It all started last month in March. What happened? Obama’s Nose happened. A picture was posted of his nose on Google, and now everyone is picking their nose to celebrate the excellency’s nose.

About

America Online^[1], often referred to as its initialism AOL, was a subscription-based online software suite with a walled-garden^[2] community that also offered access to the internet at large beginning in 1991. As of April 2013, AOL continues to offer subscription-based dial-up and high speed internet services^[16] as well as free desktop software that allows users to access webpages at the click of a button along with the embedded chat client AOL Instant Messenger.

History

1980s

The company that would become AOL Inc. was founded as Quantum Computer Services in 1985. The company worked with Apple Inc. on an online service called AppleLink Personal Edition^[3], which Quantum wanted to distribute freely and bundled with new computers in order to reach as many people as possible. Apple did not agree with this method, leading the companies to part ways in 1989.^[4] That October, Quantum rereleased the program for use on Apple II computers under the name America Online.

1990s

In 1991, Steve Case^[5] became CEO of Quantum and officially changed the company’s name to America Online, Inc. AOL offered a graphical user interface (shown below), allowing users of any skill level to easily access features. Over the years, the service worked with a number of nonprofits, magazines, associations and institutions including the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, Scholastic, National Public Radio, and the U.S. Department of Education to provide homework tutoring and other educational services for children and parents. In 1996, Black Bayou^[14] became the first chatroom-based role playing game to exist on AOL. The same year, the site switched from an hourly service fee to a monthly rate of $19.95, driving a large influx of new subscribers. Since the only service offered was through a phone connection, many people ended up canceling their accounts due to busy signals.

2000s

In January 2000, AOL was purchased by media corporation Time Warner. Six years later, the service officially became known as AOL and it was announced that they would be offering web-based email accounts for free. In 2007, more than 80% of paid subscribers had transitioned to the free products.^[15] By 2008, AOL began shutting down a number of services including photo hosting, web hosting and blog hosting. In 2009, Time Warner ened up spinning AOL off into its own digital media company.^[17] The following year, in December 2010, AOL chat rooms were shut down. As of February 2013, the AOL dial-up subscription service is still offered and accounts for approximately $500 million in profits for the company annually^[18], more than the rest of the company makes combined.

Reception

At the height of its popularity in June 2001, AOL had more than 30 million subscribers across the globe.^[19] However, that number gradually declined to approximately 19 million in 2006^[20] and less than 5 million in 2009.^[21] Despite its massive popularity, the service was often criticized^[22] for its policies as well as its years-long postal blast of promotional mailings.

Community Leader Lawsuit

Beginning in the 1990s, AOL used volunteer community leaders to monitor their chat rooms and message boards. In 1999, two of these volunteers, Brian Williams and Kelly Hallissey, filed a class action lawsuit^[23] seeking compensation for their work. This resulted in a complete reorganization of their volunteer system, as well as letting go all volunteers under 18.^[24] The suit was settled in February 2010 for $15 million dollars.^[25]

Impact

You’ve Got Mail

When logged in to the service, the arrival of a new message prompted a soundbyte of American voice over actor Elwood Edwards^[28] saying “You’ve Got Mail!” The verbal notification eventually became a catchphrase of its own, as it was voted the top quote of 1989 by TIME^[27] that year. The phrase was also used as the title of a 1998 romantic comedy film^[29] about two strangers who fall in love after a series of e-mail exchanges, unaware that they were actually real-life business competitors. The phrase is still closely associated with AOL and nostalgia for the heyday of its services.

AOL Promotional CDs

Throughout the 1990s, AOL distributed hundreds of thousands of promotional AOL floppy disks and CDs, offering hours of free service for new subscribers. The disks cost the company upwards of $300 million dollars over the years^[13] and at one point, caused all other CD production to be halted. The disks were highly criticized for their environmental impact^[26] and as early as October 1996, Usenet members were sharing ideas on how to destroy them.^[6] In 1997, computer software engineer Dave Dyer created a lit Christmas tree^[7] out of 66 AOL CDs. In August 2001, NoMoreAOLCDs.com^[8] launched, encouraging people to mail them their unwanted promo disks. Their initial goal was to gather 1 million of the disks and hand-deliver them back to AOL headquarters. By May 2003, they collected 179,245 disks.^[9] The project ceased on August 10th, 2007^[10] after collecting 410,176 disks.

