About

Bikini Bridge is a slang term used to describe 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.

Origin

On February 26th, 2009, a Tumblr blog titled “Bikini Bridge” was launched, highlighting photographs of bikini bottoms stretched across women’s hip bones (shown below).

Spread

On April 24th, 2009, Urban Dictionary^[3] user mormdav submitted an entry for the phrase “bikini bridge,” defining the term as a bikini bottom stretched across protruding hip bones. On October 12th, 2010, the /r/bikinibridge^[2] subreddit was launched, featuring user-submitted photographs of thin women in bikini bottoms. On September 11th, 2012, MixedMartialArts forum member -FC- shared a compilation of bikini bridge photos. On September 13th, 2012, a Facebook^[10] page titled “Bikini Bridge” was created. On August 1st, 2013, the sports blog Barstool Sports^[13] highlighted several bikini bridge photographs.

Operation Bikini /b/ridge

On January 5th, 2014, 4chan members launched “Operation Bikini Bridge,” in which bikini bridge photos were spread to promote the pose as “the next big thing” while simultaneously denouncing the fad as being an “unhealthy obsession” in social media circles centered around subjects like “thin privilege” and “fat shaming” with the hashtag #BikiniBridge2014.

On the same day, BuzzFeed^[8] highlighted a dozen of bikini bridge photos in the style of the “Just Girly Things” image macros in a post titled “12 Perks of Having a Bikini Bridge.” On the following day, Redditor rdwtoker submitted a post titled “Operation Bikini /b/ridge” to the /r/4chan^[4] subreddit, featuring an Imgur gallery containing photoshopped tweets of celebrities Katy Perry, Pope Francis and Justin Bieber promoting the bikini bridge (shown below).

On January 6th, the women’s fitness blog Blogilates^[7] published an article about the hashtag, which urged women not to base their beauty off of having a thigh gap and included several example photos taken from Instagram (shown below).

The next day, The Daily Mail^[6] published an article in which the bikini bridge is labeled as a “disturbing selfie fad” and compared to the “thigh gap,” a related slang term used to describe a visible gap between a woman’s thighs while standing upright with both knees touching. Also on January 7th, several news sites reported about 4chan’s involvement in the hoax, including The Daily Dot,^[11] Today^[12] and BuzzFeed.^[14] Within the first 48 hours, the hashtag #bikinibridge had been tweeted over 3,400 times according to the Twitter analytics site Topsy.^[5]

Search Interest

External References

About

Dear Girls is a photoshopped image featuring model Cole Mohr in space holding a sign instructing women to not be insecure. The photograph has been criticized for being pseudofeministic and even misogynistic, inspiring a number of parody images reenacting the photo.

Origin

On May 8th, 2011, the Latvian site Spoki^[10] published an image compilation including a photo of fashion model Cole Mohr^[9] edited with an outer space background and a sign which read “Dear Girls / don’t be insecure / you don’t need make-up & nice clothes / you’re all fucking beautiful.”

Spread

On August 8th, 2011, the Mohr photo was posted several times on the microblogging site Tumblr.^[11][12][13] On September 3rd, a Facebook^[1] page for “Dear Girls Don’t Be Insecure U Don’t Need Makeup & Nice Clothes” was created, which received over 1,250 likes within 10 months. On November 2nd, Tumblr user Unbroken Wave^[5]posted several webcam photos of a boy holding signs featuring the same message as the one displayed in Mohr photo (shown below).

On January 23rd, 2012, Tumblr user The Frogman^[8] posted a parody image of the Mohr photo in which he suffocates to death in space (shown below, left). On May 28th, Tumblr user einsteinonacid^[6] posted a response image to the Mohr photo holding a sign which read “Dear boy in outer space, don’t tell me what to do” (shown below, right). Within two weeks, the post received over 150,000 notes.

On May 29th, einsteinonacid’s photo was reposted on the Internet humor sites FunnyJunk^[15] and 9gag.^[7] The same day, Redditor wonderless2686 submitted the photo to the /r/funny^[3] subreddit in a post titled “Dear boy in outer space," receiving over 29,500 up votes and 1,000 comments within 15 days. On June 6th, 2012, Slacktory^[4] editor Nick Douglas published an article titled “Sassing Back Boys With Pseudofeminist Handwritten Signs)”, which featured several parody versions of the Mohr photo.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Lonk, an intentional misspelling of “Link,” is a Nintendo Mii avatar based on the protagonist character from the video game series The Legend of Zelda. Lonk can be seen as a fan-made alter ego of the officially licensed character, in a similar fashion to other corrupted versions of iconic video game and cartoon characters like Sanic (Sonic the Hedgehog), Mayro (Mario) and Dolan (Donald Duck).

Origin

On November 30th, 2013, FunnyJunk^[5] user taintedangel posted a screenshot of a Nintendo Mii character dressed in a green outfit resembling Link from The Legend of Zelda, with a speech bubble identifying himself as “Lonk from Pennsylvania” (shown below).

Spread

On December 2nd, 2013, a Facebook^[3] page titled “Lonk from Pennsylvania” was launched. On December 29th, DeviantArtist piffposh reposted the screenshot of Lonk. On June 10th, 2014, Tumblr^[2] user alternlsdlm reblogged the Lonk from Pennsylvania screenshot, which garnered more than 90,300 notes in the next two months. On July 20th, Tumblr user iguanamouth^[4] posted the Lonk image, a screenshot of a Mii character based off Princess Peach from the Super Mario franchise identified as “Petch from Texas” and an illustration of the two characters (shown below). In the first month, the post received over 260,000 notes.

On July 23rd, the Hello Ask Lonk Tumblr^[7] blog was launched, featuring posts written from the perspective of the Lonk character. On July 25th, Redditor ianelinon submitted the Petch and Lonk screenshots to the /r/gaming^[1] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 3,500 votes (89% upvoted) in three weeks. On July 29th, iguanamouth posted an illustration of a Nintendo Mii avatar named Dankey Kang, a misspelling of the gorilla video game character Donkey Kong (shown below).^[4] The following day, Redditor MBArceus submitted the illustration to the /r/gaming^[8] subreddit, where it gained over 3,400 votes (90% upvoted) in two weeks.

Notable Examples

On Tumblr, many users have uploaded various fan illustrations of the character under the tag “#lonk.”^[9]

Search Interest

External References

About

“I’m So Fresh, You Can Suck My Nuts” is a catchphrase that originated from the song So Fresh by DeAndre Cortez Way that was used in the Brody Quest mashup “Soulja Quest.” The phrase is commonly used in animated GIFs and image macros featuring characters throwing their elbows and torso back and forth.

Origin

The lyric “I’m so fresh you can suck my nuts” originated from the song So Fresh by DeAndre Cortez Way, a.k.a. “Soulja Boy”.^[2] The song was first posted on YouTube on December 18th, 2010, by Youtuber CEOSouljaBoy.^[3] On June 9th, 2011 YouTuber OniMorter^[1] posted a remix of the song titled “SouljaQuest.mp3”, which featured a mash-up of Souljaboy’s “So Fresh” with the main tune of Brodyquest.

