Overview

The 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary is the preliminary round in the Democratic party’s candidate selection process for the upcoming 2016 general election for the presidency of the United States. The series of state caucuses and primaries will begin in February 2016 and end the following June.

Background

After President Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012, many began speculating about who would run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was widely anticipated as a potential candidate, having been defeated by Obama during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. In December 2012, Clinton was rated favorably in several polls, including a Siena College poll with 54 percent of respondents saying she should run for president.^[1] Additionally, incumbent Vice President Joe Biden was expected to enter the 2016 race.

Notable Developments

Hillary Clinton’s Announcement

On April 10th, 2015, the Republican National Committee released a 30-second video titled “Stop Hillary,” featuring a silhouette of Clinton walking up to a lectern while voices criticizing her past political controversies play in the background (shown below).

On April 11th, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch parodying how Clinton would declare her candidacy for president (shown below, left). On the following day, Clinton announced her bid for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in an YouTube video titled “Getting Started,” in which she expresses her desire to be America’s “champion” (shown below, right).

Bernie Sanders’ Announcement

In March 2014, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders revealed he was considering running for President of the United States but felt it was too soon for an official announcement. On May 26th, 2015, Sanders formally announced his bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination (shown below). Unlike other presidential candidates, Sanders did not pursue funding through a Super PAC, instead focusing on small individual donations.

Lawrence Lessig’s Announcement

On August 11th, 2015, Harvard Law School professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig announced he had formed an exploratory committee for a potential bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. In addition, Lessig declared that he would run if the leading Democratic candidates had not committed reforming elections and if his committee raised over $1 million by Labor Day. On September 6th, Lessig reached the $1 million crowdfunding goal and officially announced his bid for presidency (shown below).

Other Official Candidate Announcements

On May 30th, 2015, Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley formally declared his bid for presidency as a Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election. On June 3rd, 2015, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee officially announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. On June 15th, Virginia Senator Jim Webb declared he would be seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination.

Debates

CNN Debate: October 13th

On October 13th, 2015, the first debate for the Democratic presidential primary candidates will be held at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada and aired on the CNN 24-hour cable news channel. The event will be moderated by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper with additional questions from anchors Dana Bash, Juan Carlos Lopez and Don Lemon. Clinton, Sanders, O’Malley, Webb and Chafee are set to appear at the debate, with an additional spot reserved for Joe Biden if he were to declare candidacy.^[2]

Search Interest

External References

You may have seen the “hiss” spam on twitch or around the comment sections of top youtubers. The “hiss” origin came from a youtuber named “LeafIsHere”. He is supposedly apart of “the reptilian brotherhood” and “the reptilian army”. His subscribers decided to spam other accounts as a supposed publicity stunt for his channel. If you go on many major twitch channels and say “hiss” in chat, you will most likely be either banned from chat or your comment will be deleted. The “hiss” spam will soon reach it’s peak, and leafyishere has even said that he’s been getting mentioned on twitter that people are “hiss spamming” their streams. This just shows that anyone who wants to troll can troll, and that it may not stop.

About

“Can’t Stump the Trump” is a slogan often used by supporters of the 2016 Republican presidential primary candidate Donald Trump, indicating that he is incapable of being flustered or defeated by critics.

Origin

While the exact origin of the phrase is unclear, the earliest known use of the expression was posted to the /pol/^[1] (politically incorrect) board on 4chan on June 15th, 2015 (shown below).^[1]

Spread

On July 28th, 2015, the conservative news site The Ralph Retort^[2] published an article titled “Can’t Stump the Trump,” which lauded Trump’s ability to deflect criticism. On August 9th, YouTuber ZarosTemplar uploaded a montage parody titled “Can’t Stump the Trump,” featuring footage of Trump from the first 2016 Republican presidential debate (shown below, left). On August 26th, YouTuber Can’t Stump the Trump uploaded a video titled “Can’t Stump the Trump (Volume 1),” containing footage of Trump dismissing a Univision reported during a press conference (shown below, right).

