[Warning – This entry may contain spoilers for the series]

About

Oreimo , short for Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai (俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない, lit. My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute) is a series of Romance Light Novels written by Tsukasa Fushimi, and later adapted into an anime series by AIC and A-1 Pictures. Since its original creation, the series has garnered a significant fandom online, spawning a number of fan works.

History

Oreimo first began as a light novel series written by Tsukasa Fushimi and illustrated, by Hiro Kanzaki, which ran from August 10, 2008 and June 7, 2013, spanning a total of 12 volumes. A 12-episode anime adaptation produced by AIC also aired in Japan between October 3 and December 19, 2010 , later followed by a second season by A-1 Pictures between April 7 and June 30, 2013. As well as the Anime and Light Novels, there was also a Manga adaptation based on the series, which first circulated between March 2009 and May 2011. This was later followed up by a second manga adaptation, which started on July 2011 and is still ongoing. There have also been a number of other adaptations of the series, including a radio show, a drama cd, and a number of video games.

Online Relevance

In North America, Oreimo is licensed by Aniplex of America, and is available for streaming on Crunchyroll. The show has gained a large online following on many sites, including on Tumblr^[1], Reddit^[2], 4chan’s /a/ (Anime and Manga) board^[3], Fanpop^[4], My Anime List^[5], and DeviantART^[6]. There are numerous sites that provide episodic information about the series, such as the Oreimo wiki^[7], TV Tropes^[8] and Anime News Network^[9]. In addition, the Oreimo Facebook page also has over 25,000 likes^[10].

Oreimo Ending Controversy

The twelfth and final volume of Oreimo was published on June 7, 2013 and the anime adaption of the ending was released as a three-episode OVA on August 18, 2013. The route the novel took ended up displeasing many fans. The protagonist Kyousuke rejects two women and confesses his love to his little sister Kirino. The two later get married, only to reveal that they promised each other they would pretend to be a couple for a little while, then go back to being regular siblings. This ending upset fans for multiple reasons, including incest, and the fact that the protagonist ended up romantically with nobody, leading fans to take online to express their anger.

Fandom

The Oreimo series has spawned a significant online fanbase since it’s creation, which has created much fanart and fanfiction. On the Japanese fanart site Pixiv, there are over 13,000 images tagged under “俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない ”^[11], as well as over 150 videos on the video sharing website Nico Nico Douga^[12]. On DeviantART, there are also over 3,000 images tagged related to the series^[13], as well as over 100 stories on Fanfiction.net^[14].

Related Sub-Memes

Oreimo Cover Art Parodies

Oreimo Cover Art Parodies refers to a series of illustrations parodying the cover art of the first volume of the Oreimo Light Novel series, often titled under “My Little X Can’t Be This Y", based off the English title of the series.

Search Interest

External References

About

Sherlock is a British television series that presents a contemporary update of the original Sherlock Holmes^[21] stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The series was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and began airing on the BBC in 2010. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as John Watson. Each season is comprised of three episodes, with two seasons having already aired.

History

Previous to this series, Moffat and Gatiss had experience adapting Victorian stories for modern audiences. Moffat having written for the 2007 series Jekyll^[13] (an interpretation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and Gatiss having written the Doctor Who episode The Unquiet Dead^[14] based on Charles Dickens story. Both being fans of Sherlock Holmes, the two writers got together and created the series to incorporate all Sherlock canon, including the Rathbone Movies.^[15] Since both considered recent TV adaptions of the stories to be “too reverential and too slow,”^[22] they wanted to give the mythology a fresh spin. The series was first announced with an unbroadcast pilot in 2009.^[23] Beginning in July 2010, the first 3 episodes aired on the BBC, followed by another set of 3 in January 2012. In late August 2012, Steven Moffat teased^[32] the storylines for the show’s third season. The third season premiered on January 1st, 2014.

Reception

Sherlock has been received positively overall, resulting in the first series winning a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award in 2011 for Best Drama Series. The first season has received five stars on Amazon^[29] and a 9.1 rating on IMDb.^[30] The official Facebook^[31] fan page for the show has more than 704,000 likes as of April 2013.

Fandom

Many members of the show’s fandom convene on Tumblr. Popular tags include #Sherlock^[1] and #Sherlock BBC^[3], as well as ones dedicated to the characters and actors themselves. Various blogs dedicated to the show can also be found, such as Fuck Yeah, Sherlock^[4] and Sherlock Holmes Fanart^[5]. Many artists upload their fan works to Tumblr, such as Sdkay^[8], Reapersun.^[9] DeviantArt also hosts various fanworks when searching for Sherlock^[10] and Sherlock BBC.^[2] The site also has two Sherlock dedicated groups: BBC-Sherlock^[6] and Sherlock-2010.^[7] In October 2011, The Beginner’s Guide to the Sherlock Fandom^[44] Fans have also compiled a glossary^[43] of popular terms within the fandom, which has more than 100 entries relating to pairing names for shipping purposes, fanfiction terms and inside jokes relating to actual dialogue from the show. On FanFiction.net, there are roughly 52,600 fan fictions for Sherlock, ranking it as the TV show with the fourth largest amount of deviations, losing only to Glee, Supernatural, and Doctor Who in that order from largest to smallest.

Role-Playing Game

On March 27th, 2013, two developers and fans of the show Lynxelia and Fenix launched a Tumblr account^[34] and revealed their plan to develop a crowd-sourced puzzle RPG based on the BBC series. Later that day, they posted^[35] a mockup of the 221B Baker Street map, as well as twelve animated character sprites including Sherlock, John Watson, Jim Moriarty and Molly Hooper, among others, to their Tumblr blog and on deviantART,^[36] seeking to recruit voluntary illustrators, pixel artists, writers, sound designers and puzzle designers to help complete the not-for-profit game. Within 6 days, the post gained more than 6200 notes.

The following day, a gallery of the images was shared on the Sherlock subreddit^[40], where it earned 365 points in five days. Over the next several days, the duo launched a Facebook^[37] fan page, Twitter^[38] account and LiveJournal account^[39] to draw more attention to their project. The developers have outlined the potential game mechanics^[41], suggesting that players will have to maintain John Watson’s money meter while keeping Sherlock’s boredom meter from getting too high through large cases that would take 3-4 game days and side cases that would only take one. They also included a sketch of the proposed in-game menu (shown below), based on the Nokia N97 smartphone that Watson is shown using throughout the first two seasons. On April 2nd, the Daily Dot^[42] ran a feature story on the game and its developers, noting that they had received dozens of applications within a week.

Casting of Amanda Abbington

In late March 2013, it was rumored^[46] that actor Martin Freeman’s real life partner actress Amanda Abbington^[45]would be joining the cast of Sherlock. As the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories did not have many recurring female characters, many blogs^[47] suggested that she would be assuming the role of Mary Morstan^[48], Watson’s love interest and later, wife. This idea was reinforced by an August 2012 tweet from the series creator Steven Moffat, who gave “wedding” as a clue for the third series.^[49]

On April 23rd, the Daily Mail published a photo from the Sherlock production set (shown below) showing Amanda Abbington in a wedding dress and Martin Freeman in dress pants and a tie, with the article’s headline suggesting their characters were to be married. Immediately, shippers who favored the imagined pairing between Watson and Sherlock (Johnlock) began complaining about Watson’s rumored marriage voiding their ship.

After Abbington addressed the ship on Twitter^[50], noting that she thought it was strange fans were getting so worked up about it, fans of the slash pairing allegedly began attacking her with death threats.^[51] While some fans were enthusiastic about the choice^[54], others expressed concerns that the chemistry between Watson and Sherlock would be destroyed by the wedding.^[55] The anger from the Johnlock shippers resulted in the launch of two separate single topic blogs, We Love Amanda Project^[56] and Support Amanda Abbington,^[57] on April 24th, with both sites encouraging people to submit messages of support for the actress (shown below). On April 26th, The Daily Dot^[58] examined the backlash, noting that a handful of prominent fanfiction writers blogged reminders^[59][60] to the fandom that despite what happens in canon, they are still allowed to ship whoever they want.

Fuck You, I Won a BAFTA!

On January 6th, 2012, Martin Freeman appeared as a guest on the British talk show The Graham Norton Show. When Norton raised a question about why his character Watson does not speak a lot in the show, Freeman quickly retorted, “Fuck you, I won a BAFTA,” referring to the award he won for Best Supporting Actor on Sherlock in 2011.

Following the broadcast of the talk show, and its subsequent airing on BBC America the next day, the line became popular in the fandom, with the phrase being edited into gifs from the show and other media featuring Martin Freeman.

