About

Hijacker Selfie refers to a photograph of a British flight passenger smiling and posing with Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian man who hijacked EgyptAir Flight 181 and held its passengers hostage for several hours at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus on March 29th, 2016. Upon entering online circulation, the picture quickly went viral on Twitter and elsewhere in the social media.

Origin

On the morning of March 29th, 2016, EgyptAir Flight 18 was hijacked by a passenger claiming to be wearing an explosive belt while en route from Borg El Arab Airport in Alexandria to Cairo International Airport in Egypt. Shortly after taking control of the plane, the armed passenger forced the pilot to divert and land the plane at Larnaca International Airport in Cyprus, where he held four crew members and three European passengers hostage for several hours and demanded to see his estranged wife living in the country. By 2:41 p.m. local time, the crisis had ended with the release of the remaining hostages and the arrest of the hijacker, who was identified as 58-year-old Egyptian national Seif Eldin Mustafa. Later that day, a photograph of an unknown male passenger smiling and posing with Mustafa began circulating on Twitter (shown below).

Spread

Throughout the day, the photograph went viral across the world and prompted varying reactions in the social media, with many scorning the passenger as being irresponsible and narcissistic for exploiting a hostage crisis into a souvenir photo-op, while some took more lighthearted jabs at the “hijacker selfie” with photoshopped parodies or humorous commentaries and a few others cheered him on for seizing the moment and taking the selfie game to a new height.

Identity

The smiling passenger in the photograph was soon identified by several British news outlets as Ben Innes, a 26-year-old Health and Safety auditor based in Leeds, United Kingdom.

“Selfie” Debate

In the following days of Innes’ rise to accidental fame on the Internet, many people in the social media raised issues with the use of the term “selfie” to describe the photograph, as it had been taken by an unseen flight attendant, rather than Innes himself.^[13][14]

Search Interest

External References

About

“Who Is She?” is the title of a popular Vine video by Chloe Woodard, known online as chloe lmao, which features her dancing, then turning around dramatically to the opening riff of Take On Me . The clip was subject to a high quantity of parodies and remixes.

Origin

Chloe Woodard posted the original Vine on July 2nd, 2015, and as of April 5th, 2016, it has acquired more than 90.5 million loops, 626,000 likes, and over 331,000 revines. In the clip, Woodard is wearing a tie-dye shirt and a large ponytail, and shimmying her shoulders to the beat of A-ha’s “Take On Me.” After a few moments, she turns dramatically, and you can see that she has a full set of braces, several pimples, and sunglasses that are too small.

In a Paper Magazine interview from September 2015, Woodard wrote about what caused her to film the original clip:

We were playing outside and messing around with the water balloons outside. My friend gave me the glasses and I was just playing around with them. I was like, “Wait this would be funny” and I had her film it for me. I was like, “Did you like this?” and she was like, “Yeah, well maybe you could put music to it.” And I always put “Take on Me” by a-ha to my Vines. So I was like, “Alright I guess we’ll put that one.” And I don’t know, I guess everyone liked it!

Spread

The clip was immediately popular. According to Woodard, it had more than 100,000 loops in 24 hours, and more than one million loops by July 4th. The clip crested in popularity five days after posting on July 6th and July 7th, when many other notable Viners like Jared Wonago and Matt Maraldo used the clip in parodies that also obtained millions of their own loops. The original gained over 60 million loops in just three months.

On February 5th, the most notable parody was recorded by Entertainment Weekly, who recorded a tribute to the vine featuring actor and Jurassic Park star Jeff Goldblum. This Vine received more than 24 million loops, and was written about in the magazine.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

[WIP]

About

“Do You Remember How Many Breads Have You Eaten In Your Life” is a quote from the Japanese manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure said by the antagonist Dio Brando, regarding how many lives had he taken to heal his injuries. Online, the quote spawned numerous derivatives: parodies, edits, and jokes.

