About

Doom is a first-person shooter video game series created by id Software. In the game, the player assumes the role of a space marine who fights against hordes of demons to thwart an invasion from Hell.

History

The first title in the Doom series, Doom, was released on December 10, 1993.^[1] On September 30th, 1994, a second installment, Doom II: Hell on Earth, was released.^[1] On August 3rd, 2004, Doom 3 was released, which takes place in a separate story arc from the previous titles.^[1] On October 20th, 2005, the motion picture Doom was released. On October 12th, 2012, a remake of Doom 3 titled Doom 3: BFG Edition was released.

Doom 4

In May 2008, Doom 4 was officially announced as being in production by id Software, though without any detailed information on the scheduled release date of the title. Since the initial announcement, the production of the game has reportedly faced numerous setbacks, with Bethesda Softworks stepping in as the new publisher of the game in 2011. On February 19th, 2014, after several rounds of sweeping changes in the development team and the concept for the game, Bethesda Softworks announced its plans to release a multiplayer-only limited alpha of the game for select participants under the revised title Doom. On June 10th, 2014, an extended teaser trailer of Doom was simultaneously unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2014 and on the newly launched official website for the title. On May 18th, 2015, another teaser trailer was unveiled on YouTube, which garnered more than 1.4 million views and 1,600 comments within the first month (shown below, left). On June 14th, the first trailer featuring actual gameplay footage of the game was shown at E3 2015, which was met by generally positive reception (shown below, right).

On December 3rd, 2015, Bethesda opened up a limited, multiplayer-only alpha version of Doom for select participants, which ran for three days and ended on December 6th. On March 31st, 2016, the first closed beta of the game was released for a three-day period, followed by an open beta which took place between April 15th and April 17th, 2016. After years of a long build-up in anticipation, Doom was released for PC on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 13th, 2016.

Online Presence

On June 15th, 1995, the domain Doom.com^[11] was registered, which currently displays the teaser trailer for Doom 4. On January 3rd, 1998, the fan site DoomWorld^[8] was launched as a resource for information about the video game franchise. On June 6th, 2009, the /r/Doom^[9] subreddit was launched for discussions about the series. On February 17th, 2012, the official Doom Facebook^[10] page was launched, which gained over 340,000 likes over the next four years.

Reception

Fandom

Doom has a large fanbase on the internet, stretching back to the release of the first title in 1993. Because of the game’s easily modifiable nature, players have created level editors and forums for sharing modified content. Custom content is downloaded and added into game files through PWADS, custom patch files that could be acquired through downloading from a ‘bulletin board system’^[3] and purchasing on CDs at game stores. Later on, players could download files directly from id Software’s FTP servers. The idgames archive^[12] currently houses more than 14,500 PWADS created over the years. On February 9th, 2013, YouTuber TJ Townsend uploaded a speed art video creating a high resolution digital recreation of a Doom screenshot (shown below).

Controversies

While Doom was widely praised for its innovation, its intense focus on Satanic imagery and graphic depiction of violence drew strong criticism. Many religious organizations denounced the game for its portrayal of demons and related imagery, and was even referred to as a “mass murder simulator” by Killology research group founder David Grossman^[4].

Columbine High School Massacre

On April 20th, 1999, two students attending Columbine High School in Jefferson Country, Colorado carried out large scale mass murder at their high school. The students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, were avid players of the Doom series, which led to speculation that they used the games as “training”. Eric designed several levels, sometimes placing messages in the text files of his PWADS asking for praise and recognition.^[5][6] One particular rumor surrounding the shooting was that Eric had designed levels based off of his school’s floor plans, with enemies representing Columbine’s student body, a rumor that was later discovered to be false.^[6][7]

Related Memes

IDDQD

IDDQD is the god-mode cheat code in the original Doom title. It has found a fair amount of use as an internet slang term, typically used when explaining how a seemingly impossible task was accomplished. It also finds use as a caption on images depicting people such as Chuck Norris, and others renowned online for their herculean abilities.

