About

#ShowWolfATurtle is a Twitterhashtag that started after CNN correspondent Wolf Blizter tweeted a photo of a turtle saying “Always nice to see a turtle.” Following the tweet, people began posting pictures of turtles with the hashtag with the idea that Blitzer would see the turtles and have his day brightened.

Origin

On May 14th, 2017, Blitzer tweeted^[1] a picture of a turtle captioned “Always nice to see a turtle.” The tweet gained nearly 4,000 retweets and 12,000 likes (shown below, left). The following day, Dr. David Steen posted the first tweet^[2] under the #ShowWolfATurtle hashtag (shown below, right.

Spread

Over the following two days, dozens of people joined in on the hashtag posting pictures of various turtles. The spread of the hashtag made Twitter Moments^[3] and was covered by Atlas Obscura^[4] and Uproxx.^[5] Most users took the hashtag sincerely, sharing pictures of actual turtles, though some jokingly replied with pictures of the Pokémon Squirtle and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (ex: shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References

About

Branson Reese is a cartoonist and sketch comedy actor whose comics have a significant following on Weird Twitter.

History

Reese’s first webcomic, Escape From Heaven,^[1] launched on Tumblr on February 18th, 2015 (first comic shown below).

While most of the comics did not gain many notes, Reese did draw Teen Comix, ^[2] a doodle which would later grow into a popular exploitable. In the original comic, the second panel, which would become the altered panel in future exploitables, shows a shirt that reads “What if they made Simpsons porn illegal?” The comic has generated over 25,000 notes as of May 18th, 2017 (shown below).

After June 7th, 2015, Reese did not update Escape From Heaven again until February of 2017. On October 15th, 2015, Reese appeared in the first episode of The Pioneers, a webseries published by Funny or Die (shown below). He would appear in more episodes of the series over the course of the following year.

Meanwhile, Reese continued posting webcomics for various news and comedy outlets. On September 7th, 2016, he posted the first of what would become several Garfield parodies to his Twitter account (shown below).^[3]

On December 18th, he uploaded several comics to his personal Tumblr account. As of May 18th, 2017, he has uploaded a new comic to his personal Tumblr nearly every day since. Many of these grew popular on Twitter and Tumblr. One of the most popular was his comic titled “The Person Who Discovered Sharks,”^[5] which gained over 13,000 retweets and 32,000 likes after its April 3rd, 2017 publication (shown below).

The popularity of the comic was buoyed by the discourse that followed it. Several people replied to the comic correcting Reese that sharks were not smooth creatures. Reese responded by trolling these people by acting like an expert on sharks who knows that sharks are in fact smooth. His troll was covered by gomn.com.^[6]

Online Presence

Online, Reese is mostly popular on Twitter.^[7] There, he has over 23,400 followers. His comics have been written about by College Humor,^[8] who called him “The Internet’s Weirdest Artist.” He has made a notable fan out of comedian Paul F. Tompkins, who on May 15th posted to his Facebook account,^[9]“I like Branson’s comics very much.”

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Devestated Elmo refers to a popular photograph of a person in a distraught-looking Elmo costume observing a Times Square tourist taking a picture with a person in a costume of Woody from Toy Story. The picture, particularly the expression on the Elmo’s face, has become the inspiration for numerous photoshop battles on Reddit.

Origin

On July 26th, 2014, Redditor Brian_Buckley^[1] posted a picture (shown below) of a person in a Elmo costume appearing to “catch” a person dressed as Woody taking a picture with a tourist in New York City’s Times Square. They posted the picture in the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit, garnering more than 1,800 points (96% upvoted) and 130 comments.

Spread

Around the same time as the photoshopbattle, July 2017, two blogs also published the same photograph of Elmo. The blog Shock My Mind and the Spanish-langauge blog Lomacia also uploaded the same picture as the one in that started the photoshopbattle.^[2][3]

Several days later, on July 29th, the website We Know Memes^[5] posted a tenso variation of the meme with the caption “I thought we had something special.”

