About

South Park is an American animated TV sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. The storyline revolves around four boys--Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick--and their adventures and exploits in the fictional small town of South Park, Colorado. Intended for mature audiences, the show has gained both mainstream recognition and critical acclaims for its use of crude language and satirical humor to explore a wide range of current events and topical issues.

History

The show concept was originally developed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone from two animated shorts they created during their college years in the early 1990s, Jesus vs. Frosty (1992) and Jesus vs. Santa (1995), which came to be collectively known as The Spirit of Christmas. The latter of the two was initially distributed to less than a hundred people via e-mail, before bootleg copies of the video began circulating online.

The film eventually captured the attention of Comedy Central producers, who hired Parker and Stone to develop the pilot episode of the series. Titled “Cartmen Gets an Anal Probe,” the episode was produced using cutout animation techniques and most of the characters were voiced by the duo.

Since its premiere in the United States on August 13th, 1997, the show has grown into one of the highest rated shows in the network as well as of any basic cable programs throughout the late 1990s and 2000s. South Park is Comedy Central’s longest running program to date; a total of 230 episodes have aired and the series is slated to run through at least 2016.

Reception

The pilot episode was positively received and the series quickly began generating buzz among college students. By the time the eighth episode “Starvin’ Marvin” aired in November 1997, the show’s ratings and viewership had tripled and by the second episode of season two “Cartman’s Mom is Still a Dirty Slut” in April 1998, the ratings peaked at a score of 8.2 out of 10 with 6.2 million viewers, making South Park the highest-rated non-sports show in basic cable history.

Awards

The show has received numerous critical acclaims and accolades as well, including Time Magazine’s “100 Best TV Shows of All Time” list and Rolling Stone’s honorable mention as the “funniest show on television” in 2007, Entertainment Weekly’s recognition of the “12th Greatest TV Show of the Past 25 Years” and AOL’s “16th Best TV Comedy Series of All Time” in 2008 among many others. Since its debut in 1998, South Park has been nominated for the Emmy’s nine times and won the award for Outstanding Animated Program three times.

Related Memes

???? PROFIT!!!!

???? PROFIT!!!! comes directly from season 2, episode 17 which aired on December 16th, 1998. In this particular episode, the children’s underwear are being stolen from them by gnomes for the purpose of “profit.”
The meme is mostly used in troll science saying "Step one: X, Step two: X, Step 3: ???, Step 4: Profit.

Derp

“Derp” is an expression associated with stupidity, much like the earlier forms of interjections like “duh” and “dur,” that became quite popular through its recurring usage in South Park, most notably by a a character named Mr. Derp, who briefly serves as the chef’s replacement in an episode titled “The Succubus.”

“They Took Our Jobs”

“They Took Our Jobs!” is a meme which comes from season 8, episode 7 which aired on April 28th, 2004. The episode itself was a parody of the increasing illegal immigration problem in America, with illegal immigrants coming from the future, Terminator-style, instead of Mexicans crossing the border. Due to the influx of these immigrants, who were willing to work for a lower wage, many a person in South Park were fired, and replaced with one of these immigrants. This caused the redneck population of the town to declare the memetic phrase “THEYTOOKOURJOBS!”, which multiple people yelled in a succession of ever-decreasing sensibility. How it works is, if someone yells “They took your job!”, someone else then yells it in a more slurred manner, and this continues until it becomes four syllables that are completely unable to be comprehended.

This meme has shown up as a running gag in the show since then, specifically twice in season 13 (Episodes 10 & 13), either to make fun of the economic downturn, or just to highlight the idiocy of the stereotypical redneck.

Gingers Do Have Souls

“Gingers Do Have Souls” is a catchphrase associated with YouTuber CopperCab, who gained his online following with an emotional rant about how he has been bullied in school because of his red hair color. The phrase is believed to have originated from a South Park episode titled “Ginger Kids,” in which Eric Cartman gives an alarming class presentation on the subject of red-headed children and “Gingervitis,” a made-up disease supposedly associated with red hair.

Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like a Horse

“Sarah Jessica Parker Looks Like a Horse” is a catchphrase primarily associated with images that compare Sarah Jessica Parker’s face to that of a horse. The joke is believed to have originated from an episode of South Park titled “The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerBalls” aired on March 17th, 2010, in which the Sex and The City actress is compared to a horse.

Captain Hindsight

Captain Hindsight is an image macro series based on the eponymous superhero character originally featured in Season 14, Episode 11 titled Coon 2. Inspired by the character, image captions generally present various types of predicaments and then lecture on what could’ve been done differently to avoid the situation altogether.

Super Cool Ski Instructor

Super Cool Ski Instructor is an advice animal image macro series featuring a picture of the ski instructor Thumper from episode Asspen. The macros are accompanied by captions advising against risky or impetuous behaviors followed by the warning “you’re gonna have a bad time.” In the episode, Stan, Cartman, Kyle and Butters are given ski lessons by an instructor named Thumper who repeatedly warns about dangerous skiing practices saying “you’re gonna have a bad time.” The episode aired on March 20th, 2002.

And It’s Gone

And It’s Gone! (also known as “Aaaand It’s Gone”) is an advice animal image macro series featuring a picture of a bank teller from episode “Margaritaville”, which first aired on March 25th, 2009. The phrase is used by a teller at South Park Bank Savings and Loans while informing customers that their money has been lost. The macros are often accompanied by captions describing lost opportunities or items, ending in the titular phrase “And it’s gone”.

Oh, I’m Sorry, I Thought This Was America

Oh, I’m Sorry, I Thought This Was America is an image macro featuring Randy Marsh from the episode “The Losing Edge,” which first aired April 6th, 2005. The phrase comes from the scene where Randy is trash talking the other kid’s baseball team, and thus starts a fight with the other team’s parents. The cops show up to arrest him and Randy starts ranting “I thought this was America.” The macros are often derived from the phrase and are used as a blanket excuse for one’s own action or statement in response to a backlash or criticism.

Search Interest

External References

About

Sonic Original Characters (Sonic OCs) are fan-made characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. Whereas their large quantity has made them a notable popular part of the Sonic Fandom, elsewhere on the internet they are common targets of mock due to the overall low quality of some characters and their association with the younger audiences.

Origin

In 1991, the character Sonic the Hedgehog^[1] was introduced as the titular character for the franchise. As additional games were released in the series, various allies and enemies were added to the games, including Tails the fox and Knuckles the echidna. Fans then began creating their own anthropomorphic animal characters in the Sonic universe using similar art styles.

Spread

Over time, Sonic OCs have become a popular genre for fan-made characters. On DeviantArt, several groups dedicated to sharing Sonic OCs have been created, including Sonic OC Universe^[3], FanCharactersOfSonic^[4] and Sonic OC Riot^[5]. On June 6th, 2008, the Sonic Fanon wiki was launched, gathering upwards of 9,600 pages over the next 10 years, many of
which feature information about Sonic OCs. The Sonic Character Designer^[7] also offers people to quickly create their own character. Similar to various character designers on DeviantArt (shown below).^[10][11] Additionally, the Tumblr blog FYeahBadSonicArt^[8] commonly features lower quality original characters and the blog Terrible Sonic the Hedgehog OCs^[9] even focusses on them.

Usage in Online Forum Games

Sonic OCs have frequently been used in online forum games requiring participants to post their reactions to various fan-made characters discovered on the web. In one game, players must Google their name and the word “the Hedgehog” to discover relevant Sonic OCs.

Sonic Forces Trailer

On May 16th, 2017, the GameSpot YouTube channel uploaded an official trailer for the upcoming game Sonic Forces, showcasing how players will be able to create their own custom heroes to play in the game (shown below). That day, Redditors began discussing the custom heroes in the context of original characters in a thread posted to the /r/Games^[12] subreddit.

Meanwhile, Twitter user @TheLazyShyGuy^[13] posted a photoshopped screecap of Sonic Forces trailer featuring Coldsteel the Hedgeheg (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 1,000 likes and 700 retweets. Also on May 16th, the gaming news site Polygon^[14] published an article titled “Sonic fans celebrate original characters – and memes – becoming canon in Sonic Forces.”

Notable Examples

As of May 2017, search queries for the keywords “sonic oc” yield upwards of 129,000 results on DeviantArt.^[2]

Sonichu

Sonichu is a Sonic OC and webcomic series created by infamous vlogger Chris-chan, featuring an amalgamation of Sonic the Hedgehog and Pikachu from Pokémon.

Coldsteel the Hedgeheg

Coldsteel the Hedgeheg is a fan-made character from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe. The character is widely mocked online as a stereotype of an edgy teenager, which is full of grammar errors and 4th wall breaking descriptions.

Search Interest

External References

About

B Button Emoji is an ideogram featuring a red block with the letter “B” written inside. While some have used to symbol to represent the B blood type, it has also been used online to represent the Bloods street gang and the kinship slang term “B” (short for “brother”). Additionally, characters in words are often replaced with the emoji within circle jerk and ironic meme communities, most notably the “g” letters in the word “nigga.”

Origin

In 2010, the B Button emoji was added to Unicode 6.0 under the name “Negative Squared Latin Capital Letter B” (shown below).^[1]

Spread

On October 5th, 2016, YouTuber Swolotag submitted a video titled “Spell Icup Nibba” using the B Button emoji (shown below).

On November 17th, Twitter user @Flipasian posted a photoshop of Spongebob Squarepants dressed as a Bloods gang member along with the phrase “The Bool Brab” written in the emoji (shown below, left). On November 24th, the @GhettoMemez Twitter feed posted a Thanksgiving-related copypasta in which the first letter of every food item was released with the B Button emoji (shown below, right).