In 2002, Sparky Haufle launched AOLCollecting.com^[11], both to show off his collection of AOL CDs as well as facilitating trades between other collectors. The following year, The AOL CD-ROM Museum^[11] was established, housing pictures of multiple people’s collections as well as separate exhibits highlighting the different types of disks issued. Well into 2005, collectors continued to share photos of their collections on forums.^[12]

Eternal September

The Eternal September occurred in September 1993 when AOL introduced Usenet access into their interface. Though September had previously been associated with an influx of newbies due to college freshman accessing newsgroups for the first time, the America Online access created an open door for their steadily increasing customers. The term was coined by Dave Fischer on January 26th, 1994 in a post on alt.folklore.computers:

“It’s moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended.”

Search Interest

External References

About

The Pirate Bay (TPB) is a torrent hosting website where users can share files using the BitTorrent protocol. The site has often been criticized by companies in the entertainment media industry for facilitating Internet piracy and copyright infringement.

History

The Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån (“The Pirate Bureau”) was established on August 1st, 2003, which aimed to support file sharing on the Internet in opposition to the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. On September 15th, 2003, Piratbyrån members Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij launched the torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay.^[10] In 2004, TPB began accepting donations on the website in order to fund its operations. On April 1st, 2005, TPB posted an April Fool’s Day prank claiming they had been raided by the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau.^[1] In 2006, the donate page was removed and the site began running advertisements on the search results page. In May of that year, Swedish reality star Petter Nilsson donated US $4,656 to the torrent site, which was used to buy new servers. In January of 2007, TPB attempted to purchase the micronation of Sealand in a legal maneuver to protect itself from prosecution but was denied by the Sealand government. On June 23rd, 2010, Piratbyrån disbanded following the death of Ibi Kopimi Botani, creator of the Kopimi copyright alternative concept. In January of 2012, the category Physibles was added to TPB, which contained files for objects that could be fabricated using a 3D printer.

Domain Name Change

In April of 2013, TPB changed to a Greenland-based .gl domain after they were warned that Swedish authorities were planning to seize their .se address.^[6] In less than 48 hours, the telecommunications company controlling the .gl domain announced they would block the site for promoting illegal activity.^[7] On April 11th, The Register^[8] published an article about the domain problems, which was subsequently posted to the /r/worldnews^[9] subreddit the same day. Within 24 hours, the post received over 3,700 up votes and 690 comments.

Documentary

On February 8th, 2013, director Simon Klose released a documentary titled “The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard,” which chronicled the early history of the website and its founders (shown below). Within two months, the video had received over 1.77 million views and 7,600 comments on YouTube.

Highlights

Operation Payback

Operation Payback was a series of DDoS attacks organized by users of 4chan’s /b/ (random) board that started on September 17th, 2010 against the entertainment industry websites for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the MPAA. The operation was launched in retaliation for DDoS attacks against The Pirate Bay by the Indian company Aiplex Software.

Kopimism

Kopimism is an online movement espousing the benefits of free file-sharing that is officially recognized as a religious community by the Swedish Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency. The concept was created Ibi Kopimi Botani, a member of TPB’s founding group Piratbyrån who designed the movement’s official logo as well (shown below).

Controversies

• In November of 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) unsuccessfully filed a complaint with Sweden to shut down TPB for violating copyright.

• On May 31st, 2006, TPB and several people involved with the site were raided by Swedish police on orders given from Judge Tomas Norström to investigate the alleged copyright violations. As a result, the website was temporarily shut down and several servers were confiscated.

• In September of 2008, torrents containing autopsy photos of two murdered children surfaced on TPB, leading the father Nicklas Jangestig to request that the files be removed from the site.^[4]TPB refused to remove the torrent file from the site, with spokesperson Peter Sunde stating “I don’t think it’s our job to judge if something is ethical or unethical or what other people want to put out on the internet.”