Spread

On August 12th, 2011, a thread was posted to the IGN^[10] gaming forums titled “I’m so fresh you can suck my nuts” with a link to the video. On October 28th, the video was posted to the AutoCowrecks FAILblog^[11] page. On August 15th, 2011, the video “fuckshit avenue” by R33MIX^[2] using the various Team Fortress 2 characters was uploaded to YouTube and subsequently posted to Reddit^[7] the following day, and is credited with creating the swaggering movement associated with the image macros. On November 18th, 2011, a My Little Pony remix was submitted to Reddit.^[6]

Derivatives can be found on Tumblr under the tags “#I’m so fresh”^[4] and “#soulja quest.”^[9]. A Facebook page^[5] has accumulated 111 likes as of December 23rd, 2011.

Swag

Animated GIFs and image macros using the catchphrase often include the word “Swag” from the song as well. The top rated Urban Dictionary^[8] definition for “swag” was submitted on July 31st, 2006.

swag: apperance ,style ,or the way he or she presents themselves.
He got a killa swag.

Notable Examples

Images

Video

Search interest

Search queries for “i’m so fresh you can suck my nuts” picked up in August of 2011, 2 months after OniMorter’s “Soulja Quest” remix was released.

External References

About

Subway Porn refers to a series of photoshopped images and original fanart in which explicit content has been censored with submarine sandwiches, making it appear as if the characters are engaging in sexual activities with a sandwich, usually of the Subway brand. This type of Work-Safe Porn was initially used within the Brony fandom to humorously protest against explicit art, but was quickly adapted by other fandoms as a way to humorously censor any image.

Origin

In late 2011, a handful of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fans began including a ponified version of its creator, Lauren Faust (shown below, left), into explicit Rule 34 fan works. These were mostly met with negative comments due to Faust’s iconic status within the fandom, leading other bronies to edit sandwiches in to the fanart in an attempt to stop its creation (shown below, right). Due to the closing of the largest My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic image board Ponibooru in August 2012, many of the original instances of both the Rule 34 images and the edited versions have been lost. The earliest archived image was uploaded to the image board 20% Cooler on October 31st, 2011.^[7]

Spread

During the final months of 2011, Bronies began vulgarizing fanart illustrations of Lauren Faust’s ponified character Fausticorn^[8] with pictures of sandwiches. Soon, cutouts of sandwiches began appearing in safe-for-work fan art^[9][10] images as well, in similar vein of unnecessary censorship.

On December 26th, 2011, the photoshop meme made its way beyond the My Little Pony fandom, when Facepunch forum user Jackald asked other posters to photoshop Subway sandwiches on to scanned images of hentai manga and doujin pages.^[1] As of April 2013, the thread has amassed more than 200 posts worth of contributions. Sometime in early 2012, a Facebook fan page titled Hatsune Miku Troll also launched, which shared a number of hentai manga images censored with sandwiches until its deactivation later that year.

Subway’s Facebook Flooding

On August 15th, 2012, members of the Hatsune Miku Troll Facebook fan page began tagging Subway’s official fan page^[11] in the censored images uploaded to their page, resulting in the sheer volume of tagged images flooding the Subway page. Though the company quickly banned the Hatsune Miku Troll page from posting on the page, Facepunch forum posters^[12] as well as other Facebook users who found the images humorous began uploading their own pieces directly to Subway’s Facebook. A screenshot of the flood of tagged photos (shown below) was quickly shared on the Funny subreddit,^[6] where it gained more then 11,000 upvotes and 1679 points overall before being archived. The event was soon covered by The Daily Dot,^[3] Gawker,^[4] Hypervocal^[5] and Uproxx.^[13] Later that same day, Subway replied that they were aware of the content and began removing it.

Search Interest

Though “Subway Hentai” has been searched for consistently since 2008, there is a large peak of search interest corresponding with the Subway Facebook page flood in August 2012.

External References

About

Bitstrips is a website and app for generating comic strips featuring customizable characters of the creator and their Facebook friends.

History

Bitstrips.com^[1] was registered in April 2007 and the site went into beta (shown below) in February 2008.^[2] The site was created by an artist named Ba from Canada after he found himself spending too much time redrawing his comic characters and sought a way to streamline the execution.^[4] Bitstrips launched the the public in March 2008 after being revealed at that year’s South By Southwest.^[3]

Stop Bullying Comics

At the end of 2008, Bitstrips For Schools^[8] launched, turning the free app into a paid educational tool. On October 3rd, 2011, Bitstrips for Schools partnered with Cartoon Network to launch an anti-bullying campaign in which people could create their own comics to promote awareness of the effects of bullying. As early as October 6th of that year, people began making parody comics with the program known as Stop Bullying Comics, dozens of which were shared across 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr in late 2011.

Facebook App

In October 2012, Bitstrips moved to Facebook, where users could create a character for themselves that would be made available for any of their friends to use while making comics within the app. In early December, the app was seeing approximately 10,000 monthly users but by the end of the month, they began to see more than 110,000 active users (shown below).^[9]

In the first half of 2013, a handful of news sites blogs wrote about the app including ComicVine^[10], The Baltimore Sun^[11], NPR’s All Tech Considered^[12] and Venturebeat^[13], who reported more than 50 million comics had been created by more than 10 million users as of July 2013. That October, the company released a mobile app for iOS and Android that quickly reached the top of the app charts^[7] the week of its release. The week of October 24th, Bitstrips were featured on International Business Times^[14], ABC News^[15] and Business Insider^[16], among many others, causing the app’s servers to go down for a period of time beginning on October 25th.

Traffic

As of October 2013, Bitstrips.com has a a Quantcast^[6] rank of 31,849 in the United States. and an Alexa^[5] score of 5,396 in the Unites States and 32,186 globally. During the week of October 26th, Bitstrips was the top free app for iPhone, iPad and Android.^[7]

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: This entry contains spoilers.

Background

On March 6th, 2012, BioWare’s action RPGMass Effect 3 was released amidst high anticipations from the online gaming communities. The title was heavily promoted through viral marketing campaigns prior to the release, including teaser trailer videos and interactive events between the fans and the game’s production team on social networking sites. The game received critical acclaims from several major game review sites like IGN (9.5 / 10), Game Informer (10 / 10), 1UP (Rated A) and Edge (8 / 10).

However, the cinematic ending of the game was rather poorly received by the fans and became a source of grievances. This is mostly due to the fact that all the choices made by the player over the series boiled down to what color the explosion is in the closing cutscene. As a result, a large outcry over the anticlimactic ending has arisen, mostly stemming from the BioWare forums and social networking groups.

Developments

The controversy over the ending sequence arose one day before the release of the game. On March 5th, 2012, a community poll on the Bioware Social Network^[1] asked what the fans thought of the leaked endings. The response was almost entirely negative. 90% of users voted “The Endings Suck” while only 2% deemed it “Fine As It Is”. The poll has since received 300,000 views and become a focal point of the “Take Back Mass Effect” movement.

On March 9th, YouTuber ImRodyle posted a Hitler reaction commentary video titled “Hitler finds out about Mass Effect 3’s Ending,” expressing anger over BioWare’s ending sequence falling short of the fans’ anticipation.

On March 11th, BioWare forum user Pro5 started another thread titled “Bulleted list of reasons why the finale is getting such reaction,” in which he explained his main reasons in disapproving the Mass Effect 3’s ending sequence. Some of the more notable points included:

No matter what you choose, it feels like a failure (MOSTIMPORTANT, imho).
bq. Decisions throughout the game (and the whole trilogy) have no impact on the ending you get.
bq. It contradicts the established ME1 canon.