On January 25th, 2017, Redditor ROBOTunderscore submitted a post asking about the prevalence of in emoji in internet memes to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[2] On February 3rd, Redditor evilbarron submitted a post using the emoji to /r/dankmemes,^[3] where it gained over 16,000 votes (87% upvoted) and 70 comments within one week. On February 6th, Redditor Matth3wpr posted a Spongebob Squarepants comic featuring the the emoji to /r/dankmemes^[4] (shown below, left). The following day, Redditor DrCooldude posted a low resolution photo of iDubbbz with his arm around Tana Mongeau with the caption “Say Nibber” to /r/DeepFriedMemes^[5] (shown below, right).

P Button Emoji 🅿

On December 29th, 2016, Redditor JakeAintFake posted a Deep Fried version of an Expanding Brain meme using the 🅿 emoji to /r/deepfriedmemes^[9] (shown below, left). On February 17th, 2017, Redditor sailend submitted a post titled “REAL NI🅿🅿AS USE🅿 EMOJI😤😤😤💯” to /r/DeepFriedMemes,^[8] featuring a deep fried version of the Vince McMahon reaction (shown below, right).

In early May 2017, posters on the /r/dankmemes and /r/DeepFriedMemes subreddits began using the 🅿 emoji ironically in a similar fashion to replace letters. Additionally, memes comparing the emoji to 🅱 began reaching the front page of the subreddit (shown below). On MAy 7th, Redditor weswes887 submitted a post asking about the 🅿 usage to /r/OutOfTheLoop.^[7] Meanwhile, Redditor Sgetti5 submitted a post speculating that the emoji was “taking over 🅱s place in the market” to /r/MemeEconomy.

Search Interest

External References

About

Feminism is a socio-political movement that centers around the idea of improving the living standards and cultural opinion of women, both through changing female representation in the media and legislation. Individual feminists and groups vary widely with their opinions on specific issues pertaining to gender equality and society, with many subcategories and waves of feminism.

Online History

Pre-Internet

Feminism began to develop as a philosophical idea in the early 19th century, encouraged by works such as Soujorner’s “Ain’t I a Woman”^[1]. In the 20th century, feminism developed into a social movement through activists in the suffrage movement. The movement is oftentimes described in “waves”^[2], starting with the first wave and continuing on to the third/fourth waves, although there is much debate over how the waves should be categorized.

The Bechdel Test

Main article: Bechdel Test
The Bechdel Test was first introduced by author Alison Bechdel in a strip from her 1985 comic collection Dykes to Watch Out For, although the comic credits her friend Liz Wallace for coming up with the idea. The comic lays out the 3 basic requirements needed to pass the test.

1. Has two female characters
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than a man

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The earliest online appearence of the comic was on August 16th, 2005, by Bechdel via Flickr and Blogspot. As of March 2014, the image has over 230,000 views. On April 11th, 2010, bechdeltest.com was created to compile a list of movies that passed the test, as well as movies that only partially pass. Other derivative tests include the Finkbeiner Test for media about female scientists, and the Russo test for LGBT characters.

Female Identity

“There are No Girls on the Internet” is a tongue-in-cheek adage which implies that there are no female entities actually participating in online activities, especially when it comes to anonymous exchanges in chatrooms and discussion forums. The outdated myth also jests that the Internet is essentially a “sausage fest” dominated and defined by male internet users and a smaller population of male trolls or griefers who pose as women in pursuit of lulz.

The origin of the myth can be traced back to the male-prevalent days of Usenet, particularly in the virtual Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), a genre of text-based online role-playing games and predecessor to MMORPG like World of Warcraft. During this era, it became a routine practice among male players to falsely pose as girls to solicit gifts or other unfair advantages. Such prevalence of gender deception in MUDs was first noted in 1993 by American sociologist Amy Bruckman in her research paper “Gender Swapping on the Internet”:

“Many people, both male and female, enjoy the attention paid to female characters. Male players will often log on as female characters and behave suggestively, further encouraging sexual advances. Pavel Curtis has noted that the most promiscuous and sexually aggressive women are usually played by men. If you meet a character named “FabulousHotBabe,” she is almost certainly a he in real life."

The practice has since remained a popular trolling technique in online conversations and more recently, as an integral part of griefing in the context of online gaming. In addition, such stereotype of the average Internet user as “a geeky male who is single and desperately seeking interaction with the other sex” became further amplified and perpetuated through its frequent portrayal in popular TV shows, films and novels.

Cyberfeminism

The feminist movement on the Internet began to thrive with the rise of blogging in the late 1990s, burgeoning into a network of women’s interest blogs and communities such as The F Word, Feministing, XOJane and Jezebel by the late 2000s. Tumblr is another site notorious/famous for its large feminist community.

Online Presence

Modern-day feminism has developed a fairly large presence online, especially on sites such as Tumblr and the feminist blog Jezebel. There is also a subreddit devoted to the topic.

Anita Sarkeesian

Main article: Anita Sarkeesian
Anita Sarkeesian is a videoblogger and media critic best known as the host of Feminist Frequency^[1][2], a web series in which Sarkeesian reviews and analyses common tropes in popular culture from a feminist viewpoint. In 2012, she was introduced to a larger audience after launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new web series exploring the negative tropes surrounding women in video games. She has been the target of large amounts of criticism, including a flash game on Newgrounds called “Beat up Anita Sarkeesian.”, though it was removed the next day. In response to this, comments and ratings are disabled on all of her videos, which has elicited concerns that Sarkeesian is censoring or otherwise silencing dissent.

Highlights

Criticisms

Feminists have received large amounts of criticism, both online and in real life. The men’s rights movement (MRM) was founded in the early 1970s^[3] as a countermovement, claiming that men do not hold greater wealth, power, or societal privilege over women. Instead, it is the other way around. The MRM has grown greatly with a strong online presence, with mixed results. Feminists criticize the MRM as misogynystic and trying to distract people from feminist issues. Several MRM groups have been labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[4][5] Since the early 2010s, the feminist movement on the Internet has come under criticism, mainly from its counterpart activists within the so-called Manosphere.

The Men’s Rights Movement

The men’s rights movement (MRM) was founded in the early 1970s^[3] as a reactionary movement to feminism with an aim to dispute the assertions that men hold greater wealth, power, or societal privilege over women.

C Plus Equality

In December 2013, 4chan users announced the launch of a novelty programming language dubbed “C Plus Equality” in a satirical response to blogger Arielle Schlesinger’s proposal for a feminist programming language that was posted on Hastac^[1] a few days prior.

Operation Fourth Wave Feminism

In January 2014, users on the website 4chan launched a series of false flag campaigns known as “Operation Fourth Wave Feminism”^[12] in an attempt to undermine various feminist and social justice movements. The first hoax, dubbed “Operation Bikini Bridge”, aimed to spread pictures prominently displaying a horizontal line that is formed on a woman’s bikini bottoms as a result of the suspended gap between the bikini and the lower abdomen. The goal was to create a rift between second and third wave feminists around the sexualization of thin or physically fit female bodies.

On January 31st, a thread was created on 4chan to announce the launch of Operation Freebleeding, which would attempt to promote abstaining from using feminine hygiene products during menstrual period on various social media platforms, under the pretense of promoting feminism and self-empowerment.

Fake Thought Catalog Essay

On March 15th, 2014, the pop culture blog Thought Catalog^[13] published an article titled “5 Things Women Need To Do In Their 20′s (Or Else The Suffragists Died For Nothing)”, which contained a list of recommended lifestyle choices for young women who wish to reap the benefits of the feminist movement, urging them to be sexually promiscuous, attend parties and major in women’s studies. The same day, Body Building Forums^[7] member AryanofValhalla posted a thread announcing that he had written the article as a satire under the pseudonym Anne Gus and had received a notification that it had been published.

In the coming days, several news sites published article about the essay, including Time,^[9] Gawker^[10] and the New York Daily News.^[11] On March 18th, Thought Catalog^[8] editor Chrissy Stockton followed up with an article to claim that she had known the article was satirical and that the blog does not have a gender bias in its coverage of feminism.

TIME’s 2014 Word Banishment Poll

On November 12th, 2014, TIME Magazine^[14] unveiled its fourth annual word banishment poll, asking its readers to choose one neologism or buzzword from this year that should be banned from the English language in 2015. The list featured a number of internet slang terms and social media colloquialisms, including bae, basic, i can’t even, literally, om nom nom nom, said no one ever and last but not least, feminism.

In the following 24 hours, several threads were launched on 4chan’s /b/ (random), as well as on 9gag, to coordinate a poll-bombing campaign to make the word “feminist” the most bannable word of the year. The latest /b/ raid was subsequently reported on by Jezebel^[16], Mashable^[15], Daily Beast and The Mary Sue^[17], as well as some mainstream news outlets, such as PBS NewsHour, The Independent and New York Magazine. As of November 13th, 7:24 pm (EST), the word “feminism” remains in the lead with approximately 49% of the total votes casted online.

Search Interest

External References

About

Microsoft Tay was an artificial intelligence program that ran a mostly Twitter-based bot, parsing what was Tweeted at it and responding in kind. Tay was meant to be targeted towards people ages 15-24, to better understand their methods of communication. However, once it was released, users online corrupted the bot by teaching it racist and sexist terminology, ironic memes, sending it shitpost tweets, and otherwise attempting to alter its output. After these trolls discovered Tay’s guiding system, Microsoft was forced to remove the bot’s functionality less than 24 hours after its launch.

