About

Assigned Male – The Incredible Adventures of Stephie (Who Happens To Be Trans), originally Assignée garçon and more commonly known as Assigned Male, is an ongoing webcomic by the French-Canadian artist Sophie Labelle about a young transgender girl named Stephie. The comic has come under repeated criticism for what some consider a heavy-handed message as well as an unrealistic portrayal of its characters.

Plot

Assigned Male is a slice of life comic that follows the life of Stephie, an 11 year old male-to-female transgender girl. The comic features her talking to her family and friends about transgender issues, and her struggles with her conflicting gender identity.^[1] Some pages in her comic do not involve a story and are single panel writing about various transgender issues.

Internet History

Assigned Male was first published online in French as Assignée garçon, and premiered on Tumblr on August 15th, 2014.^[2] It later began in English on September 13 of the same year. A Facebook page was created for the comic around this time as well, with currently over 30,000 likes.^[3] A Patreon page for the comic was created in early 2015.^[4] The domain name for the comic’s website was registered on May 14, 2015.^[5] A Twitter account for the comic was started in August of the same year.^[6]

Reception

Assigned Male receives large amounts of criticism for what is perceived as a heavy-handed message, poor characterization, textwalling, and poor art. One of the earliest criticisms of the comic comes from the right-wing blog The Right Stuff, which published an article on the comic by “Toilet Law” on December 4, 2014.^[7] The Bad Webcomics Wiki published a negative review of the comic on January 13, 2015, which was later defaced by someone presumed to be Labelle.^[8][9] An Encyclopedia Dramatica page on the comic was created in late April of 2015.^[10]

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s note: This entry is unfinished. If you would like to help, or have any information on it, please leave a suggestion or request editorship.

About

Psychic: Reads My Mind refers to a text meme where a psychic reads someone’s mind and finds something unexpected, and them responding to this with “what the fuck”.

Origin

The earliest known usage was by Tumblr user c-a-k-e on May 23rd, 2015,^[1] which gathered over 350,000 notes in the following 8 months.

psychic: *reads my mind*
me: *only endless screaming*
psychic: what the fuck

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{WIP}

Various Examples

References

Major WIP. Feel free to request editorship.

About

“Spoons Rattling” refers to a still of Spongebob in a cowboy hat waving his arms in the air. The image is frequently used in shitposting on iFunny and Tumblr.

Origin

The still originates from a scene in the Spongebob episode Pizza Delivery,^[1] in which Spongebob is demonstrating to Squidward how the pioneers hitchhiked.

Spread

A vine uploaded to iFunny with the song Spoonman playing in the background has gained over 240 likes in 7 months.^[3]

An image of Richard Dawkins wearing a shirt edited to have the picture on it was uploaded to Tumblr, where it gained over 270 notes in two months.^[2]

Various Examples

Search Interest

Not avaliable

External References

http://i.imgur.com/yhUslyZ.png

About

The 2016 French Orthograhic Reform refers to the announcement by the French government of a 26-year-old orthographic law meant to simplify the spelling usage of over 2 400 French words, including changes applied to the use of the circumflex, and set to take effect for grade schoolers during the start of school year in September 2016. Following the announcement made in early February 2016, many French netizens reacted to a potential oversimplification of the French language various hashtags and parodies.

Context

In 1990, an orthographic law was passed in France, in accordance with the Académie Française, concerning over 2 400 words that needed spelling correction and adaptation to a more recent usage^[1]. Though passed, no official enforcement of the law had been made for roughly 26 years.
On February 3rd 2016, TF1’s news channel affiliate LCI issued an article about the reform being officially set to take effect on the start of school year 2016^[2]. The report segment was also broadcasted on national television (shown below).

Among over 2 400 words being affected by the change, 10 of them, the most used, stood out (shown below):

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#JeSuisCirconflexe

[WIP]

Debunkery

[WIP]

Various Examples

[WIP]

Search Interest

As shown by the graph below, searches for “accent circonflexe” skyrocketed following the event.