Similar sentiments resonated throughout the gaming review blogosphere, with virtually every gaming news site reporting on the growing tension over the game’s ending, including Kotaku’s article “Why Mass Effect 3’s Ending Was So Damn Terrible,”^[5] The Escapist Magazine’s “Why BioWare Shouldn’t Change Mass Effect 3’s Ending”^[6] and GameFront’s “Mass Effect 3 Ending-Hatred: 5 Reasons The Fans Are Right”^[7] among others. In contrast, GameSpot defended BioWare’s decision to stay put with their original work in a column article titled “Why BioWare Shouldn’t Change Mass Effect 3’s Ending.”^[8]

In addition, a Tumblr blog called “Retake Mass Effect”^[2] was launched to provide the latest developments in the fans’ rally against the current ending and a Facebook page titled “Demand a Better Mass Effect Ending”^[3] was created to serve as the hubsite for petitioning for an alternate ending. Meanwhile, the grievances of the fans inevitably resulted in the creation of “Scumbag Bioware” image macro.

Reaction Videos

The outrage over Mass Effect 3’s conclusion did lead to some positive developments, with the fans’ rally against Bioware gaining substantial comic value. The debate quickly spawned hundreds of YouTube reaction videos, often re-contextualizing various clips of celebrities and fictitious characters as their reactions to the game’s ending sequence in typical Downfall style of tongue-in-cheek criticism.

Bioware Responses

Despite the overwhelmingly negative reception of the ending, Bioware initially stood by its decision and proceeded to go forward with multiplayer downloadable-content (DLC) rather than producing an alternate ending as requested by the fans. In an official statement released via official website^[10] on March 16th, the game’s executive producer Casey Hudson insisted that the production team has been always open to suggestions and there will be additional features and improvements available for download in the future. This decision has only served to fan the flames that are already engulfing the company’s Twitter feed.

  

On March 21st, 2012, Bioware co-founder Dr. Ray Muzyka published a blog post to the official Bioware website^[9] in response to the influx of criticisms. In the post, Muzyka claimed that the Mass Effect team had been pooling together data about the reactions to the game and would be working to create additional game content to address the issues which would be revealed in April of 2012.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

“Miley Cyrus Sex Tape” Facebook Scams are phishing schemes on the social networking site Facebook that trick users into authorizing access to spam software programs by using a non-existent sex tape of the pop singer-songwriter Miley Cyrus as bait. The scams began appearing as early as December of 2010 and have continued to resurge in derivative formats.

Background

On December 14th, 2010, the tech news site Tech News Daily^[2] published an article titled “Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Phishing Scam Hits Facebook,” which reported that a phishing scam was using promises of a sex tape featuring Miley Cyrus to trick users into clicking a link in their inbox. The link would take users to a phishing site designed to to collect their Facebook account information, that would in turn post more spam messages to the targeted users’ Facebook friends. Also on December 14th, the scam was reported by the tech news blogs Naked Security^[7] and All Facebook^[5], who posted screenshots of the spam messages (shown below).

Celebrity Sex Tape Scams

Scams and malware programs have a long history of using fake celebrity sex tapes as bait. In September of 2008, a spam email with an attached file claiming to be a sex tape of United States president Barack Obama began circulating that contained several Windows viruses from Eastern Europe. In June of 2009, malware masquerading as a Kim Kardashian sex tape began spreading in messages online. In March of 2011, Smart Water created a commercial titled “Jennifer Aniston Sex Tape” (shown below) as a tongue-in-cheek joke to make the video attract more views. In April of 2012, a scam used a fake Justin Bieber sex tape as bait lure users on the social photo sharing site Pinterest to fill out marketing surveys.

Notable Developments

March 2011 Resurgence

On March 3rd, 2011, All Facebook^[10] published a post titled “Warning: Miley Cyrus Scam Returns to Facebook,” reporting on a new version of the scam using a fake YouTube page prompting viewers to complete a marketing survey to verify their age, which would provide the scammer with a commission payment for each completed survey.

September 2012 Resurgence

In September of 2012, a new spam message titled “Breaking news” (headline is for news reports) began circulating around Facebook with a faked screenshot of Miley Cyrus (shown below, left). After clicking the link, the viewer would be taken to a new page with an instruction to paste a URL into the address bar (shown below, right), which would enable the malware to send additional spam messages from the user’s Facebook account. On September 28th, the scam was reported by the software news website Softpedia,^[8] which provided a screenshot of the scam website (shown below, right).

The same day, the computer security blog Hot For Security^[12] published a post titled “Yet Another Miley Cyrus Sex Tape Kicks Tagjacking Back Into Shape,” crediting the scam’s success with its use of Facebook’s “tagging” feature. On October 1st, the Facebook scam news site Facecrooks^[14] responded to the hack by urging readers to customize their Timeline settings in order to avoid the scamware’s infiltration.^[15] On October 2nd, an entry for “Miley Cyrus ‘Sex Tape’ Facebook Scam” was created on the hoax database website Hoax Slayer^[9] and the scam was reported in an article on NBCNews.^[13]

Search Interest

External References

About

Jack Blankenship’s Face, also simply referred to as The Face, is an oversized cutout of University of Alabama student Jackson Blankenship’s contorted face which he uses during college basketball games as a distraction to the opposing team.

Origin

The first photo of Jackson Blankenship^[4], a freshman at the University of Alabama, and the cutout of his face at a home game against the University of Mississippi was posted to Reddit^[8] on February 4th, 2012. Titled “Distraction done right,” the thread received a score of 1874. Blankenship’s photobombing technique was also featured on ESPN during the broadcast of the game.

In Sports Photobombing

The tradition of bringing oversized heads to sporting events was started by The Show^[15], the student fan group for the San Diego State Aztecs in 2002.^[16] They began with a cutout of Michael Jackson^[18] as a way to distract members of the opposing team during free throws.^[17] The practice was first documented in the December 19th, 2005 issue of ESPN the Magazine.^[22]

The fad spread to Indiana University in 2008^[21], after their coach Tom Crean saw the idea in the ESPN Magazine. At the time, they were the only athletic department in the Big East who owned a jigsaw to cut out the photos. In 2010, students at Syracuse University in New York co-opted the idea, bringing a foam board cutout of the team’s coach, Jim Boeheim, to games.^[19] It debuted on January 25th of that year, inspiring other fans to make heads of players on the team throughout the season.^[20]

Spread

The night of February 14th, Blankenship retweeted the photo from the previous game, telling his followers to look out for him during the upcoming match against the University of Florida. A photo of Blankenship and his cutout at this game was taken by Hal Yeager^[1] and was published on The Birmingham News^[3] site that night. The next morning, Alabama’s state news site, Al.com, reposted it^[2], calling it the Southeastern Conference photo of the year.