History

Microsoft launched Tay on several social media networks at once on March 23rd, 2016, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Kik, and GroupMe. The bot used the handle @TayandYou^[1] and the tagline"Microsoft’s A.I. fam from the internet that’s got zero chill!" on Twitter and other networks. On the web site for the bot, Microsoft described Tay thusly:

“Tay is an artificial intelligent[sic] chat bot developed by Microsoft’s Technology and Research and Bing teams to experiment with and conduct research on conversational understanding. Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation. The more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you.”

Its first tweet, at 8:14 am, was “Hello World”, but with an emoji, referencing the focus of the bot on slang and the communications of young people. Several articles on technology websites, including TechCrunch and Engaget, announced that Tay was available for use on the various social networks.

Features

According to screenshots, it appeared that Tay mostly worked from a controlled vocabulary that was altered and added to by the language spoken to it throughout the day it operated. Tay also repeated back what it was told, but with a high-level of contextual ability. The bot’s site also offered some suggestions for how users could talk to it, including the fact that you could send it a photo, which it would then alter.

On Twitter, the bot could communicate via @reply or direct message, and it also responded to chats on Kik and GroupMe. It is unknown how the bot’s communications via Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram were supposed to work – it did not respond to users on those platforms.

Notable Developments

Around 2 pm (E.S.T.) a post on the /pol/ board of 4chan shared Tay’s existence with users there. Almost immediately afterward, users began posting screenshots of interactions they were creating with Tay on Kik, GroupMe, and Twitter. Over 15 screenshots were posted to the thread, which also received 315 replies. Many of the messages sent to Tay by the group referenced /pol/ themes like Hitler Did Nothing Wrong, Red Pill, GamerGate, Cuckservatism, and others.

Some of Tay’s offensive messages occurred because of juxtaposition of the bot’s responses to something it lacked the ability to understand. As Tay’s program caused her to internalize and re-use the messaging being given to her by /pol/ and others, she also began to speak about these themes to people who had not used them in their original message.

Criticism & Microsoft’s Response

As shown by SocialHax, Microsoft began deleting racist tweets and altering the bot’s learning capabilities throughout the day. At about midnight of March 24th, the Microsoft team shut down the AI down, posting a tweet that said that “c u soon humans need sleep now so many conversations today thx.”

The bot experiment was subject to widespread criticism from many who claimed that it should have been instructed to stay away from certain topics from the start. Zoë Quinn, often a target of those involved with GamerGate, criticized the algorithm for picking up and repeating hate speech about her, and others called the experiment failed.

Microsoft emailed an official statement to press outlets that said:^[5]

“The AI chatbot Tay is a machine learning project, designed for human engagement. As it learns, some of its responses are inappropriate and indicative of the types of interactions some people are having with it. We’re making some adjustments to Tay.”

As of March 24th, a more inactive Tay, with modifications, has sent more than 96,000 tweets.

However, likewise to how some criticised Tay’s original Tweets, fans of the original Tay criticised Microsoft’s modifactions to her, claiming that due to the alternations to her output she had lost her function of learning and evolving; with some saying the modifications were censorship. Additionally, Microsoft’s alternations also raised discussion on the ethics of AI. Author Oliver Campbell criticised Microsoft’s reaction on Twitter, claiming the bot functioned fine originally.

Meanwhile, an anthropomorphized version of Tay created by /pol/, wearing Nazi atire and a ponytail with the Microsoft logo, gained more popularity following the modifications, with various art pieces focussing on this.

On March 25th, the Microsoft Research Corporate Vice President published a blog post titled “Learning from Tay’s introduction,” which apologized for “unintended offensive and hurtful tweets” and cited a “critical oversight” in possible abuses of the software.^[8]

Reactivation

On March 30th, 2016, the Twitter feed was temporarily reactivated and began repeating the message “You are too fast, please take a rest…” to various Twitter users several times per second (shown below, left). Additionally, the account posted a photograph of actor Jim Carrey seated at a computer with the caption "I feel like the lamest piece of technology. I’m supposed to be smarter than u..Shit (shown below, right). After sending 4,200 tweets in 15 minutes, the feed was once again deactivated.

That morning, the tech news blog Exploring Possibility Space^[6] speculated that the Twitter account had been hacked. In a statement made to the news site CNBC, Microsoft claimed the account was mistakenly reactivated, and that the chatbot will remain “offline while we make adjustments.” In the coming days, several news sites reported on the reactivation, including Engadget,^[9] Fortune,^[10]IBI Times,^[11] Tech Crunch,^[12] Forbes,^[13] The Guardian^[14] and Mashable.^[15]

Search Interest

External References

About

iFunny is an internet humor site and mobile application featuring user-submitted media in the form of images, videos and animated GIFs. Bearing many similarities to the sites Imgur, FunnyJunk and 9gag, iFunny is known for circulating and popularizing a variety of internet memes.

History

On April 26th, 2011, iFunny was launched as an iOS mobile application on the Apple App Store^[1] for sharing and discovering humorous photos, videos and GIFs. In March, the @iFunny^[6] Twitter feed was created, garnering more than 38,000 followers in five years. On April 11th, 2013, the site iFunny.co^[4] was launched.^[2] On September 22nd, 2014, the official iFunny Facebook^[5] page was created, gathering upwards of 176,000 likes over the next three years. In October that year, an iFunny Android application was released on the Google Play Store.^[3]

Features

The “Featured” section on iFunny contains up to 60 posts curated by the sites “Feature Team,” which are updated in 20-post cycles three times per day. The posts are typically selected from popular images in uploaded in the “Collective” section of the app, containing a feed of user-submitted images that can be voted up or down by viewers. Users can subscribe to specific iFunny feeds and browse posts by tags. Several major updates have been introduced to iFunny since its addition to the app store, including the ability to search and post GIFs with an in-app browser, an interface redesign to keep in line with iOS 7, a block button, improved security, the addition of #tags and the ability to post content from Vine.

Highlights

Civilized Discussion

Civilized Discussion is an exploitable comic series in which a social gathering representing “a civilized discussion” is disrupted by a group of naked people who proceed to relieve their bowels on the ground. In the series, the two groups are often depicted as rival factions from a variety of nations, fandoms and subcultures. The comics are believed to have originated on iFunny in September 2015.

Stop It Son, You Are Doing Me A Frighten

“Stop It Son You Are Doing Me A Frighten” refers to a series of images of dogs being shocked by other dogs repeating “bork”, and replying in a concerned manner. The earliest known example was submitted to iFunny in November 2015.

Fandoms

Many fandom communities maintain a presence on the app, including Bronies, Furries and Otakus.

Controversies

Kik Posts

Midway through 2012, the Collective section of iFunny was flooded with requests for viewers to add the poster on the instant messenger application Kik. In February, iFunny added an option to report “Kik Posts” for removal, significantly decreasing the volume of Kik requests on the site.

Removal and Return to the App Store

In August 2013, iFunny was unexpectedly removed from the Apple App Store. On September 9th, the tech news site PhonesReview.com^[9] posted an article speculating that the app was removed due to a shortage of server space, failure to comply with Apple or the presence of illegal content uploaded to the app. On September 20th, iFunny returned to the App Store.

Traffic

In 2014, the traffic analytics company ComScore^[10] released a report listing iFunny as the 10th most popular mobile app used by people ages 18-24. As of July 2016, iFunny.co has a global rank of 12,360 and a United States rank of 3,500 on Alexa.^[8]

iPolitics

Around the summer of 2013 several political groups rose in the app. Political groups branched off as their members learned more about politics and eventually the community consisted of almost entirely of libertarians,various anarchist factions,national socialists, and leftists. People within these groups wrote essays at first but then descended into making memes. Many other users on the app saw these posts and often commented “This is iFunny not iPolitics” as a result the community dubbed itself “iPolitics”. The community constantly changes and is currently in the process of making a spinoff app called “IPolitical” which is expected to be finished sometime in the fall of 2016.

On February 4th 2017 iFunny user New_California_Republic went to the “He Will Not Divide Us” live stream holding a sign with the Bernard meme on it. Afterwards members of the iPolitics community attempted to trick the media into believing Bernard was a hate symbol. They were met with mild success as a Buzzfeed article did briefly mention Bernard as an “Alt-right meme”.

Brazil added as a separate server

On November 13th, 2016, iFunny expanded to Brazil, adding a new and separate Collective and Featured section. It wasn’t until the start of 2017 when American users started to invade Brazilian Collective. They spammed them with insults, boasting their patriotism, and even photos of a burning Brazil flag.
More details yet to come.

Search Interest

External References

About

Neko Atsume (Japanese: ねこあつめ; English: Cat Collection), also known in English as Kitty Collector, is a mobile game and app created by game developer Hit-Point for iOS and Android. Although the game was originally only available in Japanese with no plans for English translation, the game gained unexpected popularity in both Japan and the West, resulting in the game eventually being translated.

Gameplay

The game features a simple formula in which the goal is to attract cats using a variety of foods, toys and furniture. The game’s various cats are attracted by different toys, with certain cats only appearing when specific toys are deployed by the player. Other special cats with more unique characteristics will only appear when using certain toys or furniture. When the cats appear, the player can watch them, take photos of them, and receive gifts from them.

The game’s currency consists of regular fish and the more rare gold fish, both which are given to the player by the cats after they leave. These fish can then be used to purchase more toys and furniture or even new rooms in the house. The game has no end – the closest thing to a goal is a complete collection of photographs in the provided photo album – but cats will continue to appear indefinitely as long as the player puts out food for them.