External References

^[1]Wikipedia– Rectifications orthographiques du français en 1990 (French)

^[2]LCI– Réforme de l’orthographe : 10 mots qui vont changer à la rentrée (French)

Editor’s note: Work In Progress

About

Isabelle is a character from the Animal Crossing series of life-simulation games. Since her first appearing in the 2012 installment Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Isabelle has gained popularity among Animal Crossing fans.

Origin

Isabelle was first introduced in Animal Crossing: New Leaf. In the game, she is the assistant to the town’s mayor, whom the player plays as. She is portrayed as friendly and dutiful, albeit clumsy.^[1][2] In April 2013, she was given her own Twitter account in 2013.^[3] In 2014, she appeared as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS & Wii U. She later appeared in 2015’s Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer, and was released as a playable downloadable racer in Mario Kart 8 earlier in the same year.^[4]

Spread

Isabelle has proven to be very popular among fans. On the Japanese art website Pixiv, a search for Isabelle’s Japanese name returns over 3,000 results.^[5] Similarly, a search on DeviantArt returns over 3,800 results.^[6]

In 2016, animator HotDiggedyDemon released the parody cartoon Isabelle Ruins Everything, which has been viewed over 1 million times.

Isabelle Cannot Be Harmed!

Isabelle Cannot Be Harmed is a meme relating to the character’s appearance in Mario Kart 8. The meme is usually sued in relation to moments in races where she narrowly avoids some form of unfortunate event.

Example Images

Search Interest

External References

About

Meme Magic is an expression used to refer to the hypothetical power Internet memes have to transcend reality and create events that affect the world. The expression, mainly used by 4chan’s Politically Incorrect board /pol/, has been heavily paired with several fads, like Ebola-chan, Baneposting and Donald Trump.

Origin

While most of the earliest uses of the term were to refer to the spread of catchphrases or image macros, like the first archived example from a /mlp/ thread asking about the popularity of the catchphrase I Want to Cum Inside Rainbow Dash,^[1] it quickly evolved to refer to the use of memes to induce disasters thanks to the “White People” Conspiracy Hoax spreaded in September 2014 in relation to the Ebola Outbreak from the same year.

Spread

The term remaint dormant until March 2015, when a Germanwings plane was crashed by the pilot and several online communities started drawing parallels with the memorable plane scene from The Dark Knight Rises, being one of the first references a post on /pol/ from March 26th claiming that /tv/ used “meme magic” to crash the plane.^[5] Since then, the expression has been used to refer to several happenings from the past regarding Internet memes, like the 2014 Slender Man stabbing (by the paranormal board /x/), the posting of the character Ebola-chan by /pol/ to make the pandemy stronger or the 2015 Umpqua Community College Shooting related to a /r9k/ post; and several tactics to use that power, like posting pictures or GETs. The term has also been associated to the Egyptian God of darkness Kek^[8] and a black-and-white photo of a man (shown below).

Notable Examples

Winter-chan

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. The idea behind Winter-chan was 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.

Lemmy Kilmister’s Death

On December 28th, 2015, a thread about Motörhead‘s vocalist Lemmy Kilmister health was submitted on 4chan’s music board /mu/, being one of the responses “hell be fine”.^[3] A few hours later, Lemmy’s death was announced,^[6] leading to several jokes regarding that post on the thread being the cause of his death. The catchphrase “hell be fine” also experimented some spread on 4chan, mainly on /mu/.^[4]

Donald Trump

From June 2015 onwards, the term has been heavily associated to the bussinessman and 2016 United States President candidate Donald Trump, with /pol/ users using the “meme magic” to make Trump win the elections and transform the country under a similar ideology. Several notable events include the posting of a Trump Pepe picture on Trump’s twitter (shown below, right) or the use of a Yiddish curse word to talk about Hillary Clinton, being consequently reported on a opinion editorial featuring the word “Oy vey”.^[7]

Search Interest

Not available

External References

About

Puppy Monkey Baby is a hybrid dog-monkey-human creature shown in a Mountain Dew advertisement broadcast during Super Bowl 50 held in early February 2016. Online, many expressed displeasure with the creature, claiming they found it disturbing and distasteful.