Get ready world. We return at 6:00 on <a href="https://twitter.com/ESPN">ESPN</a> <a href="http://t.co/JmZ6MuA1" title="http://twitter.com/jack_____enship/status/169560206307639296/photo/1">twitter.com/jack_____enshi…</a></p>&mdash; Jackson Blankenship (jack_____enship) February 14, 2012

The photo was posted to Reddit^[6] on February 15th, 2012. It received 41,617 upvotes over five days with an overall score of 2812. The same day, it was reposted to Tumblr by cajunboy^[7] and reblogged by The Daily What^[9], causing it to accrue nearly 25,000 notes in five days. It also appeared on Deadspin^[10] that day. On the 16th, the photo was featured on ESPN^[11], Yahoo! Sports^[12], and the Hollywood Gossip.^[13]

Interview with Blankenship

In an interview with a local CBS news station, Blankenship stated he has been making the face since the age of 13 when he and his friends began using it as an inside joke.^[5] Previous to the February 2012 sightings, Blankenship had been seen making the face in the crowd of the Today Show in April 2010, but did not have the cutout.

Just doing #TheFace on the Today show (April 2010) twitter.com/jack_____enshi…

— Jackson Blankenship (@jack_____enship) February 16, 2012

Al.com^[14] caught up with Blankenship on the 17th in a video interview, during which he explained exactly how he makes the face.

On Twitter

Search Interest

Search for Jack Blankenship peaked on February 16th, 2012, two days after the photo was taken.

External References

About

Black Twitter is an online social movement made of people of African American descent using the microblogging and social networking site Twitter.

Origin

The earliest known use of the term “Black Twitter” was in the title of an article titled “Black Twitter: A Starter Kit,” which was published on the African American culture online magazine The Root^[3] on February 4th, 2010. The article contained useful tips for using Twitter, arguing that the black community is a “powerful force” on the microblogging site.

Brown Twitter Bird

Brown Twitter Bird is a cartoon character and Twitter hashtag inspired by a controversial Slate article published on August 10th, 2010. The article featured an illustration of a Twitter bird with brown feather and a blue baseball cap with a hashtag printed on it (shown below, left), which many regarded as stereotypical and offensive. In response, many Twitter users made parody versions of the image, dressing the bird in a variety of different costumes (shown below, middle, right).

Spread

On January 18th, 2011, The Root^[6] published an article titled “Black Twitter: Trending Topics Paint the Wrong Picture,” reporting that black people make up 25% of all Twitter users. On December 13th, the African American news site News One^[5] published a “Black Twitter History” infographic (shown below).

In March of 2012, writer Kimberly Ellis (a.k.a. “Dr. Goddess”) held a presentation at the South by Southwest (SXSW)^[7] conference in Austin, Texas titled “The Bombastic Brilliance of ‘Black Twitter’.” On December 20th, the men’s interest blog Complex^[8] published an article about negative misconceptions associated with Black Twitter. On February 18th, 2013, the black men’s interest blog Single Black Male^[4] published an article about the different types of Black Twitter users. On May 31st, the viral content site BuzzFeed^[2] published a list titled “8 Things You’ll Find on Black Twitter,” which provided examples of tweets from Black Twitter. On the same day, The Huffington Post Live aired a segment on Black Twitter (shown below).

On July 16th, BuzzFeed^[1] published an article about the role Black Twitter played in killing the book deal for one of the jurors in George Zimmerman‘s trial. On the following day, CNN aired a segment on "The Influence of ’Black Twitter’," citing its involvement in the Trayvon Martin trial (shown below).

#WhitePeopleBoycottingEBONY

On August 7th, 2013, Ebony Magazine posted a tweet^[9] mocking rumors that Tea Party activists would be boycotting the magazine for their September cover dedicated to the memory of Trayvon Martin (shown below). The same day, News One^[10] reported that jokes about the rumored boycott subsequently circulated on the microblogging site under the hashtag “#WhitePeopleBoycottingEBONY.”^[11]

Search Interest

External References

About

The Barber, also known as Just Fuck Me Up, is a series of captioned images featuring photographs of people with botched haircuts or bold hairstyles and transcripts of mock conversations between the subject and their barber.

Origin

On August 13th, 2012, rapper Tyler, The Creator posted a tweet mocking Miley Cyrus’ new short haircut, joking that the pop star requested her stylist to “fuck me up real quick” (shown below). The following day, Cyrus responded to the tweet by insulting the rapper’s face but complimenting his music (shown below).^[9] The tweets were subsequently deleted.

Spread

On June 7th, 2014, Twitter user @TheHuzlers^[4] posted a photograph of the back of a man’s freshly-shaved head with the message “Nigga sat at the barber chair and said ‘Just fuck me up bruh’” (shown below). On June 20th, 2014, Twitter user tf_i_looklike^[5] reposted the same photograph, which accumulated more than 10,700 retweets and 5,600 favorites over eight months.

On December 11th, Twitter user @RiqqiXNX^[1] tweeted a photograph of an advertisement for Cleveland-based dentist Gino DiGiannantonio,^[8] along with a mock conversation between DiGiannantonio and his barber (shown below, left). In three months, the tweet gathered over 5,400 favorites and 4,600 retweets. On the same day, the @WorldStarFunny^[10] Twitter feed posted a photograph of a man with a circular haircut blended into his facial hair with the caption “he sat in the barber’s chair and just said ‘fuck my whole life up fam’” (shown below, right). In three months, the tweets gathered over 4,600 and 7,100 retweets respectively.

On December 15th, Redditor DickHardwoodJohnson submitted a screenshot of the DiGiannantonio tweet to the /r/funny^[7] subreddit, where it received upwards of 4,900 votes (96% upvoted) and 1,900 comments in two months. On December 17th, the /r/justfuckmyshitup^[6] subreddit was launched for notable examples of the captioned image meme. On February 12th, 2015, the @BarberPosts^[2] Twitter feed was launched, which highlights notable photographs of botched haircuts accompanied by mock barber conversations. On February 19th, Urban Dictionary^[3] user holiday1432 submitted an entry for “Just fuck me up,” defining it as “putting the fate of your hair into someone else’s hands.” On February 25th, the men’s interest blog Brobible^[11] published a compilation of notable examples of the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Homer Backs Into Things is a reaction GIF taken from a scene in the animated comedy series The Simpsons in which the main character, Homer Simpson, steps back into a hedge until he is no longer visible. The GIF is used to express embarrassment, and has been frequently edited so Simpson disappears into other things.

Origin

On March 17th, 1994, an episode of The Simpsons titled “Homer Loves Flanders” first aired. In the scene captured in the reaction GIF Homer asks his neighbors the Flanders if they want to hang out with him. When they say they don’t, Homer responds by saying, “Oh, ok,” before disappearing into the bushes. The scene appeared as a reaction GIF as early as December 8th, 2010 on GIFGarage.^[1]

Spread

On November 5th, 2012, Tumblr blog kompajunior^[6] published a template of the GIF which erased the hedge, allowing others to edit other images into its place.

On November 6th, 2012 UpRoxx^[4] published a post titled “Homer Backs Into Things Is The GIF Theme We Need Right Now,” which featured several edited versions of the GIFs showing Homer disappearing into other items like pizza and french fries. The GIF was included as one of the 37 GIFs exhibited at the Museum of Moving Images^[2] in Queens, New York, from March 12th, 2014, to May 15th, 2014. On June 13th, 2014, Redditor OSUperson added a thread titled “I made a Homer Backing Into Things generator. Can anyone come up with some funny ones?” to the Simpsons subreddit^[3] which featured a link to the generator^[11] which allows users to upload an image file to replace the hedge within the GIF. The generator was featured on several sites including On The Media^[5] and The Journal.^[7]

Related Memes

Fair Weather Fans

A four paneled reaction image featuring Homer disappearing into the hedge, then coming back out has been used to portray sports fans who begin routing for the winning team as their original team begins to lose. The concept was first used online during the 2014 Superbowl, the image set featuring Homer wearing a Broncos jersey going into the hedge and emerging with a Seattle Seahawks jersey was included in a post titled “The 25 Funniest Broncos Super Bowl Memes” published on TotalProSports^[8] on February 4th, 2014. The image set was applied to Canadian basketball in a post published by RaptorsCage^[9] published on April 8th, 2014. The meme was also applied to the 2014 soccer World Cup, appearing in a post published by the Daily Mail^[10] on June 20th, 2014.