Trial

On January 31st, 2008, Swedish persecutors charged Pirate Bay staff members Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Peter Sunde, and Swedish businessman Carl Lundström, with breach of copyright law and claims for damages of US $13 million. On February 16th, 2009, the trial began at the district court of Stockholm, Sweden. During the trial, defense attorney Per Samuelson presented an argument attempting to illustrate how TPB admins had no control over the actions of their users, which would later be known as the “King Kong defense.”

“EU directive 2000/31/EC^[37] says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don’t initiate transfers. It’s the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong… According to legal procedure, the accusations must be against an individual and there must be a close tie between the perpetrators of a crime and those who are assisting. This tie has not been shown. The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia.”

On April 17th, the defendants were found guilty of accessory to crime against copryright law and sentenced to one year in jail and US $3.5 million in fines and damages. Three days later, the ad-hoc group of Internet users known as “Anonymous” retaliated by taking down the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) website with a DDoS attack as part of “Operation Baylout” and called for supporters of TPB to boycott the entertainment industry for the next two months. The verdict was immediately appealed by the defendants, which resulted in an increase of fines for a reduction of jail time. On February 1st, 2012, the Supreme Court of Sweden refused to appeal the case, which prompted admins to change the site’s domain name from .org to .se as an attempt to avoid United States copyright laws.

Traffic

On May 31st, 2008, TPB published a blog post reporting that they had grown to over 2.7 million registered users, 2.5 million peers and were ranked as a top 100 website in the entire world. As of April 2013, ThePirateBay.se is ranked 63 in the United States and 74 in the entire world, according to the web traffic analytics site Alexa.^[5]

Search Interest

External References

Note: this entry is currently being researched.

About

Hyperlapse Photography is a filmmaking technique that entails recording video while revolving the camera around a fixed point and then speeding up the footage in post-production. The process incorporates several other well-known photography techniques, mainly time lapse and stop motion photography, as well as tilt-shift and slow motion effects for enhanced results.

Origin

The earliest known use of the term “Hyperlapse” can be attributed to a short video project uploaded to Vimeo by Spanish filmmaker Fran Muradas on December 27th, 2008. Titled “Test Hyperlapse / Timelapse Paseo por Pontevedra,” the clip shows a downtown walking tour of the city of Pontevedra in time lapsed sequence.

Spread

On March 13th, 2009, British visual artist and Vimeo user Theo Tagholm uploaded “Still Moving,” a walking tour video of London’s Victoria Park which he compiled from individual photographs and sped up in post-production. The video was met by positive reception on Vimeo, accumulating more than 96,200 views and 1,826 likes over the span of four years, eventually getting featured as Vimeo’s “Staff Pick” video.

On November 5th, 2009, Japanese stop-motion animator Taijin Takeuchi uploaded a hyper-lapsed video of Tokyo shot in 360-degrees rotation. The video went onto receive more than 116,000 views over three years and even spawned several response videos shot in the same style.

Google Street View Hyperlpase

On April 9th, 2013, Toronto-based digital studio Teehan+Lax released Hyperlapse^[11], a web-based app that enables its users to instantly create motion control time-lapse videos using the image feed of Google Street View. According to the studio’s press release^[12], developers initially sought to make use of the Google Street View as an aid for hyper-lapse photography, but decided to use it as the source material for their product.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Psy is the stage name of South Korean pop singer and entertainer Jae-sang Park who is best known for his 2012 international hit single Gangnam Style. While Psy has been actively performing as a recording artist in South Korea for over a decade, he rose to international stardom in July 2012 following the release of the Gangnam Style music video, which became the first YouTube video to reach the milestone of one billion views in December that same year.

Online History

[researching]

About

Today Is The Day Marty McFly Arrives When He Travels To The Future, often abbreviated as Back To The Future Day, is an internet hoax used in online trolling to make people believe that incorrect dates match up to the date the main character of the Back to the Future franchise, Marty McFly, travels to in the second installment of the films.

