About

“Bad Apple!!” is a Japanese dance pop song originally featured in one of the arcade games from the Touhou series. Since its rise to popularity on Nico Nico Douga (NND) in 2009, the song has inspired an extensive list of remixes, dances and musical tributes primarily on the Japanese web. In October 2010, the original upload became the first NND video to reach 10 million views.

Background

The Touhou series is a Japanese indie scrolling manic shooter game created by Team Shanghai Alice’s sole member, ZUN. Touhou games have a strong following in Japan and it is far from uncommon to see most Touhou soundtracks being remixed by various doujin circles, some of them giving birth to other phenomena such as U.N Owen Was Her? and Night of Knights.

Origin

The Song

“Bad Apple!!” was originally included in the soundtrack of Level Stage 3 in the 4th Touhou Project game Lotus Land Story, created by series designer Zun and released in July 1998.

On May 20th, 2007, Masayoshi Minoshima, the founder of well-known, Touhou-affiliated doujin club Alstroemeria Records released a remix of “Bad Apple!!” featuring the voice of Japanese pop singer Nomico in an album called Lovelight.

Early MAD Videos

One of the first MADs of “Bad Apple!!” was uploaded on March 28th, 2008. While its peak has likely passed, MADs based on the song are still being published on YouTube to this day.

Viral instance: Stylized Shadow Art

On June 8th 2008, a Nico Nico user made a video (Registration Required) featuring a storyboard with precise details of what he considered would be the best video clip for the “Bad Apple!!” song. His video has accumulated more than 900,000 views on Nico Nico Douga alone. Here is a translated version available on YouTube:

As the idea began to spark interest, the first draft of video was uploaded on October 26th, 2008:

“Bad Apple!!” exploded on October 27, 2009 when Nico Nico Douga user Anira (あにら) released the last draft of his work on the video (Registration Required), inspired by the 2009 fan version. This video, made with 3D moving models and silhouette shadow art featuring a great amount of the female cast from the Touhou series hit YouTube the same day. In addition, the original NND video (Registration Required) became the first to reach 10 million views , making it one of the most watched videos in the Japanese video-sharing community (English subtitled version).

As a result of the video’s success, many Touhou articles were published, mostly praising it as an art form.

Derivatives: Stylized Shadow Videos

While that video clip was far from being the first one in history to employ shadow and light in an artistic manner, this silhouette art instance launched its own trend of parodies. This was first translated by videos featuring other Japanese CGI models, mostly Miku Miku Dance related clips:

There were also video comparisons/compilations between the original clip and previous fan-made animations:

But overall, many users tried to recreate the initial clip using alternative artistic tools, like Laser Show (October 2009) :

Sand Art Effect (November 2009) :

Apple Peeling (February 2010) :

CNN News: Bad Apple in Stop-Motion

One of the most popular MADs of “Bad Apple!!” uses stop-motion animation where the director printed out every individual frame of the shadow video and uses contextual frame placement, published January 2010:

While most of the parodies, remixes, and MADs were made by people knowing at least a little bit about what Touhou is, the rest of the world was bound to discover the stop-motion animation clip when CNN made a report about it on January 30th 2010 :

However, in it, the reporters mistakenly credited the stop-motion alteration as being the initial video describing how the Stylized Shadow one has been made, which unleashed many fans to leave raging comments about it.

Dance Videos

Before the 3D shadow MAD, “Bad Apple!!” was already popular on Nico Nico Douga as a dance fad from people inventing a dance fitting the song. In a manner similar to the Fukkireta meme, the Odotte Mita (踊ってみた) or “I tried dancing it” fad on NND took hold.

It first began on June 27th 2009 when two Japanese boys uploaded themselves dancing to the song on Nico Nico Douga (Registration Required).

The duet performance gave birth to more than 100 videos of people following the dance, featuring either human beings or 3D characters.

Performances / Tributes

While others, pertaining to a Japanese fad called Hiite Mita (弾いてみた) or “I tried playing it” can be considered as covers and can feature nearly every kind of instrument :

Violin

Piano

Guitar

Fan Dubs

Another peculiar fad on Nico Nico Douga involving a song meme, Utatte Mita (歌ってみた) or “I’ve tried singing it” involves people singing the tune, recording and posting it to Nico Nico Douga or other video streaming sites. This fad isn’t restricted to the Japanese web and fandubs exist as well :

About

Figwit, also known as “Frodo Is Great… Who Is That?”, is a nickname given to the actor/musician Bret McKenzie, who appeared as an extra in the 2001 film The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. The unnamed elf character received widespread popularity and fandom online, mainly due to his short amount of screen time and apparent good looks.

Origin

The name Figwit was created in 2002, when an Israeli girl named Iris Hadad noticed the extra sitting in the background during the Council of Elrond scene, who she described as “perfect, pouty and gorgeous”. She dubbed him Figwit, an acronym for “Frodo Is Grea… Who Is THAT?!” and created a website for him with a British friend and fellow fan Sherry de Andres. The site, Figwit Lives! featured fanart and songs about the mysterious elf. The term “Frodo Is Grea… Who Is THAT?!” (purposely missing a t) is meant to describe the reaction that female viewers have when watching the scene.

When Frodo says “I will take it!”, we are so impressed we start to think “Frodo is great!" But before we finish, the camera pans and we see Figwit, smoldering enigmatically in the background. All other thoughts are whisked away by that elf – who is THAT?! He’s gorgeous!

Spread and Popularity

Within the year 2002, Figwit has been the subject of a TV news report, following newspaper articles :

The sites popularity grew as more and more fans began to take notice of the “handsome, dark-haired elf”. A similar site, Fans of Figwit started up later that year. In 2003, Figwit reappeared in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, this time credited as “Elven Escort”. He has two lines and only a few more seconds of screen time.

