespread across English-language forums and it has since gone through numerous changes and evolved into an image macro series featuring the text “bump,” boosted by the advents of free image-hosting services and Chan-style imageboards. While it is still most prominent in discussion forums, it can be also used in the context of e-mail threads and instant message chats.
As an Acronym
It has been suggested that ‘bump’ is an acronym of “Bring Up My Post,”^[4] however, it is more likely a “backronym” that became associated with the phrase retroactively and the usage is entirely consistent with the verb “bump” which means “To knock to a new position”.
As a Nuisance
While any forum member can bump a “thread” to its front page, it should be generally exercised within the range of acceptable reasons and purposes, such as to remind others that an important question asked in a dated thread still remains unanswered.^[5] Bumping a thread simply for the sake of raising its visibility is generally regarded as spamming.
However, the acceptable grounds for bumping threads may vary from one community to another, therefore it is best to check each forum’s rules & guidelines beforehand.^[6] The topic has been also subject to forum debates, with many users trying to distinguish good and bad examples of “bumping” and others using programs like “Thread Bumping”^[7] and “Bump or De-bump”^[8] to achieve the same effect without adding redundant posts.
As a Moderation Tool
In most current-day discussion forums, administrators and/or moderators can use the optional “sticky” tool to pin a particular thread or post near the top of the forum index, thus preventing it from being buried by newer posts.
Related Terms
In contrast to bumping a recently posted thread, Necro-bumping refers to the intentional and unintentional practice of reviving old and inactive topics back to the first page. Depending on the forum, intentional necromancy of a discussion thread that has ended and remained inactive for a long time is generally prohibited, a practice typically known as “necro-trolling.”
Conversely, on some imageboards and BBS sites, users can choose to SAGE a thread, or post a reply without “bumping” its profile to the top. The word “sage” derives from the 2channel terminology 下げる sageru, meaning “to lower”.
The term is also closely associated with MOAR in a way that it shows interest in a topic where a request hasn’t been fulfilled. Here, the “bump” allows it to remain on top of the topic list, as to be viewed more frequently.
External References
^[1]The Internet Engineering Task Force – Internet netiquette
^[2]Urban Dictionary – BUMP
^[3]StraightDope Forum – Bumping Threads
^[4]Wapedia – Bump.
^[5]eHow – How You Should Bump a Forum Thread
^[6]A Fools’ Wisdom – Bump This
^[7]VBulletin Board – [AJAX] Thread Bumping 1.1
^[8]VBulletin Board – Bump or De-Bump

Editor’s Note: The original incident by an underage student was never a criminal/court case. To avoid further cyber bullying, this article doesn’t give any mention about his real name.

About

The Colombia Pose, better known as “Answer: Colombia” (Japanese: 答: コロンビア, Kotae: Colombia) or “Colombia” (コロンビア) simply, refers to the victory pose by a Japanese college student who became to a subject of online mockery due to his poor intelligence and careless post on a social network service.

This impressive pose with a smug look is one of the symbolic icons in Japanese online parodies after his incident in 2006.

Origin

The man who gave the name “Colombia” to this pose was a 19-year-old college student, one of the 4 contestants in a Japanese TV quiz show Panel Quiz Attack 25^[1] aired on October 1st, 2006. He performed it at moment of deciding the winning of the game at this question: “What is the South American country of sharing boundaries over land with Panama in Central America?” Yes, the answer is “Colombia”.

Answer: Colombia

Cheating Suspicion

From during on air, he got a much attention among some 2channel users watching the show because he made many wrong answers in spite of easy questions arranged for college students. However, he luckily succeeded to win the game by the help of rules of Panel Quiz and get prizes worth several hundred thousand yen with that smug look.

Some of 2channel users were very irritated to this poor intelligence winner. To mock at him, they searched his personal information on the web by his name and the college’s name which were announced in the show, and they identified his account on a Japanese social network service mixi.^[2] Then, they found out that he made a confession of his cheating in a qualifying test for the show in his diary post which was uploaded on June 19th in that year.^[3]

translation (summary):

I couldn’t answer even half of questions by myself. But someone said in TV “Do anything for win. But if you are defeated, be a good loser.” So, I did…


cheating. lol.


I wanted to win and a thing to talk about. As a result,




I passed the test XD

On the Japanese web in those days, mixi had caught much attention for its dishonorable fame, which was led by many ridiculous user’s diary confessing drunk/no-licence driving, underage alcohol/smoking, or something illegal activities. So, it was also a natural thing that his diary made a headline on there.