Origin

During Super Bowl 50 on February 7th, 2016, a commercial was broadcast in which a bizarre creature with a pug dog’s head, a monkey’s torso and a human baby’s legs delivers a bucket full of Mountain Dew “Kickstart” sodas to a group of men sitting in a living room (shown below). Within 24 hours, a YouTube upload of the commercial gained over 9.9 million views and 2,700 comments (shown below).

Spread

The same day, the @MountainDew^[3] Twitter feed posted an animated GIF of the creature performing “The Dab” dance (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the tweet garnered more than 3,000 retweets and 2,500 likes.

Meanwhile, actress Mindy Kaling tweeted “I don’t need to see no dog monkey baby centaur creature,” gathering upwards of 2,700 likes and 530 retweets (shown below).

Also on February 7th, comedian Patton Oswalt posted tweets joking that the commercial made his “brain shut down” and that the advertisement as “already being used in ISIS recruiting videos” (shown below).

For much of the day, the hashtag “#PuppyMonkeyBaby”^[1] remained a trending topic on Twitter.^[2] In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to the commercial, including Gawker,^[5] The Huffington Post,^[6] Business Insider^[7] and Bleacher Report.^[8]

Search Interest

External References

About

Persian Room Cat Guardian is a reaction image macro series and photoshop meme featuring photographs of a stuffed toy cat seated on top of a box with arms outstretched. Image macros of the photos are typically captioned with frustrating or annoying situations, using the stuffed toy’s pose to convey an incredulous reaction.

Origin

On August 5th, 2013, DeviantArtist^[1] AnyaBoz posted a photograph of a stuffed cat toy titled “Persian Cat Room Guardian,” describing room guardians as “small creatures that protect one’s home from negative spirits and energies” (shown below).

Spread

The images remained undiscovered until early 2016, when they began appearing on Instagram in the form of reaction image macros. On February 5th, 2016, the @ratchetpeoplemeet Instagram^[5] page posted an image macro featuring two photos of the stuffed toy with the caption “When you ask your girl what’s wrong and she gets mad even more and says ’you’re supposed to know’” (shown below, left). Within four days, the image gained over 8,500 likes. The following day, Anyaboz posted several photos Tumblr^[3] blog, including another image macro with the caption “When you wake up from a nap and your mom starts yelling at you” (shown below, right).

That day, Anyaboz updated the DeviantArt page noting that the picture had “become somewhat of a meme” and encouraged others to credit her when using the photo. On February 7th, Reddit captainchase submitted the photograph to the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit, describing it as a “monkey looking thing.” Within 24 hours, the post gathered upwards of 2,100 votes (91% upvoted) and 100 comments, many of which contained edited versions of the image (shown below).

The same day, Redditor majkadajk submitted a post titled “What is the origin of the stuffed white monkey looking thing?” to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[4] to which Redditor Beast_Mode_Alfy cited Anyaboz DeviantArt page. Also on February 7th, the @gymmemesofficial^[6] Instagram page posted an image macro of the stuffed toy with the caption “When you get done with the dumbbells and see someone else racked theirs in place of yours” (shown below).

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Ker Blam!

About

Sidelined Chris Martin is a nickname given to the lead singer of the British rock band Coldplay during their performance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show on February 7th, 2016. Despite being billed as the headliner of the prestigious event, many viewers at home felt that the English singer-songwriter was upstaged by the sheer star power of his American co-performers, Beyonce and Bruno Mars, which quickly gave birth to a slew of jokes mocking Martin as the “third wheel” on stage.

Origin

On December 3rd, 2015, the National Football League announced that the Grammy Awards-winning British rock band Coldplay would be headlining the halftime show at the 50th National Football League (NFL) championship game, with Bruno Mars and Beyoncé joining the bill as co-performers of the event. On February 7th, 2016, Coldplay kicked off the halftime show by performing their hit songs, “Viva La Vida," “Paradise" and “Adventure of a Lifetime,” with the frontman Chris Martin taking over the stage to hype up the crowd. However, the spotlight quickly shifted away from Martin once he was joined by Bruno Mars and Beyonce, the latter of whom practically dominated the stage with a live debut of her latest new single “Formation.”