His brief but slightly longer on-screen appearance caused his popularity to soar, as more fans began to wonder if anyone else had the same strange attraction to the elf that they did, and realized they were not alone. According to Figwit’s Wikipedia article:

Director Peter Jackson stated in the DVD commentary for The Return of the King that Figwit was called back and given dialogue in the third film “just for fun for the fans” because “so much fuss has been made about him over the last couple of years”.

Identity Revealed

After looking up his names in the credits, fans discovered Figwit’s true identity, Bret Mckenzie. Mckenzie is more widely known as one half of the comedic folk-rap duo from New Zealand, Flight of the Conchords, who had their own self-titled series on HBO. Mckenzie, who was only now aware of his Lord of the Rings fandom, said it was “pretty weird, but I’m flattered.”

Figwit was also the subject of various Lord of the Rings related merchandise, including trading cards, action figures, and a lego figurine, though the fan-given name Figwit was never actually used. In 2004, a documentary entitled Frodo Is Great… Who Is That?!! was released, following Bret Mckenzie as he met with his fans at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, along with interviews from the Lord of The Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson and other cast members from the films.
“Frodo is Great… Who Is That?!!” can be viewed on Vimeo.

In addition to the Figwit nickname, people have also called him “Melpomaen”, the Elvish word-to-word and very loose translation from Fig (Melpo) and Wit (Maen). This variation of his name is widely used in slash fan fictions.

The Frodo’s song

Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, from Flight of the Conchords as a band, created a tribute song to The Lord of the Ring movie, as shown by the TV report, during the time Figwit’s popularity was exploding.

Several years later, Fligh of the Conchords became a TV comedy series which premiered on HBO in June 2007, incidentally bringing back to life the Figwit phenomenon as shown by Google Insights.
The Frodo’s song, Frodo Don’t Wear The Ring, was also reused in a bit of episode 11, season 1 from that show :

As a joke, among other characters played by Bret can be seen Legolas, an elvish reminiscent of his Figwit fame.

Jemaine Clement as Figwit

Sources

• Figwit Lives!
• Lord of the Rings Wiki
• Tolkien Gateway
• Papa’s World blog
• Urban Dictionary
• Moria.co.nz
• Byte Me Festival

About

Dolan is an MS Paint web comic series featuring a variety of poorly drawn Disney cartoon characters. The main character Dolan, based on Donald Duck, is often portrayed as a psychotic killer and sex addict.

Origin

According to Uncle Dolan^[2], the comics were originally created during the summer of 2010 by artist Sakolut^[1] on the Finnish image board Kuvalauta. Titled “Aku Ankka” (Finnish for “Donald Duck”), the comics featured :poorly drawn":http://bit.ly/JAMTfK MS Paint characters and misspelled captions in speech bubbles. Following the repeated use of “Dolan” to refer to the character of Donald Duck, the comics eventually became known as “Dolan” comics.

Precursor: Spurdo Spärde

Dolan has many resemblances to Spurdo Spärde, another Finnish webcomic character from Kvalauta that is meant to represent a poorly drawn version of Pedobear. The character was conceived in a mocking response to the sudden influx of teenage newcomers in June 2009. Aside from their imperfectionist style of drawing, both comics also share similarities in dialogue captions; Spurdo comics often end with the message “t. Spurdo” (Finnish: “regards, Spurdo”) as Dolan comics do with “regards, Dolan.”

Spread

The earliest archived instance in English-language comes from a You Laugh, You Lose thread on 4chan^[4] posted on August 12th, 2010. The /r/dolan^[7] subreddit was created two days later on August 14th, 2010.

In August 2011, YouTuber SweederLander^[16] launched a web series titled “The Uncle Dolan Show,” using various images of comics found on 4chan and text-to-speech narrations of the dialogues. One of the episodes was posted onto eBaumsworld^[20] in January 2012.

Through the rest of 2011 and early 2012, Dolan comics continued to surface on 4chan’s /b/ and reblogged through personal blogs on occasions, but the meme stayed mostly dormant. However, beginning in early March 2012, the comics saw a significant resurgence in popularity with a slew of threads popping up on 4chan^[5][6], the /r/4chan^[8][9] subreddit and Tumblr under the tag #Dolan.^[10]

Single topic blogs like Dolan-Duck^[18] and Fuck Yeah Dolan^[19] were launched to cater to the rising demand of comics while those who were puzzled by its nonsensical humor began inquiring about its origin and meaning via Yahoo Answers^[21] and Reddit. The meme also gained a large following on the BodyBuilding forum, leading to dozens of Dolan-related threads on the site. As of May 2012, the Memegenerator^[11] page for Uncle Dolan has more than 3,500 image macro instances, the /r/Dolan subreddit^[7] has 21,989 readers and the Facebook page^[12] has 47,000 likes.

Notable Examples

Related Characters

The Disney character Goofy also became a popular subject of MS Paint-style characters, such as the highly suspicious Ferrari Goofy who has elusive interactions with Dolan, as well as “Gooby,” who has also appeared in several comics. The /r/gooby^[3] subreddit was created on March 14th, 2012 and YouTuber SweederLander of “The Uncle Dolan Show” launched a spin-off series titled “A Gooby Story” in April.

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Other characters include poorly drawn variations of Mickey Mouse, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny.

Everything Went Better Than Expected

A recurring theme in the comic series involves variations of the phrase “everything went better than expected”, based on the rage comic character.