On September 26th, Redditor Townidiot submitted a Facebook comment screenshot titled “Can’t Stump the Trump,” which refuted the authenticity of an image macro claiming the Simpsons predicted Trump’s run for presidency many years prior (shown below). Within three weeks, the post gained over 4,900 votes (93% upvoted) and 180 comments on the /r/quityourbullshit^[3] subreddit.

On October 13th, 2015, Trump tweeted an illustration of himself as Pepe the Frog along with a link to a montage parody titled “Can’t Stump the Trump (Volume 4)”.^[4] In less than 24 hours, the tweet gathered upwards of 3,000 favorites and 2,800 retweets. The same day, the news sites RealClear Politics^[5] and Vocativ^[6] published articles about the online reaction to the tweet.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

About

“It is a mystery” is a video of a ghost with a cheery tune playing in the background. The image is typically posted as a reaction image.

Origin

“It is a mystery” is based off of a Something Awful emote, which was added along with the other emotes back in 2010. The emote became popular after an nsfw image from the /z/ board on 4chan was taken down, and was instead replaced with a link to an image of “it is a mystery”.

Spread

The video was made after the /z/ image was taken down and featured the ghost with a cheery tune in the background. The image and video later became reactions to mysterious things. The image later mutated into other examples such as “mystery solved”.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

WIP The meme is old and the only guidance I have is an ED article. Yay.

You broke you leg? Call Luca’s Dad! Broke your fence? Call Luca’s Dad! and Broke your computer screen? CALL LUCA’S DAD!!!

About

Jack Sparrow is the main character of the Disney movie series Pirates of the Caribbean, which was released in 2003. The character has gained notoriety online due to his memorable quotes.

Origin

The character first appeared in the Disney movie Pirates of the Caribbean in 2003. The movie was based off the ride of the same name and was a huge success. Since then the character has starred in 3 other Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Online Relevance

The character gained online relevance after the success of the movie, with the character being featured in parodies, image macros, and youtube poops. The character was also included in other notable memes.

Related Memes

Why is the Rum Gone?

Why is the rum gone? refers to a memorable quote from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie where Jack Sparrow is stranded on an island. After realizing the rum is gone, he utters the line. This line later became popular in youtube remixes.

Jack Sparrow Reaction

Jack Sparrow Reaction features Jack Sparrow looking through a spyglass to see something, and then reacting to it.

Search Interest

External References

WIP

About

Winter-chan is a female anime character created to be an anthropomorphic representation of the winter season. The character is used by members of the web forum 4chan to express the response of right-wing Europeans to those fleeing the Middle East in the European Migrant Crisis.

Origin

On September 18th, a user on the 4chan political board /pol/ created a post entitled “Winter-chan will save us.”^[1] In the post, the user detailed an idea: to create a manga character who would be used to summon a cold and harsh winter in the way that the user believed that Ebola-chan created a more powerful epidemic. The harsh, cold winter summoned by the Winter-chan would be painful, or fatal, to those fleeing the Middle East in the European Migrant Crisis.

The anime character was intended to look like a blend of current pop culture, including references to Game of Thrones and Frozen and ancient Norse and Germanic mythology. The user wrote:

The rune on her hat combines the runes for ice, wrath of nature and resistance. She deliberately looks like Elsa to utilise the huge psychic energies of millions of young girls idolising the paragon of an aryan maiden. She has warm clothes to protect whites like herself from the cold but not so warm they’d help a desert dweller in a tent.

The post received 336 replies before it was archived, with many users answering the original poster’s call for better art and more information about cold winter mythologies.