His confession to a cheating immediately began spreading through the web via a wiki page for his suspicions launched by 2channel users.^[4] Within a half day after finishing the show, he forced to face a heavy storm of criticism not only on 2channel, mixi and comments in YouTube videos recording his poor performance at the show. Quite a few people sent claims to the TV station and the college he belonged to, and argued he had to return the winner’s prize.

In a reflection of this heavy criticism against him, even gossip newspapers quickly reported this incident.^[5] In those reports, the TV station and the college commented that he claimed to each of them: “it is never true, but just a joke for my friends.”, “I deeply regret my carelessness.” Besides, the college had to promise further investigation because he also confessed to alcohol drinking in another post in his mixi diary.^[6]

His article appeared on the front page of a Gossip news paper Tokyo Sports

However, there was no additional report by news media. And because the TV station decided not to do further investigations believing his claims, People weren’t able to know the sequel of this incident. Of course, no one of them believed his excuse.

Spread

Throughout the incident, his victory pose, holding both of fists with a smug look, gained a much presence among the Japanese internet users. And due to its caption, the pose itself became to be known as the “Colombia” pose.

Today, few people remember him. But, “Colombia” is the magical answer that makes everything funny, and its pose is one of the symbolic icons in the Japanese online parodies. 2channel has many Shift-JIS arts for Colombia made by anonymous users.^[7] There are Colombia Image Generators utilizing the original picture in image macro style^[8] or superimposing “Answer: Colombia” to other images like Brazzers.^[9] And many illustrations with Colombia motifs have been uploaded to the Japanese illustrators community pixiv^[10] and niconico Seiga.^[11]

2channel Shift-JIS Art

Besides, even Google image search suggests his victory pose in the top of search results for the term “コロンビア”.^[12]

Notable Examples

Greetings Are Magic
Suwako from Touhou Project
Cat
Q:Who Are You?
A: Doctor Doom.
A: Chimichanga
Q:What is the stand’s name of Dio?
A: Za Warudo

Among people outside of Japan, probably the most well-known instance of “Colombia” is Cirno’s one in the flash animated video for the very popular Touhou Project remix song Cirno’s Perfect Math Class, which was produced by IOSYS and TETLA-POT in 2008.

For more information about this song, please check the KYM entry for Cirno’s Perfect Math Class.

Search Interest

External References

[Work in progress]

About

Milking is a video fad in which participants record themselves dumping containers of milk directly over their heads. Similar to cone-ing, the videos are often filmed in public places to include bewildered onlookers.

Origin

On November 21st, 2012, the MilkingNewcastle YouTube channel uploaded a video titled “Milking Newcastle,” in which several young men are shown dumping entire containers of milk over their heads in a variety of odd locations (shown below). Over the next five days, the video accumulated over 92,000 views and 520 comments.

Spread

On November 26th, YouTuber frampoid uploaded a video titled “Milking Lancaster: Jack Schofield 2012,” which featured several Lancaster University students dumping milk on their while urging students to vote for Jack Schofield for County College Social Secretary (shown below).

External References

Moderator Note: We have received a large amount of suggestions all pointing in different directions of what might be the origin of ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°). If you believe yours is the actual correct origin, please provide links or any other type of evidence along with your suggestion to back this up. Thanks in advance.

About

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is an emoticon created with unicode character symbols. The face is often used to spam forums and image boards, similar to the Japanese word “desu”. On 4chan it has also come to be known as Le Lenny Face, and Le Face Face.

Origin

The exact origin of the emoticon is currently unclear. On November 18th, 2012, 4chan users raided the /r/Israel^[4] subreddit with posts spamming the “( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” face (shown below), with some users referring to the emoticon as “le Palestine face.”

Spread

The same day, mods banned several 4chan users for spamming the emoticon on the site’s various image boards (shown below).

Redditor Dogcatcher1979 submitted a post titled “So I guess this is a thing now?” to the /r/4chan^[2] subreddit, which included a screenshot of the face being used in a 4chan thread (shown below). In the post, Redditor 8-bit_d-boy commented that the face resembled the children’s television show character Bob the Builder.

Also on November 18th, World of Warcraft Forums^[5] member Kuallius submitted a post titled “The Sha of Casuals ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” and YouTuber cubegoat uploaded a video titled “( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” (shown below, left). On the following day, cubegoat uploaded another video titled “Fresh ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) of /b/el Air,” featuring various animated versions of the emoticon accompanied by the theme song for the 1990’s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (shown below, right). As of November 19th, 2012, there are more than 50 Facebook pages containing “( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)” in the title on Facebook.^[1]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

Can You Please Photoshop The Sun Between My Fingers? (often accompied by “Hey X”, with X representing a site or community) is a phrase that refers to a picture of a male failing at an attempt to take a forced perspective photo of himself in which the sun is placed between his fingers. The results of this request commonly feature intentionally bad or incorrect photoshops.