Search Interest

Search query volume for “dolan comics” rose significantly in early 2012 following the resurgence in popularity on Reddit, 4chan and Tumblr.

External References

About

囧 is a Chinese character that is commonly used as an emoticon in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. However, it is also used by non-Chinese speaking countries as well, especially in Korea and Japan. Because it resembles a person with an open mouth, it is used to convey distress, helplessness, disappointment, reluctancy, shock, dislike, defeat, embarrassment, and the like.

The original meaning of 囧 is “window,” and is pronounced jiŏng or jiong3 (Pinyin) in Mandarin Chinese, but is rarely used in this context anymore.

It is part of the ever growing Martian Language (火星文) popular among Chinese netizens and is also closely related to the orz phenomenon.

囧 can be used in a variety of ways:

Emoticon: 囧
Noun: I want you to give me a 囧。
Verb: When I heard the terrible story, I 囧。
Adjective: You are so 囧。
Interjection: 囧！What?!?

囧 Variants

囧rz – 囧 used as a popular replacement for the “head” in orz.

囧gg – Because “gg” is widely used as an abbreviation for “good game,” 囧gg is way of showing that you lost. Badly.

Popularity

囧 Derivatives

Websites

• 囧囧天地論壇: – 99world forum
  
• 囧片王 – video.ofeva.com
  
• Intel 囧 – Part of a marketing campaign allowing users to talk about their personal “囧” situations.
  

• Jiong.ws
  A community of 囧 people. It is also well known for making comedic 囧 videos. A few examples:
  最强的俩口子吵架（一日一囧）081021
  
  幽会（一日一囧）
  
  肾斗士之歌（一日一囧）
  

Myolie Wu (胡杏兒)

Myolie Wu is an actress sometimes called 囧囧」 because of her amazing facial expressions.

囧 references outside the internet

The following is very incomplete list:

• Orz Boys
  The film, Orz Boys uses 囧 in one of its movie posters, and was released in 2008.
  
  
  
• Li Ning 囧 Sports Shoes
  
  
  Li Ning has a popular series of 囧 shoes, which are sometime described as “Very 囧 Very Powerful,” a reference to Very Good Very Powerful.

• Kimberly Clark’s Kotex
  Commercial:
  
  尖子攻略
  The show, 尖子攻略, features a scene where a student needs to write a 600 word essay, and resorts to writing “orz” and “囧.”

• TVB
  Commercial:
  
  TVB also has an upcoming show called 囧探查過界.

• O 囧 O (English: Rubber Friend)
  O 囧 O is a music program by 903 Radio. (叱吒903)

• 囧 About Sex
  
  《爸媽囧很大》 is an ongoing television series that talks about sex education and other controversial sex-related topics.

Videos

囧 初音 LUCK STAR 甩葱歌

囧

External Links

• Evchk Wikia
• Uncyclopedia Taiwan

About

Fresh Prince of X is a series of mash-ups based on various songs set to the vocal track from the theme to the American sitcom series The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as performed by Will Smith. The remix song series is derived from the bait-and-switch copypasta Bel-Air which initially became widespread through 4chan’s /b/ as early as in 2004.

Origin

Airing from 1990 to 1996 on NBC, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air starred the then rapper Will Smith as a fictional version of himself who is made to move to Bel Air after getting in one little fight, scaring his mom. The famous theme song written by Will Smith himself and QD3, recounts the backstory behind the series in musical form, and is also a popular subject for bait and switch copypastas.

On October 10th, 2006, “Fresh Prince of The Death Star” was uploaded to YTMND by State-of-mind^[1]. Featuring a mash up of “The Imperial March” by John Williams from the Star Wars series and Smith’s vocals from the Fresh Prince theme song, the site essentially set the standard for other mashup YTMNDs that followed afterwards.

Spread

In January 2007, YTMND user LazyTown4 uploaded “Fresh Prince of LazyTown,” a mashup song which combines the tune of “Cooking by the Book” and the vocal track from the original theme. In the following month, “Fresh Prince of Six Flag” was uploaded on February 4th, 2007, set to Vengaboy’s eurodance track “We Like to Party” originally featured in a Six Flags commercial.

After the launch of YouTube, numerous YTMND derivative sites were transplanted into the video-sharing site and many new original creations were uploaded as well. One of the first notable YouTube uploads was titled “The Daft Prince of Punk-Air,” uploaded on July 5th, 2008 and set to Daft Punk’s 2001 hit single “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

In the following years, hundreds of additional remixes surfaced on YouTube, some of the most popular examples including The Fresh Prince of the Mushroom Kingdom^[3], The Fresh Prince of the Matrix^[4], Fresh Prince Roll’d ^[5] and Thomas the Tank Engine vs. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ^[6].

Notable Examples

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song has been set to a wide range of pop music hits and classic video game tunes. The series is usually recognizable through the album covers which feature Will Smith’s face.

Search Interest

Due to the high volume of search queries for the 1980s sitcom series with a similar name, it is difficult to isolate the level of online interest in the remix phenomenon apart from the TV show.

External References

About

“Move Your Feet” is a 2003 pop song by the Danish duo Junior Senior that became most well-known for its pixel art-influenced music video on the web. Since its YouTube upload in early 2008, the music video has inspired a series of handcut GIF animations on Something Awful, DeviantART and elsewhere online.

Origin

The pixel art for the “Move Your Feet” music video^[1] was originally drawn by art collective Shynola^[2] using its signature style of low-resolution pixel art with the bitmap graphics editor Deluxe Paint.^[3] The song was recorded sometime in 2002 and the earliest known instance of the music video available for download was featured in a blog article^[4] posted on August 5th, 2002.