Spread

As of October 13th, 2015, Winter-chan has been mentioned 1832 times in the /pol/ forum.^[2] Users have created collections of Winter-chan fan art throughout these threads, and have also posted the art in the subreddit devoted to Winter-chan, which was created September 21st, 2015 and as of October 13th has 21 subscribers.^[3]

As with Ebola-chan, users created an entire mythos surrounding the character, using the runic language to create a series of shields and emblems, which they call sigils, and writing a series of songs and chants meant to be used in Wiccan rituals to summon the winter.

Left: a Winter-chan rune sigil; Right: an incantation.

Various Examples

Search Interest

not yet available

External References

About

Cure-chan is a female anime-style character designed to be the anthropomorphic representation of good health, prosperity and overall medical need. She was designed as a response to the rise of Ebola-Chan and made to oppose her nature of infecting and killing off the human race, where Cure-Chan lectures good health, and vaccines.

Origin

On October 13th, 2014 three users from the /f/lockdraw board Skycow.us created Cure-Chan. The idea of Cure-Chan was simple, to promote the usage of vaccines, and to create tension between Ebola-Chan posters and people who opposed Ebola-Chan. She was designed to be the opposite of Ebola-Chan, with long flowing light blue hair, taller, and a older, more robust figure.

Spread

While Cure-Chan had a relatively slow spread at first, she caught on towards January of 2015 and beyond when the /ebola/ board on 8chan was stolen by a member of the Cure-Chan board, /cure/, on 8chan. The member of /cure/ simply e-mailed 8chan’s admin asking for the board since the owner of the board wasn’t logged into his admin account for 2 weeks. This allowed the member of /cure/ to easily spread her name to new heights by changing the images to more of a Cure-Chan theme such as a re-imagining of the infamous Ebola-Chan picture holding the bloody skull but with Cure-Chan holding Ebola-Chan’s head.^[1] It is now a ban worthy offense to talk about Cure-Chan in a good light on /ebola/.

Cure-Chan in recent times has become more of a rival than a nemesis to Ebola-Chan, demonstrated in the official Ebola-Chan Tumblr Ask Blog^[2].

Various Examples

References

On April 30th, a video titled “Dr Jean’s Banana Dance” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFmr_TZLpS0) was posted to Youtube by Alex G May. The user presented the video in a gym class. It then became popular as a chant at camps, or to be used as a harassing introduction.

Its two main parts are “Peel the Avocado” and “Peel the Banana”

About

Chad Says Beta Things is a series of awkward and cringeworthy messages sent by an anonymous Tinder user to several women using a fake profile image of an athletic, attractive looking man, an online dating archetype often referred to as Chad Thundercock on 4chan’s /r9k/ board. After screenshots of the messages were posted to 4chan in October 2015, many others on the imageboard community began posting the corn emoji in reference to the catfishing prank.

Origin

In early October 2015, /r9k/ user Beta Chad submitted a series of screenshots in which he uses a fake Tinder profile with a photograph of an athletic man to send women bizarre messages on the dating app. The thread was not archived. On October 10th, Beta Chad submitted a second batch of screenshots to /r9k/^[1] due to popular demand (shown below).

In the messages, Beta Chad portrays himself as a caricature of the beta male stereotypes by telling various women that he is sexually inexperienced, wears diapers and watches cartoons. In one particularly memorable exchange, Chad makes an attempt at a lame pun using the emoji of corn and poop (shown below).

Spread

After the screenshots were posted to /r9k/, 4chan users began posting the corn emoji along with images of corn (shown below).

On October 12th, 2015, Redditor user mycomputerisonfire submitted the screenshots to the /r/4chan^[2] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 2,300 votes (93% upvoted) and 290 comments. In the comments section, many posters referenced the use of the corn emoji (shown below).

On October 13th, Redditor 69ingJamesFranco submitted a post asking “Why am I seeing corn on the cob emojis everywhere?” to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[4] where he claimed to have seen the emoji in random comments and on the application Yik Yak. The following day, Redditor irony_panda submitted a post asking about why corn emojis were appearing on the site to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[3] to which Redditor thenewmeredith cited the Beta Chad 4chan posts.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

[This entry is still in works. Feel free to request editorship]

About

“Papyrus’ Spaghetti” refers to a series of jokes associating the character Papyrus from the video game Undertale with spaghetti, in reference to a dialogue from him in the game.