Origin

Back to the Future Part II^[1] is a science fiction comedy film first released on November 22nd, 1989, and is the second installment of the Back to the Future trilogy. In the film, Doctor Emmett Brown and Marty McFly travel from October 21st in the year 1985, to the same date in the year 2015. As was expected, the 30 years have changed the town Marty lived in a lot, now containing various types of highly advanced technology such as hoverboards.

Spread

The highly advanced future as described in the film has become a common milestone expectation of internet users as the actual date grew closer, commonly resulting in assumptions on whether or not the technology used in the film will be available before the actual date of October 21st, 2015, and demanding science to hurry up. Mainly the hoverboards used in the film have become a common target of demand, with image macros being found on various image sharing blogs and websites such as Cheezburger,^[2] WeKnowMemes,^[3] Memerial^[4] and Funny Wall Photos.^[5]

On June 28th, 2012, the single-serving websiteistodaythedaymartymcflyarriveswhenhetravelstothefuture.com^[6] was launched by blogger Richard Haderer, which only shows the message “NO!” in large capital letters as an answer to the question presented if today is the day Marty McFly arrives (shown below). As of April 12th, 2013, the site has received more than 5,000 Facebook likes and 600 Tweets. The single serving site itsbacktothefutureday.com,^[7] created on June 28th, 2012, by blogger Erik Rasmussen, contains a generator which allows you to create a Back to the Future day image for any date possible.

[Researching]

Search Interest

External References

Craap

’Let’s Fly To the Castle’ is a popular quote from a toy from the My Little Pony merchandise which has been used in tons of parodies, remixes and images.

Origin

The company Hasbro along with their My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic merchandise released a toy of Princess Celestia with an included sound file saying “Let’s Fly to the Castle”

On Feb 13, 2013, the YouTube user IMMATOONLINK uploaded the video: LET’S FLY TO THECASTLE which involved the Princess Celestia doll to say “Let’s Fly to the Castle” then the user threw the toy into a toy castle, knocking it over.

Then on Feb 21, 2013 the YouTube user EileMontyVA dubbed over the original video while saying “Let’s Fly To Castle HOLY S***”

Popularity

Both videos gained over 100,000 views and the dubbed video has sparked a number of videos upon Youtube including remixes and pardoies.

This character appeared in the social network Tuenti by 2009. It all started with a simple profile called Sentencer of Crime in which the person who was behind him posing as a vigilante.

Not much is known about who was its creator but it is rumored that most of the images have been created by a user called Jef01 Deviant Art. Notably, the most important drawing this character was created at the hands of Dark Emo Scene, a user who had added to Tuenti Sentencer of Crime and apparently, it asked him to draw a picture based on the traits that gave .

Began in the Spanish social network Tuenti with the idea to make their ideals based on absolute justice and hatred of criminals. Added to make it known to people and try to convince her to help him do the same as well as exchange views on many issues almost all based on morals.

It is rumored that his real intention is to inspire someone with the media, physical skills and enough money to fight crime so try to change the world.

Currently has spread like images but not much but if you type in Google sentenciador del crimen (but only in Spanish) will appear on this character results with a skull-headed goat.

It really does not become an internet phenomenon or anything just something that nobody pays attention and is not known by many people.

About

Shodan is a search engine that indexes servers, webcams, printers, routers and other devices that are connected to the Internet, which is often used as a tool to discover vulnerable systems that could be compromised by hackers. The engine was named after the artificial intelligence villain in the 1990s cyberpunk role-playing games System Shock and System Shock 2.^[9][10]

History

In November of 2009, computer programmer John Matherly hosted an early version of the Shodan computer search engine on the website Sutri.^[3] On November 25th, Intern0t Forums^[4] member s3my0n created a thread about Shodan, which sparked a discussion about whether it would be abused by malicious hackers known as “script kiddies.” On February 18th, 2010, the engine relocated to the domain ShodanHQ.^[1] On February 23rd, Matherly submitted a link to ShodanHQ in a post titled “search engine for hackers” on /r/netsec subreddit,^[2] where it received over 150 up votes and 35 comments. On April 24th, cyber security researcher Ruban Santamarta tweeted that he had located a control system for a particle-accelerating cyclotron by using Shodan.