Upon its commercial release in 2003, the song became Junior Senior’s biggest hit, reaching #3 in the United Kingdom and #20 in Australia, and played at dance clubs all over the world. The song was also featured in numerous promotional clips for various TV programs, such as the Australian version of “So You Think You Can Dance,” as well as comedy films like White Chicks and Forgetting Sarah Marshall among others. The game was also incorporated into the dance arcade games Dance Dance Revolution and Phineas and Ferb.

Spread

In 2003, the QuickTime movie version of the music video quickly spread through other internet humor forums like Ebaumsworld and Albino Blacksheep; However, many of the early copies were removed due to copyright infringement. In April 2004, The Metal Box^[6] released three Flash-based mini games based on various segments from the original music video. On March 31st, 2005, the first YTMND^[5] version of “Move Your Feet” was uploaded with the GIF animation of a bread jumping up an down from a toaster. Numerous duplicate sites based on the same GIF soon followed.

On March 25th, 2006, YouTuber Sundaysworstenemy uploaded the original music video, rekindling online interest in the song. On January 3rd, 2008, a game version of the music video uploaded onto Newgrounds.^[7] On March 7th that year, the same game was reuploaded onto DeviantART.

But the GIF-making fad didn’t begin until July 21st, 2008, when SomethingAwful user Squirrels2Nuts started a discussion thread dedicated to “Move Your Feet” animations. Titled “move your feet.gif,” the thread went on to spawn several dozens of animated GIFs on Something Awful as well as on DeviantART.

Notable Examples

The artworks became widely adopted as personal avatars and profile page decorations; the dancing robot GIF became one of the most recognizable instances to this date.

Notable Videos

Search Interest

External References

About

“Forever Alone” is an exploitable 4pane comic derived from “Rage Guy” in which the main character expresses loneliness and disappointment with their life in which they are alone. On Memegenerator, “Forever Alone” is on the Legendary Tier.

Origin

It is currently unclear where the comic began, as “Rage Guy” mutations have been popular on not only 4chan, but Tumblr, FunnyJunk, and many other memetic hubs for quite some time. It is believe to have first appeared in April of 2010 according to the meme entry’s original poster, but no link was provided to corroborate this claim.

Spread

*June 27th, 2010 Funnyjunk.com.

*July 9th, 2010 same image reposted to Funnyjunk.com.

*August 22nd, 2010 reposted on funnyjunk yet again.
Same day, a derivative posted on funnyjunk.

*As of September 16th, 2010, there are over 23,000 results for “Forever Alone” on Funnyjunk.com and 48,000 on Tumblr.com

• October 4th, 2010 Geekosystem posts an article on the “Forever Alone Meme”.

Fuckyeah Forever Alone single-topic Tumblr.

About

Prancing Cera is an emerging photoshop trend based on a picture of actor Michael Cera in mid-air leaping from one platform to another on a dock in Haugesund, Norway.

Origin

The photograph was taken by film director Edgar Wright while in Norway to promote the 2010 action comedy film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World with the leading actor Cera and uploaded to his Flickr account on August 22, 2010.

Development

[citation needed]

On the evening of August 23rd 2010, the single topic blog F*ck Yeah Prancing Cera was created and the site was immediately flooded with fan-made images. Most recreations of the meme so far have involved song lyrics with the word ‘Dance’ changed to ‘Prance’ and numerous references to film and television. Many have also collaborated the Prancing Cera meme with other memes such as Pedobear, Jessi Slaughter, Antoine Dodson, Haters Gonna Hate, Sad Keanu and others. The Tumblr site gained more than 5,000 followers in the first 48 hours of launch.

The next day, the image was posted to Buzzfeed, who encouraged users to create their own by including the photoshop exploitable. Within 24 hours, the article had over 28,000 views.

About

Dystonia Hoax Remixes are videos that dub new audio over the original dystonia segment from Inside Edition. They are meant to make it appear as if Desiree Jennings is dancing to music when she is undergoing episodes that cause her to shake erratically.

Origin

A segment from the television show “Inside Edition” showed a woman that claimed to have contracted dystonia from a seasonal flu shot. She was a former Washington Redskins cheerleader and says that the shot dashed her career of being a professional cheerleader. Many believe her condition to be a hoax given Inside Edition’s investigation of her after she failed to return their phone calls for a follow-up interview. She was miraculously cured, and doctors have claimed she could not have dystonia from a flu shot.

Search

Derivatives

Many YouTube users remixed footage from the original segment to various songs, mostly ones instructing choreographed dance moves.

“This Is How You Dance To Dubstep”

“Teach Me How to Dougie”

“You’re a Jerk”

“Let Me See Your Hips Swing”

“Walk It Out”

About

Hurr or Hurr Durr is an interjection used to criticize a post that is considered subpar or unentertaining, or alternatively, to express sarcastic laughter. Similar to the image macro application of “Derp,” this expression is often paired with images in which the subjects are gaping awkwardly or looking unflattering.

Origin

Before it became paired with “durr,” the word “hurr” appeared alone on sites like the Something Awful forums where it was used in similar vein to the sarcastic laughter “har har”^[3] in responding to a dumb joke. This usage of “hurr” has been noted as early as March 27th, 2003 in a Something Awful thread^[5] about 1970’s adult films. Hurr was first defined on Urban Dictionary^[4] as a caricature of “a dumb sounding laugh” on June 28th, 2003. By July 2006^[6], hurr had been implemented as an emoticon^[7] on the site.

One of the earliest archived mentions of “hurr durr” also took place on the Something Awful Forums. On August 17th, 2007, the phrase appeared as commentary^[1] on dialogue used in the dating sim game Sakura Wars: Atsuki Chishio ni^[2] in a Let’s Play thread.