Origin

On Chapter 25 of the manga, during the events of Part 1: Phantom Blood^[1], the protagonists, Jonathan Joestar, William A. Zeppeli, and Robert Edward O. Speedwagon, are ambushed by Dio Brando and his zombie subjects. Zeppeli is the first one to engage Dio, and they have the following exchange:

Dio Brando: When I heal these wounds on my stomach, I will have erased all of JoJo’s burns! Come! Magician! I will fumigate these wounds wilth your life!
William A. Zeppeli: Bastard… How many lives have you sucked to heal those wounds!?
Dio Brando: Do you remember how many breads have you eaten in your life?

Spread

It is unknown when and where the quote gained traction online, but the earliest archived examples date back to February 15, 2008, to a thread on 4chan’s /a/ board, dedicated to Remilia Scarlet from the Touhou series^[3], who is notable for quoting the Dio’s phrase in the sixth official game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil^[4].

On July 22nd, 2013, a Tumblr user josephsk posted an edit of the manga panel, featuring Sasha Braus from the Attack On Titan (pictured below, left). Over the period on over 2 years, the post got 536 notes^[5]. On October 7th, 2015, a Tumblr user confirmeddelusional uploaded the edit of the panel (pictured below, right), featuring characters from the computer game Undertale: Sans and Frisk. Over the period of 5 months, the post got 2,254 notes^[6].

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Bust a Move Dancing Dog refers to a video loop of a large dog appearing to dance behind a chain link fence that is often remixed with different songs for comedic effect.

Origin

The original video of the dog was taken in an army encampment in Kazakstan and posted November 14th, 2013. The staff at the encampment are playing the song “You’re My Heart, You’re My Soul” by Modern Talking, a popular European group from the 1980s. The original video has acquired more than 3.4 million views as of April 6th, 2016.^[1]

Spread

The original video was first posted to /r/videos on December 1st, 2013, where it acquired 1,802 points (93% upvoted). On December 23rd, 2013, the dog was featured on the Kazakstani news station Tengrin TV, and on January 24th, he was featured on another station, this time with a remix of the dog dancing to Gangam Style.

On April 2nd, 2016, user jabbathechav used the Imgur video to GIF tool to create a 15-second long GIFV format of the dancing dog,^[2] which was then posted to the popular subreddits /r/funny^[3] and /r/gif,^[4] where it received 4,769 points (82% upvoted) and 5,863 points (84% upvoted) respectively. In the resulting comment threads, people began posting remixes of the dog dancing to songs using the website GIFSounds;^[5] many of these eventually migrated to YouTube. On April 4th, YouTube user Michelle Walstra posted a video of the dog dancing to Dawin’s song “Dessert,” which received over 400,000 views.^[6]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Graves, The Outlaw, is a character from League Of Legends. Within the community, Graves’ cigar is the subject of jokes, often using the snowclone“x can y, but Graves can’t have his cigar.”

History

In his first appearance, Graves was depicted as smoking a cigar on official art, before his cigar being removed from his splash art in November 2014^[1] according to “censorship or age rating problems”^[2], a reason often turned into ridicule due to a number of other questionable content in the game, especially since other arts depicting characters smoking or drinking alcohol^[3] were not affected. This started the snowclone“x can y, but Graves can’t have his cigar.” , where “x can y” being something horrifying, violent, or questionable, like the character Thresh stealing souls and torturing them for eternity or the character Gragas carrying a barrel of wine and drinking from it regularly but somehow not being subject to censorship or increasing the age rating of the game.

Recently, a planned change to the splash art of the “Gentleman” skin for the character Cho’Gath, removing the pipe he held and emptying his glass of wine was badly received by the community, causing it to be compared to the removal of Graves’ cigar, and bringing the meme to light again.^[4]

Spread

Graves’ cigar is often joked about when discussion about Graves comes up between “League of Legends” players, and, in April 2016, due to the controversial changes done to the Gentleman Cho’Gath splash art, the “League of Legends” subreddit added cigars to user flairs depicting the game’s champions – except, of course, Graves and Cho’Gath.