Nearly four years later, on May 17th, 2017, Redditor KingMactastic posted “Horrorfied Elmo” to /r/photoshopbattles under the name “Devastated Elmo.”^[6] Within 24 hours, the post received more than 63,500 points (90% upvoted) and 700 comments. Some of the most popular response can be seen below. Several sites covered the photoshop battle, including Complex,^[7] Teen Vogue,^[8] and more.

Various Examples

!

Search Interest

External References

About

Richard Spencer is an American white supremacist made famous for founding the alt-right movement. His profile raised since significantly following the election of President Donald Trump, appearing on numerous news outlets as the face and spokesperson for the alt-right.

Search Interest

About

Matthew Silver is a performance artist in New York City who plays a “village idiot” character, acting as a “clown” and “trickster” in order to parody social norms.^[1] He has been in several viral videos in which he performs his antics.

History

Before his performance art appeared online, Silver appeared in an experimental short film called “The Shadow Monster” (shown below, left). The earliest recorded instances of his performance art online came on November 30th, 2011, in a video in which he wore a white dress and sang the Neil Diamond song “Sweet Caroline” (shown below, right).

Silver’s work began appearing more online in the coming year as he began to gain notoriety for his bizarre performances. He was profiled by Paper Magazine^[4] during this time. On December 10th, 2012, documentary channel The Back of the Busk posted a documentary about him in which Silver explained the impetus behind his work, gaining over 104,000 views (shown below).

He appeared in several other documentaries and his performances continued to be posted online in the coming years. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2014 when he went viral. On June 12th, 2014, YouTube user Rony Portillo published a video in which they stopped to interview Silver and were struck by his inspirational words that came along with his character’s eccentricities (shown below). The video gained over 2.7 million views and brought Silver some of his most widespread attention to date. He was covered by Ozy^[2] magazine two months later. A user on /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] asked about him shortly after the video’s spread as well.

Silver went viral again in May of 2017 thanks to two videos of his performances. One in which Silver preaches a message of love was covered by Time Out New York on the 13th (shown below, left).^[5] Another found him interacting with a fidget spinner published by NYC artist New York Nico, also published on the 13th. (shown below, right). On YouTube, the video gained over 118,000 views. It also gained 2.2 million views on Facebook on the Viral Thread^[6] page.

Online Presence

Online, Silver has a strong following, with over 240,000 Facebook likes^[7] and 30,000 Instagram^[8] followers.

Various Videos

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External References

About

You Just Enjoyed One of Hitler’s Artworks is an image macro series featuring various images with a top caption asking the viewer “That’s a pretty good painting, right?”, followed by a bottom caption revealing that they had “just enjoyed one of Adolf Hitler’s artoworks.”

Origin

On September 27th, 2010, The Telegraph reported that a collection of paintings made by “Adolf Hitler”: were being sold auction later that month. The article included a picture of a watercolor painting showing a staircase outside of a home (shown below, left). On March 2nd, 2013, FunnyJunk^[1] user trollypollyz uploaded the painting along with the caption “That’s a pretty good painting, right? / You just enjoyed one of Adolf Hitler’s artworks” (shown below, right). Within four years, the post gained over 59,000 views and 1,500 points.

Spread

The following day, Redditor coledog22 reposted the image to /r/funny,^[4] where it gathered upwards of 1,000 points (83% upvoted) and 600 comments prior to being archived.

On December 27th, 2016, the ShitpostBot 5000 Facebook^[3] page posted a version of the image featuring a portrait photograph of YouTuber Jon Jafari (shown below). Within five months, the post gained over 2,800 shares and 2,000 reactions.

On March 5th, 2017, Twitter user @Frektelfelms^[5] submitted a painting of a Counter-Strike map with the “Nice painting, right?” caption (shown below). Within two weeks, the tweet garnered more than 3,500 likes and 1,000 retweets.

Search Interest

Not available.

Search Interest

External References

[WIP. Also note: I most likely will not be touching this with a 5 foot pole because…no.]

About

Spider Man-Elsa Videos are videos on video-hosting sites, usually Youtube, that usually feature the Marvel superhero Spider Man and Elsa from the Disney film Frozen in various bizarre and odd manners. Usually aimed towards younger audiences, the videos have gained notoriety on Youtube due to their high view counts, with some having over 10 million views, bizarre, questionable and fetish-like subtexts, low-quality roleplay, and accusations of more dishonest ways to abuse the Youtube algorithms, such as view-botting and fake commenters.

