Background

On June 3rd, 2013, The Guardian^[1] published an exclusive interview article with Academy Award winning actor Michael Douglas, who revealed quite a few details about his marriage to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, his role in the 2013 American drama film Behind the Candelabra and the ongoing battle with throat cancer. When asked if he believed his heavy drinking and smoking habits had something to do with it, Douglas responded by identifying cunnilingus as the possible cause of contracting the sexually transmitted carcinogen HPV [human papillomavirus].

“No,” he says. “No. Because, without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus.”

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

Immediately after The Guardian’s publication of the interview, several celebrity gossip news sites and blogs including BuzzFeed^[3], TMZ^[4], Salon^[6], The Atlantic^[7], Huffington Post^[8] and Jezebel^[10] picked up on Douglas’ assertion with attention-grabbing headlines like “Michael Douglas: Oral Sex Gave Me Cancer” and “Michael Douglas: Oral Sex Can Cause Cancer” among other variations.

On Twitter

Many influential Twitter users in the entertainment business promptly reacted to the headlines with punchlines and commentaries on cunnilingus and HPV, including the creator of HBO series Girls Lena Dunham as well as comedians Julie Klausner and Michael Ian Black.

To be clear: very glad Michael Douglas has brought attention to the HPV epidemic, but did he have to say cunnilingus so much while doing it?

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) June 3, 2013

“Hey girl, how’d your date go? Did you….you know. GIVEHIMTHROATCANCER?”

— Julie Klausner (@julieklausner) June 2, 2013

Somehow, this was the week throat cancer almost became sexy.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) June 3, 2013

Inevitably, mentions of both terms on Twitter surged in the following 24 hours, both of which became trending topics on the microblogging site. Between June 1st and June 3rd, mentions of “cunnilingus” shot up from a few hundreds per day to more than 10,000, according to the Twitter analytics service Topsy.^[13]

Publicist’s Response

Within hours of the story going viral, the actor’s publicist Allen Burry addressed the story by telling the Hollywood news site TheWrap^[16] that Douglas never said cunnilingus is what directly caused his illness, but rather brought it up as a possible cause of oral cancer in general. Despite asserting that his statement was misinterpreted, Burry added that he was not seeking a formal correction from The Guardian or other news outlets that ran stories about his client.

Medical Opinions

Meanwhile, several mainstream news outlets and medical reference sites like CNN^[15] and WebMD^[16] followed up with articles examining the scientific basis of Douglas’ claim and providing background information on the current state of HPV virus. While most news publications cautiously acknowledged that a growing majority of oral cancer cases are caused by HPV, which has recently replaced tobacco as the leading cause of throat cancer, medical experts like Kent Sepkowitz^[5] conveyed skepticism as to a direct link between the act of cunnilingus with contracting HPV infection.

“The story, like so much that touches the silver screen, is just close enough to a truth to grab a headline and just far enough away to drive experts insane.”

Search Interest

External References

About

Cat Vs. Printer is a video fad showing cats often-exciteable reactions to printers. Many of these videos show the cat attacking the paper as it comes out of the machine.

Origin

The first known video depicting a cat fighting with a printer was uploaded to YouTube on April 23rd, 2006 by Azahara Carreras León. The video depicts her cat Marcus attacking a HP Deskjet printer as it prints, violently ripping up the paper. As of June 2013, the video has been viewed more than 1.8 million times.

Spread

Two days after León’s video was uploaded, YouTuber choucrouto uploaded a video depicting an orange cat reaching in to a printer as it prints. In the later half of 2006, León’s video was posted on VideoSift^[1] and the personal blogs Life of 7 Cats^[2] and Nothing To Do With Arbroath.^[3] In 2007, the video was reuploaded to YouTube dozens of times and featured on Clip A Day^[4], Maniac World^[5], Dailymotion^[6] and Break.^[7] In 2008, a number of new cat vs. printer videos were uploaded to YouTube, most notably Paperinjerate’s Pussy versus Printer (shown below, left), uploaded on September 5th, 2008. Featuring added sound effects as the cat hits the printer, this video has been viewed more than 7.2 million times as of June 2013.

Another cat vs. printer went viral in April 2009^[9] (shown above, right) and that July, Urlesque^[10] posted the first compilation of these videos. Between 2010 and 2012, cat vs. printer videos were featured on Animal Planet^[11], Buzzfeed^[12], Viral Viral Videos^[13], Catsparella^[14], the Guardian^[15], the Huffington Post^[16], College Humor^[17], eBaum’s World^[18] and Boing Boing.^[19] In December 2012, YouTuber mihaifrancu uploaded a two-minute compilation video (shown below) of cats attacking printers.