Google Trends

External Links

^[1]Surrender at 20 – 11/7 PBE Update

^[2]League Of Legends boards – Riot Silver on Graves’ cigar

^[3]League Of Legends boards – User remarking on Gragas smoking and drinking not being affected

^[4]League Of Legends Subreddit – And thus Riot reinforced the cigar meme

About

“Sploosh” is an onomatopoeic expression mimicking a splashing sound that is often used online to indicate female sexual arousal.

Origin

On May 1st, 2008, Urban Dictionary^[1] user Timothy Jordan posted an entry for “sploosh,” defining it as “Female ejaculation, not associated with golden showers.”

Spread

On March 18th, 2010, Season 1 Episode 10 of the animated television series Archer was broadcast, in which the character Pam Poovey says “sploosh” after hearing her boss Sterling Archer discuss having a ménage à trois with two princesses (shown below).

On April 1st, 2013, DeviantArtist MeganLara posted an illustration of Pam Poovery riding a dolphin with the word “Sploosh” written underneath (shown below, left). A T-shirt using the graphic was subsequently sold on the online retailer DesignByHumans (shown below, right).

On April 10th, 2014, YouTuber davedacunt uploaded a clip from Archer in which the character

On February 22nd, 2013, Imgur user phillyskywarp posted a parody “Hope” poster featuring an illustration of Poovery with “Sploosh” written underneath (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s note: Work in Progress

About

Ellen Baker (Japanese: エレン・ベーカー) is a fictional character in a series of English textbooks for Japanese junior high schools. Soon after Twitter users shared her pictures in April 2016, this American lady became to a new online moe icon on the Japanese web.

Origin

Ellen Baker, an adult woman of an assistant English teacher in Midori Junior High School, is one of the characters in a 2016-2019 edition of NEWHORIZON, a Japanese long-run English textbook series for junior high schools released by Tokyo Shoseki.^[1] On April 5th 2016, a Twitter user @haiyore_audio^[2] uploaded pictures of the characters including her, which were taken from the textbook of his younger brother enrolling in a junior high school in that month. This tweet had been retweeted 50,000 times and favorited 45,000 times within its first 24 hours by people surprised at this unexpected moe in public schools serious textbooks.

はぁ？新しく中学校に入学した弟が持って帰ってきた英語の教科書。
登場人物可愛すぎない？？？特にエレン・ベーカー先生。惚れた。 pic.twitter.com/5EUzNWoWDi

— そーちんは難聴予備軍 (@haiyore_audio) April 5, 2016

Translation:

WTF is this my brother’s new English textbook? Why they are so cute??? And this, Ellen Baker. I love her.

This edition’s illustrations were drawn by a Japanese illustrator Denchubou (電柱棒), who also worked for an adult edition of NEWHORIZON released in the previous year. On the other hand, typical illustrations for English textbooks that many ordinary Japanese people imagine is like these from the previous edition of New Horizon (shown below).

Spread

Editor’s note: Work in Progress

In a reflection of her popularity, articles for Ellen Baker were submitted to Nico Nico Pedia^[3] and Pixiv Encyclopedia^[4] in the following day, while she got more than 200 fan illustrations in total on both of illustration sharing services.^[5][6] Twitter users held a crappy collage grand prix for her as usual^[7], and many of those user-created contents are reblogged to Tumblr.^[8]

The exploding popularity of Ellen Baker was soon covered by online news media^[9] as well as English otaku communities: Crunchyroll^[10] and 4chan’s /a/.^[11]

Various Examples

Search Interest

[Not Available]

External References

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

basically water made some meme called we’re all pinecones and annoyed everyone with it and made others spam it on comments. water himself spammed it on comments but he stopped and hates it kkkkkkkkkthxbyeeeeeeeeee he did a video of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am6c8ge4IpA
that is the origin k

About

Archer is an animated television series centered around the protagonist Sterling Archer (voiced by H. Jon Benjamin) and his cohorts who perform various acts of global espionage. The show is known for its adult-themed humor and anachronistic settings, and has gained a significant fan following on the internet.