History

Precursor: Toy Channels

Derivative: Fake Animations

Reception

Search Interest

External References

You Just Have to Say That You’re Fine is a quote said by Katy Perry in an interview with Katy Perry on an episode of the Australian news-current affairs TV show The Project in 2014. Over time, the quote became popularized when edited in fail videos.

Origin

The quote comes from an interview with Katy Perry on a 2014 episode of The Project in 2014. Perry can be heard uttering the quote at around the 4:15 mark. As of May 2017, the original interview has over 200,000 views and over 3,000 likes on YouTube.

You know, you walk out the door. You see someone that you know, and they ask you how you are, and you just have to say that you’re fine, when you’re not really fine, but you just can’t get into it because they would never understand.

Spread

Nothing

My Mom! is a joke/catchphrase said by Muscle Man from the Cartoon Network TV series, Regular Show. This has became a running gag in the entire series as Muscle Man made it a habit of telling these jokes. This is used to provoke someone that his/her mom does better at something (e.g. playing a mean piece of brass, taking stress check-ups, etc).

Origin

The origin of the “My Mom” joke came from the Regular Show Season One episode, “Just Set Up the Chairs”. The following below is the origin of the joke itself:

Special Entertainment Clown: (groans) Who’s at da door? Whoa it’s bright!
Muscle Man: You know who likes special entertainment like that? My mom!

Spread

The joke has been spread all over the Internet since it’s debut on “Just Set Up the Chairs”. It was remade using Vine remixes, especially Sparta ones, as shown below:

My Mom Sparta Remix

Various examples

About

Kyle says “Fuck” in class became a meme. I wonder how?

About

Thick. Solid. Tight. is a copypasta that originated in the bodybuilding community after a Bodybuilding.com user sent other users friend requests while commenting that in their pictures, they looked “Thick. Solid. Tight.” He did this with such frequency that it grew into a copypasta in the community and spread into other subcultures.

Origin

The copypasta originated with Bodybuilding.com user unconditional,^[1] who would send users friend requests with messages complimenting their pictures. In multiple requests, he said “Awesome pics. Great size. Look thick. Solid. Tight.” The earliest recorded example was posted on July 28th, 2009 (shown below).

Spread

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References

About

L.A. Noire “Doubt”, also known as Press X to Doubt, is a reaction image taken from the video game L.A. Noire by Rockstar Games used to express disbelief in a headline or a thread’s previous statement.

Origin

In the video game L.A. Noire, the player plays as detective Cole Phelps in 1940s Los Angeles.^[1] One of the major gameplay features of L.A. Noire are scenes in which Phelps interrogates witnesses to crime. After a witness makes a statement, the player is presented with three options. The player must choose whether to accept the statement as truthful (“Truth”), express doubt of the witness’ statement (“Doubt”), or accuse the witness of lying (“Lie”). An image of Phelps’ face looking disbelieving accompanied by the “Doubt” prompt became the reaction image (shown below, left). On December 4th, 2012, the image without the caption was posted to Funnyjunk, ^[2] and the comment accompanying the image was “(X) Doubt.” This likely was the first iteration of the meme (shown below, right).

Spread

The image was posted on Funnyjunk several more times over the course of 2013,^[3][4] cementing the meme’s purpose as a means to express doubt. The meme also found use on Tumblr and Reddit in the coming years. In this time, it also began being used in Coaxed Into a Snafu variations. For example, a post from Tumblr user loatheoflaughing about Fallout 4 expressed doubt that the game would feature no loading times as promised, turning into a thread^[5] with several Coaxed Into a Snafu variations (shown below). The post gained over 28,000 notes.

The popularity of Coaxed Into a Snafu edits made the meme a good fit for the Increasingly Verbose Meme template. On September 30th, 206, Redditor le 43eyes compiled previously existing Snafu edits to make it appear as an Increasingly Verbose Meme, gaining 4,700 points on the Coaxed Into a Snafu subreddit^[6] (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

WIP

About

Animator vs. Animation is an animation video that got uploaded onto newgrounds^[1] on 2006 and is about a stick figure in Flash 8. The animator creates a stick figure made for tortures purposes in his next animation. The stick figure, however, breaks free and wreaks havoc over the app.