Notable Videos

As of June 2013, there are more than 169,000 search results on YouTube for “cat printer”^[8], but a number of these are reuploads.

Search Interest

External References

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About

Squirrel-Monkey is a website that produces video remakes of current video games and social media if they had been created in the 1980s and 1990s.

History

The Squirrel-Monkey website was registered in February of 2010 as a “hobby project” by actress Kinna McInroe and director Jo Luijten. According the the site’s about page, Luijten was inspired to create 1980s and 1990s version of contemporary games and web apps by the British BBC show Look Around You. On January 21st, 2012, Squirrel Monkey uploaded it’s first video to YouTube featuring a 1980s pixel art version of the mobile video game Angry Birds (shown below, left). In the first two years, the video gained over 3.01 million views and 530 comments. On January 29th, Squirrel-Monkey published a video featuring a version of Google running on the 1980s operating system MS DOS (shown below, right), which received more than 530,000 views and 220 comments in the same time frame.

On March 18th, a video parody of a 1990s version of Facebook was uploaded to YouTube, which required users to send photographs to Facebook via snail mail to have uploaded to their profile (shown below, right). Within 14 months, the video garnered upwards of 1.65 million views and 1,300 comments. On April 1st, the channel uploaded a video featuring a 1980s version of the microblogging and social networking site Twitter (shown below right), which gained over 620,000 views and 780 comments. in the first 13 months.

ITN News Segment

On June 2nd, 2012, Luijten and Squirrel-Monkey were featured in a segment on the British television news network ITN (shown below).

Reception

Squirrel-Monkey has received positive press from a number of news and tech sites. In April of 2012, the site’s videos were highlighted by Mashable,^[3] Wired,^[4] The Huffington Post,^[5]CNET^[6] and Gizmodo.^[7]

Other Notable Videos

Traffic

As of June 2013, the Squirrel-Monkey YouTube channel has received upwards of 6.53 million video views and 6,700 subscribers.

External References

w.i.p.

About

Genwunner is a negative term for fans of Pokemon who only like the first generation and hate the new generations and/or even pretend they don’t exist. They’ve been known to create criticisms that the Pokemon after Generation I are unoriginal and don’t even look like Pokemon, though some of these remarks have been hypocritical

Origin

[researching]

Reactions

The reason why people and other fans have given negative reaction to these people is because their claims have been known to be hypocritcal and don’t make sense. One of these claims have been that the Pokemon in later generations have bad designs and don’t even look like animals while not even considering the designs of several Generation I Pokemon, or that later generation Pokemon are rehashes when they basically represent different types of animals. DeviantArt user YattaroSB covered this topic in his comic “The Grasshole Show 7”.

Images

Search Interest

Who says all weight loss supplement are unsafe. There is one product that is better and above all and that is Pure Garcinia Slim. The supplement can help you shed pounds and thus you can be fit and healthy with ease. Get many health benefits easily.

Pure Garcinia Slim

About

“Big Yellow Duck” is a nickname given to a series of giant floating rubber duck sculptures designed by Dutch artist Florentijin Hofman. In June 2013, the phrase was banned by Chinese censors after an image of several giant rubber ducks photoshopped into the famous “Tank Man” photograph began circulating online in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.^[5]

Origin

On May 2nd, 2013, one of Hofman’s 54-foot high yellow inflatable ducks was launched in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor (shown below, left). On May 15th, the sculpture mysteriously deflated (shown below, right), which resulted in the hashtag “#bigyellowduck” rising to the top searched keyword on the Chinese microblogging and social networking site Weibo.^[2]

Sina Weibo user Weiblog^[7] subsequently posted a photoshopped version of the 1989 photograph “Tank Man”^[3] (shown below, left) from the Tiananmen Square protests, in which the tanks were replaced with the large duck sculptures (shown below, right). Leading up to the anniversary of the protests on June 4th, several words were censored on Sina Weibo, including “1989,” “In today,” “anniversary” and “big yellow duck."

Spread

On June 3rd, 2013, United States Foreign Service Officer Richard Buangan tweeted Weiblog’s Tank Man photo with the description “Chinese netizens 1, Chinese censors 0.”