SHODAN 1 – Berkely National Labs 0. Seems its B88 Cyclotron: http://tweetphoto.com/19795092 I’ve already contacted US-CERT

— Ruben Santamarta (@reversemode) April 24, 2010

On February 24th, 2011, YouTuber softgens uploaded a video presentation about Shodan, which demonstrated its ability to discover vulnerable computer systems (shown below).

Trendnet Webcam Exploit

On January 10th, 2012, a hacker using the handle “someLuser” published a blog post^[5] about a security vulnerability he discovered in the firmware of Trendnet home surveillance webcams, which would allow Internet users to anonymously access video feeds using a URL. The exploit was turned into a script utilizing Shodan search to discover other vulnerable cameras connected to the Internet. On February 3rd, the tech news blog The Verge^[8]published a post about the security flaw, noting that links to compromised video feeds were being shared on sites like Reddit and 4chan. On February 7th, The BBC^[6] published an article about the controversy reporting that Trendnet had immediately addressed the issue by releasing an updated version of the firmware.

On January 22nd, 2013, The Verge^[15] published a followup post about the security flaw, noting that many cameras remained vulnerable and included a screenshot of Google Maps app^[14] giving access to various Trendnet cam streams (shown below). As of April 2013, the map has since been disabled.

Reception

On August 21st, 2012, YouTuber vissago uploaded footage of a presentation by Dan Tentler at the hacker conference Defcon, in which he showed how to use Shodan to access web cameras and power control systems (shown below). Within eight months, the video gained more than 20,000 views and 40 comments.

On April 8th, 2013, CNN^[11] published an article about the search engine, noting the troubling discoveries made by Tentler and other cyber security researchers. The same day, the article was submitted to the /r/technology^[12] subreddit, where it received upwards of 730 up votes and 120 comments within the next 24 hours.

Search Interest

Search query volume for the keywords “shodan search” increased dramatically in February of 2012 after the Trendnet webcam exploit was publicized.

External References

Admit It
This movie made you shit bricks

About

Draw My Life is a YouTube video fad including sped-up recorded hand-drawn stick figure pictures.

Start and Spread

The first “Draw My Life” video was created by Sam Pepper (username: OFFICIALsampepper) on 8th January 2013. The first video response was submitted by Emily Bland (username: emilybland88). In the description of Sam’s video, he tagged Caspar Lee (username: dicasp) and Louis Cole (FunForLouis) to “Draw Their Life’s” and so, they did it, too. Other YouTubers, who joined the idea, tagged other people as request.

Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (username: PewDiePie) also joined the fad on 31st January 2013. His video has more than 4 million views as of April 2013. Anthony Padilla’s video has 4.5 million views and it was front-paged by YouTube. The recent most popular Draw My Life video is from German Alejandro Garmendia Aranis (username: HolaSoyGerman) with 8.8 million views.

Work in progress. Feel free to request editoship

Overview

#ElVideoDelMamazo is a hashtag used to refer to an amateur porn video, in which a girl performs oral sex on a guy, while another guy grabs her hair from behind. This latter guy has been nicknamed “El Palanquilla”; although this has no good direct translation, an approximate expression could be “The Little Kahuna”. The surrealism of the situation and “El Palanquilla”‘s ’work’ have been used used as subject of jokes, photoshopped images and videos.

Background

he April 2rd, 2013, the video was filtered from a micro blogging page. During the night, people used the hashtag #ElVideoDelMamazo to make jokes about the video, specifically about the guy who was grabbing his hair. For this, it was named “El Palanquilla”.

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About

“Just a flesh wound” (also “’tis but a scratch”) is a line said by the Monty Python and the Holy Grail character, the Black Knight, upon having his arms chopped off by King Arthur. According to Cleese, this scene is a polemic against the saying that “if you never give up, you can’t possibly lose”. ^[1] The phrase is often used when one denies their opponent’s advantage or downplays received damage. It often has an ironical meaning, like in the sketch, and is used when someone is obviously losing bad or was heavily hurt.