Origin

[Researching: Believed to first appear around late 2011.]

Spread

From December 10th to December 12th, 2011, over 20 image macros and demotivational posters (shown below) were created for the image on Cheezburger.^[8] Although they quickly lowered after that, with new variations only appearing once every few months.

On September 4th, 2012, Tumblr user Scarvenrot made a post^[6] containing a drawing of the character Dirk Strider of the webcomic Homestuck in the style of the original image (shown below, left). On September 8th, Tumblr user Cheese3d posted a similar drawing^[7] using the characters John Egbert and Dave Strider from Homestuck (shown below, right). As of November 19th of the same year, the posts gathered respectively over 2,600 and 3,700 notes.

On October 28th, 2012, Tumblr user securethevictory made a post containing a collection of 7 intentionally incorrect photoshops (shown below) of the original image.^[1] As of November 19th of the same year, the post has accumulated over 71,000 notes. The post was collected into a Imgur folder the next day, which has acumulated over 1,300 points as of November 19th.^[2] In the following weeks, the same collection made its way onto numerous humor blogs and sites such as DamnLol,^[3] Funri^[4] and Uber Humor.^[5]

On November 1st, 2012, Tumblr user DirkStrider made a post^[8] containing the correct photoshop with the sun placed between the man’s fingers, along with the comment “THISPICTUREHADBEENBOTHERING ME FORFARTOOLONGTHEJOKE IS OVER”. As of November 19th of the same year, the post has gathered over 2,000 notes.

Notable Examples

External References

About

Kim Jong Un is the supreme leader of North Korea who assumed the position in December 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il.

Online History

While it is widely assumed that Kim has little presence on the state-controlled and heavily censored Internet, a lot of discussions surrounding North Korea’s latest head of state began circulating in the South Korean and Western social media following the death of his father Kim Jong Il and during his subsequent rise to power in December 2012.

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

On December 18th, a parody blog titled Kim Jong Un Looking at Things^[1] launched. It was inspired by a similar blog utilizing state propaganda photos of his father, Kim Jong Il Looking At Things, which launched in October 2010. As of November 2012, the blog is still active.

Hungry Kim Jong Un

The day after Kim Jong Un Looking at Things launched, on December 19th, Redditor GunnieGraves submitted a photo to the Funny subreddit^[2] depicting Kimg Jong Un pointing at something with the caption “Ok so…can I eat this?” (shown below, left). The same day, a Quickmeme^[3] titled Hungry Kim Jong Un was established, with an instance (shown below, right) reaching the front page the same day. As of November 2012, it has more than 220 submissions. Four days after the first Reddit post, a single topic Tumblr titled Kim Jong Un is Hungry^[4] launched, using other photos of the leader with similar food-related captions.

2012 Person of the Year Campaign

On November 26th, 2012, users on 4chan‘s /b/ (random) message board began to organize a way to fix Time Magazine’s annual Person of the Year public vote^[9] so Kim Jong Un would take the top prize. Over the next 24 hours, multiple threads were posted to the forum, linking to a Pastebin^[5] with a VBS script for voting as well as a downloadable Java-based program^[6] to help users vote in bulk.

An IRC channel was also set up with the name #OpFuckMorsy^[7], as a reference to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi^[8] who stayed in the lead of the poll throughout November 26th. Within the first day, the 4chan raid of the Time poll was featured on Betabeat^[10], the Daily Dot^[11]and Reddit^[12], where a screenshot of one of the threads earned more than 9182 upvotes and 2148 points overall.

The Onion: Sexiest Man Alive for 2012

On November 14th, 2012, satirical news site The Onion^[13] posted an article naming Kim Jong Un as the site’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2012. Five days later, Korean newspaper the Korean Times^[17] published an article on the Onion story. They noted in the Korean version that the Onion article was meant to be satirical, but left that out of the English translation. On November 27th, the official newspaper for the community party of China, the People’s Daily^[14], reported on the story, complete with a 55 photo slideshow of the North Korean leader.

The North Korean newspaper’s misreporting of the Onion article was featured on the Los Angeles Times^[15], the Atlantic^[16], the Guardian^[18], BBC News^[19] and Mashable.^[20] A news article on the subject from the Associated Press was submitted to the World News subreddit^[21]where it earned 13,686 upvotes and 2862 points overall. Following the news coverage, the Onion amended^[22] their article, linking to the “exemplary reportage” provided by the People’s Daily.