BFG

The BFG (short for “Blast Frequency Gun”) is a fictional plasma weapon featured in a wide range of first-person shooter video games, most notably in the Doom and Quake series. Since making its first appearance in 1993, the weapon has spawned a number of reiterations in other games under the fan given nickname “Big Fucking Gun,” as well as a growing collection of fan-made replicas modeled after the original design.

DOOM: Repercussions of Evil

DOOM: Repercussions of Evil is a fanfiction set in the Doom universe. It has garnered cult status due to its abysmal grammar and style, much like My Immortal. As with My Immortal, Repercussions of Evil has spawned a great deal of fanart, and several dramatic readings. There have even been a number of fan dramatizations of the fic. Arguably the best-known phrase from the fic is “The radio said “No, John. You are the demons” // And then John was a zombie.”; it has been used in a variety of image captions and macros relating to the fic.

“Rip and Tear”

“Rip and Tear” is a popular catchphrase from the 1996 comic book adaptation of Doom which was released exclusively as a free gift at select gaming convention. In the book, the phrase is uttered by the protagonist while under the influence of a “berserker power up,” a physical performance booster that provides the player with full health and extra strength when attacking enemies, during a confrontation against Cyberdemon, one of the more major enemies featured in the game. On forums and image boards, both the quote and the illustration have been used to express intense hatred towards any given subject.

Doom Cover Art Parodies

Doom Cover Art Parodies are photoshopped renditions of the official box art for the 2016 reboot of Doom in which the logo and the title are replaced with those of other popular video games to mock the underwhelmingly cliche aesthetics of the package design that has been overused in many other modern first-person shooters.

Search Interest

Since 2004, Google search queries for “Doom” soared in June 2004 after the release of _Doom 3, followed by another spike in October 2005 with the box office premiere of the live-action film adaptation.

External References

About

Aw Shit Nigga is a catchphrase, normally related to an image of the Clannad character, Ibuki Fuuko. The images are usually preceded by a conversation or another image to show that someone is in a trouble and in a situation to say “Oh Shit”.

Origin

The original picture comes from a scene from the ninth episode of Clannad. In the scene, Nagisa puts a party hat into Fuuko’s head.

While the phrase itself may have predated internet history, The first recorded use of the image macro was on February 24th, 2011, on 4chan’s /a/ board during a discussion about the character Fuuko^[1].

Spread

On March 1st, 2013, Urban Dictionary user RocEgg123 submitted an entry regarding the phrase “Shit Nigga”^[2] which he describes as “When something happens unexpectedly and you believe that saying this will help cope with the situation.” Around the year 2013, Imgur user Derilz uploaded an edited gif version of the image. As of April, 2015, the post has gained more than 57.000 views and 40 points^[3].

Search Interest

External References

About

Slide Into Your DMs (permutations are common and may include: Slide Into Her DMs, Slide Into Yo DMs, Slide Into the DMs, often with the word “like” after the phrase) is a catchphrase which refers to the act of direct messaging another person on a social media platform, usually for romantic reasons, in a smooth or cool way. While the phrase can be used literally, it is often parodied by being attached to videos or photographs of people engaging in awkward behavior.

Origin

It’s currently unknown where the term originated. The first online examples, including some GIFS with the tag and a Yahoo answers post, seem to appear in November 2013.^[1] At that point, the only social media platforms that allowed direct messaging were Twitter and Facebook; Instagram introduced direct messaging in December of 2013,^[2] and Vine premiered the feature in April of 2014.^[3]

One of the first popular examples of the term was this hip hop single by M-Boy titled “Slide Into Your DMs,” which was released on January 8th, 2014. The video has over 23,000 views as of July 2015.