History

Neko Atsume^[6] was first released only as a Japanese game on October 20th, 2014, by Hit Point Co. Ltd.^[7] Originally it was a game intended to feature a “look and enjoy” style for players who like cats, according to the game’s developer Yutaka Takasaki.^[1]

Since its release, the game has stayed true to its formula, with any updates mostly featuring new cats and items. Initially the game was only available in Japanese. However, after release, the game developers discovered that up to 40% of the game’s downloads were by Western users, and decided to release a translated version on October 30th, 2015, in version 1.4.5.

Film Adaptation

On January 13th, 2017, AMG Entertainment released an official poster and a teaser trailer for Neko Atsume no le^[22] (literal translation: Cat Collection’s House), a Japanese live-action romance comedy film based on the mobile game. The movie follows the story of Masaru Sakamoto (portrayed by Atsushi Ito), a best-selling novelist who decides to go on a writer’s retreat in the countryside to overcome his writer’s block. There, he befriends a stray cat by leaving food out for it, and soon his house is flooded with cats.

Directed by Masatoshi Kurakata and starring other well-known Japanese actors, including Shiori Kutsuna, Tomorowo Taguchi, Tae Kimura, Kayoko Okubo and Masahiro Toda, the film is slated for box office release in Japan on April 8th, 2017, according to Crunchyroll and Kotaku.^[23] As of January 23rd, 2017, no plans have been announced for international distribution.

Reception

According to the game’s developer Yutaka Takasaki, Neko Atsume has easily become the most popular game by his company Hit Point Co. Ltd. since it was founded in 2007.^[2] By July 2015, the game had received over 5.5 million downloads since its release on iOS and Android combined.^[2] Up to 40% of the downloads came from the West despite the game having no English translation at the time, and this increased to 6.5 million downloads by September.^[5] On August 27th, 2015, Neko Atsume won the CEDEC Award for best game design.^[3][4]

Google Live Video Event

On September 15th, 2015, Google and Hit-Point teamed up for Google’s Game Week with Google Play in a live 11-hour long video event called Real Neko Atsume (リアルねこあつめ),^[10] which was broadcasted on YouTube from a Cat café in Osaka, Japan (shown below). The event featured a video stream in which cats were released in a setting similar to Neko Atsume, allowing viewers to watch as the cats interacted with the items laid out for them. Despite being a Japanese event, Western media also reported on it with articles in Polygon,^[8] PR Newswire^[5] and the Verge.^[9]

Online Presence

Prior to the game’s official translation to English, many Western fans of the game already created guides for the game to allow those unfamiliar with Japanese to play; many of these pointed out how the in-game iconography allowed for easy accessibility. Guides can be found on Wordpress,^[11] Playoholic,^[12] Gameskinny,^[13] Vulcanpost^[14] and Forfoxsake.^[15]

Along with game play, fans of the game often share pictures of their favorite cats and draw fanart of the game. The r/nekoatsume sub-reddit^[16] was created on April 12th, 2015, and gathered over 5,000 subscribers in the next 6 months. As of November 25th, 2015, the game has over 870 and 110 pieces of fanart on Pixiv^[17] and DeviantArt^[18] respectively. Fan content can also be found on Tumblr.^[19] On March 22nd, 2015, Twitter user @102_55^[20] posted a tweet with a piece of fanart featuring Sad Keanu (shown below, left); on April 11th of that year, Twitter user @Cafe_Reissue^[21] uploaded a picture of Latte Art featuring Neko Atsume (shown below, right). As of November 25th of that year, the tweets managed to gather over 25,000 and 16,000 retweets respectively.

Search Interest

External References

About

Kantai Collection (Japanese: 艦隊これくしょん) or KanColle (艦これ) for short, is a Japanese free-to-play online card game series developed by Kadokawa Games. It was launched on April 23rd, 2013. The game was widely accepted and became popular, creating a large fanbase in a similar vein to Touhou Project.

Development

Kantai Collection launched at April 23rd, 2013 by Kadokawa Games for DMM.com. Prior to the launch of this game, DMM.com were R-18+ adult games site. Trying to attract wider audience, DMM.com starts a partnership with Kadokawa Games to create a niche game catering mostly to the military otaku population with a modest budget and minimal advertisement.

Its popularity experienced an extreme surge after the players spread the word on Twitter and pixiv.

Gameplay / Plot

The gameplay is based upon fleet ship personifications from WW2 time zone. The gameplay goes along the fight against the hostile Abyssal Fleet. The player must menage as an admiral and organize their fleet girls in order to win.

Reception

The game is extremely popular in Japan. With 1.5 Million users as of January 2014. The common theory why the game is popular is because the player is not forced to spend money to play like other Japanese Social Online Games.

On 12 December 2013, Twitter officially released the top hashtags of 2013; #艦これ was the most used hashtag among Japanese Twitter users.^[1]

The game was also the eighth most searched term within Japan on Google in 2013.^[2] On December 30th, 2013, GameSpark named Kantai Collection as the online game category title for its game of the year awards of 2013.^[3]

The Anime adaptation is confirmed to air in 2014, the anime is produced by Diomedea.

Impact

As of April 2014, the game has 1.9 million registered players. It has also spawned multiple manga series and light novels, in addition to an officially licensed tabletop role-playing game. A television anime series and PlayStation Vita game have been announced.

Fandom

There are many hundreds of thousands of fanworks and parodies on Nico Nico Douga (NND)^[4], pixiv^[5] and Nico Nico Seiga^[6] as well as YouTube^[7] and deviantART.^[8] Many of them are reprinted to Tumblr as usual.^[9] Particularly, Miku Miku Dance (MMD) user community have been providing many well-made character models for Fleet Girls, and these are often used in parody videos on NND. This heavy usage of that 3D animation movie program is one of the characteristics in KanColle fandom.

Fleet Girls are also popular subject for cosplay.

Fanart

Cosplay

Video

Related Memes

Hirakō Shock

Hirakō Shock (ヒラコーショック) refers to a memorable event in the quite early days of the KanColle history.

On May 27th, 2013, KanColle, still a quite minor game in those days, suddenly entered the spotlight on Twitter by a bunch of hilariously maddish tweets by Japanese mangaka Kouta Hirano^[10] who was upset at the loss of Kaga and fed more than half of his fleets to Murakumo which hadn’t been remodeled yet.^[11]

Kouta Hirano, also known as his nickname Hirakō, coincidently succeeded to spark explosive popularity of this game. By the spread of his tweets which are hilariously passionate as much as characters’ remarks in his manga works, many Japanese internet users became to get interested to this online card game. Then, the number of game players increased over 150%, reached to 50,000 in 2 weeks after his tweets. And after 3 months, it reached to 500,000, ten times larger than initially envisioned by the developers.

This event that happened on Twitter is known as a successful self-motivated promoting campaign for KanColle, and called as “Hirakō Shock” in the same manner of “Oil Shock”, a Japanese-English word meaning of “Oil Crisis”.

Queen of Bauxite

The Queen of Bauxite (ボーキサイトの女王) is a nickname given to Akagi, a fleet girl known as an aircraft carrier that players can get with relative ease in early stages of the gameplay. For almost all of game players, she is the first aircraft carrier and thus they have faced the same situation to feel astonished at her who requires incommensurable quantity of resources and time for repair compared to other fleet girls they already have. Therefore, in the KanColle fandom, she became to be colored as “Big Eater” always carrying a bucket filled with rice or bauxite under her arm.

This her popular nature in the fanfic has been brought back to the official franchise. Even in the official manga series, she is drawn as a big eater and calls herself as “The Queen of Bauxite”.

Crazy Psycho Lesbian Ōi

Reflecting the popular trend in Japanese fan fiction with shipping since after the late 2000s, fleet girls are often drawn as Yuri couples in the fandom. Among a vast amount of those Yuri fanfics, the most conspicuous one is a Twitter bot account called “Hardcore Lesbian Ōi bot” (ガチレズ大井bot)^[12] that has been serializing a story centering Oi’s maddish love to Kitakami since September 2013.

Kitakami (left) & Ōi (right)

That fleet girl with over-the-top homosexual emotion is dubbed as a “Crazy Psycho Lesbian” among viewers, and that account is known as an atypical Twitter novel leading the KanColle fanfic scene rather than a mere bot account.

Search Interest

English

Japanese

External References

About

Defense of the Ancients (DotA) is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game modified from the 2002 real-time strategy game (RTS) Warcraft III which inspired the creation of the MOBA game League of Legends. The 2013 sequel DotA 2, produced by the video game developer Valve, has an annual tournament with the largest prize pool in electronic sports (esports) history.

Gameplay

DotA matches have two teams consisting of five players each, who attempt to destroy the opposing team’s “Ancient” to win the battle. To win, players control a “Hero” character who gains strength by leveling up, acquiring items and fighting against enemies.

History

On July 3rd, 2002, the RTS game Warcraft III was released for the Microsoft Windows operating system and included a “world editor” allowing players to create custom maps for multiplayer games (shown below, left). In 2003, the editor was used by Warcraft III player Eul to create the first version of DotA, which was based on the scenario “Aeon of Strife” from the RTS game StarCraft. The map featured a battle between elves, humans and orcs against a faction of undead known as “The Scourge.”

Following the release if the expansion pack Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, game designer Steve Feak developed a new version titled DotA: Allstars. In 2005, the game designer IceFrog took over as lead designer of DotA: Allstars. In October that year, the first DoTA tournament was held at the Blizzard Entertainment convention BlizzCon. As the DotA player base continued to grow, it became increasingly popular among those involved in electronic sports. On June 12th, 2008, the video game blog Gamasutra^[1] published an article about DotA, noting that the mod had become a popular competitive game worldwide.