Chinese netizens 1, Chinese censors 0. #June4#May35twitter.com/RichardBuangan…

— Richard Buangan (@RichardBuangan) June 3, 2013

The same day, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[9] published a post titled “Chinese Netizens Defiantly Remember Tiananmen Square,” featuring several images circulating on Chinese social media in remembrance of the Tiananmen Square protest. Among the images featured in the post were a remake of the Tank Man photograph made entirely of LEGO bricks (shown below).

On June 4th, The Huffington Post^[8] published an article reporting that Chinese bloggers were using memes to bypass the censorship of tributes to the Tiananmen Square protests, which cited Weiblog’s duck picture and a photograph of a cow standing in front of a line of tractors (shown below, left) as examples. The article also noted that after a vigil candle emoticon used to mourn those who died in the protests was removed from Weibo, users created an emoticon of a Type-64 pistol commonly associated with Chinese military officials (shown below, right).

Throughout the day, several English-language news sites reported on the censorship of Weibo, including The New York Times IHT Rendezous blog,^[10] The Daily Mail,^[11] Slate,^[12] Business Insider^[13] and The Wall Street Journal.^[14] On June 5th, Redditor Highway2Hell submitted Weiblog’s rubber duck image to the /r/pics^[6]subreddit, receiving over 11,800 up votes and 400 comments in the first six hours. In the comments section, Redditor Synthur replied with an edited version of photographer Stuart Franklin’s wider shot of the Tank Man encounter, which replaced the tanks with giant rubber ducks (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

Sloth-Facing is a photoshop meme in which the subject’s eyes and eyebrows are horizontally aligned with the nose as to resemble the face of a sloth and the The Goonies character with the same name.

Origin

On May 30th, 2013, Redditor traverhass shared an Imgur album^[7] consisting of seven digitally manipulated screenshots from movies in which the actors’ eyes and eyebrows have been vertically lowered to align with their noses. In the title of the post, he called the images “Sloth-Facing.” Within six days, the post gained more than 3,815 upvotes, 1,451 points overall and 143 comments.

Precursor: Tumblr Face Game

In 2011, a photoset collage of Hollywood actor Elijah Wood’s facial features in close-up images (shown below, left) began circulating on Tumblr.^[2] On December 24th, 2011, Buzzfeed^[1] published a compilation of 26 similar collage-style photo sets depicting various celebrities with their facial features in disproportionate scale. The Elijah Wood photoset resurfaced on Reddit^[4] in April 2012, gaining 830 overall points, 10,960 upvotes and 410 comments in the WTF subreddit. On October 28th, 2012, the subreddit /r/Quasimoderp^[5] was launched. Two days later, the earliest known instance of such composite image without the white margins was submitted to the subreddit, featuring an image of actor Clint Eastwood^[6](shown below, right).

Spread

On May 30th, the sloth-faced images of celebrities and icons were compiled into a Tumblr photoset by Tastefully Offensive,^[8] where the post gained more than 10,400 notes within six days. Also on the 30th, the images were featured on Buzzfeed^[9], The FW{10] and Obvious Winner.^[11] In the following week, sloth-facing also appeared on Funny or Die^[12], Laughing Squid^[13], Blame It On The Voices^[14], Maxim^[15] and the Chive.^[16]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

David Thorne is an Australian humourist, satirist, Internet personality and New York Times best-selling author. He was born on 23 February 1972 in Geraldton, Western Australia. He is well known on the internet for his pranks such as “Kate’s Birthday,” he also writes satire regarding popular culture and issues revolving around his life and work.

His work has been featured around the world especially in Australia, Britain and the USA. In late 2008 his work was brought to wider attention and to a wider audience when his humorous email exchanges regarding his attempt to pay a bill with a drawing of a seven legged spider was featured on the “Have I Got News For You” on the BBC and on “the Late Show with David Letterman”. This lead to a massive increase in traffic to his personal website and blog “27b/6” which features a collection of humorous emails and articles from Thorne’s life. These exchanges and other unseen exchanges were published in Thorne’s first book “The Internet is a playground” which went on to receive international success and the book debuted at number four on The New York Times Best Seller list.