Spread

In January of 2014, the term skyrocketed in popularity; however, due to the phrase’s common permutations, exact numbers are difficult to gather. On January 24th 2014, a Meme Generator was created of a boy going down a slide.^[4] The phrase was first defined by Urban Dictionary on March 24rd, 2014, as “When you send a Direct message to someone on twitter confidently and smoothly.”^[5] A reddit /r/outoftheloop post was created on April 27th, 2014; a user responded that Sliding into the DMs meant, “… basically like, being slick and starting a DM conversation with someone (of the opposite sex), and be smooth at the same time.”^[6]

Searches for the phrase on Vine return over 8,000 results as of July 29th, 2015, and the hashtag #SlideIntoYourDMsLike is used on over 500 posts.^[7][8] Collected searches for various permutations of the phrase, used as hashtags, return over 5,000 results on Instagram as of July 29th, 2015.^[9] In addition, the phrase was tweeted over 78,000 times in the 30 days prior to July 29th, 2015, with and without parody.^[10][11]

Various Examples

Because social media platforms focus on different means of communication, the act of direct messaging someone is different on each. On Twitter, the message can only be text; therefore, sliding into the DMs on Twitter consists of a text conversation which can be screenshot. On Instagram, sliding into the DMs is a photo message with a caption, often expressed as an image macro or a GIF. On Vine, the direct message is a video message; however, the hashtag #SlideIntoYourDMsLike is consistently trending, and therefore these examples refer to that.

Vine

Twitter Conversations

Image Macros and GIFs

Search Interest

External References

About

“Bitch I Might Be” is an ambiguous retort falsely attributed to Atlanta-based rapper Gucci Mane in a photoshopped image posted to Reddit in April of 2013. The phrase is often used in text posts and image macro captions shared on the microblogging site Tumblr.

Origin

On April 10th, 2013, Gucci Mane appeared in court where he was indicted for assaulting a military soldier with a champagne bottle.^[3] On April 17th, Redditor hellpony submitted a photoshopped screenshot of a local news report to the /r/Funny^[2] subreddit, which changed the on-screen text to read “Rapper Gucci Mane responds with ‘bitch I might be’ when asked if guilty” (shown below), referencing a lyric from his 2006 single Pillz."^[1] Within one month, the post accrued more than 10,300 upvotes and 360 comments.

Spread

The same day, many blogs reposted the photoshopped image trying to diffuse the truth behind the image including Hollywood.com^[4], E! Online^[5], The Drop^[6], Buzzfeed^[7] and MTV.^[8] Also on April 17th, the phrase was used on Twitter^[9] more than 10,000 times.^[10] By April 30th, Tumblr users were discussing^[19] the popularity of the catchphrase on the microblogging site (shown below, left) and within several days began adding the phrase “bitch I might be” into quotes attributed to historical figures (shown below, right).

On May 3rd, TumblTrends2013^[17] noted that the phrase was beginning to pick up steam throughout the site. Two days later, the Twitter account @BitchIMightBe^[16] began posting tweets made to look like multiple choice questions with the answers “yes,” “no” and “bitch I might be.” Within 12 days, the account gained nearly 60,000 followers. On May 6th, there were over 12,500 tweets containing the phrase “bitch I might be” according to the Twitter analytics site Topsy^[10] (shown below).

Notable Examples

Additional instances can be found via the Tumblr tag #Bitch I Might Be^[18], where it is also used as a descriptive tag for text posts.

Search Interest

External References

About

Overwatch is a team-based first-person shooter video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment, in which players assume control of a variety of hero characters each with their own unique abilities.

Premise

Overwatch takes place in a future after an event known as the Omnic Crisis. The Omnic Crisis began when robots that once served humans mysteriously gained sentience, and rebelled against their human masters. Humanity responded to this by creating Overwatch: an organization tasked with enforcing good and defending the planet from evil. A large battle then commenced between the robots and Overwatch, with Overwatch being victorious at the end. Skip to present day, thirty years after the Omnic Crisis. For reasons unknown, Overwatch has been disbanded, and most of its members now serve as mercenaries.^[5]

Gameplay

In the beta release of the game, Overwatch allowed players to control 21 heroes in a six versus six team. Hero characters include:

• Tracer: A former pilot with the ability to blink through time
• Hanzo: A ninja-like hero who wields a bow and can climb walls
• Reinhardt: A hero who carries a massive hammer and wears a giant suit of armor
• McCree: A former outlaw who delivers justice on his own terms with his revolver
• Reaper: A mysterious rogue who brandishes dual shotguns and can turn into a shadow
• Widowmaker: A deadly assassin armed with a sniper rifle and an infra-sight recon visor

Current maps consist of three game modes: Control, Payload, and Point Capture, with some being hybrids between the latter two. Each match will put you on a team of six people attempting to attack/defend an area while the opposing team tries to stop you from doing so. ^[4] At the end of each match, a “Play of the Game” will be displayed, showing the player that employed a maneuver that turned the tide of the game.