Related Memes

Johnlock

A large and very significant part of the Sherlock fandom is the shippers, people who like to pair characters romantically and create fan art or fiction based on these relationships. Since Sherlock does not easily get along with people in the show other than Watson, many fans have created works around this slash pairing dubbed “Johnlock.” Writers of the show are familiar with this fan act and it has been alluded to being more than just platonic^[28] in at least three episodes. There are several deviantART groups dedicated to this ship, such as Sherlock-Bromance^[11] and Holmes-Watson-Slash^[12], as well as a Tumblr tag.^[61]

I Believe In Sherlock Holmes

I Believe In Sherlock Holmes originates from a clip of a news report posted to the official John Watson blog^[24], an official tie-in site to the show, immediately after the last episode of series 2 aired on January 15th, 2011. The news report declared Sherlock Holmes dead and was paired with the message “He was my best friend and I’ll always believe in him.”^[19]

After the video was posted, various fan blogs reviewed it including Earl Foolish^[20], who imagined the reaction of a Sherlock fan in the television show’s universe. He proposed a real-life tribute campaign to show support for Sherlock the person as well as the show, inspired by viral marketing for the 2008 record “Who Killed Amanda Palmer?”^[25] In July of that year, a user on the Dresden Dolls’ message board posted a thread^[26] providing a stencil^[27] with the title of the record, encouraging people to spray paint them in their areas and photograph it with two $500 prizes to the best entries.

Earl Foolish’s post suggested using the phrases “I believe in Sherlock Holmes^[16]” and “Moriarty was real^[17]” to spread the message. It received over 12,000 notes on Tumblr within a week, with fans making various response posts across social networks.

Various fans also started creating fanart including propaganda posters and graffiti with the phrases, many of which are collected in the deviantArt group #Believe-in-Sherlock.^[18]

Otters and Hedgehogs

It’s common in fan art for Sherlock to be portrayed as an otter and John as a hedgehog, through illustration or placing a photo of one of the characters next to a photo of the animal with a similar pose or facial expression. Using an otter to represent Sherlock became popular after the Tumblr photoset “Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A Visual Examination”^[63][64] created by Red Scharlach^[65] went viral in March 2012. ^[66]

Not Our Division

In the beginning of the 3rd and final episode of Season 2, ‘The Reichenbach Fall’, James Moriarty, Sherlock’s main enemy throughout the series, manages to break into the case of the Crown Jewels. When Sergeant Sally Donovan walks into Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade’s office to inform him that there has been a break-in, Lestrade is shown sitting casually eating with his feet up, initially replying with a simple “Not Our Division”.

The scene quickly became a fan favourite, with many people creating their own gifs and reaction images out of it, frequently in posts where Lestrade brushes off any cause for alarm with the line.

#Not Dead

The finale episode of Season 2, titled “The Reichenbach Fall,” features a cliffhanger scene wherein Sherlock leaps from the roof of a hospital building, leading many of his friends, in particular John, to believe that he didn’t survive the fall. However, during the final moments of the episode, it is revealed to the audience that Sherlock is still alive.

In the months leading up to the premiere of Season 3, fans of the show began speculating how Sherlock would tell John that he was still alive, including Tumblr artist ShockingBlanket^[62] who created a series of GIFs to illustrate a variety of amusing ways in which Sherlock would reveal himself, such as popping out of his refrigerator or appearing on his clothesline, using the hashtag #not dead.

Sherlock Falls on Things

On January 16th, 2014, Reddit user Mikejohnno^[67] uploaded an exploitable image of Sherlock in free fall while facing the camera (shown below), as depicted in BBC’s behind-the-scene footage of the third season’s premiere episode “The Empty Hearse,” to the r/photoshopbattles subreddit.

The thread was quickly met with several dozens of photoshopped derivatives created by other Redditors, plugging the fictional character into a variety of iconic images, such as classic artworks and promotional posters for blockbuster films like Gravity and 300. On January 18th, Imgur user AndrewYashchuk^[68] compiled some of the best examples from the thread into a Imgur album. On the following day, Jezebel^[69] covered the photo series in an article titled “Watch Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Fall Into Everything Everywhere.”

Notable Examples

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External References

About

“When U Mom Com Home And Make Hte Spagheti” is an intentionally misspelled expression derived from a Tumblr post featuring a GIF of a dancing green alien.

Origin

On April 21st, 2012, Tumblr user familyfriendlyurl^[2] posted an animated GIF of a dancing green alien captioned with the phrase “when u Mom com home and make hte spagheti.” As of June 20th, 2013, the post has more than 98,000 notes. The dancing alien GIF^[3] has been used online since the 1990s in banner ads for mortgage loan services.^[1]

Spread

On May 18th, 2013, the phrase was used on the IGN forums^[4] as the subject of a thread containing nothing else but the dancing alien GIF, which yielded a dozen of confused responses from other posters. The same day, a second thread^[5] dedicated to the phrase was created by another user. By May 20th, derivatives of the phrase began appearing^[6], with posts naming other dishes mom comes home to make, misspelled in a similar manner

On May 30th, the esoteric phrase was used as the title of a thread on the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic forum Brohoof.^[7] The same day, TumblTrends2013^[8] reported that both the phrase and the alien GIF has been frequently popping up on Tumblr dashboards. On June 6th, a Facebook fan page^[9] for the phrase was created. In early June, similar threads dedicated to the phrase were posted on music forum Spill It Now^[10] and Phantasy Star Online forum PSO-World.^[11]

Notable Examples

Additional posts can be found on the Tumblr tags “when u Mom com home and make hte spagheti”^[12], “when u mom com home”^[13] and “make hte spagheti.”^[14]

Search Interest

[Not Currently Available]

External References

About

Kumamon^[1] is a cartoon character of a rosy-cheeked brown bear designated as the official mascot of the Kumamoto prefecture in Japan. Since its debut in early 2011 as part of a tourism promotion campaign, Kumamon has become a popular character nationwide and even inspired a reaction image featuring the mascot with a mischievous grin reminiscent of the Disaster Girl on the English-speaking web.

Origin

Kumamon was designed by the Kumamoto government and unveiled to the public on March 12th, 2010 in an effort to promote tourism in the region. As part of the campaign, the local government launched a personal website,^[2] blog,^[3] as well as Facebook^[4] and Twitter^[5] accounts for the mascot, whose official description says he is a public employee in the prefecture.

Spread

In November 2011, Kumamon was voted the most popular mascot in Japan with more than 287,000 votes in an online poll for the annual Yuru-Kyara Grand Prix. By January 2012, Kumamon had developed a fictitious personality described as “potentially violent” but also “irresistibly adorable.”^[7] During the first half of 2012, Kumamon merchandise and other branded promotions generated more than ¥11.8 billion in revenue^[8], reaching more than ¥29.36 billion by the end of the year.^[9] Starting in December 2012, the sensational popularity of the character was picked up by several English-language news outlets and blogs, including The Wall Street Journal,^[10] The Guardian^[12], Tofugu,^[11] Tokyoite,^[13] Japan Realtime^[14] and Brand Channel.^[15] As of September 2013, Kumamon’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have gained more than 139,000 likes and 284,000 followers respectively.

Notable Examples

Why? For The Glory of Satan Of Course!

On December 24th, 2011, FunnyJunk^[16] user gedmpbass submitted a two-panel comic of Kumamon standing in front of a bonfire and the caption “Why? For the Glory of Satan of course!” In January 2012, the same image was reposted to Tumblr^[17] and eBaum’s World^[18], although they didn’t receive much attention until it was submitted to the /r/WTF^[19]subreddit on February 13th, 2012. Prior to being archived, the Reddit post accrued 13,639 upvotes, 927 points overall and 283 comments.

The same day, the image was reposted to 9gag^[20] and We Know Memes^[21] where it was shared an additional 7,000 times combined. On March 23rd, 2012, the first Facebook fan page for the phrase “Why? For The Glory Of Satan Of Course”^[22] was created, followed by a second fan page titled “For the Glory of Satan Bear” in August.^[23] In September that year, the photo was uploaded to deviantART^[24], where it has been downloaded more than 30,000 times. By October 2012, a number of other images and GIFs of Kumamon had become associated with the phrase, including a GIF^[25] of the bear flailing next to a chef with a flaming pan. (shown below) In November 2012, a third Facebook fan page^[26] was created. Additional photos of Kumamon using the phrase have appeared on MemeCenter^[27], Tumblr^[28][29] and Reddit.^[30]

Search Interest

External References

About

“>tfw no gf” is an abbreviated expression for “that feeling [I get] when [I have] no girlfriend” often used in online discussions and comments to describe one’s fragile emotional state as a result of loneliness and lack of companionship. Most commonly found in greentext posts on 4chan, the phrase can be seen as an expression of self-pity or commiseration over being single, in a similar vein to other lonely characters like Forever Alone, That Feel Guy and the Sad Frog characters.

Origin

The earliest archived thread containing the phrase “>that feel when no gf” was submitted to the /jp/^[1] (otaku culture) 4chan board on September 23rd, 2010.

Spread

On February 23rd, 2011, the phrase “that feel when no gf” was paired with an image of the That Feel Guy in a post on 4chan’s /a/^[2] (anime and manga) board (shown below).

On April 5th, 2012, YouTuber Bernd Meier uploaded a video titled “That feel when no girlfriend,” featuring a photoshopped image of the That Feel Guy playing a guitar accompanied by a song about being “forever alone”. In the first two years, the video accumulated over 118,000 views and 1,000 comments (shown below, left). On June 9th, the tfwnogf YouTube channel was launched, which contains videos with photoshopped images of That Feel Guy accompanied by dramatic background music (shown below, right).