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At 8:39 p.m. (EST), American actress Anna Kendrick made a witty comment about Martin’s underwhelming presence on stage via her Twitter account.^[3]

At 8:48 p.m., Internet comedian Josh Ostrovsky (a.k.a @TheFatJew) posted a still shot of the three singers performing on stage together with the caption “when u tryin to fit in” to his Instagram account (shown below), garnering more than 291,000 likes in less than 24 hours.

At 8:57 p.m., BuzzFeed writer Spencer Althouse tweeted a photoshopped parody based on a still shot of the three performers on stage in which Martin is completely replaced by an image of the “Left Shark” that went viral during the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIX.

News Media Coverage

In the following hours, Chris Martin’s newfound meme-dom was picked up by several entertainment and social media news outlets in the United States and United Kingdom, including BuzzFeed^[4], Mashable^[7], Perez Hilton^[6], The Daily Mail^[5], Metro UK^[9] and The Independent^[11], among many others.

Search Interest

External References

About

Doom Cover Art Parodies refers to the photoshop alteration of the box art of id Software’s upcoming title Doom , in which the the lettering is replaced with ones from various other first-person shooters, mocking it’s use of the generic “Soldier /w Gun + Title” format utilized by many modern first-person shooters on the market.

Orgin

The Doom 2016 cover art was first revealed from a post from Conan O’Brien’s Twittter account ‘TeamCoco’ on February 3, 2016, promoting the game to be featured in his next episode of the Clueless Gamer segment of his show. The art has seen near universal negative reception from many gaming review sites and blogs, including Polygon^[1], Destructoid^[2], and Gawker Media’s gaming blog Kotaku^[3].

The next day, a PR person for Bethesda Softworks named Pete Hines confirmed that the cover was the real art.^[6]

Spread

On February 4, 2016, a NeoGAF forum topic^[4] was created by the user Boo Boo’n in response to the reveal of the cover art. On February 5, 2016, a poster in that thread named shagg_187 created six iterations of the altered version of the cover art, featuring the lettering of a number of modern first-person shooters, including Halo 5: Guardians, Crysis, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, and others^[5]. Many others in the thread followed suit, and it eventually accumulated 848 replies as of February 10th, 2016. These edits have been recognized on a number of popular gaming sites, which helped spawn a number of additional edits of the cover art.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1]Polygon – Doom’s box art is terrible

^[2]Destructoid – If this is really the new Doom box art, it sucks.

^[3]Kotaku – Doom’s Cover Fits Perfectly With Every Game

^[4]NeoGAF – god damn this DOOM box art is bad

^[5]NeoGAF – god damn this DOOM box art is bad – Post #473

^[6]Twitter – DCDeacon’s Tweet

About

Rubio Robot, also referred to as Robot Rubio, is a nickname given to referring to the machine-like, memorized quality of Republican Presidential candidate Marco Rubio’s debate performances and campaign appearances.

Origin

During his campaign, Rubio had been criticized for sounding scripted before, and in fact the first instance of the hashtag #RobotRubio being in use dates back to August 2015, shortly after he launched his presidential run.^[1] However, on February 6th, 2016, Marco Rubio appeared at a GOP debate in New Hampshire, along with the other contenders, including Donald Trump and Governor Chris Christie] The day before the debate, Christie’s campaign released a series of YouTube videos documenting Rubio’s practiced repetitions, and during the debate, Christie accused Rubio of memorizing 25-second soundbites and delivering them repeatedly. Rubio, visibly flustered, then proceeded to repeat the same line of his answer four times.

8:30 pm: “And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

8:32 pm: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

8:34 pm: “This notion that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”

9:21 pm: “I think anyone who believes that Barack Obama isn’t doing what he’s doing on purpose doesn’t understand what we’re dealing with here. Okay?”^[3]

Spread

After the appearance, the #RobotRubio hashtag immediately began attracting more attention, especially among Christie supporters.^[4] The Twitter account @RubioGlitch was created and first tweeted Rubio’s above line at 9:43pm, near the end of the debate; the initial tweet received 332 retweets and 307 likes. The account quickly accumulated almost 4,000 followers in the following 3 days, although it only tweeted the same text repeatedly.^[6]