27B/6 (27bslash6)

(27bslash6) is referencing the fact that George Orwell had lived in Apartment 27b on the 6th level while writing the novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. The phrase “27B stroke 6” is also used by Terry Gilliam in the movie “Brazil”. Thorne stated that he was unable to secure the word stroke and changed the word slash due to domain issues. The website originally received a hundred hits a week from a small and consistent group of his fans to gaining a larger mainstream audience (a few thousand hits a day ) when the article “I Wish I Had a Monkey” was listed on the Bored At Work website. Following the 7 legged spider drawing page being posted on Digg, the 27bslash6 server crashed after taking over half a million hits in a 24-hour period. The second server crashed following Thorne’s next article, “Party in Apartment 3,” in which Thorne repeatedly RSVPs for a party he has not been invited to, before the site was moved to a third server in the US and has since continued to receive a substantial volume of traffic.

Thorne has continued to get international success with a multitude other articles from the 27b/6 website such as “Missing Missy”; is a series of emails between Thorne and a secretary who requires a missing poster designed for her lost cat. Thorne’s articles “Strata Agreement” and “Party in Apartment 3,” became so popular that it was read out during a broadcast on BBC Radio service in the United Kingdom and was reprinted in over 300 publications worldwide. Thorne’s article regarding a former client contacting him for free work titled “Simon’s Pie Charts” became such a viral hit due to being passed on by email and social networking sites that it has been described as one of the most passed on viral emails of all time and has been mentioned on social networking by many celebrities. His articles were featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Australia’s The 7PM Project and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Publications

The Internet is a Playground.

Thorne’s first book, a collection of articles from the website titled The Internet is a Playground, sold approximately 8,000 copies in its first month of release. The book was initially published by a small Australian publisher named Fontaine Press. However Thorne ended his relationship with them due to Fontaine Press missing deliveries and not paying of author royalties.

In 2011, the rights to publish the book along with approximately 160 pages of new content were purchased by Penguin Group US. Penguin renamed the book The Internet is a Playground, Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius and the book debuted at number four on The New York Times Best Seller list the following week.

I’ll Go Home Then, It’s Warm and Has Chairs

Thorne’s second release, a new collection of both unpublished articles and ones from 27b/6 titled I’ll Go Home Then, It’s Warm and Has Chairs, sold twice as many copies of his first book in its first month of release. The cover of its first edition featured Penguin’s logo giving the finger, leading to Penguin Group claiming copyright infringement and demanding the cover be changed. The cover was eventually changed to feature a cat dressed as an astronaut, holding a snowboard.

Notable Examples

7 Legged Spider

Seven Legged Spider (a.k.a Paying Bills with Drawing of Spider) refers to the e-mail conversations that took place in October 2008 between David Thorne and Jane Gilles. More specifically, Seven Legged Spider is a comical drawing made by Thorne, who offered his stick-figure artwork as a payment for his overdue utility bills. Needless to say, his drawing was rejected by the company’s representative Jane, but the playful, cutesy e-mail exchange between them lived on to become internet famous.
Drawing Auction on eBay

In November 2008, Thorne took his joke to another level by auctioning off his drawing of the seven-legged spider. The classic eBay joke quickly caught on in the blogosphere and news media after an eBay user known as Patrick made the winning bid of US$ 10,000 for the drawing while others put up customized or accessorized versions of Thorne’s spider, such as Santa’s hat and Buddhist’s robe.

Kate’s Birthday

Kate’s Birthday was an open Facebook event organized by Kate Miller, who wished to invite some of her close friends and celebrate her birthday on May 1st, 2010. Although it was meant to be a small, intimate get-together, the number of invites quickly got out of hand after it became widely publicized by others, amassing over 60,000 attendees before getting shut down.

It was highlighted by David Thorne on Twitter which exploded the popularity of the event causing the 60,000 attendees, however after the event was shut down by facebook it was revealed that Thorne created the Facebook account and event to “entertain a few people over the weekend.”

Search Insights

External Links

http://www.27bslash6.com/

This meme was created from when I went into my course half way through the day and he noticed I didn’t look well. So without me asking he put me down for the full day, getting me the full pay for the day. I thought that this was the least he deserved for such a fair and good natured act.

I created this meme after someone shared the quote “when your knight in shining armor turns out to be a retard in tin foil” with me. I could instantly visualize this and found it hilarious. Just a quick google image search provided me with the content I needed to really bring home the point.

(work in progress)

About

#MyGirlfriendNotAllowedTo is a Twitter hashtag used with humorous tweets about the activities in which a person does not want their female significant other to participate.

Origin

While the origin of the hashtag is currently unknown, it first appeared as a worldwide trend^[2] on June 3rd at 7:20PM EST, ranked at #4.