On August 10th, the website TfwNoGF^[4] was created, in which users can submit emotional green text stories and images featuring That Feel guy. On the following day, Urban Dictionary^[3] user Anonymous8223 submitted an entry for “tfw no gf,” defining it as a “statement of sorrow.” On August 16th, 2013, a Facebook^[6] page titled “That Feel When No GF” was launched, which highlights various “tfw no gf” image macros. On June 27th, 2013, the men’s interest blog New Age Man^[7] published a compilation of That Feel Guy images titled “Do You Know That Feel When No GF?” (shown below).

Various Examples

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External References

About

“Cheeki Breeki” is a phrase associated with a quote, originating from the first-person shooter survival horror game series S.T.A.L.K.E.R..

Origin

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, during fights with the Bandit faction non-player characters (NPCs), they will repeat several stock lines in Russian language, one of them being “А ну, чики-брики и в дамки!” (phonetically: A nu chiki-briki i v damki!).

“Chiki-briki” (also written as “Cheeki Breeki”) is a part of a nursery rhyme, “i v damki” means “to make a piece of checkers king”. The literal translation of the phase is “One, two – you’re on top!”. It means “to have an advantage, to flank, etc.”

The tune associated with Cheeki Breeki is played on the Bandit radio ingame. It is written in the genre “Russian chanson” which is mainly enjoyed by criminals and wannabe-gangsters. It is loosely based on an actual song with the title Хоп, мусорок (phonetically: “Hop, moosorok”; translates as “Heyho, little cop”) that gained memetic popularity in Russia around the time when S.T.A.L.K.E.R was released.

Spread

In December 12th, 2011, YouTuber named TheIronTyrant uploaded a video named “Meet The Bandits”. The video consists of dancing Russians with the music and Bandit quotes from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games (including Cheeki Breeki) being played in the background. As of January 2014, the video has around 126,000 views and 1926 likes.

In July 28th 2012, an image (pictured below, left) translating and explaining the meaning of the phrase popped up on 4chan’s /vg/ (Video Games – General) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. thread ^[1]. Same year, in October 15th, A Tumblr user 45-70govt posted a derivative of How About I Slap Your Shit meme (pictured below, right) ^[2].

Other Examples

Several images containing the phrase have been made over the years. Most of them include a masked man, looking similar to a bandit from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

The phrase is also used as a title in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. related videos, ranging from gameplay videos, to modifications of other games.

Search Interest

External References

About

You Are Already Dead (Japanese: お前はもう死んでいる; Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru) is an expression from the manga and anime series Fist of the North Star (Japanese: 北斗の拳; Hokuto no Ken). The catchphrase is often combined with an image of the lead character Kenshiro pointing at viewer, which has gained usage as a reaction image in arguments on image boards and discussion forums.

Origin

Originally premiered in Japan in 1983, the series Fist of the North Star centered around the protagonist Kenshiro, a master of the martial art style Hokuto Shinken. Unlike other martial art styles, Kenshiro’s Hokuto Shinken attacked the opponent’s body through pressure points. Upon unleashing his attack, including his signature move Hokuto Hyakuretsu-ken, his victims would be told that they were “already dead” before their bodies would erupt from the inside.

Spread

On August 5th, 2010, a page titled “You Are Already Dead” was created on TV Tropes,^[1] describing it as a martial arts trope involving finishing moves that have a delayed effect, including diagonal sword cuts, pressure point and ki attacks. On August 8th, DeviantArt user inui submitted an illustration of Kenshiro with the caption “You are already dead” (shown below).

On June 11th, 2011, NeoGAF Forums^[4] member Nekofrog submitted a thread asking other members what memes they were getting tired of, citing “you are already dead” as a meme that is sometimes used inappropriately. On August 16th, 2012, YouTuber UrbanSLUG uploaded an animation in which Kenshiro pokes a man and says “you are already dead,” causing the man’s head to explode (shown below).

Notable Examples

Additional examples can be found on Tumblr under the tag “#you are already dead.”^[2]

Search Interest

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About

Surgeon Simulator is a free online simulation game in which the player assumes the role of medical surgeon Dr. Nigel Burke and performs a heart transplant by controlling the hand and arm movements in first-person perspective. Due to the game’s difficult control system, it has often been compared to the indie flash-based game QWOP and many YouTubers have uploaded humorous playthrough videos conveying their frustration.

Origin

The game was created under 48 hours in late January 2013 by Bossa Studios employees Tom Jackson, James Broadley, Luke Williams and Jack Good as their entry for Global Game Jam, an annual video game hack-a-thon held across 47 countries. On January 28th, the game was publicly released on the Bossa Studios^[1] website.

Gameplay

The player must perform open heart surgery on a patient laying on an operating room table using a doctor’s hand and a variety of surgical tools. The hand is moved using the mouse, lowered by clicking the left mouse button, rotated by holding down the right mouse button and each finger is opened and closed using a corresponding key. The player must grasp the tools laying next to the patient and use them to remove the patient’s heart to replace it with a new one.

Spread

On January 28th, 2013, YouTubers PewDiePie (shown below, left) and Robbaz (shown below, right) uploaded Surgeon Simulator playthrough videos, with each receiving over 1.5 million views within the next week.

On January 29th, Forbes^[5] published an article on the game, likening its online buzz to that of QWOP. On January 31st, the RoosterTeeth YouTube channel uploaded a Surgery Simulator gameplay video with narration by hosts Michael Jones and Gavin Free (shown below).

On February 2nd, Redditor JakeFraser submitted a banner image to the /r/roosterteeth^[2] subreddit, featuring Jones and Free performing heart surgery. Within 48 hours, the post received over 720 up votes and 25 comments. In the following week, several news sites published articles about the game, including the International Business Times,^[6] Game Informer,^[7] and Laughing Squid.^[8]

Creators AMA

On January 31st, 2013, James Broadley, Luke Williams, Tom Jackson and Jack Good submitted an “ask me anything” (AMA) post to the /r/IAmA^[4] subreddit, which received over 8,500 up votes and 1,500 comments within four days. The team answered a total of 120 questions in the post, noting that there is a special scalpel for heart removal, their appreciation for the Robbaz playthrough video and that one player had beaten the game in 28 seconds.

Steam Release

On April 19th, 2013, an expanded version of Surgeon Simulator 2013 featuring new missions, improved graphics and physics engine was released on Steam.^[9] According to The Escapist^[10], among the new additions include an in-ambulance surgery mission and a laser cutting tool.

Notable Examples

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External References

About

DeviantArt^[1]is an online artist community that focuses on curation of user submitted artworks and collaboration among its users. The website’s content pool is sectioned into a number of categories including digital art, photography, traditional art, film and animation, cartoons, manga, flash animation and literature. Aside from showcasing artworks, the site also hosts a discussion forum where users can discuss their artworks and a category section dedicated to educational resources and tutorials for artistic techniques.

History

Launched on August 7th, 2000, deviantART was founded by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others as part of the Dmusic Network, a larger network of music-related websites and blogs. In the beginning, deviantART was designed as a place to upload and share custom designed skins for applications, similar to other projects like Winamp Facelift, Customize, Deskmod, Screenphuck and Skinz. The site was well-received upon its launch and quickly gained a strong and loyal user-base as well as a team of voluntary moderators.

In less than a year after its foundation, deviantART was officially incorporated in April 2001. Later that same month, deviantART user switched submitted a mascot artwork of a robot cat named “Fella,”^[2] which went onto win the site’s contest and became adopted as the official mascot of deviantART.

As the community continued to grow, one of the co-founders Matt Stephens proposed a plan to expand the scope of the site from application skins to a general art community. In November 2006, deviantART enabled a new option for users to submit their works under Creative Commons license, which gave the artists the right to specify how their contributions can be used and shared by others. In September 2007, a film category section was added to the site where users could upload their own videos and add annotations for comments or critiques during playback. Many individuals who were involved in the early development and promotion of the site continue to work for the site, including the co-founder Angelo Sotira who serves as the chief executive officer of DeviantArt, Inc.

In a major update in December 2014, the traditional spelling of “deviantART” was changed into “DeviantArt” simply.

Features

• Both unregistered visitors and members can browse millions of user-submitted artworks through thousands of category sections by medium, genre or style. Once signed in, a user can easily “favorite” bookmark any artwork by clicking and dragging it into the user’s collection page. Users can upload an unlimited amount of artwork at no cost.

• Users can also create and customize the profile page to introduce oneself to the community at large. The user profile section also offers journal entries and custom widgets, as well as pageview statistics on submitted artworks.

• Users can also earn revenue through selling prints of their artworks, receiving 20% of the profits in transaction. With a premium account, users can be rewarded 50% of the profits.

Traffic

According to one of the co-founders Angelo Sotira, the site had over 14.5 million members, 100 million total submissions and generates roughly 140,000 submissions, 1.4 million favorites and 1.5 million comments per day, as of August, 2010.^[3] The site holds a Compete^[4] rank of 344, a Quantcast^[5] United States score of 97, and is the no. 121 in the entire world on the Alexa^[6] scale as of July 2011.