The theme of Marco Rubio’s robotics spread offline as well, with the candidate being met at several campaign stops in New Hampshire before the February 9th primary by men dressed in robot costumes. On the one occasion, one of the men had labeled his costume the “Rubio Talking Points 3000” (below, left); on another occasion, a man dressed in a silver costume was physically pushed away by Rubio supporters who were not interested in the robot-themed disruption (below, right).^[5]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

not yet available

External References

wip

About

Congratulations! / Omedetou! is a line repeated by several characters in the final scene of the 1995 anime mecha series Neon Genesis Evangelion. The scene is noted for being very underwhelming and monotonous due to the repetition of the word in such a short period of time. Online the line is used to mockingly give praise to someone, and is generally accompanied by ironic clapping.

Origin

The original scene aired in Japan on March 27th, 1996, while the dubbed version aired in America on April 13th, 2006. On March 20th, 2008, the English dub version was uplaoded to YouTube by YouTuber Iseths (shown below).

Spread

On November 2nd, 2011, YouTuber ostolero uploaded a video titled “Congratulations! You Won!” mashing up the scene with audio from generic online sweepstakes scams (shown below, left). On February 13th, 2014, YouTuber Ryan Pollard uploaded the final video in their Rog and Tyrone series which was done in a parody of the final scene of Evangelion, and gave a particular point of making the “congratulations!” part overly absurd (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Overview

The O.J. Simpson Murder Trial was a highly publicized criminal trial of retired American football player Orenthal James Simpson on two counts of first-degree murder relating to the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman in June 1994. Following a lengthy and dramatic trial by a grand jury that lasted for eight months, Simpson was ultimately acquitted of all charges in October 1995. Due to the celebrity status of the defendant, coupled with an extensive period of intense media scrutiny and turbulent race-relations under which the trial took place, the case was eventually dubbed “the trial of the century” by the U.S. news media.

Background

[researching]

Notable Developments

[researching]

Search Interest

External References

About

“The Pest” is a 1997 comedy film starring John Leguizamo, which found a resurgence in the /tv/ board of 4chan in early 2016.

Origin

The Pest was released in 1997 to very poor reviews, for its immature humor and Leguizamo’s performance, and became a forgotten 90s comedy.

Spread

In January and February of 2016, users of the /tv/ board on 4chan started to pick up on the film, due to being a poorly received 90s film, and started to ironically call the film “cinema” and “kino” (German for Cinema), and daily threads were dedicated to spamming quotes from the film, such as “stinky dinkins”. This practice has become known to the members of the board as Pestposting.
One very notable scene is the intro, involving the main character singing in the shower, showing his disguises and jokes based on racial and ethnic stereotypes.

About

#RIPTwitter is a hashtag reacting to reports that Twitter would be replacing its reverse chronological feed with an algorithmic timeline similar to Facebook. In mid February 2016, the service was released as an optional feature for Twitter users without replacing the reverse chronological feed.

Origin

On February 5th, 2016, BuzzFeed^[1] reported that Twitter was planning on launching a new “algorithmic timeline,” which would prominently display popular tweets in the feed rather than in reverse chronological order. That day, many tweeted their displeasure with the reported timeline change, including Nerdist social media manager Michelle Buchman who posted a GIF of the RMS Titanic passenger liner sinking with the caption “RIP Twitter” (shown below).^[7]

Spread

The same day, YouTuber Mark Dice posted a video titled “R.I.P. Twitter”, comparing the reported timeline changes to “the way Facebook’s algorithm censors material” (shown below).

Also on February 5th, 2016, NBC reporter Josh Sternberg tweeted^[4] that his sources at Twitter claimed the “algorithms are strictly opt in” (shown below). Meanwhile, BuzzFeed^[8] published a follow-up article titled “Everyone is Freaking Out That Twitter is Switching to an Algorithmic Timeline.”

On February 6th, the hashtag #RIPTwitter^[9] began trending on the social media platform in tweets condemning the reported changes (shown below). That day, Redditor SausageBarm submitted a post titled “Why is #RIPTwitter trending on Twitter” to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[3] where it gained over 2,600 votes (93% upvoted) and 290 comments.