History

Overwatch was first announced on November 7th, 2014 during BlizzCon (shown bellow). During Penny Arcade Expo East 2015, Blizzard Entertainment announced the release of a closed beta on October 25th, 2015.^[6] The game is set for release on May 24th, 2016.

Tracer’s Pose Controversy

On March 25th, 2016, Blizzard forum user Fipps started a discussion thread in Overwatch’s beta feedback page^[9] asserting that the victory pose of Tracer, one of the more well-known playable characters, is irrelevant to her character traits and therefore objectifies her as a female sex symbol.

In response to Kaplan’s announcement, many users criticized the decision for what they perceived as a disproportionate response to an individual beta participant’s qualm, some raised their eyebrows at the studio’s seemingly arbitrary hypersensitivity to sexualization of cartoon characters, despite its gratuitous depiction of cartoon violence, while others complimented the studio for its receptiveness to community feedback and dedication to the details in portrayal of characters in line with their personalities. On April 5th, the game was updated to include a replacement for the original, which was consequently praised by the fans for being more fitting with Tracer’s personality. A post on the Overwatch subreddit regarding the pose change gained over 2,900 points (89% upvoted) and 950 comments in less than 16 hours.^[15]

Open Beta

On May 2nd, Blizzard released a new cinematic teaser titled “Are You With Us?”, featuring the Overwatch character Winston announcing the game’s “Open Beta” event, which will allow people to play the game for free from May 5th to May 9th (shown below). The same day, those who preordered the game were allowed early access to the Open Beta.

On May 3rd, the @PlayOverwatch Twitter feed posted a map showing when the Open Beta will be available for various regions around the world (shown below).

On May 20th, Blizzard released an infographic containing various player statistic gathered during the beta test period.

Online Presence

Since its announcement, Overwatch has been heavily compared with the team-based first person shooter Team Fortress 2. On November 9th, 2014, YouTuber RIZΣKI uploaded a video titled “Team Overwatch 2 Trailer”, featuring Overwatch‘s trailer with Team Fortress 2 voice commands, gaining over 250,000 views in the following year, On November 11th, 2014, the let’s playerSTAR_ uploaded a video where he discusses about the comparasions and his opinion on the game, gaining over 900,000 views in the following year. After the announcement, a dedicated subreddit was created, gathering over 75,000 subscribers in the following year.^[1]

After its announcement, the game quickly gained a fandom, spawning fan art and discussions on the released trailers. As November 25th, 2015, the artist community DeviantART leads to over 5,000 results under the keyword “overwatch”, being most of them related to the game.^[3] Fandom presence can also be found on other communities like Tumblr.^[2]

Related Memes

Time to Reap

“Time to Reap” is a voice line uttered by Reaper when using his ultimate ability. First seen on the gameplay trailer (shown bellow, left), the quote got consequently mocked for being percived edgy, and got popular after an animation uploaded by STAR_, which got over 460,000 views in less than a month (shown bellow, right).

It’s High Noon

“It’s High Noon” is a voice line uttered by the hero McCree when using his ultimate ability. Due the effectiveness of the ability, the quote has become popular on the fandom.

Justice Rains From Above

“Justice Rains From Above” is a memorable quote uttered by the the playable hero character Pharah whenever she uses her ultimate ability Barrage.

Search Interest

External References

About

“If Young Metro Don’t Trust You” is one of the DJ tags of producer, Metro Boomin’. The phrase has become popular on Twitter, tweeted along with images that detail the consequences of not being approved by Metro Boomin’. The tag became popular on twitter jokes following its use in the songs Jumpman, by Drake and Future; and Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1, by Kanye West, from the album The Life of Pablo.