History

On September 17th, 2009, a pilot sneak peak for Archer aired on the FX network. On January 14th, 2010, the first season of the show officially premiered on the television channel. Archer has continued to run for an additional six seasons, with the latest premiering on March 31st, 2016.

Online Presence

On February 21st, 2010, the Archer Wiki^[3] was launched, garnering upwards of 545 pages in the next seven years. On November 8th, the official Archer Facebook^[4] page was created, which gained over 2.6 million likes within six years. On December 23rd, YouTuber The Gamers’ Temple posted a mock “office etiquette” public service announcement, featuring various clips from Archer (shown below, left). Over the next five years, the video gathered more than 1.6 million views. In January 2011, the /r/ArcherFX subreddit was launched for discussions about the animated television series. On May 12th, YouTuber gregtherobot uploaded a montage of notable clips from the show, garnering upwards of 3.7 million views and 2,000 comments in five years (shown below, right). On August 3rd, the “FYeahArcher” Tumblr^[7] blog was created. In November, a Twitter^[5] feed for the show was launched.

On January 15th, 2014, the official ArcherOnFX^[8] Tumblr blog was created. On January 20th, 2015, the late night talk show Conan posted a segment in which an animated Conan O’Brien goes on an adventure with Sterling Archer (shown below). Within two years, a YouTube upload of the video received more than three million views and 1,800 comments.

Reception

In 2010, Archer’s voice actor H. Jon Benjamin was nomination for a Primtime Emmy Away for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance. In 2014, Archer was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. On the review aggregator Metacritic,^[2] the show has received scores of 78 (Season 1), 88 (Season 2), 75 (Season 3) and 80 (Season 4).

Related Memes

Do You Want Ants?

“Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants” is a memorable quote said by the character Malory Archer while explaining the dangers of leaving sugary food products uncovered in an office. Online, the phrasal template“Do you want X? Because that’s how you get X" is typically used as a reaction image to warn against the potentially negative consequences of acting upon a decision.

Sploosh

“Sploosh” is an onomatopoeic expression mimicking a splashing sound that is often used to indicate female sexual arousal. The word was popularized after appearing in Archer Season 1 Episode 10, in which the character Pam Poovey says “sploosh” after hearing her boss Sterling Archer discuss having a ménage à trois with two princesses (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

Carly Rae Jepsen is a Canadian pop singer and songwriter known for her hit singles “Call Me Maybe,” and “I Really Really Like You,” among others. Music videos for her songs have often been subject to remixes and other meme treatments.

Career

“Call Me Maybe”

Jepsen had already released one album and made it to the top three on Canadian Idol when pop star “Justin Bieber’s” manager, Scooter Braun, signed her to a larger deal with his record company, Schoolboy Records in 2012. After the signing, Bieber himself began tweeting about Jepsen’s new single, “Call Me Maybe,” which caused sales to skyrocket even though he misspelled the singer’s last name.

Since its release, Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” became notable for its international success, reaching number one in Australia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as peaking in the top three singles in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The music video for the song was uploaded to the singer’s YouTube VEVO channel on March 1st, 2012. She released the full-length album Kiss later that year.

The singer was the first Canadian to receive Billboard’s“Rising Star” award in 2012, and “Call Me Maybe” won two Juno awards and was nominated for two Grammies.

After touring to support Kiss, the singer recorded her third studio album, Emotion, in 2014 and began releasing singles in 2015. The video for the first single, “I Really Really Like You,” was posted to the Carly Rae Jepsen VEVO on March 6th, 2015, and starred the actor Tom Hanks dancing and lip-syncing to the song. It reached the Top 5 and Top 40 charts in Canada and the United States, and the video received 135 million views as of April 2016. On July 17th, 2015 she released the album’s second single “Runaway With Me,” on her VEVO channel; as of April 2016 it has 18 million views.