Origin

The joke originates from several scenes in Undertale in which Papyrus talks about cooking spaghetti, with the first association being a plate of Spaghetti being left at Snowdin with a note saying that the plate of spaghetti is a trap that stalls the player for time.

Spread

The jokes saw quite a spread on a social network site Tumblr and other social network sites.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

[still researching]

WIP

About

“I;m thinking about thos beans” is a meme originating in 2015. The meme frequently includes people stating the phrase, or pictures of baked beans.

Origin

In July 2015, Bill Foster made a post on the official Bush’s Beans Facebook page saying, “I;m thinking about thos beans”.

Spread

The quote was then posted to oldpeoplefacebook^[1] on Reddit and gained over 200 upvotes. Since then, the quote has spawned many variations and is often posted on Bush’s Beans social media outlets by fans.
Later, a petition was created on Change.org trying to get Bill Foster to appear in a Bush’s Beans commercial, as well as granting him beans due to his internet celebrity status. The petition has gained over 500 signatures.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1]Reddit – Old People Facebook

WIP Feel free to ask to edit.

About

Eight Legs, Seven Vaganias is a notable phrase from the internet comic, Ariel Needs Legs. The phrase is typically used in parody comics or just said by itself. The phrase typically relates to characters who have a large number of legs, such as spider characters or octopus characters.

Origin

The phrase was first uttered in the tumblr comic Ariel Needs Legs in which Ariel gets eight legs. After the prince finds out, he visits Grimsby, who advises him to date Ariel due to her presumably having seven vaganias.

Spread

The comic was later upload into video form by Neil Cicierega. The video has gained over a million views.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Work in progress

About

“Homer Is Dead” refers to a series of MS Paint comics featuring characters from the comedy cartoon series The Simpsons. The comics, consisted in two panels with the final one featuring a close up of Homer Simpson’s face with the catchphrase “Homer is dead” on it, inspired various parodies.

Origin

The original set of comics was created by an artist labeled as “david guy & raz”, and originally uploaded to his personal website “Goatse.com” (now defunct).^[2] The comics despited various The Simpsons’ characters talking to Homer Simpson, with a close-up of Homer’s face and the message “Homer is Dead”. On July 12th, 2010, user Dark Homer posted a version featuring Marge Simpson asking Homer if he was drunk on the Simpsons-themed forum NoHomers,^[3] which would later become the most popular version.

Spread

[wip]

Various Examples

[wip]

Search Interest

External References

Work in progress

About

Derpy’s Flag is a Photoshop meme of fan-favorite background pony Derpy Hooves from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, waving the Ponyville flag in S4E10 Rainbow Falls. The scene marked Derpy’s comeback after being absent due to the Derpygeddon controversy.

Origin

A few days before the episode aired, show writer Meghan McCarthy posted tweets on her Twitter hinting at the return of Derpy Hooves. On January 18, 2014, the episode Rainbow Falls aired on television. During the middle of the episode, Derpy Hooves made her comeback, waving the Ponyville flag. She continued to make appearances throughout the remainder of the episode, although she was never given a speaking role in this episode.

4chan’s /mlp/ board promptly posted edited images of the flag scene, with images ranging from her holding different types of flags and to weapons and signs.

Spread

Various Examples

Editor’s Note: Work in progress. This entry contains spoilers for the game Undertale. Don’t confuse this entry with Super Cool Ski Instructor.

About

“You’re Gonna Have a Bad Time” is a memorable quote uttered by the character Sans from the retro-stylish RPG video game Undertale, as ultimatum said to the players who had decided to take the Genocide Route (also known as No Mercy Route), a story branch of the game that can be achieved by killing every fightable monster.