Personal Life

Not much is known about Kim Jong Un’s personal life, including his birthday which may have been in either 1983 or 1984.^[23] He attended boarding school in Switzerland under a fake name, where he was said to have had poor grades^[25], but enjoyed skiing, the American NBA and actor Jean Claude Van Damme.^[24] Kim Jong Un married a North Korean woman named Ri Sol-ju in 2009, but this information was not made public until July 2012.^[26]

Search Interest

External References

About

Weev is the pseudonym of Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, an American hacker and Internet troll known for his involvement on the website Encyclopedia Dramatica and in an AT&T data breach that exposed personally identifiable information of 114,000 iPad users.

Online History

On February 4th, 2003, Weev created an account on the social networking blog site Livejournal,^[1] where he gained the reputation of being a prominent troll within the site’s community. On August 1st, 2006, Auernheimer spoke at the ToorCon information security conference in San Diego, California (shown below), during which he claimed to be under the influence of LSD.^[4] In the talk, he discussed various types of Internet crime, including hacking the Firefox browser and trading in online black markets.

On August 3rd, 2008, The New York Times published an article titled “The Trolls Among Us,” which featured interviews with several Internet trolls including Auernheimer as well as Jason Fortuny and Encyclopedia Dramatica creator Sherrod DeGrippo. In the article, Auernheimer is described as a dangerous hacker with access to thousands of social security numbers (SSN), having sent the author his own SSN one month after being interviewed. On February 1st, 2009, Auernheimer began uploading videos to the weevlos YouTube channel, where he would provide sermons on his unique brand of Christianity (shown below).

On April 13th, Gawker^[3] published an article titled “Why it Makes Sense That a Hacker’s Behind Amazon’s Big Gay Outrage,” which reported that Auernheimer had taken responsibility for exploiting a vulnerability in the ratings tool for the online retailer Amazon, causing gay-themed romance novels to disappear from the site’s best-seller lists. The article cited a Livejournal^[5] post in which Auernheimer described the methods used to execute the prank. On October 20th, Auernheimer submitted an “ask me anything” post to the social news website Reddit,^[13] in which he discussed the practice of trolling and his political views.

AT&T Data Breach

On June 9th, 2010, Gawker^[10] published an article titled “Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed,” which reported that the information of CEOs, military officials and politicians had been leaked due to a vulnerability in the AT&T network. The article went on to reveal that iPad subscriber data had been obtained by the hacker group Goatse Security^[11] on AT&T’s website, which was accessible to anyone on the Internet prior to the group’s exploit.

On June 11th, The Wall Street Journal^[12] published an article reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had begun investigating the incident. On June 15th, the tech news site Cnet^[15] published an article reporting that Auernheimer had been detained following an FBI search of his apartment, in which several illegal drugs were discovered, including “cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and schedule 2 and 3 pharmaceuticals.” On July 7th, The Register^[20] published an article titled “AT&T iPad ‘Hacker’ Breaks Gag Order to Rant at Cops,” which quoted Auernheimer saying:

“My actions and those of Goatse were not criminal; they were done using industry standard practices as a public service. All the actions of the original author of this exploit were not criminal. Scraping data from a public web server is an extremely common practice amongst lawyers, security researchers and journalists, not to mention web developers.”

On April 9th, 2012, the site Free Weev^[19] was launched, which urged viewers donate to Auernheimer’s legal defense fund. On November 20th, 2012, the tech news site Wired^[16] reported that Auernheimer had been found guilty of “conspiracy to access a computer without authorization” and “fraud in connection with personal information.” The same day, Auernheimer tweeted that he would be appealing the conviction.

Hey epals don’t worry! We went in knowing there would be a guilty here. I’m appealing of course.

— Andrew Auernheimer (@rabite) November 20, 2012

On November 21st, the technology culture blog Motherboard^[17] published an article titled “No More Lulz: Should Weev, the World’s Most Notorious Troll, Go to Jail for ‘Hacking’?” On November 27th, Gawker^[18] published an article titled “The Internet’s Best Terrible Person Goes to Jail: Can a Reviled Master Troll Become a Geek Hero?”, which described Auernheimer’s history and court appearances leading up to his conviction. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post^[8] announced its plan to release an exclusive interview with Auernheimer regarding his conviction on November 28th.

Support of OWS Movement

On October 20th, 2011, YouTuber optikaltekniq uploaded a video in which Auernheimer revealed his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement and explained why he felt federal prosecutors were attempting to put him in jail (shown below). The same day, the video was highlighted on the Internet news site BoingBoing.^[9]

“I’ve had a strong decade of infuriating rich people.”