The album was released later that year to critical acclaim, although it did not chart as highly as Kiss_. In the meantime, Jepsen recorded the theme song for the reboot of "_Full House":/memes/subcultures/full-house, Fuller House, and played Frenchy in the live television musical production Grease Live.

Online Presence

Jepsen maintains social media accounts on Twitter, where she has 11 million followers; Facebook, where she has 13 million likes; Instagram, where she has 1.6 million followers; and YouTube, with 2,358,135 subscribers. She also maintains an active fan club on the app BKSTG. In addition, a subreddit devoted to the singer was created in 2012 and has 371 subscribers as of April 2016.

Related Memes

Call Me Maybe

“Call Me Maybe”:/memes/call-me-maybe is a 2011 dance pop single recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen. The song rose to fame online after being endorsed by pop star Justin Bieber in December 2011. Since its release, the song has inspired many lip dub tributes, parodies and covers on the video sharing site YouTube.

Backseat Lip Dub Dancing

Backseat Lip Dub Dancing is a choreographed group performance that takes place in the backseat of a moving vehicle involving a group of passengers, such as traveling sports team. On YouTube, it can be seen as a subgenre of lip dub music videos. The combination of lip dubbing and dancing in the car went through its highest growth period in early 2012 with cover renditions of Carly Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”, which led to an impromptu challenge among college sports teams.

Runaway With Me

“Run Away with Me”:http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/run-away-with-me is a 2015 pop song written and performed by Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen that was released as the second single from her third studio album Emotion. In late February 2016, the saxophone arrangement from the opening of the song inspired a series of remix videos on Vine.

Search Interest

External References

Work in progress.

About

“FUCKEN” is a catchphrase associated to a facial composite of a black man, used on several communities to mock refugees on European countries. The face has also been associeted to the phrases “Ich will fucken” (mispelling of “I wanna fuck”) and “große brüste” (Big breasts).

Origin

During 2016 New Year’s Eve, hundreds of sexual assaults and at least five rapes were reported on Germany, mainly on the city center of Cologne. As of March 17th, 2016, 120 suspects had been identified, with Chief Prosecutor Ulrich Bremer stating that most of them were asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who had recently arrived in Germany,^[8]
sparklng several debates regarding the European migrant crisis. A week after the incidents, several news websites published that some suspects carried a note with several phrases in German translated into Arab, including phrases like “I want to kiss you” and “big breasts”, and the word “fucken”, a mispelling of “ficken”, to fuck.^[1][2]

On January 22nd, German police released the facial composite of a sexual assaulter from the district of Waldhof, in the city of Mannheim, who assaulted a 55 years old woman during the New Year’s Eve.^[9] Both the composite and the note phrases were heavily mocked on sme online communities, like 4chan’s international board /int/,^[3] being a post from January 30th the first one to associate both.^[4]

Spread

The term didn’t gain traction until February 4th, 2016, when an edited cover of a Kinder Chocolate box featuring several references to the phrases was submitted on /int/.^[5] Two days later, another thread contained more edited pictures featuring the composite, a version of “Aliens Everywhere” and “It’s Goofy Time”.^[6] Both the edits and catchphrases started being used on 4chan, mostly /int/.^[7]

Various Examples

[WIP]

External References

About

Nileseyy Niles Disappears is a photo series based on a Vine video by the comedian Nileseyy Niles (real name: Niles Stewart). The photo series is often used on Black Twitter to indicate someone leaving an embarrassing situation.

Origin

On April 28th, 2015, Nileseyy Niles posted the first of three successive Vine videos in which he is in a confusing or aggressive situation. In each video, he holds up a peace sign and uses a special effect to disappear. The first video in the series received 1.8 million loops, the second almost 1 million loops, and the third 1.9 million loops as of April 2016.

Spread

On June 19th, 2015, Twitter user chanelpuke used Twitter’s multiple image upload feature to upload a series of screen captures from Nileseyy Niles’s third disappearing Vine, “When you not tryna get jumped.” The tweet received 2,329 retweets and 4,114 likes. The next day, the same series of images and accompanying text was used in by a parody WorldStarHipHop account, worldstarfunny, where it received 4,753 retweets and 5,901 likes. The series of images were frequently used on Twitter after that.