Spread

“Hurr durr” was defined on Urban Dictionary^[8] on June 20th, 2008:

“Hurr durr” is the sound of laughter coming from someone with half a brain. Mostly it is used to point out when someone has made an idiotic claim, though, surprisingly, idiot males will attempt to make thier laugh as deep as possible to make them sound more manly, when all it really does is make them sound like idiots.

Since 2009, captioned photos with the phrase have appeared on the single-topic blog Image Macros.^[14] Collections of these have been shared on Urlesque^[17] in April 2010 and the Chive^[18] in April 2011. The phrase has also appeared in over 20 archived 4chan threads^[15], including one plotting equations^[16] from a hurr durr chart that took place on the /sci/ (science and math) board on March 27th, 2010.

On September 16th, 2009, the domain for the single serving site hurr-durr.com^[9] was registered, which displays a GIF animation of a pug shaking around with the gibberish chorus from “Chacarron Macarron”. The site uses Javascript to keep the window or tab open while triggering pop up windows so the user cannot exit the page. The site has been used as a bait and switch on Yahoo! Answers^[11] to draw visits from the curious readers. Hurr-durr.com has been parodied on Newgrounds^[12] and also has nearly 1000 likes on Facebook.^[13]

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Peaks for just the word “hurr” have appeared nearly every year in August or September, with the exception of June 2010. The search volume may be affected by the other defition of “hurr” as slang for “hair,”^[10] which began in 2008. Search for “hurr durr” began to pick up in September 2008 and reached an all-time high in May 2011.

External References

About

Leo Strut (also known as “Leonardo DiHapprio”) is a photoshopped exploitable that uses an image taken of Leonardo DiCaprio during the filming of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”. The original image is of DiCaprio doing a jolly strut down a street, but has been photo shopped into several scenes that usually depict a catastrophe or terrible happening, similar to Disaster Girl. DiCaprio is shopped into the scene, as if he could have stopped the incident or helped people nearby, but instead continues throughout the scene doing his jolly strut.

Origin

The original picture was taken on set during filming of the 2010 sci-fi movie Inception, which in itself generated significant volume of internet buzz and user-generated parodies, most notably the Inception multi-panes. The single topic tumblr “Fuck Yeah Strutting Leo” was created on August 29, 2010.

Spread

• “Fuck yeah strutting Leo” Tumblr.

• Add your own strutting Leo on BuzzFeed.

• Simply strut into Mordor on Reddit.

About

Jesusland is a fictional country made up of red states: states that traditionally vote Republican. The meme surfaced in 2004 during the U.S. presidential election season, when a satirical map of the new country, along with its counterpart “The United States of Canada” (consisting of blue states and Canada), was uploaded to YakYak.org.

Origin

On November 3rd, 2004, G. Webb posted the map to a thread on YakYak.org. It instantly went viral over the internet, with the New York Times labeling it an “instant internet classic”.

Popularity

The image gained popularity on various political blogs, and from both ends of the political spectrum. Many democrats thought the map a good idea, jokingly and semi-seriously taking secession into consideration. Many liberal users began posting their own maps, or tweaked versions, featuring new countries and borders. Republicans, however, joked about banishing the other states or annexing them to Canada. Conservative users published their own variations of the map, including a flag for the new republic. Soon the maps began to resemble those made during the later years of the American Civil War.

Variations

Jesusland

• Jesusistan
• Dumbf*ckistan
• Redstateistan
• Redneckistan
• Bushlandia
• The United States of Evangelicals
• The United State of Texas

The United States of Canada

• Eastern Realitania
• Northeastistan
• Western France
• The New American Republic
• New America
• The Sorry States of America
• New Canada
• Snobberia

Analysis of Map

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

In the context of the Jesusland map, the states in which a majority voted Democratic in the 2004 election are viewed as more socially liberal in outlook, and therefore having more cultural similarities with Canada than with the remainder of the United States. The Republican-voting red states tended to vote based more on Christian moral values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research. Holders of these values are characterized by a high degree of faith in Evangelical Christianity, thus causing the name of Jesus to be affixed to the hypothetical country; in an article by Ron Suskind of the New York Times, a Republican official characterized the divide as being one between a “faith-based community” and a “reality-based community”.

Sources

• Uncylopedia
• The Patriot Axe
• Urban Dictionary
• Freakonomics Blog

About

The Horse Head Mask, made from soft vinyl and latex, has become a symbol for anonymity (like the Guy Fawkes mask) and humor over the internet, most commonly in Japan.

Mask Origins

The mask was manufactured to be a Halloween costume by the Seattle-based Archie McPhee & Co. novelty dealers¹, being sold on other websites as early as February 1, 2002.²

Horse Head Adventure

The concept of wearing a horse head mask for purposes other than as a Halloween costume came about as early as June 29, 2005 in a book from the popular travel guide series known as Lonely Planet.³

The book was dedicated to traveling styles that are “a little less formulaic” than normal and is called “The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel”.⁴

The 22nd experiment on the book was called “Horse Head Adventure”⁵ and what was required for this experiment was a person to wear a horse mask while they were on their vacation. It was a social experiment to see how people would react to the weirdness of the mask.

Tom Green

Tom Green, a talk show host famous for the numerous amounts of 4chan prank phone calls, had an episode where he wore the mask and started screaming while shaking his head around, seemingly as a parody of Mitchell Henderson. This is currently the first known usage of the mask in web video.