Spread

By Juen 3rd at 10:40 PM EST, #MyGirlfriendNotAllowedTo was the #1 trending topic worldwide, staying there until 2:20 AM. Several times throughout the day on June 4th, the hashtag was trending again but did not go back to the #1 spot. According to Topsy Analytics^[3], the hashtag was used 392,489 times on June 4th.

Notable Examples

Derivative: #MyBoyfriendNotAllowedTo

Search Interest

[Not Currently Available]

External References

Overview

NSA Data Mining Scandal is an ongoing controversy surrounding the U.S. National Security Agency’s telephone data-mining operation of millions of customers of Verizon, one of the largest telecommunications providers in the United States.

Background

On June 5th, 2013, The Guardian^[1] published an exclusive report that the U.S. National Security Agency is collecting the telephone records of millions of customers of Verizon. The article detailed a classified order from the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was obtained by the U.K. daily newspaper and made publicly available on its website^[2], directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to hand over all “telephony metadata” created by the mobile service provider within the United States and abroad.

Notable Developments

The Guardian’s leak of the court document was universally met by criticisms of the Obama administration from both ends of the political spectrum, as well as news media outlets^{[4][5][8][9][10][11]} and civil rights advocacy groups.^[12] That same day, the New York Times^[7] published an editorial titled “President Obama’s Dragnet,” slamming the president’s abuse of executive power, especially in the light of another recent scandal that the Justice Department secretly monitored the Associated Press and Fox News, and adding that the Obama “administration has now lost all credibility.”

On Facebook, The Guardian’s story was shared more than 103,000 times before 2 p.m. (EST) and the story was met by similar reactions of anger, confusion and even a few jokes about Verizon’s “share everything” plan and its ever-so-fitting catchphrase “can you hear me now?”

On Twitter

On Twitter, the original story published by The Guardian was shared more than 10,200 times before 10 a.m. (EST) while the hashtag #NSA immediately shot up to the top trending topic of the day, leading to nearly 250,000 mentions in less than 24 hours.

American actor Jason Biggs tweeted a joke referencing Verizon’s advertising catchphrase “Can you hear me now?”, which received over 330 retweets and 130 favorites in the first 24 hours.

“Can you hear me now?” – Verizon customers"Yep." – The U.S. government

— Jason Biggs (@JasonBiggs) June 6, 2013

Former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain tweeted a sarcastic statement to Verizon customers, congratulating them on being spied on “without probable cause.”

Congratulations, Verizon subscribers! The NSA is spying on you without probable cause! bit.ly/1b8Uuhp

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) June 6, 2013

Other Twitter users began posting jokes about the scandal with the hashtag #NSAcalledtotellme.

#nsacalledtotellme that my choice of DrWho over AmericanIdol was unpatriotic #watchingfordrones

— Nicholas Brown (@nicholasbrown85) June 7, 2013

PRISM Program

Also on June 6th, 2013, The Guardian^[14] published an article reporting on a previously undisclosed government surveillance program called PRISM, which gives the NSA the power to gain direct access to search history, emails, file transfers and live chats from various Internet services, including those provided by Google, Facebook and Apple. The details of the program were revealed in a leaked PowerPoint presentation, which claimed the program was run with the assistance of the Internet companies involved.

n response to questions about their involvement with the program, each company The Guardian contacted denied any knowledge of PRISM, including Google who released the following statement:

“Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

The article noted that the program raised many concerns about due process, as it allows the NSA to directly access company servers to obtain information in complete secrecy. The director of ACLU’s Center for Democracy Jameel Jaffer criticized PRISM for being military surveillance of civilians:

“This is unprecedented militarization of domestic communications infrastructure. That’s profoundly troubling to anyone who is concerned about that separation.”

On June 7th, The Guardian^[15] published a follow-up article, reporting that the United States Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed the existence of PRISM, but insisted that it only covered surveillance of communications with foreigners, not United States citizens.

President Obama’s Response

That same day, President Barack Obama held a press conference in which he defended the surveillance programs, arguing that they did not apply to United States citizens, were subject to Congressional oversight and required the authorization of federal judges (shown below).^[16]

Notable Examples

External References

Background

On June 6th, 2013, Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder^[1], whose previous Twitter experiment “2 Grams For $40” went viral in April, instructed his Twitter followers to text their parents asking them if it is illegal to not tell a sexual partner that they may have given them a sexually transmitted disease and specify that they were asking for a “friend.” In less than 24 hours, this instructional tweet was retweeted nearly 1,900 times and favorited more than 900 times.