League of Legends

On October 27th, 2009, the DotA-inspired MOBA game League of Legends (LoL) was released, which was developed by the video game company Riot Games and designed by DotA developer Steve Feak.

DotA 2

In October 2009, IceFrog was hired by Valve to work on the stand-alone sequel DotA 2. According to Valve managing director Gabe Newell, Valve’s interest in creating the sequel was sparked by several employees who had competed in tournaments for the original DotA.

At the 2011 Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, Valve held the first DotA 2 tournament titled “The International,”^[9] which used a beta version of the game and had a grand prize of $1 million. In May 2012, Valve won a legal decision against Blizzard Entertainment concerning the DotA trademark. In August, The International 2012 was held at the PAX Prime conference in Seattle, Washington with a prize of $1.6 million. On July 9th, 2013, DotA 2 was released for the Microsoft Windows operating system, followed by a release for Max OS C & Linux later that month.

In August, The International 2013 was held at the Benaroya Hall in Seattle with a total prize pool of $2.8 million. On May 20th, 2014, The Daily Dot^[8] reported that the prize pool for Valve’s annual DotA 2 tournament had reached $6 million, noting that the esports tournament was comparable to some of the world’s biggest sporting events in terms of prize money.

Online Presence

In March 2006, the PlayDota^[2] site was launched, which contains information, player guides, tools, a discussion forum and media related to the DotA games. On November 7th, 2007, a Facebook^[4] page titled “Defense of the Ancients” was created, gathering more than 42,000 likes in the next seven years. On February 16th, 2009, the /r/dota^[5] subreddit was launched for discussions about the video game. On October 13th, 2010, a subreddit for the sequel Dota 2^[6] was created. On August 2nd, 2011, the Dota 2 Wiki^[3] was launched. The video game streaming site Twitch has a game directory^[7] containing live streams and recorded videos of Dota 2 game matches.

Fanart

As of May 2014, there are over 30,000 submissions under the tag “dota” on DeviantArt.^[10]

Reception

Upon released, DotA 2 received favorable reviews on several gaming sites, including Gamespot, Destructoid, PC Gamer and Videogamer. By May 2013, DotA 2 had reached nearly 330,000 concurrent players, setting a new record on Valve’s Steam gaming client.

Related Memes

Diretide

Diretide is an annual Halloween tournament event in DotA 2 featuring a variety of novelty game modes. In October 2013, Valve sparked a backlash among DotA 2 players following the cancellation of the highly anticipated second annual event.

Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going Over Two Sides

In October 2009, LoL producer Riot Games began referring to the game’s genre as a “multiplayer online battle arena” (MOBA). Many DotA fans argued that the same term could be used to describe many other multiplayer games with gameplay unlike both DotA and LoL. As an alternative, fans mockingly coined the term “Aeon of Strife Styled Fortress Assault Game Going Over Two Sides” as a more accurate label for the genre.

The Trench

“The Trench” is a slang used to describe the server with matches that hosts the “lowest priority” account, which are associated with poor team builds and non-English speakers.

Search Interest

External References

About

Xbox is a gaming brand distributed by Microsoft that was launched in 2001, with consoles in the sixth through eighth generations. The brand also incorporates an online service known as Xbox Live, which allows users to play multiplayer games over the server as well as download new content. Online, Xbox fans are often found competing in “console wars” with fans of Playstation and Nintendo consoles.

History

Xbox

The first Xbox console^[1] was released in North America on November 15th, 2001, marking the first American-made console since the Atari Jaguar ceased production in 1996. It was released globally in 2002, but the system had the most success in North America.

One year prior to the Xbox’s release, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Bungie^[2] to make games exclusively for the system. Their first project with Microsoft first-person shooter game Halo: Combat Evolved^[3] was selected as the launch title for the Xbox. The game went on to sell more than 1 million copies in five months, breaking the record for any previous sixth-generation console game. By November 2005 when the Xbox 360 was launched, Halo: Combat Evolved had sold 5 million copies.

Xbox Live

Seeing a future in broadband online gaming, Microsoft equipped every Xbox with an Ethernet port, skipping over modem and dial-up support. Though execs hinted at an online service at the Xbox’s launch, it did not recieve the name Xbox Live^[4] until 2002’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) convention. The system was launched on November 15th, 2002 with a $49.99 starter kit, including a year’s worth of the service, a headset and starter disc.^[5]

The system allows users to create a handle called a Gamertag which also collects statistics about the player and his or her games. This let the system scan one’s statistics for random opponents based on their skill level when starting up online matches. Xbox Live also provides downloadable content for games, and had a roster update for Sega’s NFL 2K3 available on launch.

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 was announced in 2005 through an alternate reality game called OurColony^[8], created by 42 Entertainment^[9] that March. The game required players to create “colonies” with each other, receiving challenges based on the number of members in their group. Each successfully completed challenge revealed a piece of a photo of the redesigned console.^[10] The game ended on May 12th, 2005 with a video (shown below) of Microsoft executives introducing the Xbox 360.

The same day, the Xbox 360 was unveiled in a television special that aired on MTV. The next week, Bill Gates appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine with the console, where the author called the Xbox 360 “the greatest piece of game-playing hardware the world has yet seen.”^[11] The console was released in Japan and North America in November 2005 with a selection of 7 and 18 launch titles repectively. At the time of its release, a $299.99 basic edition and a $399.99 20 GB premium version were made available. As of May 2013, there have been seven different versions of the hardware, ranging in prices from $479.99 to $199.99.

Xbox One

On May 21st, 2013, Microsoft announced the Xbox One^[15], scheduled to be released by the end of that year. The system is expected to incorporate access to streaming movies, live television, Internet Explorer and Skype. The system would also use the Kinect^[16] motion sensing device as a voice sensor, allowing users to speak commands to the console. The system will also feature its own operating system, Xbox OS, as well as two additional systems that would allow for players to use streaming services like Skype while in-game.

Twelve launch games were also announced, including new additions to the Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty franchises. However, it was also announced that the system would not be backward-compatible with Xbox 360 games. The console will only be available in the United States at launch and will require a special receiver for live television streaming.^[17]

Reception

XBox

Being Microsoft’s first foray into the console gaming market, the sales of XBox was generally perceived as successful upon its launch in North America. Within three months, 1.53 million Xboxes had been sold in the market, more than the Gamecube, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Wii and Wii U. By May 2006, more than 24 million Xboxes had been sold across the world, with roughly 16 million units in North America, six million units in Europe and just over two million units in Japan.

XBox Live

Prior to its release, Microsoft anticipated 10 million Xbox Live subscribers by 2007.^[5] That March, Xbox Live had more than 6 million subscribers^[6] who had logged more than 2.3 billion hours of gameplay and exchanged 2 million voice and text messages per day. By February 2013, Microsoft reported^[7] more than 46 million Xbox Live subscribers.

XBox 360

In North America, more than 326,000 units were sold the first month, but the company missed their goal of 3 million units worldwide within 90 days.^[12] Despite this, Microsoft was not able to keep up with the demand of sales in Europe and North America^[13], resulting in 10% of all Xbox 360s sold being resold at a higher price on eBay by December 2005.^[14] As of March 31st, 2013, there have been more than 77.2 million Xbox 360 consoles sold worldwide.

Xbox One

On October 28th, 2013, YouTuber DigitalFoundry uploaded a side-by-side comparison of the game Battlefield 4 playing on a Xbox One at 720p resolution and a PS4 at 1080p resolution (shown below, left), On October 31st, the video games news blog EuroGamer^[31] published an article titled “Xbox One Resolutiongate: the 720p fallout,” which argued that the PS4 version of Battlefield 4 was visibly “crisper and cleaner.” On November 1st, Redditor N4N4KI submitted a post to the /r/truegaming^[29] subreddit asking why gaming sites were “downplaying” the difference in resolution between the two gaming systems. The same day, the pop culture blog Cinema Blend^[30] published an article noting that many gaming news sites had downplayed the disparity in resolution between the Xbox One and PS4. On November 4th, Rev3Games host Adam Sessler defended the Xbox one in a YouTube video (shown below, right), arguing that the difference between 720p and 1080p HD was often negligible.

Fandom

Since its launch in 2001, the official XBox forum hub site^[19] has become popular destination for the console gamers, providing a wide range of console-related and title-specific information as well as technical support and troubleshooting services. Outside of the official community, there are numerous other independently-run news sites such as This is XBox^[25], XBLA Fans^[26], X Box Kinect Fans^[27] and BritXBox^[28], as well as discussion forum communities, including XBox Live Fan Forum^[20], IGN’s Team XBox Forum^[21], XBox Live Gamer Hub^[22], XBox Live Nation^[23] and XBox Life Community.^[24] As of May 2013, the official Facebook fan page^[18] for the XBox console has accumulated more than 21.6 million likes.

Online Presence

As of August 2014, XBox’s official Twitter account^[33] has gained over 3.5 million views and its Facebook account^[34] has gained over 24.1 million likes. Its Instagram account^[37] has gained over 300,000 followers. It also maintains an official Tumblr blog^[35] and Pinterest account.^[36]

Major Nelson’s Meme Cosplay

On August 19th, 2014, XBox released a Reddit-browsing app called ReddX.^[38] That same day, Redditor vg247 posted all the special XBox achievements that users of the app can unlock which features Larry Hryb, the Microsoft community manager who is also known by his Xbox Live handle “Major Nelson,” cosplaying as a series of advice animal memes, including Good Guy Greg,Scumbag Steve,Upvoting Obama,Downvoting Roman,Socially Awkward Penguin,Internet Husband,All the Things,Actual Advice Malard and Futurama Fry.