Nico Nico Douga

In Nico Nico Douga, a Japanese video-sharing website, many who wish to remain anonymous wear masks. One of the masks used was the Horse Head Mask. The mask eventually took off as one of the signature masks used in NND, similar to the Scream Mask and the Darth Vader Helmet. Unlike those two other masks though, the Horse Head Mask became popular in its own right.

It is possible that this is due to the popularity of the Japanese performance artist Wotaken, mentioned later in this article.

YouTube

Because of its appearance on the Tom Green episode, and since a lot of other NND are often reposted, the Horse Head Mask found its way onto the popular video-sharing website, YouTube. Due to the mask’s strangeness, it was seen by most people as something humorous.

Dancing Japanese Man Wearing a Horse Mask Cooks Wild Mushrooms

This horse-headed video was uploaded onto YouTube on January 9, 2008, by YouTube user mrhorseshoe⁶, it is known as “Dancing Japanese Man Wearing a Horse Mask Cooks Wild Mushrooms” and features just what the video’s title implies: A man wearing nothing but a horse mask and a variety of thongs (most notably a gas mask) cooking wild mushrooms while dancing. The man in the video is a Japanese performance artist known as Wotaken.

The video was featured on numerous blogs and news sites such as BuzzFeed⁷, 3Yen⁸, and Urlesque.⁹ It was even given its own Facebook group.¹⁰ PC World called it one of the most disturbing YouTube videos of all time.¹¹

Horse Boy

A man named Dobbin Horsome donned the mask immediately when a Google Street View car was driving by, and was photographed by the passing vehicle. The picture was taken in the Hardgate area of the city of Aberdeen, Scotland.

According to Dobbin, he was just heading to a pub where his newly wedded friend was at when he noticed the Google car driving up towards him. Since he had the mask with him, he decided on a whim to wear it so that the car would take a picture of him with it on.

Having just been heading back to the pub to see my recently-wedded Scottish mate with the infamous mask in my hand, only to spot a famous Google car, in a split-second moment of thinking “I’ll only regret this if I don’t at least give it a go”.

Here are two short clips of the party he mentioned:

The split-second decision can be seen in this picture compilation.

Dobbin, nicknamed Horse Boy, became a viral internet phenomenon and caused BBC News to be e-mailed by webbies from all over Europe stating that they knew the identity of “Horse Boy”, many of which proved to be false.

Dobbin Horsome has his own blog¹², Twitter account¹³, YouTube channel¹⁴, and Facebook account.¹⁵

Search

Search queries for “horse head mask” had a small spike in October 2009, but didn’t pick up again until July of 2010.

External Links

¹ Archie McPhee -- Horse Head Mask

² Fun House Theatrical -- BROWN HORSE MASK

³ Lonely Planet -- Travel Guide

⁴ Lonely Planet -- Experimental Travel

⁵ Lonely Planet -- Horse Head Adventure

⁶ Youtube -- User mrhorseshoe

⁷ BuzzFeed -- Naked Japanese Guy In Horse Mask, Cooking [NSFW] / Posted in 2008

⁸ 3Yen -- Japanese horse mask man frolics and cooks “magic” mushrooms / Posted on 2-08-2008

⁹ Urlesque -- Dancing Japanese Man Wearing a Horse Mask Cooks Wild Mushrooms

¹⁰ Facebook -- Dancing Japanese Man Wearing A Horse Mask Cooks Wild Poisonous Mushrooms Group

¹¹ PCWorld -- The most disturbing YouTube videos of all time / Posted on 3-11-2010

¹² WordPress -- Bloggin’ with Dobbin

¹³ Twitter -- @DobbinHorsome

¹⁴ Youtube -- User dobbinhorsome

¹⁵ Facebook -- Dobbin Horsome

• CreepyHorseMask.com

Sources: BBC News, Channel 4 News, Dobbin Horsome

About

“I Fucking Love Cocaine” is an image macro series where the subject has a white substance on their face, usually snow or flour, and the overlaid text “I fucking love cocaine”.

Origin

The most notable image to be associated with “I fucking love cocaine” caption is of a grizzly bear roaring while covered in snow, which first appeared on “More Bear” Memegenerator.

While the authorship or upload information of MemeGenerator page is unknown, it appears Google search queries for “cocaine bear” and “I fucking love cocaine” began sometime in early July 2010. A photograph of the bear without any caption can be found on the natural photography site Pixdaus, titled “by fotomia” and uploaded by user “artemis”:artemis.

Precursors in Pop Culture

Prior to Cocaine Bear, “white-dusted face” has been commonly associated with cocaine binges portrayed in popular fictions and films, one of the earliest examples being a scene from the 1983 film Scar Face, where Al Pacino’s character, Tony Montana, is sitting at his desk with a white dusted face after snorting massive amounts of the substance. In early 2003, comedian Dave Chappelle introduced his fictional character Tyrone Biggums, a crack/cocaine addict who wears the white substance on his mouth as a sign of helpless drug abuse.

In the SNL Digital Short “Great Day” aired in May 2010, Andy Samberg sings a musical tribute as an unemployed cocaine addict whose face gets gradually covered in white substance throughout the song:

External Links

• Cocaine Bear interactive poster.
• BuzzFeed’s cocaine animals

About

#iconsftw is a Twitter hashtag that began trending shortly after Apple announced its latest version of popular digital media player application, iTunes 10. One of the more noticeable changes introduced with update is the revamped icon (shown above), which has been met by grievances from many users for its plain, ugly design.

Origin

Within hours of announcement on September 1st, 2010, a twitter account called @itunes10icon was registered, vigorously defending itself from all the iTunes 10 haters via tweets.