The quote got popular on the internet throught the Sans’s battle theme Megalovania, various fanarts and in a joke manner, with inspiring poorly made recreations of it.

Origin

Undertale is a video game released in September 2015, where the players are able to win their battles without killing their opponents. However, if the player has killed every monster that can be fought before passing all the puzzles in the frozen town of Snowdin, Sans will warn the player to not fight the next boss; his brother Papyrus, and drops his friendly appearance while saying “You’re gonna have a bad time” to foreshadow story events and consequences caused by continuing to kill monsters and becoming over-leveled to the point of killing most characters in a single hit.

The quote will be repeated after the “Judge” scene near the end of the game if the player succeeds in killing every boss and random encounter monster preceding the scene, where afterwards the player must fight a boss battle against sans.

In the genocide route; the player can kill nearly every monsters effortlessly in one hit, but completely averts this in Sans’ boss battle by revealing him as an extremely powerful fighter able to dodge every attack from the player, creating a high difficulty spike and an all-out battle of endurance between the player and sans in what fans dub as the “True Final Boss” of the Genocide Ending.

Spread

The quote has seen spread in the Undertale fandom from players who have complete the genocide ending of the end, using it as a catchphrase for the game’s “genocide route.”

Megalovania

Sans’ theme is Megalovania (Shown bottom left,) a revamped version of a final boss theme that Undertale’s developer Toby Fox originally composed for his previous game; the EarthboundROM hack“[Radiation’s] Halloween Hack” ^[1] (Shown bottom middle.) Toby Fox also composed a remix of the original song (also known as MeGaLoVania) for the soundtrack of Homestuck.^[2] (Shown bottom right.)

Other memorable moments

[W.I.P]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

[Under Research]

About

Jesús Manrique Gonzalez,^[1] mostly known as “MC Dinero”, is a mexican raper who became famous all around the Spanish-speaking internet after his video “Rap fail – rap del dinero” was uploaded to YouTube on November 27th, 2014.^[2]

Online History

Jesús Manrique became popular when someone uploaded a video of a rap batle which received a high ammount of views (it currently has over 9,497,000 views). Some Spanish youtubers such as El Rincon de Giorgio made parodies and reviews ^[3] of said video. Due to the constant use of the word “dinero” (money), he was given the nickname of MC Dinero. During the following months he uploaded new rap videos to YouTube, and made his first live performance on February 22nd, 2015 ^[4], making an appearance on the Mexican MTV Millennial Awards, June 10th, 2015, winning the “viral pump” award ^[5]. On June 1st, 2015, a rumor about his death was spreaded on the Internet, being the cause of said death cerebral myiasis. MC Dinero denied said rumor in an interview for the Hip-Hop website Urban Attack on June 7th, 2015^[6].

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Nude-Free Playboy refers to an announcement by the men’s lifestyle magazine Playboy revealing that the publication would no longer include nude centerfolds.

Background

On October 12th, 2015, The New York Times^[1] published an article titled “Nudes are Old News at Playboy,” reporting that the company would no longer contain full nudity starting with their March issue in 2016. The article contained a statement by Playboy CEO Scott Flanders, who cited the company’s inability to compete with Internet pornography as the impetus for the change.

“You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture”.

Flanders added that the company would focus on investigative journalism and interviews, claiming that “the difference between us and Vice is that we’re going after the guy with a job.”

Notable Developments

Online Reaction

The same day, many Twitter users tweeted jokes about the announcement (shown below).

On October 13th, UpRoxx^[3] published an article titled “The Internet’s Funniest Reactions To ‘Playboy’ No Longer Showing Boobs,” showcasing a variety of tweets about the announcement. That day, Redditor SEMIweather submitted an article about Playboy’s announcement to the /r/nottheonion^[2] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 5,900 votes (94% upvoted) and 1,600 comments. Meanwhile, Redditor JamesWreck posted a Pepperidge Farm Remembers image macro titled “RIP Playboy” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[4] subreddit (shown below).