Notable Examples

External References

About

Gravity Falls is an American animated Disney television series created by Alex Hirsch about two pre-teen twins, Dipper and Mabel Pines, and their adventures on a summer vacation at their Great Uncle Stan’s house in Gravity Falls, Oregon.

Premise

The show follows 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper (voiced by Jason Ritter) and Mabel Pines (voiced by Kristen Schaal) on summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. During this time, they live with their great “Grunkle” Stan (voiced by series creator Alex Hirsch), owner of The Mystery Shack, a museum and tourist trap. The twins quickly discover the town’s mysterious history, and along with the Mystery Shack’s employees Soos (also voiced by Hirsch) and Wendy (voiced Linda Cardellini), they set to uncover the town’s secrets.

Mysteries and Cryptography

One of the most well known elements of the show is the large amount of secret or hidden content seen in the show which adds to the “mystery” theme of the show. Fans are quick to decipher and uncover these elements, with many videos and posts on blogs, forums and Youtube about their findings. Secret coded messages are seen during the credits of each episode, with the message either referring to the episode itself or a future/upcoming episode.

Near the end of the opening credits, a whispering message can be heard. When played backwards, this voice can be heard to say “three letters back”, a guide to decoding the decrypted messages found at the end of each episode. Starting with episode 7, a new voice appeared in the opening credits, this one saying “Switch A and Z”, the new method used to decode the secret messages.

History

After a preview on June 15, 2012, the show made its on-air debut on June 29th. The show was created by Alex Hirsch who also voices several characters on the show.

Reception

Gravity Falls’ first season earned a rating of 8.5 on IMDB^[1]. The season premiere had viewers 3.4 million viewers, while the season finale had 3.2 million viewers.^[2][3] The show was renewed for a second season on July 29th, 2013.^[4]

Accolades

The show was nominated for a 2013 Teen Choice Award for Choice Animated show, a 2013 Kid’s Choice Award for Favorite Animated Animal Sidekick (Waddles), and won a 2013 Annie Award for Voice Acting in an Animated Television or Other Broadcast Venue Production (Kristen Schaal).

Online Presence

Though Gravity Falls has no official social media presence, as of March 2014, its Facebook show page^[10] has over 45,000 likes. From August 21st, 2012 to May 30, 2013, Gravity Falls ran a series of sponsered posts on Buzzfeed^[12] that included content directly related to the show (“17 Gravity Falls GIFs To Brighten Up Your Day”) and content that matched the spirit of the show (“12 Characters Who Had The Best Creature Friends”). Show extras and clips can be found on Disney Channel’s official YouTube channel.^[11]

Fandom

There are numerous fan sites offering news about the show including the Gravity Falls channel on Fan Pop^[13] and the Gravity Falls Wikia^[14]. There are several Tumblr blogs dedicated to the show, such as fuckyeahgravityfalls^[5], gravityfalls^[6], and heckyeahgravityfalls.^[7] As of March 2014, the Fanfiction.net^[8] page for the show has more than 1,700 submissions and DeviantArt^[9] has over 32,000 submissions tagged Gravity Falls.

Parapines

Parapines is the name used to describe fanfiction and fan art which feature crossovers between Gravity Falls and the stop-motion animated film Paranorman. Their frequent crossovers have been attributed to their close premiere dates (Paranoman was released on August 17th, 2012, about two months after the show premiered). They also both deal with children dealing with supernatural forces. Fan artists often cross the show with other fantasy series such as Doctor Who and Supernatural.

Related Memes

Paper Jam Dipper

In the 7th episode of the series titled “Double Dipper,” which aired on August 10, 2012, Dipper creates a number of clones of himself with the use of a magical photocopier. During the printing of one of these clones, the machine suffers a paper-jam, causing the creation of the deformed Paper Jam Dipper.

Despite his limited screen time (the character dies before the end of the episode), the character became very popular with fans, with a number of pieces of fan-arts and other fan-works based on the character.

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell

Dipper Goes To Taco Bell is a fanfic which takes place in the universe of the 2012 animated cartoon series Gravity Falls. The story and its contents became notorious within the fanbase for its highly gore-filled narrative. It is often compared to other notorious shockfics from the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom such as Cupcakes and Sweet Apple Massacre.

Still Shots & GIFs

Search Interests

External References

About

Russian Sleep Experiment is a creepypasta story about a purported experiment performed by Russian scientists in the 1940s in which prison inmates were gassed to test the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation.

Origin

On August 8th, 2009, the Rip747 Wordpress^[12] blog posted the “Russian Sleep Experiment” story, claiming to have received the creepypasta in an email from his brother. The story describes an experiment performed on five Russian prison inmates who are exposed to an experimental stimulant gas that keeps them from falling asleep with the promise that they would be set free if they remain awake for 30 days.

Spread

On August 20th, 2009, Body Building Forums^[10] member FalconPunch submitted the story to the site’s “Misc” board. On August 16th, 2010, a page for the story was created on The Creepypasta Wiki.^[2] On November 24th, 2011, YouTuber MrCreepyPasta uploaded a reading of the story, which received upwards of 640,000 views and 5,800 comments in the next three years (shown below).

On October 26th, 2012, Redditor Griffin23 submitted a link to the story to the /r/WTF^[11] subreddit, where it gained over 1,700 votes (84% upvoted) prior to being archived. On March 7th, 2013, the single-serving site RussianSleepExperiment.com^[9] was launched, which contains the full text of the creepypasta story. On August 28th, Snopes^[8] listed the Russian Sleep Experiment as “False.” On October 1st, YouTuber IReadCreepyPastas uploaded a video in which he reads the story over a slideshow of black and white photographs (shown below). In the first year, the video garnered more than 11 million views and 18,000 comments.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Paul Christoforo Ocean Marketing Emails refers to an email exchange between a customer known as “Dave” and Paul Christoforo, the president of the public relations (PR) firm Ocean Marketing. The firm was contracted to handle customer relations for the Avenger Controller. a video game controller attachment popular among disabled gamers that allows the top facing buttons to be pressed without lifting their thumb from the analog stick.

Christoforo became notorious online after an email exchange was made public in which he responded to a customer with poor spelling, grammar and lack of professionalism. Some of the most often quoted Christoforo’s responses include “welcome to the Internet”, “son Im 38 I wwebsite as on the internet when you were a sperm in your daddys balls and before it was the internet” and “maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself.”

Background

From December 16th to the 26th of 2011, a man known as “Dave” shared a series of email exchanges with Paul Christoforo, a representative of the PR firm Ocean Marketing. In the exchange, Dave requested the details of a pair of PlayStation 3 Avenger controllers for which he had paid the full price 2 months prior to release. Christoforo replied with the date “Dec 17” without providing any other information.