Related Memes

Art fads are popular amongst deviantART users, and often consist of a sort of challenge to draw certain things, such as one’s OTP, original character, or favorite things in different situations like Nyu’s Art Meme, Sparkledogs, and the DeviantArt Age Meme. In addition, Emoticon-based fads, such as Pyong or Lick Icons, can be commonly be found on the site as well. The site is also notable for popularizing template-based survey memes; there is even a group (and a supergroup at that) on deviantART dedicated to these called “Meme Station”.^[7] Many of these memes are desgined to create humorous situations and are often used as brainstorming tools for new art or fanfiction.

Popular Meme Formats

• List format memes:* The user makes a list of 10 characters, assigns each of them a number, and then follows the given situations. (eg. 2 and 5 get into a fight, who would win?)
• Shipping memes/Draw your OTP*: These memes usually open with a series of questions that the user answers about their favorite pairing. Then they must draw their pairing in the given situations.
• Art challenge memes*: These are often listed as “The ___ Meme” (eg. The Guro Meme, the Yaoi meme) and give the user a list of things to draw that surround a common theme.
• Switcharound memes*: Two or more users collaborate on several pieces of art, each user doing one stage. For example, Users A, B, and C do a meme. A draws lines, B colors, C shades. They do this 3 times so the result is 3 different complete drawings.

Search Interest

External References

About

12 Year Olds is a collective term used online to categorize prepubescent children in the age group of 10 to 14, most commonly those of the male gender, and the characterizations that come along with it, whether the individual falls within that age-range or not.

Origin

In North America, the Internet became readily available for prepubescents with America Online and other similar services in the late 1990s, but the population of the age group saw a visible increase in online presence following the launch of early social networking websites, such as MySpace and Facebook, as well as multiplayer gaming platforms in the early 2000s.

Spread

Young Internet users have gained a negative online reputation, commonly characterized by their inexperience, inarticulateness, lacking sense of humor, bad grammar and punctuation, as well as an eagerness to fit in. Due to online anonymity, older users exhibiting behaviors commonly associated with 12 year olds often risk being categorized as one or claimed one as well. Certain image sharing websites and boards, such as 9gag or Reddit’s atheism^[4] and f7u12^[5] (rage comics) sub-Reddits, also have a wide reputation of having a young userbase. As of September 13th, 2012, Urban Dictionary gives over 400 definitions when looking for “12 year olds”.^[1] Most of these definitions satirically describe online communities that have a reputation of being popular with 12 year olds. Uncyclopedia^[2] and Encyclopedia Dramatica^[3] also feature articles for bashing 12 year olds and their presence online, giving quotes commonly associated with them and examples of where they can be found.

In Online Gaming

In online gaming, 12 year olds, or just young children in general, are commonly characterized by a high pitched voice, lack of skill, and being a sore loser. Although another popular opinion is that young players and their style of gameplay tend to ruin the fun for other players or even the game’s online multiplayer function completely. On YouTube, various videos can be found of people trolling or grieving young players to catch their reactions on tape for the entertainment of the viewer.

Related Memes

I’m Twelve Years Old And What Is This?

“I’m Twelve Years Old And What Is This?” is a catchphrase typically used to react to something that is considered vulgar or outlandish, such as x-rated media, or to express general confusion. The phrase parodies the inexperience of young users found on the internet and the content they might find that is still unknown to them, but well known to older, more experienced, users. The phrase also made its way as a popular reaction image, featuring images of people, commonly children, looking at a screen on a different object with a confusing look on their face.

First Day On The Internet Kid

First Day On The Internet Kid is an advice animal image macro series featuring a young kid being depicted as a new and inexperienced Internet user who is unfamiliar with certain aspects of the web; he is often described as a younger version of Lonely Computer Guy / Net Noob.

Summer Fag

Summer Fag is an advice animal image macro series featuring a male teenager on a computer accompanied by captions depicting the boy as an inexperienced newcomer to the 4chan image board community.

Search Interest

Note: Search interest was reduced to just the categoy “Online Communities” to avoid results unrelated to the reputation of 12 year olds online.

External References

About

“Shitposting” is an Internet slang term describing a range of user misbehaviors and rhetoric on forums and message boards that are intended to derail a conversation off-topic, including thread jacking, circlejerking and non-commercial spamming. On 4chan, the byproduct of shitposting is referred to as cancer.

Origin

The exact origin of the term “shitposting” is unknown, but the earliest-known instance was submitted to the Something Awful Forums^[14] on April 10th, 2007, when member OhSNAP!Tray used the expression when referring to worthless threads on the site’s BYOB forum.

Spread

On June 28th, 2007, Penny Arcade Forums^[6] member IHasABucket commented in a thread about various types of electronic dance music in which he criticized other members for “shitposting.”

On January 4th, 2008, Urban Dictionary^[5] user jarrynkell submitted an entry for the term “shitpost.”

“To make utterly worthless and inane posts on an internet message board.”

On March 26th, 2010, Urban Dictionary^[4] user Chunky Milk submitted an entry for “Shit Posting,” defining it as the act of making an unconstructive post on an online forum.

“1: The failure to make a constructive post
2: The inability to add useful information to a forum
3: Worthless overly offensive generally racists posts written in a manner which aggravates others.”

On April 27th, 2011, an entry titled “Shitpost” was created on the Internet culture wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica,^[8] which listed the /s4s/ (shit 4chan says) board and the /r/circlejerk subreddit as online communities associated with the practice. On October 22nd, the /r/shitpost^[9] subreddit was launched for discussions regarding low-quality posts across Reddit. On November 11th, 2012, Redditor RustledHard submitted a screenshot from a 4chan thread titled “Now this is what I call shitposting” to the /r/4chan^[10] subreddit, gaining more than 3,100 up votes and 40 comments prior to being archived (shown below).

On August 5th, 2013, FunnyJunk^[12] user Nahyon posted an expand dong-style Pokemon box art image titled “Le shitposting faic” (shown below, left). On November 6th, 2013, Redditor hardycoreman submitted an MS Paint illustration of a king standing in front of the computer titled “The Shitpost King” to the /r/Braveryjerk^[11] subreddit (shown below, right).

Related Terms

Funposting

Funposting is the satiric synonym of the term shitposting.^[15] It is generally used as a mock classification against plaintiff opinions on shitposts.
Its earliest apperence comes from one of the thread on /a/ board when an anonymous user started to complain about how the shitposts derailed the older thread.^[16]

It’s Still Shitposting Even If You Are Being Ironic

“It’s Still Shitposting Even If You Are Being Ironic” is an expression used to criticize shitposters on 4chan often used in image macros featuring the character Keine Kamishirasawa from the Japanese game series The Touhou Project.

[s4s]

The [s4s]^[2] (shit 4chan says) board is often cited as a shitposting forum, known for popularizing the Topkek, gippo dude^[3] and dubs guy memes. The 4chan FAQ^[13] describes “shitposting” as “knowingly contributing low quality, off-topic, or ill intentioned posts.”

Desu

Desu is a Japanese suffix often spammed on imageboards and discussion forums associated with the character Suiseiseki from the Japanese anime Rozen Maiden.

Chickun

Chickun, a.k.a “Arise The Chickun,” are 4chan threads includes posts of photoshophed, edited or face-swaped image macros of My Little Pony character Scootaloo.

Le Lenny Face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) is an emoticon created with unicode character symbols that is often used to spam discussion forums and imageboards.

Spurdo Spärde

Spurdo Spärde is a poorly drawn character based on the sprite image of Pedobear. It was originally conceived in the Finnish imageboard Kuvalauta to mock the newcommers. The character is coarsely drawn on purpose and accompanied by captions that are misspelled and stylized in all cap with overly emoticon usage.

This Post Gave Me Cancer

That Post Gave Me Cancer is an image macro series commonly used in response to nonsensical or insubstantial posts submitted by the original poster (OP) or other users in a given thread.

Search Interest

References

About

Santorum is a term that has been popularly defined as “byproduct of anal sex.” It was first conceived and coined by American columnist Dan Savage and his readers in an effort to publicly shame the former Republic senator Rick Santorum for the anti-gay remarks he made during an interview with the Associated Press in April 2003. The term still remains as the top result for Santorum’s name on several search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo, as of September 2011.

Origin

In an interview with the Associated Press^[1] on April 7th, 2003, Republican senator Rick Santorum expressed his belief that American consenting adults do not have a constitutional right to privacy with respect to sexual acts. He also added that consensual gay intercourse could be government-regulated, similar to how states restrict other sexual acts like adultery, polygamy, child molestation, incest and bestiality in protecting the values of society and the American family.

Upon its publication on April 20th, 2003, Senator Santorum’s interview response drew harsh criticisms from the press, civil rights groups and other Democrats, mainly for his unsavory comparison of homosexuality to incest, polygamy and adultery.

One of the staunchest critics of Santorum’s remarks was the sex advice columnist Dan Savage, who took one of his readers’ suggestion and organized an open contest on his syndicated blog column “Savage Love”^[2] for people to come up with an unflattering definition for the Republican senator’s family name “Santorum.” By May 29th, Savage reported that he had received over 3,000 suggestions for the definition of the word. On June 12th, he announced the winning bid, defined as following:

santorum (san-TOR-um) n.
1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter
that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.

Spread

The website Spreading Santorum^[3] and its single serving edition Santorum.com^[4] were subsequently launched by Savage to further spread the subversive definition and other supporters participated in Googlebombing to boost its visibility in search results for the senator’s name Rick Santorum.