Experiment: text your parents “If you think u gave someone an STD is it illegal not to tell them? Asking for a friend.” Then tweet response.

— nathan fielder (@nathanfielder) June 6, 2013

Fielder’s Twitter Experiments

Fielder has hosted a number of similar pranks on parents via Twitter in 2013. His first idea^[13], tweeted on April 13th, 2013, instructed his followers to simply e-mail the word “help” to their parents, followed by another proposal,^[14] tweeted on April 20th, asking people to message their fathers inquiring about the quality of condoms purchased at a dollar store. A week prior to his STD prank, Fielder encouraged people to text their significant other the phrase “I havent been fully honest with you.” The texter was not allowed to respond for an hour.^[10] His instructional tweet received more than 4,600 retweets and 2,500 favorites, yielding dozens of examples (shown below).

Notable Developments

Five minutes after Fielder’s initial tweet, follower Brandy Haynes was the first person to complete the task. She shared a screenshot of a text message conversation with her Mom who responded by saying that it better not have really been her with the issue. Within hours, Fielder had retweeted 16 screenshot responses.

<a href="https://twitter.com/nathanfielder">nathanfielder</a> <a href="http://t.co/6tLuKPqvsh" title="http://twitter.com/Haynes03/status/342763293380857856/photo/1">twitter.com/Haynes03/statu…</a></p>&mdash; Brandy Haynes (Haynes03) June 6, 2013

Blog Coverage

On June 6th, a number of websites immediately documented the prank including comedy blog Splitsider^[2], men’s humor website Bro Bible^[3], Laughing Squid^[4] and the Huffington Post Canada.^[5] The following morning, additional coverage was found on Gawker^[6], The FW^[7], The Daily Dot^[8] and Uproxx.^[9]

Notable Responses

Search Interest

External References

About

#Litterati is an Instagram hashtag that is used to document photographs of garbage found in the streets before disposing in the trash. The hashtag has since inspired a crowdsourced environmental movement with the same name and the online gallery website Digital Landfill, which indexes various pieces of litter that have been spotted and removed by people from all over the world.

Origin

The Litterati movement originally began as a personal Instagram project by Jeff Kirschner^[4], who was inspired by his environmentally conscious daughter to start a voluntary street-cleaning campaign using the crowdsource model.

Spread

[researching]

Notable Examples

[researching]

Search Interest

External References

w.i.p.

About

“I’m Going On An Adventure” is a line from Peter Jackson’s movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey". It is said by the movie’s protagonist Bilbo Baggins, played by Martin Freeman.

Origin

The line comes from an early point of the film in which Bilbo makes his decision to join Gandalf and the dwarves on their quest to reclaim Erabor from Smaug. He is shown running through Hobbiton and saying the line to a farmer who’s questioning his sudden running.

(line at 2:07)

Impact

The line began to pick up interest after the film’s release in December of 2012. After then, several image parodies surfaced.

Search interest

About

Exploitable Environments is an environment, either it be real life or cyber web, that can be exploited in an artistic way. You probably have heard the phrase in a different way, like Facebook Profile Pic Hacks. But this type of art spans farther then just facebook, it spans farther then even just the internet with creative graffiti to 3D printing the environment around us can be exploited.

Origin

Its hard to say an origin of this type of art. Who was the first oil painter, or who was the first one to paint a picture of New York? We can say the origin came from Facebooks photos, or we can easily say it came from 4chan’s combos. Its probably impossible to pinpoint an origin.

Notable Examples

Examples can range from Cyberspace to the Internet and here are just a few.

4chan

Everyone knows 4chan combos. Was the sites main purpose to create combos? Did moot, or 2chans developers ever see anything like combos happening? Well then it is considered a hack. But hack is such a broad term these days. It used to be modifying something out of its main purpose but now most of the time it means unauthorized access and other illegal stuff. Not all hacks are illegal, and that’s what Exploitable Environments are… hacks.

3D Printer

Greg Petchkovsky, in 2012, made a video entry for a contest which he had to create an Instructable on how to make what he made. He used the environment as it was and turned it into art.

Facebook

Over the years Facebook has changed its design many times. Here are just a few notable examples of Facebook.

Twitter

Twitter with its new cover photo as brought in a simple version, like Facebooks.

Billboards

Out of the realm of the internet, the real world does it too. Billboards using the environment with its billboard to create an ad… and art.