Spread

Within a few more hours, dozens more “Icon” accounts sprung up. To name a few: @iChaticon @windows7icon, @windows95 icon, @quicktime7icon, @mailicon, @itunes9icon, @FacebookIcon etc. All these new accounts strated doing something similar to @itunes10icon: defending themelves against haters while simultaneously declaring that they are, in fact, the best icon. Many of these icons/users have started putting the hashtag #iconsftw at the end of all their posts.

Development on Twitter

Twitter user @osxdude created a Twitter list encompassing all iconFTW accounts.

Apple CEO Responds

On September 3rd, Wired.com blogged a brief exchange between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Joshua Kopac, a lead designer at the advertising firm ValuLeads who expressed his minor concerns over the iTunes10 icon via e-mail:

Kopac:

Steve, Enjoyed the presentation today. But…this new iTunes logo really sucks. You’re taking 10+ years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown. Let’s both cross our fingers on this…

Steve Jobs then responded:

Jobs:

We disagree. Sent from my iPhone

User-Generated Icons for iTunes 10

Unsatisfied with the redesigned icon, some users began uploading their own alternative designs via Dribbble.

About

“It’s a fake” is an exploitable catchphrase stemming from the strange delivery of the line by Romulan Senator Vreenak in an episode of Star Trek: DS9. While typically used in forums in response to anything that is believed to be forged, the memorable quote has also spawned a lasting series of photoshopped images, animated GIFs and video mash-ups.

Origin

The phrase originates from a scene in the Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode titled “In the Pale Moonlight”, which first aired on April 15, 1998. In the scene, Vreenak (played by Stephen McHattie) summons and confronts Captain Sisko (played by Avery Brooks) for handing him a forged optolythic data rod, before uttering the iconic line in a strange, hissy voice:

Shortly after its broadcast in 1998, the memorable quote soon became adopted as a common text response to Trek-related posts on Usenet.^[1] The phrase continued to live on as a form of copypasta on Usenet as well as Star Trek forums and chatrooms for years, as documented in a Usenet thread archived in October 2000.^[2]

Spread

The phrase didn’t evolve into its present form in videos and animated GIFs until July 2005, when the first YTMND instance of Vreenak with the accompanying sound clip was uploaded by user IzzyDS.^[3] The GIF-sharing community quickly became a breeding ground for Star Trek-related media, as seen through other YTMND memes inspired by the Star Trek series such as Khan! and Jean-Luc Picard among others.

In 2006, the same scene became the subject of a photoshop contest on SomethingAwful^[4], producing over 6 pages of variations. Since then, It’s a fake has spread at a modest pace, but has branched out into a limited number of video mashups and image macros.

Notable Examples

Video Remixes

External References

About

“Fuck You” Anti-hate Collaboration* is a series of LGBT lipdub tributes to Lily Allen’s 2008 anti-hate single “Fuck You (Very Much).” Sung to cheerful, musical-type music, the song’s lyrics directly address racists and homophobes as generally small-minded and culturally unprincipled people.

Origin

The Song

The song was written by Lily Allen and Greg Kurstin and released in 2009 (not to be confused with Cee-lo’s 2010 viral hit single with the same title). The song reached the top 10 of national charts in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Norway and Switzerland. In the US it reached 68 in the US Billboard Hot 100. In many countries, it was not released as a single.

Lipdub Series

On May 4, 2009, Australian YouTube user “steviebeebishop”: put a video called BIG FAT GAY COLLAB! online, which consisted of members of the international LGBT community lip dubbing to the song.

theres a disgusting amount of hate on the internet (especially on youtube!) directed at minority groups (especially the LGBT community) so i was inspired to organize this collab video. i never set out to change the world. i did not make this for the gay haters to see. i wanted to make something light hearted and funny for the victims of gay hate, to teach them to brush off the hate and stand strong and confident as who they are. you’re not alone! stevie loves you :)

The idea spread to other countries, resulting in the following:

French version:

Croatian version:

New Zealand version:

Hungarian version:

Manchester UK version:

Mexican version:

Brazilian version:

Lily Allen Finds Out

When Lily Allen performed the song for the French TV channel Canal+, she was made aware of the collab video herself:

About

Bear Grylls image macros featuring Edward “Bear” Grylls, host of Born Survivor, known as Man vs. Wild in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The text generally refers to the ridiculous things he will do on the show in order to “survive”.

Origin

One of the more popular variations is the “better drink my own piss” image macros that started after the act was performed in one of his shows.

Search

About

Majora’s Mask Creepypasta, also known as “Ben Drowned”, is an online legend about a haunted The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask cartridge for the Nintendo 64 video game console. It is often associated with the phrase “You shouldn’t have done that” and is popular among users of 4chan’s /x/ paranormal board.

Origin

On September 7th, 2010, 4chan^[6] user Jadusable posted a thread about his experiences with a haunted Majora’s Mask cartridge for the N64. He explained that after receiving a suspicious looking Majora’s Mask cartridge from an old man, he went to his dorm-room to play it and noticed it had a save file named “BEN” on it. He decided to ignore it and created a new file, but during the course of the game characters would refer to him as “BEN” at various moments. Figuring it would help the problem, Jadusable deleted the “BEN” save file, but this caused characters to not refer to his name at all. He then attempted to perform the “4th day glitch”, a hack that allows players to get an entire extra day to the game, and was ported to the Majora boss battle at the end of the game. He noticed that text was being displayed incorrectly, and the music being played was a reversed version of the game’s “Song of Healing” before being ported back to Clock Town. At Clocktown he discovered that the textures were missing, the music was distorted and the town was empty of the normal characters. He began posting links to YouTube videos he claims to have recorded while playing.