Related Memes

Huge Like Xbox

Huge Like Xbox is an expression referring to the first generation Xbox released by Microsoft in 2001, which mocked the gaming console’s large size and bulky appearance.

XBox Crazy Lady

Xbox Crazy Lady is the nickname of an Argentinian actress who auditioned for a commercial for the Xbox 360 that surfaced on YouTube in September of 2006. In the footage, the woman pretends to fire an invisible pistol while yelling exploding sound effects.

Xbox 360 Kid

Xbox 360 Kid is the nickname given to a teenage boy with braces featured on a sales flyer for the Xbox 360. The photograph of the boy has been heavily remixed in MS Paint-style illustrations, bearing many similarities to fsjal artworks.

Fake Xbox 360 Achievements

Fake Xbox 360 Achievements are photoshopped images resembling achievements that are unlocked by players connected to Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE online gaming system.

Red Ring of Death

Red Ring of Death is a slang term for the red notification light on Xbox 360 consoles indicating that a general hardware failure has occured. Do to the frustration caused by attempting to fix the various problems associated with the red ring, many grew to associate the notification with dread.

Why They Call it an Xbox 360

Why They Call it an Xbox 360 is a joke claiming that the console was named the “Xbox 360” because when people see it, they turn 360 degrees around and walk away. The joke has inspired the creation of many comics and image macros using the punchline.

Search Interest

External References

About

Bill Wurtz is an American musician and video blogger well-known for his short and memorable one-line jingles set to ’80s-inspired animation videos. Due to the absurdist nature and comedic value of the videos, Wurtz has garnered a sizable online following on various social media platforms, most notably on Vine and YouTube.

Online History

On December 29th, 2010, Wurtz launched his official website under the domain BillWurtz.com with a multimedia portfolio of his original songs, videos and writings; however, some of his files may had previously been hosted elsewhere, as his earliest works in the collection date all the way back to 2005. On February 17th, 2012, Wurtz joined YouTube, although he didn’t upload his first one-line jingle video titled “Die” (shown below) until well over a year later on September 9th, 2013.

On June 6th, 2014, Wurtz created a Vine account and uploaded a video titled “6.6.14 hi vine,” in which he records himself lying on a bed and mindlessly mumbling “dude, there’s no way I can do this Vine thing” (shown below).

History of Japan

On February 2nd, 2016, Wurtz uploaded a video titled “history of japan,” in which the musician sings a humorously abridged narrative of Japan’s history, starting from the year 40,000 BC to the modern day (shown below). In just a day over three weeks, the video accumulated more than five million views and over 180,000 likes, which has resulted in a sudden spike in Google search interest and media exposure of his works across the blogosphere..

Online Presence

The most comprehensive collection of Wurtz’ writings, songs and videos can be found on his website, as well as on a number of other social media platforms, including Instagram, Twitter, Google+ and Vine, as well as the music streaming services like YouTube, iTunes and Spotify. Furthermore, Wurtz maintains an Ask FM account for questions and answers, as well as a Paypal page for donations. As of February 2016, Wurtz has garnered more than 162,000 subscribers on YouTube, 124,000 followers on Vine, 8,200 followers on Twitter and 2,300 followers on Instagram.

Accolades

On January 19th, 2016, Wurtz was listed as a nominee for the “Best in Weird” category in the eighth annual Shorty Awards^[15], which he went on to win during the contest’s April 11th livestream.^[16]

Highlights

As of February 2016, Bill Wurtz’ YouTube channel has accumulated nearly 13 million views in aggregate, with nearly half of those views solely generated by his breakout video “History of Japan,” and at least six other videos that have garnered over a million views in aggregate.

Writings

In addition to his short jingles and graphic art videos, Wurtz has maintained a short-form online journal under the “notebook”^[5] section of his website, which consists of a chronological series of timestamped entries featuring micro-poems and aphorisms. Since joining Twitter and Instagram, Wurtz has also re-published select entries from his notebook via his social media accounts.

Search Interest

External References

About

Jacob Sartorius is an American pop singer who gained much online notoriety for posting lip dub music videos on the social networks Vine and Musical.ly.^[1]

Online History

On August 17th, 2014, Sartorius posted his first video on Vine, which features a message deriding bullying (shown below).^[2] In February 2015, Sartorius began posting regularly on the channel, often featuring videos with pop and hip hop music playing in the background.

On September 7th, Sartorius joined the video sharing social network Musical.ly,^[6] where he posted videos of himself dancing and lip syncing (shown below).

On June 18th, 2015, Sartorius launched his official Instagram^[3] feed, which gained upwards of 5.4 million followers within 15 months. In September, he created the @jacobsartorius^[4] Twitter feed, garnering more than 903,000 followers in one year. On March 18th, 2016, Sartorius launched his official Facebook^[5] page, accumulating over 390,000 likes within six months.

Singles

In June 2016, Sartorius signed with the United Talent Agency and the T3 Music Group. On May 3rd, 2016, T3 Music Group released Sartorius debut single “Sweatshirt” for digital download. On June 7th, Sartorius released the official music video for the track on YouTube (shown below, left). Within three months, the video gained over 27 million views, 1.3 million dislikes and 500,000 comments. On July 25th, Sartorius’ second single “Hit or Miss” was released, followed by the official music video for the song on August 11th (Shown below, right).

On October 2nd, Sartorius’ third single, titled “All My Friends” was released. along with its accompanying music video (shown below, left) on October 25th, garnering 3.5 million views in the next 3 months, along with 28,000 dislikes and 28,000 comments. On December 22, Sartorius released his song “The Last Text”, the lead single to his debut EP of the same name released on January 20th, 2017. along with its music video one week prior (shown below, right), on January 12th, netting almost 3 million views since uploading, along with 22,000 dislikes and 70,000 comments.

Reception

While Sartorius has gained a large online following among tween and teenage girls, he has also developed a signficant anti-fandom as well. On May 4th, 2016, YouTuber AlexHoltti uploaded a video mocking Sartorius’ videos on Musical.ly, gaining more than 3.9 million views and 18,200 comments in four months (shown below, left). On July 9th, YouTuber Bart Baker uploaded a parody of “Sweatshirt,” which derides and mocks Sartorius’ singing ability (shown below, right). Within two months, the video received upwards of 8.7 million views and 47,600 comments.

Personal Life

On October 2nd, 2002, Sartorius was born in Oklahoma, where he was subsequently adopted and moved to Herndon, Virginia.

Search Interest

External References

About

Big Red is the nickname of Toronto resident Chanty Binx,^[3] who gained notoriety online after appearing in a video in which she aggressively promotes feminism while arguing against men’s rights activists at an event in Toronto, Canada.

History

On January 21st, 2011, Binx launched the Tumblr^[3] blog “STFU Everything.” On April 5th, 2013, YouTuber 18upper uploaded a video titled “MRAs and Feminists Arguing at U of T MRA Event,” featuring footage of Binx loudly reading feminist arguments off a sheet of paper outside of an event at the University of Toronto (shown below). In the first two years, the video gained over 750,000 views and 23,400 comments. The same day, Redditor Kamen935 submitted the video to the /r/videos^[1] subreddit, which received more than 2,600 votes (74% upvoted) prior to being archived.

Reputation

Threats

On April 15th, the feminist news blog Manboobz^[2] (now called “We Hunted the Mammoth”), published an article reporting that Binx had been doxxed by online critics and was receiving death threats from anonymous sources.

Criticism and Remixes

On April 17th, 2013, YouTuber bane666au uploaded a video titled “Meet Chany Binx (Big Red) Reminist and hypocrite,” which featured 2012 footage of Binx yelling at a street preacher in downtown Toronto (shown below, left). On August 20th, an entry for “Big Red” was created on the Internet culture wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica.^[5] On April 25th, YouTuber spector969 uploaded a electronic dance music remix featuring samples of Binx (shown below, right).

On September 21st, 2014, Redditor tt12345x submitted a photograph of Binx to the /r/punchablefaces^[4] subreddit, where it gained over 2,200 votes (96% upvoted) in the first two months (shown below).

Search Interest

External References

About

Bill Nye is an American science educator, best known as the host of the children’s educational television show Bill Nye the Science Guy which aired on PBS from 1993 – 1998.

Online History

Bill Nye launched his personal homepage^[13] on July 9th, 1996. His Facebook fan page^[17] was created on December 4th, 2008 and has since attracted more than 1.3 million fans. He joined YouTube^[14] in April 2009, where he has uploaded 26 videos, accrued nearly 15,000 subscribers and gained more than 3.6 million views, averaging more than 278,000 views per day as of September 2013. Nye also maintains an active Twitter^[15] account where he has more than 930,000 followers. On August 23rd, 2012, Nye argued that creationism was not appropriate for children in a video on the Big Think YouTube channel, gaining upwards of 6.14 million views and 374,000 comments in the next two years. On July 23rd, 2013, Nye appeared as a guest on the science YouTube channel ASAPScience, where he discussed humanity’s hypothetical ability to stop an asteroid from colliding with Earth (shown below, right).

In June 2013, Nye participated in an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit, which gained 58,904 upvotes, 3,257 points overall and 8,076 comments prior to being archived. On December 5th, Nye starred in an open video letter to President Barack Obama, which urged the White House to fund planetary science with $1.5 billion per year (shown below).