As Dave became frustrated with Christoforo’s responses, he pointed out that the item he pre-ordered was being sold at a lower price. Christoforo responds by telling Dave to “put on your big boy hat and wait it out like everyone else” and threatens to cancel his order and sell the controller on eBay for $150.

Dave responds with an email criticizing Christoforo’s language and professionalism, and laments that he still does not know if he will be receiving the controllers by Christmas after paying full price.

Christoforo responded by revealing that Dave’s complaints did not matter and bragged about knowing editors at several gaming and tech blogs including Kotaku, IGN and Engadget.

Penny Arcade

Penny Arcade^[1] posted the emails on December 26th, 2011 and included several additional emails between Penny Arcade’s artist Mike Krahulik and Christoforo. In the emails, Krahulik informs Christoforo that Ocean Marketing is no longer welcome at Penny Arcade’s gaming conference PAX and Christoforo responds by claiming Krahulik doesn’t have the power to keep him out of PAX.

Developments

On December 27th, the story was reported on several tech and gaming blogs including Destructoid ^[2], Gameranx ^[3], Nukezilla ^[4], GamerFront ^[5] and TechCrunch ^[6]. Additionally, the emails were mentioned on various web forums including ScrewAttack ^[7], SLUniverse ^[8] and Neogaf ^[9]. The Examiner^[23] published an article revealing that the Ocean Marketing website plagarized several articles on their official blog “with little to no attribution of sources whatsoever.” The same day, several threads reached the front page of the r/gaming subreddit.^[12][28][29] On December 28th, the single topic blog oceanmarketing.cheezburger.com^[30] was created. Additionally, advice-animal image macros spawned on Quickmeme^[26] and Meme Generator^[27] using a photo of Christoforo from the Ocean Marketing Twitter^[17] account accompanied by quotes from the various email exchanges.

On Twitter

Tweets mocking and expressing outrage toward Ocean Marketing picked up during the evening on December 27th according to Trendistic^[24] Twitter analytics. The insurance company Geico referenced one of Christoforo’s email responses in a tweet sent on December 27th. A screenshot of the tweet was subsequently posted to Reddit^[25] the same day, and accumulated over 8,500 up votes within 20 hours.

Aftermath

Following the release of the email exchange on December 26th, the company’s Twitter account name was first changed from “@OceanMarketting” ^[16] to “@OceanStratagy”^[17] before being changed again to “@OceanDeepSea.” The company’s YouTube channel^[13] received a large number of dislikes for each video uploaed, with the most disliked being the “PAX 2011 East- The Avenger Controller – Review” that accumulated nearly 1,000 dislikes in 24 hours. An email was posted to Reddit^[12] claiming that Ocean Marketing would no longer be responsible for marketing the Avenger products on December 27th.

Amazon Page

The Avenger PS3 Controller’s Amazon^[10] page received 284 1-star reviews within 2 days of the emails being published, with most reviews citing the poor treatment of customers by Ocean Marketing. On December 27th, a Reddit thread titled “N-Control reviewers begin to hit Amazon”^[20] hit the front page and accumulated over 3,000 up votes within 24 hours.

IGN Reaction

On December 27th, Scott Lowe, Executive Editor of the gaming electronics blog IGN Tech, sent a tweet^[18] directed to @OceanMarketting disavowing any support for Ocean Marketing. Christoforo responded with a now deleted tweet directed at Scott Lowe calling him a “douchebag” and using a grammatically incorrect form of “you’re.”

Apologies

On December 27th, an additional email was published on Pastebin^[22] that featured Christoforo apologizing to Dave for his attitude during the emails:

The same day, Mike (also known as “Gabe”) from Penny Arcade^[14] claimed to have received an additional 3 emails from Christoforo. The first email warned Mike that he would be hearing from Ocean Marketing’s attorneys, the second asked if Mike could stop the attacks Ocean Marketing had been receiving and the final email contained a formal apology from Christoforo to Mike.

GameTrailers Interview

On January 3rd, 2012, video-game media website, GameTrailers ^[31] posted a promotional video for an interview between GameTrailer’s Geoff Keighley and Paul Christoforo that will be uploaded on January 5th, 2012 ^[32].

External References

About

“Drake The Type Of…” is a series of fan-written factoids that are presented as the personality traits of the Canadian rapper Drake.^[1] Typically iterated in the form of tweets, comments and image macros, the series is meant to poke fun at the rapper’s stage persona as being emotionally sensitive and even effeminate, which goes against the alpha male stereotype that is still prevalent in hip hop.

Origin

The earliest known tweet to feminize the rapper’s persona with the phrase “Drake the type of” was posted by @DJ_BERN^[2] on April 14th, 2011. Though it is unclear to whom the tweet was addressed, DJ Bern joked that Drake is the type of person who would challenge the traditional gender roles by letting his girlfriend propose to him.

Spread

Between 2011 and early 2013, “Drake The Type Of” factoids continued to spread on Twitter^[3], Tumblr^[4] and Instagram.^[5] On June 17th, 2013, YouTuber MeechOnMars compiled a number of these jokes into a YouTube video (shown below).

On June 22nd, a compilation thread of “Drake the Type of…” jokes was submitted to the Lil Wayne HQ Forums^[6], yielding more than 25 responses from the readers. On July 25th, the single topic Tumblr blog Drake the Type…^[7] was launched with screenshots of similar jokes taken from the comment sections of World Star Hip Hop (shown below, left). On July 29th, another single topic Tumblr^[8] was launched with a series of image macros featuring various “Drake the Type of” tweets and comments in the style of Just Little Things blogs (shown below, right).

On July 31st, the Twitter account @DrakeTheTypeOf^[9] was launched, accruing nearly 3,200 followers in the next three months, and on August 1st, the Instagram account DrakeTheTypeOf^[10] was created. On August 8th, the first Facebook fan page^[11] dedicated to the series was created, accumulating more than 22,000 likes in a month and a half. On August 14th, Buzzfeed^[12] posted a compilation of 16 “Drake The Type Of” tweets, each accompanied by a photoshopped image of the rapper (shown below).

By August 21st, the jokes had begun appearing on 4chan^[13] and Reddit.^[14] The same day, a second Facebook fan page^[15] was created, gaining more than 184,000 likes in slightly more than one month. Also in August, a discussion thread titled “Drake is the type of…” was posted on the Rap Genius forum^[16], attracting dozens of responses. On September 15th, Twitter accounts @DrizzyThatType^[17] and @DrakeeTheType^[19] posted their first tweets, gaining 166,000 followers and 11,000 followers, respectively, in less than two weeks. On September 25th, Tumblr user fromtheinnersoul^[18] posted a compilation of tweets from @DrizzyThatType, racking up more than 27,000 notes in 24 hours.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Woody Harrelson Reddit AMA refers to an “ask me anything” (AMA) thread that was submitted to the social news aggregation site Reddit by American actor Woody Harrelson. The thread became infamous after a Redditor made claims that Harrelson took one of his classmate’s virginity years before to which Harrelson responded by insisting he only answering questions related to the movie Rampart which he was promoting.

Background

On February 3rd, 2012, an AMA post titled “I’m Woody Harrelson, AMA”^[1] was submitted to the /r/IAmA subreddit by user iamwoodyharrelson.