The first Urban Dictionary^[5] entry for “Santorum” was submitted a few months later on November 27th, 2003. In 2004, The American Dialect Society^[6] selected “santorum” as the winner in its “Most Outrageous” category in the society’s “Word of the Year” event.

In July 2006, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Santorum.com appeared at the top of a Google search for Santorum’s last name. Philadelphia Weekly’s columnist Liz Spikol^[8] also reported in 2006 that the word had inspired several punk rock and blues song, as well as bumper stickers and t-shirts.

In May 2010, Savage offered the former congressman to remove the website if Santorum donated $5 million to Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group supporting the legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

In August 2010, Mother Jones^[9] published an article about Santorum’s online reputation, noting several commentators who have said Santorum’s defeat in the 2006 senatorial re-election campaign may have been affected by his “Google problem.” In addition, the article quoted Mark Skidmore of Blue State Digital and hinted Dan Savage’s website will be difficult to remove from the organic search results for “Santorum,” due to the high number of inbound links placed by bloggers to Savage’s website in comparison to that of Santorum’s official website.

In September 2010, Mother Jones^[17] published another article featuring 16 original illustrations and an
animation by artist Zina Saunders:

Resurgence in 2011

In a February 2011 interview with Roll Call^[11], Santorum addressed his notorious Google problem for the first time:

“It’s one guy. You know who it is. The Internet allows for this type of vulgarity to circulate. It’s unfortunate that we have someone who obviously has some issues. But he has an opportunity to speak.”

In rebuttal to Santorum’s Roll Call interview, Savage wrote in his column series^[12] posted on February 24th, 2011:

I do have issues--I have lots of issues--but I take particular issue with politicians who compare loving, stable same-sex relationships to “man on dog” sex, as Santorum has done, or who would ban same-sex marriage and adoptions by same-sex couples, as Santorum has promised to do if he gets elected president. But the lowercase s santorum campaign wasn’t “one guy.” A lot of people were involved--from the Savage Love reader who first suggested that we redefine his name to all the folks who’ve written about it over the years (thanks, Roll Call!).

On June 6th, 2011, Santorum formally announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination on ABC’s Good Morning America. When asked in another June 2011 interview with MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown^[13] whether he thinks Google should take any measure to downplay the visibility of the definition in search results, Santorum commented that Google should intervene as long as it is equally applicable to anyone else.

In July 2011, Savage appeared in a Funny Or Die^[14] video in which he jestfully warned the Republican presidential candidate nominee to redefine his first name “Rick” into something even worse if Santorum did not stop criticizing homosexuality during his campaign.

Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report^[16] referred to the term on more than one occasion.

Jon Stewart mentioned it on The Daily Show^[15] more than once; his on-air reference to it in May 2011 caused the word to be one of the most queried search terms on Google the following day.

Presence on Other Search Engines

Although the Santorum campaign has been widely reported in the media as Rick Santorum’s “Google problem,” similar top-ranked search results for the same keyword have been observed on numerous other high-profile search engines including Bing, Yahoo, AOL and even the Chinese search portal Baidu, according to Webpronews.^[20]

Censorship Request

In an interview with Politico^[18] published on September 20th, 2011, Rick Santorum revealed that he had contacted Google asking them to censor the sexual references to his name.

“I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they’d get rid of it,” Santorum said. “If you’re a responsible business, you don’t let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country.”

He continued: “To have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can’t handle but I suspect that’s not true."

Google responded to a CNN^[19] email asking about the censorship request with the following response:

“Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly. Once the webmaster takes the page down from the Web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process.”

Search Interest

External References

About

Urban Dictionary^[1] is a dictionary site composed of user-submitted definitions for slang terms used either online or in real life that are not defined in an actual dictionary. Once submitted, each definition entry is ranked by the user base and showcased in the order of popularity.

History

The website was created in 1999 by Aaron Peckham when he was a freshman studying computer science at California Polytechnic State University.^[2] He started the site as a parody of dictionary.com, defining words that he heard around campus and sharing them with his friends.^[3] Peckham initially advertised the site with posters around his college campus, but never did any major advertising and most of its spread has been through word of mouth.^[7] The domain name Urbandictionary.com was registered in October 2001 and the submission rate of definition entries nearly quadrupled since its launch.

Among the first definition entries submitted to the site was “the man,” submitted on August 13th, 2003:

The man is the head of ‘the establishment’ put in place to ‘bring us down.’

Between June and July 2008, Urban Dictionary released a number of new site features and offline products, including an official blog for the latest updates, a redesigned editor page, a mobile-friendly version of the site, a “browse” page which indexes most popular words by alphabetical order. The website began receiving attention from the blogosphere and news media in 2008, with its inclusion in LifeHacker’s feature article^[21]“Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds” and Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008^[22]:

Forget about learning Spanish or Chinese. The language you really need to know to keep up -- in the U.S. anyway -- is street lingo. To stay hip, visit Urban Dictionary, which has millions of user-submitted words and definitions.

They can also be found on Flickr^[24], Tumblr^[4], Twitter^[5], and Facebook^[6], where they have over 1.7 million likes.

Traffic

By July 2009, four million definition entries had been submitted, according to the New York Times.^[23] In a Fall 2011 interview with his college’s magazine, Peckham claimed that approximately 2000 definitions are submitted to the site daily, averaging out to 1.3 a minute.^[7] As of January 2012, there are over 6.3 million definitions in the dictionary. The website has a Quantcast^[8] rank of 92, a Compete^[9] rank of 367, and an Alexa^[10] US rank of 356. The highest recorded traffic for the site was on February 3rd, 2010, the same day Mashable^[11] posted an article about a Facebook trend where people were posting the Urban Dictionary definitions of their names as their statuses.

Features

Anyone can submit a definition to the site and making an account is not necessary. All new definitions must be approved by the site’s volunteer editors before they are published. The editors are given ten guidelines^[18] to follow when deciding on new additions:

1. Publish celebrity names but reject friends’ names.
2. Publish racial and sexual slurs but reject racist and sexist entries.
3. Publish opinions.
4. Publish place names.
5. Publish non-slang words. Ignore misspellings and swearing.
6. Publish jokes.
7. Reject sexual violence.
8. Reject nonsense. Be consistent on duplicates.
9. Reject ads for web sites.
10. Publish if it looks plausible.

One a word is published, users can then give each definition a thumbs up or thumbs down to help narrow down the best results for a word. Users can also decide on which videos^[20] get added to entries. Lastly, Urban Dictionary has a discussion forum^[19] where users can vote on new features the site should implement.

Publications

The first Urban Dictionary book^[12] was published on October 1st, 2005 with over 300 pages compiled from the 170,000 definitions on the site at the time. Since then, several calendars and a second book have been published^[13], with a third scheduled to be released on March 27th, 2012.

An academic study^[14] of the site was published in February 2007 by researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and Arizona State University. The research investigated not only the way some definitions receive more value and legitimacy than others, but also the processes by which the slang words are formed.

UrbanDictionary.tv

On January 19th, 2012, UrbanDictionary.tv^[16] launched. Powered by video aggregator site VHX^[17], the site shows a definition from the site and pairs it with a video that illustrates the word. Users can vote on the video’s accuracy and suggest alternate videos.

Search Interest

External References

About

It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular (Japanese: 私がモテないのはどう考えてもお前らが悪い！, Watashi ga Mote Nai no wa Dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui!) is a manga and anime series by Niko Tanigawa and published online at Square Enix’s website,^[5] about the exploits of Kuroki Tomoko, an extremelly shy girl who tries to be popular. The series became popular on 4chan‘s /a/ board because of the “similarities” between the main character of the series and /a/’s users.

Premise

The series follow Kuroki Tomoko, a high school girl who defines herself as a “mojo”, a creepy woman who’s never had any contact with the opposite sex, being also extremely socially awkward to the point where it’s difficult for her to communicate with all but a few people. The series consists of Tomoko doing various things to try to become more social and popular, with these attempts usually embarassing her.

History

Written by the mangaka duo Nico Tanigawa, the series started its serialization on Square Enix’s Gangan Comics Online service from August 4th, 2011. The first volume was released on January 21st, 2012, and the second volume, released on May 22nd, 2012, ranked #10 in the Oricon charts in its opening week.^[13]

Anime

On January 20, 2012, it was announced that an anime series based on the manga was currently in development.

There was plenty of speculation that a Gangan announcement countdown would result in news of an anime adaptation of Nico Tanigawa’s web manga Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaete mo Omaera ga Warui! aka Watamote or It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular! Looks like anime watchers will in fact soon be able to enjoy the queasiness of following Kuroki Tomoko’s misadventures, with an early confirmation of anime plans.^[8]

In July 8, 2013, the anime aired and on September 23, 2013, the anime ended with an OVA produced that was released on October 22, 2014^[10].

Online Relevance

The manga was first posted on 4chan’s /a/ board on August 23rd, 2011. It received positive attention as “/a/ transformed into a little girl” and continued to grow in popularity from there.^[6] Though originally the series became popular on /a/, it also gained the attention of /v/ when users began re-posting the series.