On October 10th, 2015, Nileseyy Niles released a 23 minute video on YouTube called “Disappearing: The Origin,” in which he went into detail on his “his life, his friends and most importantly, how he gained his disappearing abilities.” The video gained over 1.15 million views as of April 2016.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

[WIP]

About

Stand Cries^[1], the most well known of them being ORAORAORA and MUDAMUDAMUDA, are battle cries yelled out by Stands, spiritual manifestations of psychic power from the Japanese manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The cries are usually yelled while unleashing a powerful barrage of rapid-fire punches, similar to Hokuto Hyarskuretsu-Ken from Fist of the North Star.

Origin

ORAORAORA / オラオラオラ

ORAORAORA is a cry most notably yelled out by Star Platinum, stand of Jotaro Kujo, the protagonist of Part 3: Stardust Crusaders. The first one was in Chapter 119 of the manga^[3], released in May 8th, 1989, during the assault on Noriaki Kakyoin’s Hierophant Green. The battle cry is later used by Jolyne Cujoh’s Stone Free (Part 6), and Johnny Joestar’s Tusk Act 4 (Part 7).

MUDAMUDAMUDA / 無駄無駄無駄

MUDAMUDAMUDA (Muda can be translated as Useless) is a battle cry yelled by Dio Brando and his stand The World. It was used a couple of times by Dio in Part 1: Phantom Blood, Chapter 40, during his fight with Jonathan Joestar^[1]. As part of the punch rush in was first used in Part 3, Chapter 256, during the clash with Jotaro’s Star Platinum. This battle cry is also used by Giorno Giovanna’s Gold Experience.

Other Cries

Other notable stand cries include:

• DORARARA by Josuke Higashikata’s Crazy Diamond (Part 4)
  
• ARIARIARI (Arrivederci!) by Bruno Bruno Buccellati’s Sticky Fingers (Part 5)
  
• VOLAVOLAVOLA (Volare Via!) by Narancia Ghirga’s Aerosmith (Part 5)

Spread

In July 7th, 2003, a flash animation “mudah.swf” by qwerqwer1234, was posted in a thread on the Japanese imageboard 2ch^[7], featuring stick figures performing punch rushes of characters from parts 3 and 5. Later, on March 5th, 2006, the animation was uploaded on the site AlbinoBlackSheep^[2].

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

“Taiwan #1” is a memorable quote uttered by video game streamer AngryPug during a match in the game H1Z1, in which he repeatedly taunts the Chinese streamer Em0 by pretending to be Taiwanese.

Origin

During the summer of 2015, H1Z1 streamer AngryPug began infiltrating the team of Chinese player Em0 by donning their uniforms and ambushing their raids.^[4] On July 5th, AngryPug uploaded footage of an H1Z1 match in which he begins yelling “Taiwan number one” in a faux Taiwanese accent immediately after being killed by Em0’s team (shown below). Over the next nine months, the video received upwards of 2.2 million views.

Spread

On July 9th, AngryPug uploaded another H1Z1 clip in which he provokes another player by yelling “Taiwan number one” (shown below).

On November 22nd, Redditor CrazyandLazy submitted the original AngryPug video in a post titled “If you shout Taiwan No.1 in this game, Chinese gamers go nuts.” Within four months, the post gained over 7,200 votes (93% upvoted) and 1,800 comments on /r/videos.^[1] The following day, Redditor Leggomyeggo69 submitted a post titled “What is the point of the Taiwan #1 thing?” to /r/OutOfTheLoop,^[2] where several users cited the AngryPug video as the origin of the phrase. On November 29th, another post about the catchphrase was submitted to /r/OutOfTheLoop, to which Reddit RedrumSprinkles noted that China and Taiwan had been “bitter rivals” ever since the Communist Revolution. On December 10th, AngryPug posted a video titled “Taiwan #1 Red Army Edition,” in which he repeatedly yells “Taiwan number one” while playing against a team of Chinese opponents in H1Z1 and subsequently holds up a Taiwanese flag (shown below). On February 7th, 2016, the news blog The Diplomat^[3] published an article about AngryPug’s growing Taiwanese fan base.