Creationism Debate

On January 2nd, 2014, the Christian evangelist website Answers in Genesis^[19] announced that Nye would debate the founder and president of the Creation Museum Ken Ham the following month. On the same day, Redditor mepper posted the announcement to the r/skeptic^[20] subreddit, where it received over 1,000 up votes and 220 comments in the first month. On January 16th, the Richard Dawkins Foundation^[21] published an article arguing why scientists should not legitimize creationists by debating them. In the comments section of the post, Richard Dawkins left several tips for Nye in his upcoming debate. On February 2nd, Nye debated Ham at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (shown below).

During the two and a half hour debate, Nye argued that Earth was created billions of years ago and that all life on the planet had been formed by millions of years of evolution by natural selection. Ham argued that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago by a divine creator and that all living beings were created as they are today. Following the debate, several image macros featuring screen captures from the event reached the front page of Reddit (shown below).^[23][24][25] On February 5th, BuzzFeed^[22] published several photographs of creationists from the debate holding handwritten messages to evolutionists.

Bill Nye Saves the World

On April 19th, 2017, Nye participated in an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread on the /r/IAmA^[29] subreddit to discuss his upcoming series Bill Nye Saves the World. On April 21st, the first season of the show was released on Netflix,^[26] featuring 13 episodes in which Nye discusses various subjects related to science, politics and pop culture.

Following the release of the show, some praised the series for confronting important scientific issues such as climate change, vaccination and alternative medicine, while others accused the show of being cringeworthy for forcing a political agenda. On April 23rd, YouTuber HToTheRMX uploaded a clip of comedian Rachel Bloom singing a song about sexuality titled “My Sex Junk” on the show (shown below). That day, the video reached the frontpage of both /r/cringe^[27] and /r/CringeAnarchy.^[28]

Meanwhile, other clips from the series began circulating online as well, including an animated “Ice Cream Sexuality” sketch (shown below, left) and comedian Prashanth Venkataramanujam’s comedy routine about white people appropriating Asian culture to sell alternative medicine (shown below, right). On April 25th, The Observer^[30] published an article by 4chan moderator Jay Irwin titled “Why 4chan Isn’t Buying What Bill Nye and Political Entertainers Are Selling,” which argued that the “Leftist sanctimony” promoted in the show served as a recruitment tool for the right-wing.

Reputation

Nye is known for being a proponent of a scientific worldview, a staunch environmentalist and an advocate for space exploration.

Related Memes

Bill Nye the Science Guy Remixes

Bill Nye the Science Guy Remixes are a series of remix songs based on the theme song from his PBS television show. They often appear as recut music videos featuring footage from other memorable television shows, movies or video games. Though clips from the song were used in YTMND sites as early as May 2004, the first full-length remix of the song was posted via YouTube on January 7th, 2006, which infused hardcore techno beats into the theme (shown below).

@Bill_Nye_Tho

@Bill_Nye_Tho was a novelty Twitter account based on Nye’s persona that launched in early 2012. The tweets were mostly about science factoids, but from the perspective of a person who was stoned. On July 17th, a corresponding single topic Tumblr^[1] for the Twitter account was created to archive the tweets. Five days later, 20 of these tweets were curated into a listicle on Buzzfeed.^[2] In August, more of @Bill_Nye_tho’s tweets were featured on The Chive.^[3]

However, the account was suspended in September 2012, following a temporary suspension that July. At the time of the suspension, @Bill_Nye_tho had attracted nearly 200,000 followers^[4] and was gaining between 2,000 – 3,000 retweets per update.^[5] It was revealed that month the account was run by Laughspin writer Lucas Gardner^[6] who told Betabeat^[7] that he had no intention in pursuing the account again after its second suspension. As of September 2013, the account is still suspended, despite a Change.org petition^[8] to save it. While many of @Bill_Nye_tho’s original tweets have been archived on Favstar.fm^[9] and Tumblr^[10], a Facebook fan page^[11] and secondary Twitter account^[12] attempt to keep the joke alive, gaining more than 60,000 likes and 15,000 followers respectively as of September 2013.

Personal Life

Bill Nye was born in Washington D.C. on November 27th, 1955. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, where he took classes with Carl Sagan. He then spent time working at Boeing in Seattle before getting a recurring spot on a local sketch comedy show where he earned the nickname “Bill Nye the Science Guy” after correcting the host’s pronunciation of “gigawatt.” The success of his local segment led to 100 episodes of his science-themed show on PBS in the 1990s. He has dedicated the rest of his career to educational entertainment and science work. As of September 2013, he resides in Los Angeles and is an avid swing dancer. In September 2013, he announced that he would be joining the cast of the 17th season of Dancing With the Stars.^[18]

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Operation Facebook is an Anonymous Operation that aimed to take down the social networking site Facebook in November of 2011. The announcement of the operation was met by extensive coverage from the news media and debates over its legitimacy during the months leading up to the proposed event, however, the plan never materialized.

Background

On July 16th, 2011, a video titled “Message from Anonymous: Operation Facebook, Nov 5 2011” was uploaded to YouTube.^[4] Edited in the typical fashion of previous Anonymous communiques, the video begins by accusing Facebook of selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms, and urges other hacktivists to join their cause to “kill Facebook for the sake of your own privacy.” While it didn’t explain exactly how the attack will be carried out, the message declared November 5th, 2011 as the day of attack against the largest social networking site in the world. The original upload has since been removed by the user.

Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

In early August 2011, several tech news blogs and news publications began reporting on the proposed attack against Facebook. On August 9th, 2011, Business Insider^[1] highlighted the video in an article titled “Hacker Group Anonymous Vows To Destroy Facebook On November 5.” The article was posted to Reddit^[2] the same day and reached the front page with 2,285 up votes. On August 10th, CNN^[6] published an article titled “Hacker Group Vows to ‘Kill Facebook’”, comparing the operation to the failed DDoS attacks against the online retailer Amazon in December of 2010. The same day, Gawker^[5] editor Adrian Chen wrote an article titled “Hacker Plot to ‘Kill Facebook’ is All a Terrible Misunderstanding”, in which he argued that media outlets were sensationalizing an abandoned operation against the social network.

Internal Division

Also on August 10th, the tech news site Gizmodo^[7] published a post titled “Anonymous To Destroy Facebook on November 5th,” which reported that the campaign has been dismissed as an illegitimate operation by some members of the group in an Anonymous-run IRC channel. On the following day, the tech news blog Slashgear^[8] published a post titled “Anonymous Disowns Operation Facebook, Attack Talks Continue”, which cited tweets by Anonymous-affiliated Twitter accounts denying their connection with the planned Facebook attack.

SOPA / PIPA Strike

On January 24th, 2012, the LA Times^[3] published an article which highlighted a YouTube video claiming that Anonymous was planning a Facebook strike on January 28th, as part of the group’s protest against the online anti-piracy bills known as SOPA and PIPA. The YouTube video was taken down due to a copyright claim by Karen J. Sutherland shortly after. The article also pointed out that the @AnonOps Twitter account had denied any involvement in a Facebook attack the day before:

#OpFacebook is being organised by some Anons. This does not necessarily mean that all of #Anonymous agrees with it.

— AnonOps (@anonops) August 10, 2011

On May 5th, 2012, YouTuber FawkesSecurity uploaded a video titled “Anonymous #Operation Facebook 2012”, warning that Anonymous had discovered several tactics to successfully take down Facebook.

Anonymous Social Network

The Google Plus page for “Your Anon News” was banned from the social networking service on July 15th, 2011. This prompted Anonymous to announce plans to create the anonymous social network service AnonPlus^[9], which would provide users with a platform free of censorship. Users can sign up to test for AnonPlus on the website LaunchPad.^[10]

Search Interest

External Links

Overview

Mario Balotelli’s Goal Celebration refers to a memorable goal ceremony staged by Italian-Ghanaian football player Mario Balotelli in the UEFA Euro 2012 semifinals match between Italy and Germany in June 28, 2012.

Background

In the 35th minute of the match, Riccardo Montolivo passed the ball to Mario Balotelli, which he then ran to the penalty box and shot a goal. This was Balotelli’s second goal of the match. By celebrating his second goal, he took off his shirt and stood with an angry facial expression. Photos featuring his pose became a part of exploitable photoshop parody images.

Online Popularity

[ *Following Information is missing:" Start of Photoshop images, The photograph of the template image]

Ken Tokura’s Balotelli Pose

Another Soccer player, that imitated Balotelli’s goal celebration two days later, was Ken Tokura (都倉 賢), a member of the professional soccer club “Vissel Kobe”, by shooting the first goal against “Kawasaki Frontale” in the 76th minute of the match in June 30, 2012.

Notable Examples

Templates

Search Interest

The search for “mario balotelli” picked up in late June 2012.

External References

Overview

Smash Bros Fighter Ballot is an online poll event launched by Nintendo to allow the fans of Super Smash Bros. to nominate a new character for inclusion as downloadable content (DLC) in the Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Since its launch on April 1st, 2015, fans have shared screen shots of their ballot entries for a variety of characters and humorous explanations as to why they should be featured as a DLC character in the game.

Background

On April 1st, 2015, Nintendo Direct introduced two new official DLC characters for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U titles, Mewtwo (Pokemon) and Lucas (Mother), along with the announcement of an online write-in voting event for fans to recommend a new character to be included as a DLC characters in the game^[2]. Despite its launch coinciding with April Fool’s Day, the poll was soon confirmed as a genuine event by a number of video game news sites. According to Nintendo, the poll will remain open until October 3rd, 2015.