News Media Coverage

On October 13th, the news site Quartz^[5] published an article speculating that nude pictorials were being abandoned to improve the magazine’s brand image in India and China, where the company makes significant revenues from brand licensing for apparel. In the coming days, other news sites published articles about the magazine’s editorial change, including the Boston Globe,^[6] LA Times,^[7] Washington Post^[8] and Forbes.^[9]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Overview

California’s 21st Century Drought is a climate event occurring primarily from 2011 through 2015, where California and other areas on the West Coast of North America have experienced record water shortages. The drought has led to online discussions about climate change, wealth inequality, and other possible factors.

Background

California is naturally a desert environment, and the drought is thought to be primarily caused by natural variations in moisture in rainfall, aggravated by human-induced global warming.^[1] In February of 2014, the California drought began to result in extreme water shortages, causing many municipalities to enact ordinances barring residents from recreational or unnecessary water use, like that needed to water lawns or fill swimming pools.

A lack of snowfall in the winter of 2013-2014 caused President Obama to declare California to be in a federal state of emergency, which is still in effect as of October 2015.^[3][4] In January 2015, Governor Edmund (Jerry) Brown declared a statewide state of emergency that has continued throughout the year.^[2] As of October 2015, the drought shows no signs of ending; on October 16th, 2015, the California Department of Housing and Community Development created an $11 million fund for families in California who have little or no access to public drinking water.^[5] However, as the fall of 2015 progressed, locals began worrying about possibly flooding and other extreme weather as the climate pattern El Niño went into effect.^[6]

NASA has proclaimed the extended drought the “driest time in California in recorded history.”^[7]

Related Memes

Drought Shaming

Drought Shaming, also known by its hashtag #Droughtshaming, is the act of publicly denouncing someone for not conserving water properly during a drought, most often by Tweeting or Instagramming a photo combined with the hashtag. The practice became popular during the California drought, which officially began in 2011 and continued through July 2015.

Search Interest

External References

About

Urinal Etiquette is an exploitable image series based on a four-pane comic depicting an awkward moment of two strangers using the urinals immediately adjacent to each other out of an entire row in the men’s bathroom.

Origin

While the authorship of the original comic remains unknown, the image has been circulating online since as early as 2010 with the earliest known instance posted on the Brazilian humor site Capinaremos^[1] on March 2nd. The four-pane illustration begins with a man using a urinal in an empty men’s bathroom, before a second man enters and intently chooses to use the urinal right next to the first man, despite there being an entirely row of unoccupied urinals.

Precursor

The proper etiquettes surrounding the use of urinals in the men’s bathroom has been a long-standing topic of online discussions and jokes, with the earliest known example found in a PSA-style animation video produced by Kurt Nellis and uploaded to YouTube on July 12th, 2006.

In addition, xkcd webcomic artist Randall Munroe also covered the urinal etiquette at length in a blog article titled “Urinal Protocol Vulnerability,”^[5] posted to his website on September 2nd, 2009 (shown below).

Spread

Between 2010 and 2013, the image was posted on dozens of internet humor sites across many language zones. On January 2nd, 2013, Shaq O’Neal posted the image to his Facebook page with the message: “This is an automatic fight in my book…….LMFAO” (shown below).^[2][3]

On May 13th, 2013, the image was resubmitted to FunnyJunk in a post titled “Maximum Overtroll.”^[4] On October 6th, 2015, Tumblr user pi4nobl4ck^[8] posted an edited version of the image with the second character declaring his veganism to the man next to him (shown below). The post garnered over 39,000 notes within the first two weeks. On October 15th, the exploitable comic was picked up by the Tumblr meme research group^[9]Meme Documentation. Throughout the month, more than a dozen of alternately captioned and photoshopped parodies surfaced on Tumblr.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References