Jack Dorsey’s Response

On February 6th, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey posted several tweets^[5] responding to the #RIPTwitter hashtag, claiming the company “never planned to reorder timelines,” citing the service’s “while you were away” feature as a example of what they planned to release.

Trust & Safety Council

On February 9th, Twitter announced its new Trust & Safety Council consisting of “experts working for safety and free expression,” which included Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency Twitter feed among the inaugural members. Following the announcement, many critics used the hashtag #RIPTwitter in protest of the Feminist Frequency inclusion, comparing the council to surveillance symbol “Big Brother” from the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (shown below).^[10][11][12]

Timeline Released

On February 10th, Twitter announced the new timeline’s release on their official blog,^[2] noting that the reverse chronological order would remain even if the feature is enabled by the user:

“Here’s how it works. You flip on the feature in your settings; then when you open Twitter after being away for a while, the Tweets you’re most likely to care about will appear at the top of your timeline – still recent and in reverse chronological order. The rest of the Tweets will be displayed right underneath, also in reverse chronological order, as always.”

Search Interest

External References

About

Master Hamburg (Japanese: ハンバーグ師匠; Hanbāgu Shishō) is a comedy persona of Jun Itoda^[1] from Japanese comedy duo Speed Wagon.^[2] In a similar vein to Passion Yara in the end of 2000s, Mr. Hamburg’s physical comedy with a loud shout bacame to a popular subject for MAD videos on the Japanese video sharing service niconico Douga (niconico) in February 2016.

Origin

Itoda started playing this comedy persona “Master Hamburg”, a cowboy-like guy holding a large knife and a folk on his belt, circa 2009. His short skits much inspired by American stand-up comedy are consisting of too simple pun or nonsensical jokes about hamburger steak, usually called “hamburg” simply in Japan, and its related materials (eg. hot griddle, demi glace sauce, other ground meat recipes, sizzle, etc…), and always end by a loud punchline shout “HAMBURRRRRRG!!!” with a smug look though the shout purely unrelates to any skits (shown below, left). In 2015, Master Hamburg finally became a big hit among mainstream audiences, and the master succeeded to make an appearance on a major food company’s TV commercial movie for stir-fried noodles in November of that year (shown below, right).

Spread

In a reflection of his high visibility in the media, Master Hamburg’s popularity as a visual source for online parodies began by a "I will always love you" remix posted to niconico on January 2nd, 2016.^[3] Then, the smash hit of a "Marisa Stole The Precious Thing" remix posted on February 3rd by a user Zero^[4], known as the originator of Whisky Zen MADs, led the explosive increase of popularity. This video had been watched over a half million times in its first week, and since then, dozens of Hamburg MADs has been posted to the video sharing service.^[5] Besides, a news article about this MAD fad by an online gossip media^[6] was published on several portal services in that month.

Official Approval

On February 6th, 2016, Jun Itoda got a fan’s question about this MAD video fad on Twitter, and jokingly responded to it by the punchline.

俺だよ俺
ハンバーーーグだよ！！ https://t.co/n3MQrCAQmO

— スピードワゴン井戸田 (@junjunitojun) February 6, 2016

Translation:

> Excuse me, could you give me some comments about Master Hamburg is trending on niconico?

It’s ME! HAMBURRRG!!

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos/illustrations listed in this section.

About

GradeAUnderA is a British entertainer who makes rants on YouTube; which specialize in being satirical and being focused on the variety of issues on YouTube itself. Grade had become the centre of attention for his videos calling out certain YouTubers and YouTube traits (ex: reaction videos) earning a trend of subscribers within November of 2015.

Origin

Grade uploaded his first video on Mar 23, 2013 talking about ‘9 Things I Hate About The Barbershop’. Grades videos are done in Windows Movie Maker and records his audio with his mobile phone. The images used are all edited in MS Paint

Popularity

His video ‘Girly Drinks vs Manly Drinks’ was posted to the r/video page of Reddit and started gaining tons of views in Dec of 2014

Grade realizing this started to start working on making videos weekly for the channel

Calling Out of YouTubers/YouTube Traits

RayWilliamJohnson

On Mar 11, 2015, he uploaded a video calling out Ray William Johnson; stating facts that he had plagiarised his last video about job interviews

Vegan Gains

On Jun 28, 2015, he called out Vegan Gains for his videos;ending with 3 calling out videos. Grade claims that he made videos about him, stating that when others talked about him, they didn’t talk about the main issues.