Reputation

Auernheimer is a controversial figure who has been often described as offensive and bigoted in the media. In several Livejournal posts, podcasts and YouTube videos, Auernheimer has expressed his opinions on a wide range of racial and cultural issues, which earned him the label of being an anti-semite by his critics. CNN^[6] writer Philip Elmer-DeWitt referred to him in an article as “the ugliest computer hacker,” similarly portraying Auernheimer as an anti-semite and a bigot who jokes about the deaths of celebrities and makes disparaging remarks towards Black Americans. Another article in The Australian^[7] described Auernheimer as a “celebrity hacktivist.”

Search Interest

External References

Overview

National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo, is an annual online-based project in which participants are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.

Background

Freelance writer Chris Baty (shown below) launched National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in July 1999 at the age of 26.^[1] He gathered 20 of his friends around San Francisco, CA, many of whom were not writers, just to see if they could. Of the group, only six participants completed the challenge of writing an entire 50,000 word novel from start to finish, taking the arbitrary word count from a guesstimated word count of the shortest novel on Baty’s shelf, Aldous Huxley’s 1931 sci-fi novel Brave New World.^[3]

Cinder

About

GNNA^[1] (Gay Nigger Association of America) is an online trolling collective known for attacking bloggers, Internet celebrities and prominent websites. Several members of the group later founded the hacker collective Goatse Security which gained notoriety for its involvement in an AT&T data breach that exposed personally identifiable information of 114,000 iPad users.

Online History

The Wikipedia entry^[2] claims that the GNAA was founded in 2002 and was named after the 1992 Danish satirical blaxploitation film Gayniggers from Outer Space. The organization was founded with the intention to “sow disruption on the Internet,” according to the book Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive^[3] by Jodi Dean.

On June 26th, 2004, the Apple product news blog MacRumors^[11] published a post including faked screenshots of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) operating system, which were submitted by two members of the GNAA identifying themselves as “Gary Niger” and “Ron Delsner.” On August 12th, 2005, Wired^[12] published an article titled “Max Hacks Allow OS X on PCs,” reporting that hackers had managed to create a version of Mac OS X for PC processors. The following month, the GNAA released an ISO image claiming to be a version of the operating system and on June 15th, the tech news blog Gizmodo^[13] published an article revealing the file caused a machine to boot to a picture from the Goatse.cx shock site.

Goatse Security

The Goatse Security, sometimes known as GoatSec, is a hacker group that specializes in publicizing security flaws discovered by its members, including Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. The group, which derived its name from the Goatse.cx shock site, gained much notoriety in June 2010 for its involvement in a high profile AT&T data breach in which they obtained personal ID information of 114,000 iPad users.

Web Browser Exploits

On January 30th, 2010, the tech news blog Softpedia^[4] published a post titled “Firefox Bug Used to Harass Entire IRC Network,” which reported that the GNAA had written a script exploiting a vulnerability in the Firefox web browser which would cause visitors to spam the Freenode Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. On March 23rd, Goatse Security member Andrew Auernheimer posted information on how to perform a Safari browser exploit to the Internet culture database Encyclopedia Dramatica,^[6] which would allow the user to access blocked ports by adding the number 65,536 to the port number. Apple patched the glitch in the desktop version of the browser but did not update mobile versions, which could allow hackers to cause harm to Apple’s mobile devices according to Goatse Security.^[7]

2010: AT&T Data Breach

On June 9th, 2010, Gawker^[5] published an article titled “Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed,” which reported that the information of CEOs, military officials and politicians had been leaked due to a vulnerability in the AT&T network. The article went on to reveal that iPad subscriber data had been obtained by Goatse Security on AT&T’s website, which was accessible to anyone on the Internet prior to the group’s exploit. To obtain the emails, Goatse Security used a PHP-based “brute force” script to send HTTP requests with a valid subscriber identity module to the AT&T website, which would in turn reveal the email address associated with the ID. The leak sparked a debate about the proper way to disclose security flaws, which was reported by The Wall Street Journal^[8] in an article titled “Computer Experts Face Backlash” on June 14th. The article quoted former Electronic Frontier Foundation Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick, who defended Goatse Securities tactics:

“I don’t have a problem with what they did. No one was put at a risk as a result of it”

The same day, Tech Crunch^[9] founder Michael Arrington announced that the tech news blog would be giving the group a Crunchie award for public service for exposing that AT&T security flaw. On June 15th, Cnet^[10] announced that Goatse Security member Andrew Auernheimer had been detained after the FBI invaded his home and found illegal drugs. On November 20th, 2012, Auernheimer was found guilty of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization and identity fraud.

Search Interest

External References