Search Interest

External References

About

American Idol is an American singing competition TV series created by English entrepreneur Simon Fuller as the U.S. edition of the British TV series Pop Idol, that began airing on June 11th, 2002.

Premise

The main objective of the show is to scout and recruit new solo recording artists through a multi-step audition process, which begins with preliminary rounds of off-screen open auditions hosted at select cities, followed by a series of live, on-screen auditions before the panel of judges and the audience in attendance, before the public can choose the winner of each season through telephone voting from the semi-finals and onwards. In addition, the show also incorporates elements of comedy and drama by recapping memorable moments from the preliminary round of auditions and telling the backstories of the contestants and real-life drama that arise as each season progresses in real time.

History

Pop Idol

The concept for American Idol was based on the British TV show Pop Idol, which was in turn inspired by Popstars, the British spin-off of the New Zealand singing competition TV series Pop Stars, that premiered in October 2001. Created by British talent manager and TV producer Simon Fuller, the first season of Pop Idol proved to be considerably more popular than its competitor Popstars, mainly due to the on-screen chemistry of the judges and the success of its first winner, Will Young.

American Idol

In 2001, Simon Fuller, Simon Cowell and Simon Jones tried to expand its show in the United States, although it was met with lukewarm response from the American television networks. However, the show was eventually picked up for a pilot season by FOX after its president Rupert Murdoch was persuaded by his daughter Elisabeth, who was a fan of the British show. Featuring radio personality Ryan Seacrest and comedian Brian Dunkleman as the co-hosts and Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell as the judges, the show premiered under the name American Idol: The Search for a Superstar on June 11th, 2002. In contrast to the poor reception from the network executives, the show quickly became one of the biggest hits of the summer and soon grew into a pop culture phenomenon; by 2004, it had become the most-watched show on U.S. television, a position it then held on for seven consecutive seasons.

Reception

[researching]

Fandom

[researching]

Online Presence

Having premiered years before the emergence of social and viral media cultures, the show gradually adopted to the entertainment industry trend by increasing online presence over the course of its run. As of April 2016, American Idol maintains an official Facebook page (12.4 million likes) Twitter account, Instagram feed and YouTube channel.

Related Memes

William Hung

William Hung is an American Idol contestant who auditioned on the third season of the show. His atrocious singing, contrasting his gung-ho attitude, caused his performance to go viral, eventually landing him a record deal and various commercial appearances.

Crying Girl

The Crying Girl is a nickname given to a young audience member who became famous for her overly emotional reaction to the sixth season finalist Sanjaya Malakar’s cover performance of The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me."

“Pants on the Ground”

“Pants on the Ground” is an original song written and performed by Larry Platt, a 62 year old contestant who auditioned for the ninth season of American Idol in June 2009. As the title implies, the song talks about how people seriously need to pull their pants up, because wearing pants below waistline doesn’t really make them look “cool.” Upon its airing on January 13th, 2010, Platt’s performance of “Pants on the Ground” entertained millions of viewers at home, although he couldn’t advance to the next round due to the program’s age restrictions.

Search Interest

External References

WIP

About

“Rariball” refers to a photoshop meme featuring the character Rarity from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic curled up in a ball.

Origin

WIP

Spread

WIP

Various Examples

External References

About

EmperorLemon is a Youtuber on the the site YouTube.
He usually makes YTP out of Pixar films. He is best known for creating The UNcredibles and The NONcredibles, as well as many other Poops. He has been criticized for 9/11 jokes, like Cartoonlover98, in many of the comments on his videos. He got tired of seeing the comment along with many others. He also made Lightning McQueer and the Quest for Tires and the Frying Nemo saga.