Spread and mutations

In video games

The Black Knight’s famous line is often referenced in video games, either in dialogues or in achievements:

• “Just a flesh wound” achievement in Rage ^[2]


• “’Tis but a flesh wound!” achievement in Dead Island. ^[3]


• A reference in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, where Ema comments Goodman’s death saying “It’s only a mere flesh wound”. ^[4]


• “Just a flesh wound” quest in World of Warcraft ^[5]


• An elite shout in Guild Wars ^[6]


• A quest in The Secret World ^[7]

On the Internet

On the internet the phrase is used often as a punchline or a final comment, like True Story. The most often used image is the one below, showing The Black Knight without one arm. Note that he says the famous line after losing his second arm, first he says “Tis but a scratch” and “Had worse”. ^[1]

Search interest

External References

^[1]Wikipedia – Black Knight

^[2]Xbox 360 Achievements – Just a flesh wound

^[3]Xbox 360 Achievements – ’Tis but a flesh wound

^[4]The Easter Egg Archive – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Monty Python reference

^[5]Wowhead – Just a flesh wound quest

^[6]Guild Wars Wiki – It’s just a flesh wound

^[7]Unfair.co – The Secret World: Just a flesh wound

About

Ed Balls is a British politician who accidentally posted a tweet of his own name in April of 2011, leading many Twitter users to mockingly retweet the message thousands of times. In April 2013, in anticipation of the two-year anniversary of the tweet, hundreds of Twitter users participated in a spam campaign to flood the microblogging service with his name.

Origin

On April 28th, 2011, Ed Balls accidentally tweeted a blank message containing only his own name. Within two years, the tweet received over 10,800 retweets and 4,300 favorites.

Ed Balls

— Ed Balls (@edballsmp) April 28, 2011

Spread

For the remainder of 2011 and 2012, the tweet remained intact on Balls’ Twitter profile and became mocked by many British users on the site. On February 5th, 2013, Storify^[6] user Moose Allain uploaded a compilation of tweets describing how to pronounce “Ed Balls.” On April 8th, a Facebook^[3] event page was created for the second anniversary of Ed Balls’ tweet, which received over 900 RSVPs in the following week. On April 10th, journalist Andy Kelly tweeted a joke about Ed Balls punning his own name at the funeral for former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Within five days, the tweet gained more than 55 retweets and 40 favorites.

Ed Balls steps up to the podium at Thatcher’s funeral, unfolds a piece of paper, and clears his throat“Ed Balls.”

— Andy Kelly (@ultrabrilliant) April 10, 2013

On April 11th, blogger Rebecca Baker published an article about the upcoming two-year anniversary for the tweet.^[8] The following day, Balls retweeted a photograph of a train sign with his name written on it. Also on April 12th, the tech news blog Digital Spy^[2] published a post about Balls’ recognition of the meme.

Sorry… But this is getting really weird.. RT <a href="https://twitter.com/felicitymorse">felicitymorse</a>: Ed Balls makes it onto a train sign <a href="http://t.co/4uTwixFfXL" title="http://twitter.com/FelicityMorse/status/322762456785100800/photo/1">twitter.com/FelicityMorse/…</a></p>&mdash; Ed Balls (edballsmp) April 12, 2013

On April 13th, Urban Dictionary^[4] user mosmi submitted an entry for “Ed Balls,” defining it as a meme inspired by the tweet from April 2011. On April 15th, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[1] featured a compilation of notable examples of the meme and The Mirror^[5] published an article about the upcoming anniversary of the tweet, reporting that many Twitter users planned to retweet Ed Balls’ name on April 28th.

Notable Examples

Leading up to the tweet’s two-year anniversary, many Twitter users posted edited photos and image macros referencing the meme.

Bookmarklet

An Ed Balls bookmarklet^[7] tool allows users to change the text on an entire webpage to the name “Ed Balls” (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

Overview

2013 Boston Marathon Explosions refer to the deadly bombings that took place in Boston, Massachusetts during the annual Patriots Day race on April 15th, 2013. Due to the close proximity of the detonations to the finish line, the moment of the blasts and the immediate aftermath were captured on footage from multiple angles and instantly shared online via Twitter and YouTube.