Free.wmv and TheTruth.txt

In the description of the fourth video in the series, a person claiming to be Jadusable’s roommmate claimed that Jadusable was moved out of his dorm but gave him a flash drive containing the final video “free.wmv” and a text document titled “TheTruth.txt.” He was told not to release these videos until September 15th, 2010, at 23:04 PM. The text file was released on Mediafire^[8] that contained Jadusable’s notes taken during all his experiences. He claimed that Ben started haunting his computer and would communicate with him through Cleverbot. He warned that no one should believe anything coming from his YouTube account after September 12th, 2010. Shortly after, Jadusable’s YouTube channel began to change with his profile image turned into an Elegy of Emptiness Statue painting, and his location became “Now I am everywhere.”

Spread

A video outlining some of the methods used to create the “Ben Drowned” videos was uploaded to YouTube by HolyHeeroYui on September 12th, 2010.

The entire creepypasta was posted to the Within Hubris^[7] forums on February 21st, 2011. The story has been posted on Joystiq, Kotaku, Xugo Gaming, FunnyJunk and Inu’s Creepy Stuff. Facebook^[5] fan page with 6,270 likes as of October 27th, 2011.

Catchphrases

Several catchphrases were popularized by the creepypasta including “You shouldn’t have done that…”, “You’ve met with a terrible fate, haven’t you?”, “YOUR TURN” and “YOU’RE NEXT.”

Arc 2

On September 17, 2010, a comment was posted to Jadusable’s YouTube channel that linked to the now defunct youshouldnthavedonethat.net. According to Jadusable Wiki^[1], the website was for some sort of cult known as the “Moon Children”.

“At first, it seemed like an innocent cultist site (well, as innocent as a cultist website could be). It was a simple layout with seven tabs: Theories, The Truth, About, Contact Us (with a subpage called Press Room), Creed, Search, and Home. Past this point, viewers reportedly started to see things: references.”

On September 20, 2010, Jadusable revealed that the website was fake, and the entire story was something he came up with in college.

Alex Hall, also known as Jadusable. ^[2]

“I have a ridiculous amount of mail right now, but rest assured I will get to each and every one of your letters. Thank you for your interest in this story and thank you for supporting it. Just so everyone is clear – the story is not over yet, but it is paused for now. Check the menu bar for new links being put up of the Archive/Stories/Q&A, these are all coming tomorrow.”

Fanart

Several pages worth of fanart can be found on deviantArt under the tag “#majoras mask creepy.”^[17]

Hubris Arc

A forum board known as Within Hubris was launched on February 17, 2011.^[3] Strange occurrences started happening within the site’s few days of existence. Users started noticing strange events occurring inside the protected forum known as Wayward Horizon. Although they were able to see posts being made, they were not able to read them due to a password keeping them out. A password was finally discovered, but changed after a couple of days. Nevertheless, Guide, the Forum’s main admin, revealed an upcoming trailer to a game that was being released as the “Third Arc” of the story. Several months later, on July 15th, 2011, Jadusable placed the game on an indefinite hold. ^[4]

Videos

Search Interest

Search queries for both “majoras mask creepypasta” and “ben drowned” picked up in September of 2010, the same month it was first posted to 4chan’s /x/ board.

External References

About

The Single Ladies Dance is a viral dance sequence stemming from the music video for the 2008 single Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) by Beyoncé Knowles. Much like Crank That Soulja Boy and Thom Yorke’s Dance remixes, Beyoncé’s dance moves from the music video have inspired an enormous amount of parody videos.

Origin

The original music video was directed by Jake Nava, and choreographed by Frank Gatson and JaQuel Knight. The video was made on a small budget due to the large amount spent on Beyonce’s video for the title single If I Were A Boy. Knowles premiered the music videoson MTV’s Total Request Live show on October 13, 2008.

The video was first uploaded to Vevo’s YouTube account on October 2nd, 2009, gaining over 75 million views within the first month of upload. The video has over 100 million views as of June 2011:

The format and choreography were inspired by Gwen Verdon’s performance of Mexican Breakfast on the Ed Sullivanm Show in 1969:

Spread

On November 15th, 2008, the very first parody sketch of “The Single Ladies” dance aired in an episode of Saturday Night Live that Beyoncé hosted. The music video features Beyoncé with Justin Timberlake:

Soon after the SNL parody sketch, many YouTubers responded with similar parodies throughout the month. One of the first viral instances was a video of a young girl performing the dance uploaded in December of 2008:

In January 2009, American singer songwriter John Legend’s crew took a video of President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle performing part of the “Single Ladies” routine, which was subsequently posted via hip hop magazine Vibe^[3] and MTV^[4].

On April 20th, 2009, one hundred dancers wearing leotards performed the “Single Ladies” choreography in London as part of promotional campaign for Trident’s “Unwrapped”^[5] gum.

On June 3rd, 2009, Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers posted a parody video of The Single Ladies on YouTube, where it has gained over 26 million views (as of June 2011).

The domain for the single topic blog singleladiesdance.com^[2] was purchased in September of 2009.

Search

Search queries rose quickly after the video’s release in October of 2008, and peaked in December that same year. The keyword “single ladies” experienced a notable resurgence in October 2009, when the music video was uploaded onto Beyonce’s official VEVO channel on YouTube.

Derivatives

More can be found in the video gallery below.

External Links

^[1] Wikipedia – Put a Ring on It

^[2] SingleLadiesDance.com – Single Ladies Dance

^[3] Vibe – Barack Greets Celebs

^[4] MTV – Watch President Barack Obama Do The ‘Single Ladies’ Dance

^[5] Unwrapped – Beyonce 100 Single Ladies Flash-Dance Piccadilly Circus, London