About

El CandiGato Morris (Morris, the cat-idate) is the nickname given to a black and white cat who has been nominated as the citizen’s candidate in the 2013 mayoral election in the city of Xalapa, Mexico. Running under the campaign slogan “For a Xalapa Without Rats,” referring to the notoriously corrupt politicians and police in the region, the cat quickly gained popularity in Spanish-speaking social media and the attention of the Mexican news media, even raising some concerns about electoral abstentionism.

Origin

On May 4th, 2013, two young men from the state of Veracruz set up a Facebook fan page for their cat under the pseudonym “candigatomorris”. According to a Mural interview^[1], one of the owners who works as a graphic designer used the fanpage to publish some propaganda for the campaign, including some stickers pasted on citizens’ cars. The objective of this propaganda was to mock Mexican politicians and their campaigns, pointing out their laziness and distance from the people, and that anybody can make the vague promises they make. The fan page has since been used to promote campaigns against animal cruelty, and to spread public denouncements about current government actions.

Some of the more notable campaign slogans include:

“Due the large amount of rats seeking office, only a cat can bring order.”

“Tired of voting for rats? Vote for a cat!”

“Xalapa is ready to vote for a different kind of animal!”

“I can sleep in the Chamber of Deputies too!”

“Like all good cats: when I make a crap, I actually bury it, and I don’t walk around showing off my ‘prizes’.”

Precursor: Stubbs, the Cat Mayor in Alaska

Morris’ candidacy resembles a case that occurred in 1997, when the citizens of the town of Talkeetna, Alaska declared a tabby cat named Stubbs as the honorary mayor^[12]. The cat has since become a tourist attraction. The administrator of the Stubbs fan page got notice about the existence of Morris campaign, and wrote a message supporting and congratulating the idea in the ‘cat-didate’ fan page^[13].

Spread

Some time later, a fan of the ‘cat-idate’ created a Twitter account for the cat (@ CandiGato), and the owner reacted by proposing the hashtag #ElCandiGatoMorris for the campaign. He also asked to the creator of the Twitter account to contact him, but as he didn’t, the latter created another ‘official’ account (@ OfficialMorris). More recently, they proposed the hashtag #yeswecat. The owners also registered a domain and created a webpage (elcandigato.com) with works made by themselves and posted by fans in the Facebook page. The page was initially promoted among a circle of friends, but it quickly called the attention from more Facebook users in the city.

The authors claimed they hoped to get 1000 likes, but that amount was easily reached, and ironically, the fan page has been receiving much more likes than the rest of the fan pages for official candidates. This is because of the attention and sympathy the campaign got from people around other cities and countries.

News Media Coverage

The unexpected case soon attracted the attention of several local and national media, that reported the beginning and rise to fame of the campaign. Among the news portals that reported the event are SDPNoticas^[2], Milenio^[3], El Universal^[3], Yahoo Mexico^[4], Univision^[5] and Proceso^[6]. There have been reports even from media in other languages, like CNN^[7], The Huffington Post^[8], and www.lexpress.fr^[9].

Notable Examples

Derivatives

In response to this phenomena, additional “cat-idates” have appeared from cities that are going to hold election this July in the same country, they haven’t got the attention Morris got though^[10][11].

Controversy

Electoral Abstinence in Mexico

The campaign has been accused of promoting the electoral abstinence, a constant problem in Mexican politics. In all elections in Mexico, the ballots include a special space for write-in candidates which are legally eligible. But, this space of often used to cast votes for celebrities or fictional characters. Additionally, many people do not turn out to vote.

Official Responses

Official candidates has reacted to Morris campaign^[14]. The candidate for the PAN (National Action Party) confessed that he suspected the campaign was begun by his adversary, the PRI (Institutional and Revolutionary Party) candidate, in order to encourage free electors to nullify their votes and keep bought votes advantage^[15]. The candidate for the PRI has confessed that these events are symptom of the lack of inspiration from candidates and politicians^[16].

Electoral authorities have concluded that these events will convince a large amount of people to cast votes for the cat, and publicly called on the population to abstain voting for the cat^[17].

The fan page responded by saying that it is not promoting abstention, but rather that it is promoting political protest, and that nullifying a vote and abstention are different acts that have different consequences^[18].

Search Interest

External References

About

“You Know You Play Too Much When” is a phrasal template for jokes listing humorous consequences of participating in an activity for an extended period of time.