Tomoko is not the first character of her type to become popular on /a/. At one point there was a popular hentai series, Midori no Ruupe, that featured a socially introverted girl. However, that series is remembered rather bitterly due to the terrible fate of the main heroine.

Due to the self-deprecatory humor of Watamote, it has gained popularity on 4chan, especially with /a/ and /v/, due to many users feeling like that they can relate with the protagonist.

Spaghetti-Tan

Tomoko gained the nickname of Spaghetti-tan on /v/^[11] as a reference to Spaghetti Stories, but the nickname is disliked on /a/.^[9] The nickname got recognition by the manga authors, who drew Tomoko eating spaghetti for the english manga release (shown bellow, right).

Reception

Though the series was not that popular among Japanese fans, popularity from overseas fans was high enough to where all the volumes sold out in Japan.^[1] As of July 2013, the series had printed over 1.5 million copies. ^[7] In the latest volume release, the line “海外の2ちゃん的な掲示板で大人気!!”, literally “A hit on the overseas version of 2Channel!!” (in reference to 4chan) was used to pitch the series. ^[1]

Fandom

As April 29th, 2015, there is over 2 000 pieces of fanart tagged with “Watamote” and over 14 000 pieces of fanart tagged with “Tomoko” on DeviantArt^[12] and over 200 pieces of fanart under the tag “私がモテないのはどう考えてもお前らが悪い” on Pixiv.^[14] A subreddit dedicated to the series has over 1,700 suscribers,^[15] and a collective Twitter account for the series was created by 4chan users.^[3]

Search Interest

External References

About

Internet Death Hoaxes refer to unfounded rumors or misreports of someone’s death, usually a celebrity, or otherwise famous public figure, that spread virally online, particularly through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Origin

One the original pre-internet celebrity death hoaxes was a rumor of Beatle Paul McCartney’s death in 1966.^[4] One of the first death hoaxes to spread online was the 2010 Morgan Freeman death hoax.On December 16th, 2010, Twitter user OriginalCJiZZle^[6] tweeted a message asserting that actor Morgan Freeman had died, prefaced by an RT (retweet) signature credited to CNN to make it appear as if the news organization had tweeted the original report:

“RT @CNN: Breaking News: actor Morgan Freeman has passed away in his Burbank home<< wow legendary actor #RIPmorganfreeman.”

CNN^[8] quickly issued a response explaining that it had not reported on Freeman’s death via Twitter^[5]:

“CNN did not report Morgan Freeman death. Rumor is false. CNN will aggressively investigate this hoax.”

The same day, CNN^[7] published an article titled “Who said Morgan Freeman is dead? Not us," in which the news outlet reiterated their previous response and included a confirmation from the actor’s publicist Stan Rosenfield that Freeman was still alive.

Notable Cases

Steve Jobs

Between AppleCEOSteve Jobs’ announcement of his diagnosis in 2004 and his death in 2011, there had been a number of premature obituaries and breaking news updates falsely reporting on the passing of Apple’s co-founder. Jobs maintained his chief executie role in the company until August 2011 when he resigned from his post.

• In August 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published an obituary article of Steve Jobs that had been put together by the staff in the case of such event. The report quickly spread through its corporate news service and the rumor intensified as blogs and other news carriers began syndicating the story.

• During the Macworld Keynote speech in January 2009, Apple-related forum MacRumors was infiltrated by a hacker who defaced the website with false news of Steve Job’s death that read “STEVEJOBSJUSTDIED.” The news media speculated that the hacker was associated with Anonymous and 4chan .

• In September 2011, CBS reported via one of its Twitter accounts that Steve Jobs had passed from a heart attack. The post was removed within minutes with a formal retraction, but not before the information was re-tweeted by some of the account’s 11,000+ followers.

Cher

On January 26th, 2012,^[14]Twitter user Lorraine Star^[13] tweeted out a rumor that singer Cher had died, making it appear as if the tweet had originated from CNN:

“RT @CNN: American recording artist Cher dies at 65 years old. Found dead in Malibu home.”

The rumor was further fueled when Kim Kardashian^[15] tweeted:

“Did I juist hear Cher has passed away? Is this real? OMG”

The rumor was dispelled on January 27th, when Loree Rodkin^[17], a friend of the singer, tweeted:

“Whoever started that stupid rumor needs to have their face dragged across concrete..#cher is FINE”

Adele

On January 28th, 2012, RIPAdele was a trending topic on Twitter. This was proven untrue by the International Business Times and Gossip Cop.

Paul McCartney

On March 21st, 2012, RIP Paul McCartney^[9] began to trend on Twitter. The rumor was dispelled by a post on Gossip Cop^[10] published the next day.

Chris Brown

On March 23rd, 2012, rumors of singer Chris Brown’s^[19] death spread on Twitter and on YouTube through comments on his music videos. The singer was the victim of several previous death rumors including one that spread on Twitter on February 15th, 2012.

Celine Dion

On November 9th, 2013, a rumor about the supposed death of singer Celine Dion^[11] circulated on Facebook. Authenticity was lent to the claim by an app that can put news organization logos on unaffiliated posts. Dion spoke to Digital Spy^[12] the same day to dispel rumors, saying:

“Sometimes it’s freaky because I have to call my family about it. I was celebrating the birthday of my twins in Montreal and I was getting these phone calls saying there was stuff on Facebook that I was dead. The thing that worries me is my mom. It makes me a little mad – she’s 86 years old and if I’m not on the phone telling her I’m OK four seconds after it’s on the news… it doesn’t matter what they say, it’s the impact it has on your family.”

Justin Bieber

On January 8th, 2014, a rumor^[20] that singer Justin Bieber had died in a car crash after driving over 120 miles per hour in his Ferrari circulated on Twitter. On January 12th, Global Associated News^[22], a site known for spreading celebrity death rumors, published a post saying Bieber had died in a car crash:

“Justin Bieber died in a single vehicle crash on Route 80 between Morristown and Roswell. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics responding to the vehicle accident and was identified by photo ID found on his body. Alcohol and drugs do not appear to have been a factor in this accident.”

The claim was proved false^[22] when Bieber posted a photo of his new tattoo to his Instagram^[23] account.

Jim Carrey

On January 12th, 2014, an rumor that actor Jim Carrey^[18] circulated on Facebook, but was quickly disproved when Carrey appeared at the Golden Globes held that evening. A second death rumor circulated on Facebook on January 14th, suggesting the actor had died in a snowboarding accident. A representative for the actor released a statement saying:

“He joins the long list of celebrities who have been victimized by this hoax. He’s still alive and well, stop believing what you see on the Internet.”

Subway Jared

On May 5th, 2014, Twitter user nice_mustard^[1] sent a tweet using the hashtag #RIPSubwayJared which implied Jared Fogle, who has been a spokesman for the sandwich chain Subway since 2000, had died. In less than 24 hours the hashtag #RIPSubwayJared^[2] had been tweeted out over 6,000 times. Nice_Mustard also tweeted out a request that their original RIP tweet be retweeted and the hashtag be spread.

The claim was proved false the same day in a post published on Gossip Cop.^[3]

Betty White

On September 3rd, 2014, Empire News,^[25] a satirical news site published an article about actress Betty White dying her hair with a pun in the title, “Actress Betty White, 92, Dyes Peacefully In Her Los Angeles Home.” The title lead some readers^[26] to believe White had actually died. Within 24 hours the hashtag #BettyWhite^[27] was tweeted out over 100 times, with Twitter users inquiring whether White had died, or confirming it was simply a hoax. The hoax was covered that day my several sites including Business 2 Community^[28] and the Inquisitr.^[29]

Macaulay Culkin

On November 7th, 2014, a fake memorial page for actor and musician Macaulay Culkin was created on Facebook, which linked to a spoofed MSNBC article claiming the 34-year-old actor had passed away earlier that day (shown below).^[33] Within 72 hours, the article gained over 153,000 Facebook likes and 22,500 retweets.

The Facebook memorial page was subsequently removed. On November 8th, Culkin’s Velvet Underground cover band Pizza Underground tweeted^[30] a photograph of the actor with the caption “We’re on tour you silly people” (shown below, left). That same day, the rumor-debunking website Snopes^[32] posted an entry for Culkin’s death hoax. On November 9th, Pizza Underground^[31] tweeted another photograph of Culkin being held up by a friend while posing as if he were dead, in reference to a scene from the 1989 comedy cult film Weekend at Bernie’s (shown below, right).

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the hoax, including Mashable,^[24] UpRoxx,^[25] The Daily Dot,^[26]CBS News^[27] and People.^[28]

Related Memes

Good Night Sweet Prince

Goodnight Sweet Prince is a phrase and series of image macros that originally appeared on 4Chan approximately around 2006. Many assume the phrase was taken from the Shakespearean play “Hamlet”, although it is also quite possible /b/ also got the line from the either The Big Lebowski or Robocop; both taking it from Hamlet. It’s one of /b/’s many ways to troll people

RIP in Peace

R.I.P in Peace is an online slang expression marked by its redundant phrasing which can be used to commemorate an individual who has either passed away or some who has been a target of an Internet death hoax.

Search Interest

External References

About

RWBY^[1] is a MMD-stylish web animation series about a group of teenage monster hunters created by Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth Productions which premiered in July 2013. The show details the lives of four teenage girls studying to become monster hunters in the fictional world of Remnant.