Origin

Alan Becker got the idea of making an animation about a rebel stick figure when he first got his first personal PC. He watched many animations about this and played many games like the Cursor Theif. His first animation, the Pink Army, got uploaded to Newgrounds on February 2006 and got mostly positive reviews, imploring Alan to make another animation, Animator vs Animation. The video got uploaded onto Newgrounds on Jun 3, 2006, and has 2.8 million views on Newgrounds as of May 2017. This video features a stick figure revolting and fighting against his creator until the program is quit without if being saved.

Spread

Since being uploaded to YouTube, the viral video has been uploaded onto many other places, like YouTube and eBaum’s World. Just to name a few. Many of the YouTube reuploads have been removed with millions of views, so it is impossible to gauge the actual amount of views Animator vs Animation got on YouTube.
On March 15, 2007, a sequel to the original animation was finished uploaded to Newgrounds. It was also uploaded to YouTube on May 14, 2007. As of May 2017, this video has 3.3 million views on Newgrounds and 14.6 million on YouTube.

On August 6, 2011, a “part two” to the second animation was uploaded to Newgrounds. It was also uploaded to YouTube on October 2, 2011. As of May 2017, this video has 1.7 million views of Newgrounds and 26.9 million views on YouTube. The video ends with a blue screen of death to finish the series off.

On October 2, 2014, the Fourth installment was released, despite the 3rd symbolizing the end of the trilogy. This video received 70.5 million views as of May 2017.

Spin-Offs

eBaum’s World

Sometime during the peak of Animator vs Animation I, popular website eBaum’s world reuploaded the video onto his own website. eBaum’s world was infamous for stealing work and not giving credit or recognition to original authors of the videos of photos hosted, and Animator vs Animation was giving popularity being seen as a perfect way to fight back.

Parodies

Due to the popularity of the original videos, many parodies have been made, many based off of other software like Pivot or Stick Nodes. Many of these have millions of views.

Notable Examples

About/History

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is an animated television series produced by the Walt Disney Company from 1988 to 1990 and starring the long-established cartoon chipmunks Chip and Dale in a new setting with likewise-new supporting characters. In the setting of the show, the eponymous characters run an animal detective agency accompanied by comrades Gadget Hackwrench, Monterey Jack and Zipper.

The series was initially conceived alongside both Darkwing Duck and TaleSpin as a follow-up to DuckTales, which was Walt Disney Television Animation’s first major success.

The show itself consists of sixty-five episodes, and adheres to a formulaic structure typical of other children’s cartoons of the 80s and early 90s.

Online/Fandom relevance

The show was among the first of its kind to develop a significant online fandom consisting of fan-fiction/art. A since-abandoned, archaically-formatted Wiki documenting the series with an emphasis on its fan following exists, and Encyclopedia Dramatica describes the series’ fan base, labelled as “Rangerphiles”, as “a web 1.0 version of a Sonic Fag or a Brony”.

A majority of online fan-made content related to the series revolves around the character Gadget Hackwrench, frequently sexualizing her. At one point, a sub-group of fans labelled as “R.A.G.E. (Rangerphiles Against Gadget Erotica)” was established specifically to protest such content.
A literal cult devoted to the character also exists or existed in Russia.

Overall, the fandom for Rescue Rangers stands in web-history as an early subset of the larger Furry fandom.

Domino’s Pizza Malaysia uploaded this post on their official Facebook and it got viral internationally.
Some were cringing, while others find this post as timely and accurate.
People also noted how casual the admin responded in the comment section.

https://www.facebook.com/DominosMY/photos/a.180244505442035.41374.177319659067853/1022136317919512/?type=3

About

This is how you eat a big mac nigga, is a remix meme often used in vine

Origin

Spread

this 16 second clip is remixed with faces, music videos and even parodies

About

Mukbang, known as 먹방 or “eating room” in Korean, is the practice of livestreaming oneself eating large quantities of food on camera.^[1] The word itself is a portmanteau of the korean words for ‘eat’(muok-da) and ‘broadcast’(bang song).^[2] Mukbang has garnered an immense popularity in its home country, with the more popular stars making up to $10,000 a month.^[3]

Origin

[W.I.P.]