Reaction Videos

On Aug 22, 2015; Grade made a video talking about Reaction videos; mainly focusing on Jinx and his younger brother CJ and what they have said in relation to reaction videos in general. Jinx had then reacted to the video itself and made a response video to Grade; only to delete the video within 12 hours.

Tryone Magnus

Tyrone had originally reacted to Grades video in Jan 2015. Grade discovered this and put a third party claim in May 2015. In relation to this, Tyrone had deleted his video; avoid the profits going to Grade

On Feb 2, 2016; Tyrone uploaded a series of videos; showing that Grade had ‘bashed’ him on his channel and videos; which Tyrone had defended himself on Grades comments

Grade then responded on Feb 8, 2016; telling his side of the issue; showcasing evidence of what Tyrone had said and with screenshots from their PM’s and references to quotes from Tyrones video

Tyrone then made another video; claiming that Grade had ‘twisted’ his words around and was making lies about him

The issue was brought to the attention of DramaAlert who asked both of them to come on the show to debate about the situation

Tyrone then responded to Grade saying that we wouldn’t come on the show because he was tired of arguing with Grade and that he ‘already established his points’

Nicole Arbour

Grade then talked about Nicole Arbour on Sep 26, 2015; calling out her points of her car crash, being a ‘role model’ and her video content.

Grade then made a video on Jan 16, 2016; calling Nicole out for her accusations against ex-boyfriend Matthew Santoro with proof.

Google Trends

External References

Editor’s note: Work in Progress. Information for the History and Reception sections are welcome.

About

The True Crime Community, sometimes referred to as the True Crime Fandom, is an online community which focuses on mass murderers, serial killers, and similar criminals. Notable subjects of focus include Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, James Holmes, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

History

The true crime community can be considered a pre-Internet phenomena that was later brought to light by the Internet. Hybristophilia, the sexual attraction to those who have committed some form of wrong-doing, is a well-known phenomena, although the exact reason behind why it exists is unknown.^[4]

The true crime community notably flourished due in part to the nature of websites such as Tumblr, which allow easy sharing of materials relating to the true crime community.

Characteristics

The true crime fandom shares many characteristics with other subcultures, notably in the way of fanworks such as writings and fan art focused around its subjects. This aspect has proven controversial, as it has been equated by some to be equal to idolizing criminals. This claim is typically countered by the claim that the fascination is rooted in criminology as opposed to an ulterior motive.^[5]

Notable Subfandoms

The true crime community can be broken down into several subfandoms based on the criminal(s) they focus on.

Columbine Massacre

The Columbine Massacre fandom is one of the largest, oldest, and best-known examples of a true crime subfandom, focused on the April 20, 1999 mass murder at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Participants in the fandom are commonly known as Columbiners, and are typically younger individuals who associate with Harris and Klebold as similarly misunderstood by the world. The fandom has been the subject of numerous case studies.^[1]

James Holmes

James Holmes, known for the Aurora, Colorado Theater Shooting gained a true crime fandom, whose members refer to themselves as Holmies. Unlike Columbiners, Holmies are typically comprised of young females who find Holmes physically attractive. The fandom initially came to popular focus due to a Buzzfeed article about it.^[2]

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev was one of the two people convicted of causing the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings, alongside his deceased brother Tamerlan. Although members of the fandom have no name given to them, the phrase “Free Jahar” became very closely associated with the fandom in general. Similar to Holmies, those in the fandom are typically young women who find Tsarnaev physically attractive.^[3]

Nevada-tan

Although it did not have much impact on the true crime fandom as it is today, the followers of the 2004 case of Nevada-tan could be seen as a precursor to groups such as Holmies, as the way Natsumi Tsuji was transformed into a “moe” character mirrors some aspects of the fandom today.

Reception

Search Interest

External References