History

On November 7th, 2012, the first of four promotional videos for RWBY (shown below, top left) was posted to Rooster Teeth’s YouTube channel depicting a young girl, later revealed to be Ruby Rose^[2], battling a pack of wolf-like monsters known as Beowolves. Between February and June 2013, three more trailers were released, introducing the characters Weiss Schnee^[3] (shown below, top right), Blake Belladonna^[4] (shown below, bottom left) and Yang Xiao Long^[5] (shown below, bottom right) fighting with their weapons of choice.

The first episode (shown below) explains that the world had been overtaken by monsters of all shapes and sizes, introducing the four girls as students at the prestigious Beacon Academy, a facility to train fighters against these threats. Together, the girls comprise Team RWBY, requiring that they live and train together throughout their four years of school.

The series premiered at the RTX convention on July 5th, 2013 before being made available to stream on Rooster Teeth’s official site on July 18th. A week after the episodes go live, they are uploaded to YouTube. In August, Crunchyroll^[6] announced the episodes would be simulcast on their site on their initial release date. Within its first month, RWBY caused a 9% increase of views on the Rooster Teeth YouTube channel^[10], making them the fifth most-viewed channel on the site the week of August 16th. As of October 2013, 14 episodes of RWBY have been released online, while a DVD^[7] of the first volume is scheduled to be released on November 12th, 2013.

Death of Monty Oum

On January 23rd, 2015, Monty Oum suffered a severe allergic reaction that left him comatose in the hospital. On January 30th, Rooster Teeth’s founder Michael “Burnie” Burns posted a blog post^[30] on the website, linking to a GoFundMe page^[31] to support Oum’s medical bills and his family. While the fundraiser surpassed its goal of $50,000 by double the amount within the first 24 hours, Oum passed away at 3:34 PM (EST) on February 1st, 2015. His passing was subsequently announced^[32] by Rooster Teeth founder Matt Hullum on the next day. All Rooster Teeth content was put on hold for the day in remembrance, with the exception of the Rooster Teeth Podcast.

Fandom

On September 24th, 2012, a Facebook fan page^[8] was created in anticipation of the show, with its first posts appearing on November 7th. The page has since gained nearly 150,000 likes. Also in November, the /r/RWBY^[9] subreddit launched, attracting more than 4,600 subscribers as of October 2013. After the first trailer was released, discussion of the series took place across a number of 4chan boards^[11] including /co/^[12] (Comics & Cartoons), /v/^[13] (Video Games) and /vg/^[14] (Video Games General). On November 8th, a wiki^[19] and a deviantART group^[15] anticipating fan works for the show were both established.

Also that November, the first single topic Tumblr blog dedicated to the show, Fuck Yeah RWBY^[24], was created. However, it only updated that month was succeeded by a second Fuck Yeah RWBY^[25] that December. That March, a RWBYconfession blog^[26] launched, followed by a handful of ask blogs^[27][28] for certain characters as well as shipping blogs.^[29] In September 2013, an RPG forum^[23] based on the RWBY universe was launched on RPG Motion. Between September and October 2013, #RWBY has been used on Twitter more than 7,000 times, peaking on Thursday evenings when the new episodes go live.

Fan Art

Additional work can be found on deviantART^[16], Tumblr^[17] and Pixiv.^[18] There are also more than 500 fanfiction stories about RWBY on Fanfiction.net^[21] and Archive of Our Own^[22] combined.

Search Interest

External References

About

Miss Officer and Mr Truffles is a fan created cartoon duo consisting of a female police officer and her bear cub sidekick created by Tumblr artist Lemonteaflower. The comic is based on a photo featuring a police officer and a bear cub that circulated widely on Tumblr.

Origin

The original photograph of the bear standing upright next to a police officer was featured in the print edition of St. John’s daily newspaper The Telegram^[7] on June 9th, 2011. According to the report, the photograph was taken at the Terra Nova National Park earlier that month when a bear cub suddenly appeared before the police officer, Const. Suzanne Bourque of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), as she was interviewing witnesses regarding the bear’s reported encounters with the public. Although initial rumors by reporters said the bear was subsequently euthanized after being captured by the wildlife enforcement officers, in an interview^[9] with the Daily Dot on January 17th, 2014, Bourque stated that the RCMP was chasing two bear cubs and her corporal told her that the one they later euthanized wasn’t the one shown in the photo.

In November 2012, Tumblr user teamcocket^[1] posted the photograph (shown above, right) with the caption reading “officer, come quick, there’s been a robbery.” On January 6th, 2014, Tumblr user Typette^[2] reblogged the photo saying it would be a great concept for a cartoon about a police officer and a bear cub going around solving crimes. On January 11th, Tumblr user Lemonteaflower^[3] responded to Typette’s idea by reblogging the original post along with a concept image for the proposed cartoon (shown below, right), naming the duo “Miss Officer and Mr Truffles.” As of January 17th, the total post has gained over 170,000 notes.

Spread

On January 13th, 2014, Lemonteaflower expanded on her initial concept of Miss Officer and Mr Truffles,^[5] posting 3 more images (shown below) of the pair. As of January 17th the post has gained nearly 200,000 notes.

On January 14th, 2014, YouTuber Flikkof^[8] uploaded a animated short based on one of Lemonteaflower’s illustrations depicting Miss Officer and Mr. Bear listening to Spice Girl’s “Wannabe.” The video has received over 32,000 views as of January 17th.

On January 16th Suzanne Bourque, the officer in the original photo, created a Tumblr blog on which she reblogged several of Lemonteaflower’s posts on the same day, alongside a post^[4] in which she thanked Lemonteaflower and showed her gratitude for the sudden attention her picture had received (shown below, right). On January 24, Bourque posted a photo on her Tumblr showing herself sitting at her desk with one of Lemonteaflower’s images as the desktop background on her computer (shown below, left),^[11] which managed to gather over 25,000 notes within the first 24 hours.

“So I must say I’m really honoured that my photo got out and fell into the hands of someone as talented as lemonteaflower. I was told about this from our RCMP media relations and had no idea that this photo would still be as popular today as it was two and a half years ago. It was a wicked experience to be around the little cub and no less get this awesome picture taken of me with him by my partner at the time.
These comics really made my day! I hope you continue your awesome art! I know we’re enjoying it up here in Canada… ;)”

Notable Examples

More examples can be found under the Tumblr tags “miss officer and mister truffles”^[6] and “moamt.”^[10]

External References

About

Twilight is a series of romance novels and fantasy films about a love triangle between the teenage girl Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart), the vampire Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson) and the werewolf Jacob Black (played by Taylor Lautner).

History

The novel Twilight by author Stephenie Meyer was published by Little, Brown and Company on October 5th, 2005. It told the story of protagonist Bella Swan, a teenage girl who falls in love with the 104-year-old vampire Edward Cullen after moving to the town of Forks, Washington. On September 6th, 2006, the second novel New Moon was released, in which Cullen leaves Swan after his brother attacks her. The werewolf Jacob Black is subsequently introduced, who befriends and consoles Swan. On August 7th, 2007, Eclipse was released, in which Swan chooses between her love for Cullen and her friendship with Black. On August 2nd, 2008, the final novel in the series Breaking Dawn was released, concluding with Swan and Cullen’s marriage and birth of their child.

Film Adaptations

The film Twilight was released on November 21st, 2008, which starred Kristen Stewart as Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen. The film The Twilight Saga: New Moon was released in Los Angeles, California on November 16th, 2009, introducing the actor Taylor Lautner as the werewolf Jacob Black. On June 6th, 2010, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse premiered, followed by the released of The Twlight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 on November 18th, 2011. The final film in the series, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, is scheduled for release on November 16th, 2012.

On July 12th, 2012, Stephenie Meyer, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner appeared at the 2012 Comic-Con convention to promote the upcoming film The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. According to the Vancouver Sun^[2], during a press conference and a panel Q&A, Meyers revealed that a Twilight franchise reboot may occur “15 years down the line” and that she was “burned out on vampires.”

Reception

In a 2003 auction, eight publishers competed for the rights to publish the original Twilight novel, eventually settling on $750,000 for all three books from Little, Brown and Company. Within a month of its release, it debuted at #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list and subsequently peaked at #1. In the second week of New Moon’s publication, it reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in the series, sold over 1.2 million copies within the first day alone. Meyer became the first author to claim the top four spots in USA Today’s year-end bestseller list for two consecutive years.

In the United States and Canada, the film Twilight sold over $192.7 million , The Twilight Saga: New Moon sold 296 million, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse sold $300 million and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 sold 281 million. Reviews for the films were mixed, with Metacritic^[9] scores ranging from 44 to 58.

Criticisms

On November 23rd, 2009, the webcomic The Oatmeal published a post titled “How Twilight Works”, which included several illustrations mocking the fandom.

Fandom

The Twilight saga is frequently noted in the news media for its large and diverse online fandom, which has been described as “cult like” and compared to the fandom behind J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter franchise. While teenage fangirls and middle-aged women have been generally cited as the primary demographic of Twilight, dubbed “Twi-hards” and “Twi-moms” respectively, some journalists have reported positive reception from young boys and adults of both genders as well.