Mukbang had its start and is mainly popular on the streaming platform AfreecaTV.^[1][2]

Spread

[W.I.P.]

Over time, mukbang became incredibly popular in the South Korea. In 2013, there was a drama titled “Let’s Eat”(promo for which shown below) which centered around people brought together by their love of food. The popularity of the show brought fans to actively seek out restaurants featured in the series.^[1] Another popular show, Happy Together, has a segment where celebrity guests cook their favorite meals and share them with guests.^[1]

International Recognition

Mukbang saw interest from Western media as well. On March 24, 2015, npr published an article which covered the life of mukbang celebrity Rachel Ahn.^[3] On January 16, 2016, qz published an article titled: “Why some Koreans make $10,000 a month to eat on camera”, which examined the popularity of the phenomenon and how it could connect to the social situations of Koreans, specifically their loneliness and their desire to not eat alone.^[2] On February 16, 2015, YouTube channel Munchies released a video about mukbang, labeling them as “The Food Porn Superstars of South Korea”(shown below, top left). On April 2, 2015, the Fine Bros released a video titled “YOUTUBERSREACT TO MUKBANG (Eating Shows)”(shown below, top right). On April 15, 2017, they released a follow-up, with celebrities reacting to mukbang(shown below, bottom left). And on March 26, 2017, YouTube channel This Exists compared the phenomenon to YouTube’s malt liquor drinking community(shown below, bottom right)

Search History

External References

^[1]Wikpedia – Mukbang

^[2]qz – Why some Koreans make $10,000 a month to eat on camera

^[3]npr – Koreans Have An Insatiable Appetite For Watching Strangers Binge Eat

Generaljon12 is a person known for being harsh and rigid regarding operations in USM 1940s. He commonly says this whenever he walks in on a shitshow.

About

Avril Lavigne Is Dead is a conspiracy theory that Canadian pop singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003 while writing her sophomore album, 2004’s Under My Skin, and a doppleganger named Melissa Vandella has been posing as Lavigne ever since.

Origin

The conspiracy was first introduced by Liz at AvrilEstaMuerta,^[1] a Brazilian blogspot, on May 6th, 2011. The conspiracy supposes that after Lavigne grew famous following her smash debut album, 2002’s Let Go, she hired a doppleganger named Melissa Vandella to distract the paparazzi, and Melissa and Avril became friends. While recording Under My Skin, Avril was found dead in her home, but everyone in the know kept quiet, and Melissa took her place. As evidence, Liz points to images of Lavigne in different times where she has different skin blemishes (shown below).

Furthermore, lyrics from songs such as “Together” and “Nobody’s Home” can be interpreted to be references to the switch.

From “Together”:

Something is not right
I can feel it inside of me
The truth is not too far away.
You can not deny
When I turn off the lights
When I close my eyes
The truth comes to me and
I’m living a lie

Spread

The story circulated on fan blogs for the following few years until Autumn of 2015. On September 30th, Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Broderick^[5] tweeted about the conspiracy theory and AvrilEstaMuerta as a joke. Shortly after, blogs including Noisey^[2] wrote about it, bringing the conspiracy to the global stage. The story was then picked up by Gawker,^[3] who referenced a since-deleted post on ATRL.net that posited Avril could be alive but in hiding. The Gawker post also shows a screenshot of a Facebook post in which the alleged creator of the conspiracy admits to making it up as a social experiment to demonstrate how easy it is to fabricate a conspiracy. Later that year, Snopes^[4] posted about the conspiracy, labeling it false.

2017 Resurgence

On May 12th, 2017, Twitter user @givenchyass^[6] brought the conspiracy back into the public eye by tweeting a thread rehashing the evidence. The first tweet of their thread gained over 100,000 retweets (shown below). This sparked widespread media coverage of the theory, as BBC,^[7] Mirror,^[8] Jezebel,^[9] and many more.

Search Interest

External References