Background

On April 15th, 2013, at approximately 2:50 pm (ET), two bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on Boylston Street near Copley Square, killing three people and injuring at least 176 others. Later that day, law enforcement officials said that the bombs appeared to have been homemade, with at least one of them identified as a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel and planted on low grounds for lethal impact.

Notable Developments

As of April 16th, three people have been confirmed dead, including an 8-year-old boy named Martin Richard. According to hospital employees, at least 10 of the injured suffered severed limbs and 15 remained in critical conditions. The explosions have been since declared as an act of terror by the United States government, though no suspect has been named yet.

Online Reactions

Within minutes, numerous photographs and video footage of the explosions and the aftermath from the site began circulating on Twitter and YouTube. A total of six real-time discussion threads were created within 24 hours of the explosion, with many Redditors updating each others with the latest developments and links to helpful resources such as the temporary housing registry for displaced marathon attendees, live scanner feeds, Google’s Person Finder and the #bostonbombing IRC channel.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

On Twitter

Immediately following the explosions, many people turned to Twitter as a way to share photos, report news and check on loved ones attending the event. On April 15th, the phrase “Boston Marathon” was tweeted 2,910,316 times.^[16] Approximately an hour after the bombing, USA Today^[17] compiled a chronological series of tweets from news media outlets as well as attendees showing how the event unfolded via Twitter.

Explosion at coply twitter.com/Boston_to_a_T/…

— Boston to a T (@Boston_to_a_T) April 15, 2013

Tweeted messages of sympathy from celebrities, politicians, journalists and athletes were compiled on the NY Daily News^[18], Fox Nation^[19] and the Huffington Post.^[20] Additionally, the hashtag #PrayForBoston^[21] began trending on Twitter minutes after the bombing.^[22] The hashtag was ranked #1 globally until 9 PM EST that night^[23] and was used a total of 2,828,464 times on April 15th.^[24]

In the hours following the explosion, Twitter became a soundboard for people to discuss conspiracy theories surrounding the event^[25], attributing it to North Korea or the Tea Party. Simon Rickettes, a reporter from The Guardian^[26], noted at least 12 pieces of unverified information that were traveling through Twitter as if it was confirmed news.

Random Acts of Pizza

For people who were not in the Boston area and wanted to help out people affected by the blasts, many turned to the Random Acts of Pizza subreddit^[4], offering to send pizzas to hospitals, people housing stranded runners and police departments. Around 5 p.m. (ET), Moderator iamnotevenperturb launched a general Boston Marathon thread^[6], garnering nearly 600 comments within 18 hours. Many of the orders were made through Anytime Pizza, who called in their entire staff the make and deliver pizzas, completely emptying their kitchen. Four local hospitals eventually had to stop accepting deliveries and Redditors were encouraged to donate to other places in need.^[5]

Patton Oswalt’s Status Update

At about 5 p.m. (ET), American comedian Patton Oswalt posted a Facebook status update^[27] detailing his initial reaction to the news. Praising those who ran towards the detonation site to help others and reassuring that the good will always outnumber those who stand in the darkness, Oswalt’s message was met by positive responses from his fans and followers on Facebook. Within the first 24 hours of posting, the status update received at least 298,000 likes and 224,000 shares.

Shelter Finder Google Doc

At approximately 5:30 PM EST, two Google Document forms began circulating the web, the first for displaced runners who needed a place to stay and the second^[7] listing contact information for people offering their spare beds or couches. Though it is unclear who began these Google Docs, Allston resident Chris McCartney-Melstad was the first person to use the form to offer a place in his apartment. As of 1:30 p.m. (ET) on April 16th, hundreds of people in the area have added their names to the list.

Google Person Finder

Immediately following the explosions, Google launched a Boston Marathon Person Finder page,^[15] which allows users to search for or add information about specific individuals. To address privacy concerns, Google allows users to set expiration dates for each record added and announced they will be removing all records from the database several months after the crisis. Google had previously deployed Person Finder pages following the Haiti earthquake (January 2010), the Chile earthquake (February 2010), the Pakistan floods (July 2010), the Christchurch earthquake (February 2011), the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (March 2011) and the Van earthquake (October 2011).