The UNcredibles

Frying Nemo

Lightning McQueer and the quest for tires

Reaction Videos

They’re been a lot of reaction videos out of these Youtube Poops. But to make sure
, here’s an example

About

#HillarySoQualified was a hashtag launched by Hillary Clinton’s2016 Democratic Presidential Campaign after her opponent Bernie Sanders claimed she was not qualified to become president. The hashtag was then hijacked by Sanders’ supporters who used it ironically to describe Clinton’s negative attributes.

Origin

On Wednesday, April 6th, Bernie Sanders stated in a speech that he believed that Hillary Clinton was unqualified to hold the office of president based on her previous decisions in fundraising, the Iraq War, and other judgements.

According to the Washington Post, the statements by Sanders angered a Clinton supporter in Houston named Kim Frederick, who tweets as kimfrederi. In the middle of the night, she tweeted,

#HillarySoQualified she got 8M children insured while you renamed two post office boxes. #ImWithHer
-- Kim Frederick (@kimfrederi) April 7, 2016

She tweeted several more times using the hashtag, but then later protected her Twitter stream.

Spread

Again according to the Wsahington Post, by the next morning there were over 90,000 tweets using the hashtag, most of them by Sanders supporters who had hijacked it for their own use. Some tweets, like that by scott_brawley, which stated “What able and professional woman hasn’t had a mediocre old white dude with fewer credentials question her abilities? #HillarySoQualified” and received 178 retweets and 258 likes. But many others, including many that were more popular, criticized the candidate. According to Trendinalia, the #HillarySoQualified hashtag was the 10th top trending hashtag worldwide on April 7th, and it was covered by many national news outlets, including the Huffington Post, MSNBC, and Politico.

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About

Airsoft is a competitive team-based game in which participants win matches by shooting opponents with plastic pellets from airsoft replica firearms. Matches often resemble those seen in first-person shooter video games, including games like team death match and capture the flag.

History

In the early 1980s, the first airsoft pistols were sold in Japan, originally designed for target shooting. The guns were named “airsoft” after the green gas used to propel the plastic pellets. Over the next 10 years, the company LS popularized airsoft guns in the United Kingdom and the United States, which subsequently developed organized gaming communities centered around the use of the replica firearms.

Online Presence

On January 12th, 2006, the Airsoft Wiki^[3] was created, which accumulated upwards of 90 pages in the next 10 years. On June 3rd, 2007, YouTuber czk002 uploaded a video featuring an airsoft gun modeled after the IMI Desert Eagle semi-automatic handgun, receiving more than seven million views and 6,500 comments over nine years (shown below, left). On May 27th, 2008, the /r/airsoft^[2] subreddit was launched for discussions about airsoft guns and competitive matches. On November 9th, 2009, YouTuber scoutthedoggie submitted a video of an airsoft game in Scotland, featuring a large M134 minigun replica (shown below, right). Within seven years, the video gained over 38 million views and 17,800 comments.

On May 26th, 2015, YouTuber BirnyX uploaded a comedy sketch titled “Airsoft vs Nerf,” in which a group of children go to save their parents using nerf weapons at an airsoft match (shown below, left). Over the next year, the video gathered more than 22 million views and 10,000 comments. On December 30th, 2015, YouTuber Novritsch posted footage of an airsoft player cheating by failing to react to being hit (shown below, right). Within four months, the video received upwards of 4.7 million views and 7,000 comments.

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About

“Why Are You Eating Ice Cream?” refers to a comic featuring the characters Umbrella and Parasoul from the video game Skullgirls having a conversation over the former eating ice cream. The comic inspired several parodies and became an exploitable.

Origin

The original comic was created by the artist kata-009,^[1] and first submitted to their Tumblr account on November 20th, 2013.^[2] In the comic, Umbrella is asked by her big sister Parasoul why she eats ice cream everyday, replying that she does it when having a bad day. In the following two years, the post got over 28,000 notes.

Spread

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