Online Presence

Some of the more prominent Twilight fan sites include The Twilight Saga^[5], Twilight Guide^[6] and the Twilight Lexicon.^[8] As of July 13th, 2012, the official Facebook^[3] group for “The Twilight Saga” has accumulated over 34 million likes, the Twilight Wiki^[7] has over 1,000 pages and there are over 129,000 Twilight fanfiction stories on the website Fanfiction.net.^[4]

Us Weekly Photo Scandal

On July 24th, 2012, celebrity gossip magazine Us Weekly^[10] published photographs of actress and Twilight cast member Kristen Stewart in the arms of film director Rupert Sanders (shown below, left). The photographs quickly spread online through social networking sites and the celebrity gosspip blogosphere^[15][16], which instantly sparked angry reactions from the fans as well as a debate over their authenticity. Some fans on Tumblr^[11][12][14] were quick to dismiss the photographs as having been heavily photoshopped, citing the apparent lack of distinction between Stewart’s face and ear in the depiction (shown below, right), while others speculated that the paparazzi photos may have been deliberate staged to draw media attention.^[13]

The debate over the photos’ authenticity became so widespread that at one point, another rumor began to spread on Twitter^[18] that the director’s wife Liberty Ross had confirmed that the image was a modified version of her. However, it was quickly debunked as a hoax started by a prankster on Ross’ IMDB discussion boards. That same day, Livejournal gossip blog OhNoTheyDidn’t^[15] posted an article titled “Liberty Ross spills the tea on Rupert and KStew, vanishes from Twitter in the process,” detailing background information about Rupert Sanders’ marriage and a screenshot of his wife Liberty Ross’ Twitter feed shortly before she deleted the account, which simply read “WOW.” (shown below) The article generated more than 1,500 comments within 48 hours.

On the following day, Stewart, who has been romantically linked to her co-star actor Robert Pattinson since the two met on the set in 2008, issued a public apology in which she explicitly confirmed their longtime relationship for the first time, stating:

“I’m deeply sorry for the hurt and embarrassment I’ve caused to those close to me and everyone this has affected. This momentary indiscretion has jeopardized the most important thing in my life, the person I love and respect the most, Rob. I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry.”

Stewart’s apology was met by mixed responses from the fans and the media. Some news publications^[17] and blogs defended her apology by calling it “heartfelt” and “honest” in comparison to previous scandals involving celebrities’ infidelity, while others expressed disappointment and anger towards Stewart for cheating on her longtime boyfriend Robert Pattinson. Among them was Twi-hard fan and YouTuber nuttymadam3575, who posted her ranting reaction to the news in a video titled “HOWCOULDYOU DO THISKRISTEN?!”

Related Memes

Twilight Comics

Twilight Comics are multi-pane vertical images which contain screen captures from the Twilight film with text mocking the series.

Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight

Still a Better Love Story Than Twilight is an expression often seen in image macros and comment sections of various websites. It is used to illustrate that a connection between two pairings is more romantic than that of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.

Fifty Shades of Grey

The erotic fiction trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James started out as a Twilight fanfiction series written under the pseudonym Snowqueen’s Icedragon. The original story titled “Master of the Universe” was published on James’ personal website in December of 2010.

Search Interest

External References

About

YouTube Roleplay Accounts are ad hoc user profiles that assume the voice of a well-known individual or established fictional character on the popular video-sharing community. Similar to Tumblr’s Ask Blogs and Twitter’s Novelty Accounts, they are prominently used by members of online fandom communities, many of whom interact with each other through comments and replies in YouTube video pages.

Origin

These types of accounts may have been inspired by deviantART’s Plz Accounts, which utilize the site’s avatar system to recreate conversations between fictional characters. As early as 2009, people began to create YouTube accounts for fictional characters using the prefix “Imma” to denote them as being novelty accounts. One of the first of these, ImmaVegeta^[1], was created on March 10th, 2009 and has gained more than 23,000 subscribers. In addition to commenting in character, ImmaVegeta has uploaded nearly 1,500 videos including recut footage from Dragon Ball Z episodes as vlogs from the character during which they interact with other YouTubers or comment on YouTube happenings as well as unedited clips from the anime.

Spread

In June 2011, a Yahoo! Answers question^[3] was asked about the legality of these accounts. That November, an instructional guide to making Imma accounts was posted on wikiHow.^[4] In January 2012, the Imma Land Wiki^[2] launched as a hub site for these in-character accounts. After YouTube began showing full names and, later on, profile pictures in the comments in mid-2012 after linking accounts with Google+ profiles, the number of these parody accounts increased, including ones for real people who are popular online including Chuck Norris (shown below, left) and historical figures like Adolf Hitler (shown below, right).

Additionally, after comment replies were introduced, multiple accounts contained within a single fandom began interacting with each other, including characters from Lord of the Rings and Halo In May 2013, a member of the SMW Central forums^[5] reported seeing Portal-related accounts commenting on fan videos about the game.

In Message Boards

This practice is also found on message boards where people will make a novelty account based on the topic or fandom that the message board is about. One of the earliest archived examples appeared on October 10th, 2011, when an account named SiriVoiceAssistant posted on the Apple enthusiast forum iFans^[6], asking other posters if they needed any assistance. The account continued to ask questions and perform virtual tasks for commenters, taking on the typing style of Siri.

Reddit Armie

Various parody accounts mocking Redditors, radical feminists, fat activists, neckbeards and fedora wearers often comment on YouTube with polarizing or ignorant statements meant to incite a flamewar. On June 11th, 2014, the /r/RedditArmie subreddit was launched, featuring discussions related to YouTube comment trolling and screenshots of notable examples (shown below).

On September 3rd, the “Berta Lovejoy”^[8] YouTube account was created, which typically leaves flamebait comments from the perspective of a feminist extremist on trending videos (shown below).

Related Memes

Novelty Twitter Accounts

Novelty Twitter Accounts are parody profiles on the social networking site Twitter that are meant to impersonate or lampoon a wide range of subjects, from celebrities and public figures to corporations and inanimate objects. Often considered a web-based performance art, parody accounts have been created since as early as January 2007, when Fake Steve Jobs began humorously mocking the late CEO of Apple.

Twitter Reenactments

Twitter Reenactments are text-base simulations of either real events or fictional stories that typically use one or more novelty accounts to publish “real-time” status updates that correspond with the chronological timeline of the original event. The first one of these projects was created by PhD students at Utah State University, who reenacted the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg over the course of several weeks in April 2009.

Tumblr Ask Blogs

Tumblr Ask Blogs are interactive roleplay blogs that are run from the perspective of fictional characters. Readers are encouraged to ask questions of the roleplayer, who answers with either text, artwork or photos of themselves in cosplay in the first-person narrative. One of the first of these blogs was launched on April 23rd, 2011, allowing readers to ask questions of any character from the webcomic Homestuck.

Search Interest

External References

About

“Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition” is a memorable quote from the sketch comedy television show Monty Python’s Flying Circus uttered in reference to a Catholic tribunal established by the Spanish monarchy in 1481 to ensure Christian orthodoxy.^[2]

Origin

On September 22nd, 1970, the first “Spanish Inquisition” sketch was aired in Season 2 Episode 2 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (shown below). On several occasions throughout the sketch, an English townsman says “I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition” in retort to a woman’s incessant questioning, which would prompt a group of men dressed in Spanish Catholic robes to storm into the house and proclaim “Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition!”

As one of the most celebrated sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the catchphrase has been referenced and parodied in many other works of comedy and fiction in popular culture, beginning with its inclusion in Issue #3 of the DC comic book series Batman Family published in January 1976.

Spread

On June 29th, 2000, FanFiction.net^[4] user Lesietta Wehs submitted a fanfiction inspired by the Monty Python sketch and set in the Star Wars science fiction universe. On May 9th, 2004, YTMND user SailorAmaya submitted a page featuring a screen captured image from the sketch (shown below) with a looped audio track playing the phrase “Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition!” In the next nine years, more than 40 additional Spanish Inquisition YTMNDs were created.^[3]

On May 18th, Urban Dictionary^[1] user jiffy pop submitted an entry for “spanish inqusition,” which referenced theMonty Python’s Flying Circus sketch. On July 24th, 2007, YouTuber chillial uploaded a video containing three different Spanish Inquisition Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketches (shown below), which garnered upwards of 1.56 million views and 1,800 comments in the next six years.

On February 14th, 2009, Yahoo Answers^[6] member Saturday submitted a post asking the meaning of the question “I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition,” to which user Shaker replied that it is used to complain about being asked too many questions. On July 14th, the online retailer ThinkGeek^[7] began selling Spanish Inquisition T-shirts with the words “The Spanish Inquisition / Expected by Nobody Since 1970” printed on a black shield (shown below).

On February 7th, 2010, a Facebook^[5] page titled “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” was launched. On April 30th, 2012, Redditor guynumberthree submitted a post to the /r/AskHistorians^[8] subreddit, questioning whether anyone expected the Spanish Inquisition in the past. On July 23rd, 2013, YouTuber Disco the Parakeet uploaded a montage of video clips featuring a parakeet named Disco attempting to say “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” (shown below). In the first 72 hours, the video accumulated more than 195,000 views and 250 comments.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References