External References

About

Fandangoing is a dance move in which participants point up their index fingers while humming the entrance theme song for the WWE wrestler Fandango.

Origin

The dance is named after the ring name of American professional wrestler Curtis Jonathan Hussey, who made his debut as “Fandango” during an airing of WWERAW on November 5th, 2012. On March 18th, 2013, Fandango made an entrance to his wrestling match while dancing to his theme song “Chachalala” originally composed by WWE composer Jim Johnston (shown below).

On April 8th, Fandango’s entrance at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey was met by WWE audience members humming the tune of his theme song while pointing up their fingers. Following this event, the gesture soon became known as “Fandangoing," though it is unclear who coined the term.

Spread

On April 11th, YouTuber htccheer1 uploaded a video featuring Houston Texas cheerleaders Fandangoing during a practice meet (shown below, left). The same day, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals uploaded a YouTube video of several people dressed in animal costumes Fandangoing while singing “fahn dahn go vegan!” (shown below, right). Within five days, the videos received more than 210,000 views and 66,700 views respectively. On April 12th, the cheerleader Fandangoing video was posted to the /r/SquaredCircle^[1] subreddit, where it gained more than 216 up votes and 75 comments in the next four days.

Also on April 12th, Urban Dictionary^[2] user UrbanWWE submitted an entry for the term “Fandangoing,” defining the act as “humming or singing the entrance theme song of WWE superstar Fandango.” On April 15th, the wrestling news blog WrestleZone^[3] reported that Fandango’s entrance theme “Chachalala” had climbed to the #44 position on the United Kingdom’s top 100 chart.^[4] The same day, WWERAW aired a compilation of Fandangoing video clips presented by wrestler Jerry Lawler (shown below, left). On April 16th, the WWEFanNation YouTube channel uploaded a video of a WWE employee Fandangoing at the office (shown below, right).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

The Condom Challenge is a dare game that involves inserting a condom into one’s nostril and snorting it back through the throat to be coughed out of the mouth. The game gained attention in April 2013 following the viral takeoff of a YouTube video uploaded by teenager Amber-Lynn Strong.

Origin

On May 3rd, 2006, Break user tommydyhr uploaded a video titled “Condom Sucking From Nose to Mouth,” in which a young man snorts a condom through his nose and extracts it out of his mouth (shown below, left). In the next seven years, the video received upwards of 73,500 views and 130 comments. In the following years, several other condom snorting videos were subsequently uploaded to YouTube, but the phrase “condom challenge” was not coined until May 23rd, 2012, when YouTuber Isaac Mathers uploaded a video performing the same stunt titled “Condom Challenge” (shown below, right). Within one year, the video received over 9,300 views and 25 comments.

Spread

On April 3rd, 2013, the WorldStarTube YouTube channel uploaded a video featuring two girls snorting condoms (shown below, left), which received over 180,000 views and 480 comments in the first two weeks. On April 9th, YouTuber P0tatoPlanet uploaded a video of herself snorting a condom through her nasal passage (shown below, right), garnering more than 150,000 views and 1,180 comments in the following eight days.

That same month, teenager Amber-Lynn Strong uploaded a video of herself performing the challenge (shown below). On April 13th, Redditor redpanda252 submitted the video to the /r/videos^[3] subreddit, where it received over 2,800 up votes and 630 comments in the first 72 hours. On April 15th, Amber-Lynn Strong’s video was highlighted on The Huffington Post,^[1] Gawker^[2] and BuzzFeed.^[6] After gaining upwards of 2.2 million views, the video was subsequently removed from YouTube for violating the site’s terms of service.

On the following day, the Internet humor blog Break^[5] posted an article about the YouTube trend, citing YouTuber Isaac Mathers’ video as the first known use of the term “condom challenge.” Also on April 16th, notable condom challenge videos were highlighted on the Internet news blog UpRoxx.^[7]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References