Origin

The earliest known variation of the phrase was posted to the Wireplay Forums^[2] on January 2, 1999, when user Pokey submitted a thread titled “You know you’ve been playing too much Unreal when…” to discuss some of the most commonly observed behaviors associated with players of the first person shooter video game Unreal Tournament.

Precursor

The phrase bears a resemblance to the “you might be a redneck” stand-up routine by American comedian Jeff Foxworthy, in which he lists several signs or reasons someone may be seen as a “redneck.” The routine was also featured as the title of his 1993 studio album You Might Be a Redneck If.^[1]

Spread

On April 14th, 2003, Neoseeker Forums^[9] member Freyas Protege submitted a discussion thread to share in-jokes about playing too much of the role-playing game Kingdom Hearts. On May 28th, 2004, PokeCommunity^[10] Forums member DarkMage31 started a thread listing what can happen if someone plays too much Pokemon. On February 26th, 2005, Plenty of Fish Forums^[11] member Evil~Princess~Tera submitted a list of 50 consequences of watching too much of the animated television show The Simpsons.

On May 4th, 2008, Neoseeker Forums^[12] member Rune Ripper started a thread for jokes about playing too much of the game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. On June 20th, 2010, the Cheezburger site Very Demotivational^[7] highlighted a demotivational image macro of a man sleeping next to a horse with and the caption implying that he was laying next to Sarah Jessica Parker (shown below).

A few days later on July 25th, a list article was created on the Borderlands Wiki^[4] providing examples of behaviors associated with playing too much of the shooter video game Borderlands. On February 11th, 2011, Redditor bezenartw submitted a post titled “You Know You’ve Been Playing Too Much Bioshock When” to the /r/gaming^[8] subreddit, featuring a webcomic in which a video gamer confuses reality with the gameplay interface from Bioshock while answering the door in real life (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post accumulated more than 2,000 up votes and 100 comments.

On July 19th, a page listing various consequences of playing too much of the role-playing game Dragon Age was posted on the Dragon Age Wiki.^[5] On September 14th, the CNET Australia YouTube channel uploaded a video highlighting the “top 5 ways to tell you’ve been playing too much Deus Ex” (shown below), which gained over 220,000 views and 830 comments in the first two years.

On December 16th, Redditor eequalsmc2 submitted a post titled “You know you Internet too much when…” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[6] subreddit, featuring the Scumbag Steve doorway image without the character and the caption reading “Even this doorway / pisses me off” (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post garnered upwards of 7,600 up votes and 130 comments.

On April 11th, 2013, 9gag^[3] user pachomoncadam submitted a post titled “You know you’ve modded GTA too much when,” which featured a screenshot of a modded Grand Theft Auto game with several armed penguins and a lemur (shown below), gaining over 45,600 up votes and 15,000 Facebook shares within the first two months of submission.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Work in progress. Please be patient

About

Animal Crossing is a simulation video game series created by Nintendo. Within the series, the player assumes the role of a new resident to a town populated by animals, and works to repay their debt and settle in to the daily routine of the town. The series has gained popularity on a number of websites, spawning a large fandom.

History

The first Animal Crossing game was a Japan-only release on the Nintendo 64, titled Animal Forest, and was released on April 14, 2001. Due to the success of the game in Japan, the game was later ported to the Gamecube for release in the US on September 15, 2002, where it received favorable reviews. A sequel titled Animal Crossing: Wild World was released for the DS on December 5, 2005. The game utilized DS features such as a real-time clock and Nintendo Wi-Fi connection, to allow users to visit each other’s towns wirelessly. A third game titled Animal Crossing: City Folk was released on the Nintendo Wii on November 16, 2008, this time allowing players to visit a new city area, filled with a number of different shops and other services for the player to utilize. The fourth game in the series, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, was released for Nintendo 3DS on June 9, 2013 and featured a wide variety of new features, most notably the ability to become mayor of your town, and let you adjust it’s features. An anime film based of the second game in the series, titled Dōbutsu no Mori was released exclusively in Japan, and was released on December 16, 2006. As well as this, the Animal Crossing series has been featured in a number of other games series, such as Super Smash Bros., Wii Music and Nintendo Land.

Online Relevance

The Animal Crossing series has a significant fan following on a number of sites, such as DeviantArt^[1], Reddit^[2], 4chan’s /v/ video game board^[3] and Fanfiction.net^[4]. As well as this, there are two Animal Crossing wikis dedicated to recording the series^[5][6], as well as an Animal Crossing fan site, titled Animal Crossing Community^[7].

Search Interest

External References