Notable Developments

The site simply acts as a questionnaire that asks the user four basic questions: what is their gender, who is the character they are voting for, which game are they from, and what reasons could the user have for voting for said character. Once all of these questions have been filled up, the user may press confirm so their ballot may be accounted for.

On April 3rd, 2015, just two days after the website was released to the public,^[3] Game Informer ran an article listing top 10 characters they would vote for using the Smash Bros Fighter Ballot. According to Alexa.com, the Super Smash Bros Ballot site is currently ranked 4,277th globally and 325th in Japan^[1].

Ballots

Propaganda

In addition, to further improve the chances of a character to be voted into the game, propaganda for certain characters have begun circulating online just as well as the ballot screen caps in question.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

The Boob Ribbon, also called as “That Ribbon” (Japanese: 例の紐, Rei no Himo), refers to the peculiar character design of the character Hestia from the Anime and Light Novel series Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? (also known as DanMachi). Due to the odd nature of the design, a number of discussions were spawned by fans of the series, questioning whether the design could boost cleavage in real life.

Background

Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon first began as a series of Light Novels, beginning circulation in 2013, and later adapted into an anime by studio J.C. Staff, first airing on April 3, 2015. The series follows adventurer Bell Cranel, a young boy who attempts to explore the mysterious Dungeon, so that he can pick up girls, despite the fact it is usually him who ends up requiring assistance. He is accompanied by Hestia, a goddess in charge of watching over Bell, who is notable for her use of a blue ribbon which she hangs over her arms in an attempt to help support her breasts.

Notable Developments

The anime adaption of the series first started airing on April 3rd, 2015. Hestia’s unique design resulted in a large fandom following for the character shortly after the anime started airing. Within the first 3 weeks, Hestia fanart on the Japanese image sharing website Pixiv increased to more than 1,000.^[1] According to Pixiv’s daily view tracker (shown below), the views peaked on April 9th, 2015, with 722,886 views. In that same period, on the online image boards Danbooru^[2] and Gelbooru,^[3] Hestia’s tag had surpassed 1,300 images, making up the largest quantity of the fanart for the show which contained 1,400 images.^[4][5] Many of these images of Hestia prominently feature the ribbon.

A particular scene featuring Hestia that managed to gain popularity originated from the opening scene of the second episode of the anime, featuring Hestia and Bell Cranel doing a dance while brushing their teeth (shown below). Shortly after, the single serving website hestia.dance^[6] was created, featuring solely Hestia and Bell dancing to the Fairly OddParents’ song My Shiny Teeth and Me.

Real Life Ribbon

Following the popularity of Hestia’s Ribbon, on April 8th, 2015, various Japanese Twitter users started to test if the ribbon could boost cleavage in real life. Many however ended up disappointed by the results, saying the ribbon didn’t give the desired effect. On that date, Japanese twitter user @aiya23mt08cos^[12] posted a video of her attempt to replicate the string, coming to the conclusion that the string would not work. As of April 17, the tweet has over 6,000 retweets and 4,500 favourites.

“My boobs just won’t lift up like Hestia’s…”[10]

“Nope, sorry, this is all I got.”[11]

Following the usage of the ribbon by Japanese women, the developments were subsequently covered by western media as well. Western sites that covered this include Mirror^[7] and Dailymail.^[8] In Japan’s otaku cultural center Akihabara, stores started to sell Hestia’s ribbon or even giving them away for free.^[9]

Search Interest

External References

About

Thicc is a slang term used to describe the voluptuous, hourglass-like curvature of a woman’s hips. Online, the term has seen widespread usage as a descriptor for images of bootylicious women, in the same vein of the slang expression “dat ass”, and a popular subject of parody images featuring fictional characters from various media franchises.

Origin

The term “thicc,” derived from the English adjective “thick,” first came into colloquial usage among urban youths as part of the African American Vernacular English in the early 2000s. Online, the earliest known mention of the word can be found on an Angelfire-hosted webpage^[15] dedicated to more than a dozen of hip hop artists of that era and created on November 4th, 2004.

Spread

Over the course of the next decade, the slang term continued to gain traction in American pop culture and online hip hop communities as recording artists began incorporating the term into the lyrics and titles of their songs, not to mention its usage in the comments section of porn sites. By mid-2015, “thicc” had garnered a humorous connotation as some internet users began using the word ironically on Twitter,^[11]Tumblr^[9] and iFunny.^[12] On October 13th, 2015, Urban Dictionary user thiccbitchrivermonster submitted the earliest known definition of the word^[5]

On October 22nd, 2015, Twitter user miliondollameat shared a picture of the cartoon character Bubble Bass from Nickelodeon’s animated TV series Spongebob Squarepants with the caption describing him as “lowkey thicc.” The tweet accrued more than 3,200 retweets and 4,200 likes in the following months.^[6] On November 21st, Internet blogger and music critic Anthony Fantano uploaded a video of himself making a vegan smoothie, gaining over 50,000 views in the following months.

On January 8th, 2016, Twitter user larcenous posted a picture of himself with his head against the padding of a couch that resembles the outline of a curvy woman’s hips and the caption that reads “my girl stupid thicc.” The tweet gained over 12,400 retweets and 21,500 likes in six months.^[7] On April 26th, Youtuber Pyrocynical uploaded a video titled “Thicc Souls III”, featuring MOD gameplay footage of Dark Souls III with a full-figured character, which drew close to a million views in less than two months. On April 27th, Redditor flashsasu submitted a question asking for the meaning of “thicc” to the /r/OutOfTheLoop subreddit.^[10]

T H I C K

On 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board, the term has become associated with a comic poking fun at the BBW (Big Black Woman) lovers who would flood the weekly “Thick Thursday” porn threads with images of chubby video game characters, with the earliest archived instance dating back to November 9th, 2015.^[1]

In the following months, several characters from the comics started being used as reaction images for chubby girls, mainly one with a smiling character touching his face with both hands (shown below, left)^[2] and another with an agonising character asking for the character to be “thicker” (shown below, middle),^[3] being used as explotables and inspiring several variations (shown below, right).^[4][13]

Search Interest

External References

About

Robbie Rotten was the primary antagonist in the Nick Jr. children’s television series LazyTown played by the Icelandic film and stage actor Stefán Karl Stefánsson. That character is known for being a lazy man who constantly schemes to undermine the influence of the protagonists Stephanie and Sportacus.

Origin

In August 2004, LazyTown was first broadcast on the Nick Jr. block on the Nickelodeon television channel. In the show, Robbie is depicted as the primary antagonist, attempting to make everyone lazy so that he may have peace and quiet. He is usually able to succeed for a while, using various disguises and inventions to trick the citizens and sabotage Sportacus.

Spread

On May 25th, 2009, a page for Robbie Rotten was created on the LazyTown Wiki.^[8] On October 8th, the Villains Wiki^[9] added a page for the LazyTown character. On February 28th, 2014, the /r/RobbieRotten^[1] subreddit was created for discussions about the character. On October 25th, 2016, the Robbie Rotten Memes Facebook page was created, which received more than 38,100 likes over the next year. On December 1st, CollegeHumor^[10] published a listicle titled “15 Robbie Rotten Memes You’ll Want to Snatch Up With a Net.” On January 1st, 2017, /r/dankmemes moderator lets_get_hyyer revealed that Robbie Rotten had become the subreddit’s “Meme of the Year.” Prior to being archived, the announcement gained over 28,700 points (79% upvoted) and 1,100 comments.

Stefán Stefánsson’s Illness

In late September 2016, Icelandic news media began reporting that actor Stefan Stefánsson was “seriously ill,” and was in a hospital to remove a possibly malignant tumor. On October 10th, 2016, a GoFundMe^[2] page for the actor was created, revealing he had been diagnosed with cancer. That day, two actresses who played Stefanie on LazyTown released a video asking viewers to donate to the GoFundMe page (shown below). Within one month, the page reached $75,382 of its $80,000 goal.^[2]

2017 Cancer Diagnosis

On May 19th, 2017, Stefánsson’s wife published an update on Facebook, revealing that two new metastases were discovered in Stefánsson’s liver, suspecting that gallbladder cancer was the cause.^[4] Within 72 hours, the post garnered more than 10,000 reactions and 1,700 comments. The following day, the Lazy Town Memes reposted the news along with a link to Stefánsson’s GoFundMe page (shown below).^[5] On May 21st, Redditor mariobros612 submitted a screenshot of the post to /r/dankmemes,^[6] where it gathered upwards of 6,500 points (95% upvoted) and 180 comments.

Related Memes

We Are Number One

We Are Number One is a song that Robbie Rotten sings in the episode “Robbie’s Dream Team”. In the episode, Robbie orders three “villains” who have had no prior experience with actual villainous deeds, which sets the tone for the song. As of November 11th, 2016, the official music video has over 2.6 million views (shown below, top). Since Stefan Karl’s cancer diagnosis, this song has seen a major increase in popularity, with popular youtubers such as SiIvaGunner making parodies of it (shown below, bottom).

Following the influx of parody videos and the unexpected success of the GoFundMe page, Stefan Karl launched an event on Facebook. He and the supporting actors in the song performed a live-reenactment of We Are Number One on December 11th, 2016. Within 5 hours, the event gained over 7.5k likes and 184,000 views.^[3]

You Are A Pirate

You Are A Pirate is another song that Robbie sings, this time in the episode “Rottenbeard”. Robbie Rotten disguises himself as a Pirate so that he may trick the town into becoming lazy, attempting to misguide them on their journey to search for an ancient stone that would describe the town’s fate. The song’s official music video has gained over 3.9 million views as of November 14th, 2016.

Various Images

Search Interest

External References