Hi Reddit, it’s Woody here. I’m in New York today doing interviews for my new film RAMPART, which opens in theaters on February 10th. I’ll be checking in from 3-4EST today and will get to as many of your questions as I can, so start asking now! Be back soon.

The official @Rampart_Movie^[3] Twitter account was used as verification:

Big news!Woody Harrelson will do an IAMA on @Reddit this Friday afternoon.Get your questions ready, its going to be a GREAT one.

— Rampart (@Rampart_Movie) January 31, 2012

Andy Rooney’s Claim

Redditor AndyRooney replied to the thread claiming that Harrelson crashed his high school prom party and slept with one of his classmates. He updated the post with a series of animated GIFs outlining the story. His post quickly became the top voted comment in the thread, with many Redditors replying that his story was amusing.

IamWoodyHarrelson’s Response

Harrelson replied to Andy Rooney’s question claiming the story was not true followed by “lets focus on the film people.” Redditor bersh pointed out Harrelson’s insistence to only answer questions about the film he was promoting, despite using the thread topic Ask Me Anything.

Meanwhile, other Redditors^[10] began speculating that the identity behind Redditor IamWoodyHarrelson may not be the actor himself but one of his PR agents. However, the claim has not been confirmed.

Developments

A Quickmeme^[2] page for “Scumbag Woody Harrelson” was created shortly after the AMA thread was submitted. Many of the image macros parodied Harrelson’s attempts to focus his answers on his new movie Rampart and the allegations that he took a young girl’s virginity after crashing a prom several years before. The page accumulated over 50 submissions in 3 days.

The following day, a post titled “Look, Woody! You’re on Urban Dictionary” was submitted to the /r/funny^[9] subreddit which included a screenshot of an Urban Dictionary submission for the word “rampart.”

Rampart: To have sex with and then never call again.
Did you hear about Woody Harrelson ramparting that girl’s virginity at her high school prom?

YouTube uploads of trailers for Rampart began being disliked in large numbers following the posting. Within 3 days the official upload of the trailer had 236 likes to 194 dislikes.

On Februrary 4th, the New York Observer^[4] posted an article criticizing Harrelson’s handling of the AMA and posted select comments from the thread. On February 6th, the story was picked up by The Huffington Post^[5], Forbes^[7], UpRoxx^[6] and Perez Hilton.^[8] The Daily Dot^[11] and Mediate^[12] also posted articles describing Harrelson’s AMA thread as disasters.

Search Interest

Search query volume for “woody harrelson” rose significantly on February 3rd following his AMA posting.

External References

About

Westboro Baptist Church is an American church founded by Pastor Fred Phelps known for promoting anti-gay and anti-Semitic views. The church often organizes protests in which members hold signs reading “God Hates Fags” and praising various tragedies and disasters.

Online History

Funeral Picketing

The group has been known to attend daily picketing in Topeka and travel nationally to protest at the funerals of select individuals, including several gay victims of hate crime or AIDS-related deaths, war veterans who were killed during service and even victims of natural disasters and tragic massacres. The church has been involved in anti-gay movements since 1991 when Fred Phelps launched “The Great Gage Park Decency Drive,” picketing a park in Topeka, Kansas where he believed homosexuals were meeting to have sex.^[40] In October 1998, the church gained national attention after protesting the funeral of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard. As of March 2009, the church claims to have participated in over 41,000 protests in over 650 cities since 1991.

GodHatesFags.com

On the web, the church’s messages are mainly spread through the provocatively titled website GodHatesFags.com^[2], registered on January 22nd, 1997.

The church has launched several sister sites as well, including GodHatesAmerica.com^[4] (registered May 20th, 1999), GodHatesTheWorld.com^[3] (registered January 18th, 2005), AmericaIsDoomed.com^[5] (registered July 31st, 2005, now defunct), PriestsRapeBoys.com^[6] (registered July 31st, 2005), BeastObama.com^[7] (registered December 21st, 2008) SignMovies.com^[8] (registered April 5th, 2009), JewsKilledJesus.com^[9] (registered April 23rd, 2009), GodHatesIslam.com^[10] (registered September 22nd, 2010) and GodHatesTheMedia.com^[11] (registered November 9th, 2010). As of December 27th, 2012, the @GodHatesFagsWBC Twitter^[1] account has accumulated nearly 4,000 followers.

Death of Fred Phelps

On March 16th, 2014, Nate Phelps, a former member of Westboro Baptist Church and the son of the founder Fred Phelps, posted a Facebook status update^[51] saying that his father was “on the edge of death” at a hospital in Topeka Kansas. In addition to this news, Phelps also revealed that his father was ex-communicated from the church back in August 2013, following an alleged fallout with the board of male elders over the treatment of fellow church members.

Nate Phelps’ status update was quickly picked up by U.S. news outlets^[52] and spread across Twitter^[55] and Reddit^[53][54], where many critics of the church reacted to the news with enthusiasm, some of whom went as far as to suggest a protest event at the founder’s funeral service, while others urged against taking an-eye-for-an-eye approach. On March 19th, shortly before midnight, Phelps died of congestive heart failure.

Notable Episodes

March 2006: Snyder vs. Phelps

Westboro members have been protesting military funerals since as early as 2005, when protests were held at public funerals for slain soldiers in Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado and Idaho^[29], claiming these deaths are caused by America’s tolerance of homosexuality. On March 10th, 2006, members of the church picketed the funeral of U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder after he was killed in a car accident while serving overseas. In addition to the protest, the church condemned his parents for raising their son as a Catholic, claiming that they “raised him for the devil.” His father, Albert Snyder, sued Fred Phelps, two of his daughters and the church itself for defamation, intrusion upon seclusion, publicity given to private life, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.^[30] On October 31st, 2007, the jury awarded Snyder a combination of $10.9 million dollars in various damages, which was overturned in an appeal by the church on September 24th, 2009. Since the church’s signs were considered hyperbolic and figurative expression rather than actual facts, which is covered under the First Amendment right to free speech, in October 2010, the courts ordered Snyder to pay the legal fees for the Church, amounting in $16,510.^[31]

The final decision in the case was made in March 2011 when the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the hateful speech of the Westboro Baptist Church was protected under the First Amendment.^[32] However, in August 2012, The Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act^[33] was signed into law, providing a slew of new benefits to veterans, including a provision on funeral protests. Under this law, protests may not take place two hours before or after a funeral service and they must be held at least 300 feet away.^[34] Violating this would lead to up to $50,000 in statutory damages.

February 2011: Feud with Anonymous

On February 16th, 2011, an open letter^[35] to the members of Westboro Baptist Church was posted to AnonNews asking them to cease their protesting and close their websites. This came on the heels of the church’s announcement^[36] that they would be picketing the funerals of the six people killed in Arizona^[37] during a shooting that also critically injured Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Two days later, a second open letter^[38] was posted to AnonNews claiming that Westboro congregants had written the first letter themselves as a trap for WBC to steal IP addresses.^[39] Despite this, Westboro responded on the 19th telling Anonymous to bring it. On the 24th, a masked hacker appeared on the David Pakman Show with Shirley Phelps (shown below) in which he continued to claim WBC drafted the first letter to themselves while hacking the website during the segment.

December 2012: Connecticut School Massacre

Following the Connecticut School Massacre on December 14th, 2012, Westboro Baptist Church leader Margie Phelps tweeted at United States President Barack Obama that gay marriage was to blame for the shooting.

President Beast @barackobama! Stop the phony tears!You brought this mayhem! STOPMARRYINGFAGS! God is not joking! You’ve brought His wrath.

— MargiePhelps (@MargieJPhelps) December 14, 2012

Also on that same day, church representative Shirley Phelps-Roper announced via Twitter that the church planned to picket the Sandy Hook Elementary School to praise God for the shooting. Two days later, Phelps-Roper’s Twitter was hacked by someone claiming to be Twitter user @CosmoTheGod.

This account is now being ran by @cosmothegod#UGNazi#oops

— Cosmo (@DearShirley) December 17, 2012

The same day, a Pastebin^[12] was created containing the personally identifiable information of several church members. On December 17th, Gawker^[17] published an article reporting that Anonymous had launched #OpWestboro to attack the Westboro Baptist Church and its members. The article noted that several church members’ credit card numbers had been leaked and that Cosmo the God had violated his parole in order to take over Phelps-Roper’s Twitter account. On December 21st at 6 PM EST Anonymous members issued a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on godhatesfags.com followed by pizza orders, prank phone calls and fax spam causing the group to disconnect many of their phone lines.^[22] However, the group announced this was not the end of #OpWestboro, directing people to a Twitter account^[23] for further news.

Anti-WBC White House Petition

On December 14th, 2012, largely in response to the church’s announcement of a picketing rally at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a petition was created on the White House “We the People”^[13] website calling for the Westboro Baptist Church to be recognized by the government as a hate group, which amassed over 155,000 signatures in the first 72 hours. By December 27th, the petition received more than 270,000 signatures, making it the most popular movement ever on the site.^[18] Two days after the hate group petition launched, three separate petitions^[19][20][21] asking for the government to investigate and revoke the church’s tax exempt status were created. As of December 27th, each one has exceeded the 25,000 signatures necessary for government acknowledgement with more than 172,000 signatures combined.

Counter-Protests

December 2008: Phelps-A-Thon

Following a Westboro threat to protest a December 2008 Boston production of The Laramie Project, a play about the reaction to Matthew Shepard’s murder, activist Chris Mason launched a telethon-style protest where people can pledge online to donate money for every minute members of the Westboro Baptist Church actually protest. On December 12th, both groups gathered outside of the theatre (shown below) while people were able to donate online.^[24] By the time the play began, the Phelps-A-Thon raised more than $4600, with nearly $800 of that coming from people at the theater.^[25] Following the success of the counter protest, high schools in Missouri^[26], Savannah, GA^[27] and Boulder, CO^[28] held their own Phelps-A-Thons to subvert Westboro protests in their areas.

Rainbow Home Painting

On March 19th, 2013, The Huffington Post^[50] reported that Aaron Jackson, a founder of the charity group Planting Peace, painted a house directly across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church compound in the style of a rainbow gay pride flag (shown below). The project was referred to as the “Equality House” to protest the church’s stance against homosexuality.

Facebook Brandjacking

On April 17th, 2013, Redditor grink submitted a post titled “Westboro Baptist Church’s Facebook Page Hacked by Anonymous” to the /r/funny^[41] subreddit, featuring screenshots of a Facebook page titled “Westboro Baptist Church” with a logo associated with the hacker group Anonymous (shown below). In the first three months, the post gained over 5,700 up votes and 250 comments.

The same day, several news sites reported that the Facebook page had been hacked, including The Washington Times,^[42] Heavy^[43] and The Frisky.^[44] Shortly after, the news sites The Daily Dot^[45] and NBC News^[46] reported that the page had never been owned by the Westboro Baptist Church and was merely an example of “brandjacking,” a practice that involves assuming the online identity of another entity.

Same-Sex Ceremony

On July 14th, 2013, members of the New-York-based Satanic Temple visited the grave site of the mother of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps to perform a ceremony between two same-sex couples (shown below). On July 17th, the metal news site The Gauntlet^[49] published an article with the Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves, who claimed the “Pink Mass” ceremony made Phelp’s mother a lesbian in the afterlife. On the following day, the ceremony was reported on by the new sites Gawker^[47] and IBI Times.^[48]

Reputation

The church has been widely criticized for its outspoken views and high profile picketing stunts. According to the non-profit news blog Nonprofit Quarterly,^[14] political commentator Bill O’Reilly has called the church “evil” and “despicable.” The Anti-Defamation League^[15] has labeled the church “virulently homophobic” and accused its members of being anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-American and racist. The church has been labeled as a “hate group” by the nonprofit civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center.^[16]

Search Interest

External References

About

“Bitch I’m Fabulous” is an expression used to convey self-confidence and a sense of superiority. Usually superimposed over images of animals or people preening, the phrase is used to shut down an argument, in a similar vein to haters gonna hate and I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Origin

The first use of the phrase “bitch I’m fabulous” online was on September 15th, 2007, when Blogspot^[1] blog bitchimfabulous published its first post. The first image macro featuring the phrase was a photo of a pomerian puppy and was uploaded to imgfave^[6] on January 3rd, 2011.

Spread

The hashtag #bitchimfabulous^[2] first appeared on Twitter on November 6th, 2010 in a Tweet by @MeggzzBxtch^[3].

@MeggzzBxch used the hashtag again on November 23rd, 2011, and on December 8th, 2010, before it was used on Twitter by a second user, @MoisesAreRed^[8] on December 15th, 2010.

On November 27th, 2011, an image of a dog fluffing its fur with the phrase superimposed over it was uploaded to WeKnowMemes.^[7] As of March 2014, the image has been shared across social media over 3,900 times.

On November 9th, 2012, the Facebook^[5] page “Bitch, I’m Fabulous” was created. As of March 2014, the page has over 1,000 likes. On November 12th, 2012, YouTuber SimGretina^[4] uploaded a video featuring Club 69’s song “Diva” titled “Bitch I’m Faboulous.” As of March 2014, the video has gained over 92,000 views.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Owling refers to the act of sitting in a perched position while looking off into the distance as to mimic the posture of an owl. The fad was created as a response to another photo fad called “planking”.

Origin

A thread was posted to Reddit^[1] on July 11th, 2011, entitled “Seems to be an increase in planking photos, so…” featuring a demotivational stye image macro of a woman perched on railing with the caption “OWLING because planking is so two months ago”.

Spread

On July 12th, 2011, the story was posted on Salon^[2], HuffPo Urlesque^[9], NowPublic^[4]. and BuzzFeed^[5], even spawning a few user-generated images on Tumblr^[6] and Reddit.^[7]

The first Urban Dictionary^[8] definition was created the same day:

The act of displaying oneself on-top of miscellaneous objects in a sitting position while holding your knees. Let’s go owling tonight on-top of signs!

Search

Search queries for “owling” increased dramatically on July 12th, the day after the first Reddit post.

Examples

External Links

^[1]Reddit – Seems to be an increase in planking photos, so…

^[2]Salon – Owling is the new planking, and other made-up trends

^[3]Huffington Post – Owling Is The Squatter’s Answer To

^[4]NowPublic – Owling: The New Planking?

^[5]BuzzFeed – Owling is the New Planking

^[6]Tumblr – #owling

^[7]Reddit – owling

^[8]Urban Dictionary – owling