Origin

The origin of the tag comes from the song “Right Now” by Uncle Murda featuring Future which was also produced by Metro Boomin^[11]. It later gained popularity when it was sampled as a DJ Tag in the intro to the song “Jumpman,” by rappers Drake and Future. The song was released on September 26th, 2015, and became an instant hit; it has over 81 million listens on YouTube.^[1] The phrase is a shout-out to Future’s producer Metro Boomin’, who Future indicates must approve of all associates, or else violence will ensue.

The lyric was reprised by Future on Kanye West’s “Father Stretch My Hands Part 1” and released as part of The Life of Pablo in early February; the album has several samples of “Jumpman” throughout.^[2]

Spread

The first instances of the phrase being tweeted slightly precede the initial release of “Jumpman,” most likely due to song previews. The first tweet paired with an image for humorous effect was created on September 20th, six days before the official release of “Jumpman;” by Twitter user @RichFlair_; it received two favorites.^[3]

After being tweeted consistently, the phrase began to be paired with images frequently after the initial stream of “Father Stretch My Hands Part 1,” at which point the pairings began to be very popular. On February 11th, 2016, after the initial preview of The Life of Pablo, Twitter user wherebaeat tweeted the lyric combined with two photographs: one of Kim Kardashian holding a rifle, and another of Kris Jenner holding a handgun. The tweet received 35 retweets and 27 favorites.^[4]

On February 14th, user meechonmars tweeted “what you do if you about to get married and metro boomin tell you he dont trust her”, which received 200 retweets and 327 likes.^[5] On February 26th, Drake tweeted “And on the off chance that Metro Boomin doesn’t trust you…well…,” which received 62,577 retweets and 63,405 likes.^[6]

Selections from Twitter in regards to the meme were collected by several mainstream publications, including Bossip^[7] and Complex^[8]. In addition, several examples of the meme were submitted to the /r/blackpeoplesubreddit, where they received hundreds of points.^[9] In addition, the meme spread to Vine, where there are currently 165 results for the phrase.^[10]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Angelina Jolie’s Leg refers to a photograph of Angelina Jolie at the 84th Academy Awards’ red carpet ceremony which became the subject of a photoshop meme and other forms of online parodies in February 2012.

Origin

On February 26th, 2012, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie arrived at the 84th Academy Awards’ red carpet ceremony in a strapless black Versace dress with a split revealing her leg. Being one of the most well-known celebrity runway events of the year, Jolie’s red carpet entrance became a much talked-about topic during and after the awards ceremony.

Spread

On Twitter

Soon after her arrival at the red carpet, a Twitter feed dubbed “Angie’s Right Leg”^[1] was launched, accruing more than 12,000 followers within hours. The first tweet was published at 10:36 p.m. (Eastern Time).

On Tumblr

Meanwhile on Tumblr, people began uploading various photoshopped images of Jolie’s leg-revealing pose, some featuring more than one pair of legs and perfectly symmetrical stance. The symmetrically photoshopped version was posted by Tumblr blogger OldGhost and received over 18,000 notes within the first 24 hours. The image jokes were soon picked up by a number of celebrity blogs like Gawker^[3], ROFLrazzi^[4] and Entertainment Weekly^[5] among others.

Photo Fad: Joliening

Angelina Jolie’s memorable pose was imitated by on-stage presenters during the awards ceremony as well, most notably The Descendants co-writer Jim Rash who imitated her stance during his acceptance speech for the Best Adapted Screenplay award. Huffington Posts’ Style^[6] bloggers also participated in the photo fad and shared the pictures via Tumblr.

On the following day, Tumblr and Twitter went abuzz with people taking photographs of themselves in similar poses, which were uploaded under the hashtags #angellegging and #Joliening. Soon, a single topic blog called “Angelina Jolie’ing”^[2] was launched on Tumblr to curate the examples.

Legbombing

Jolie’s leg soon became autonomous as an exploitable image and plugged into various images that were dubbed “legbombing” by Buzzfeed.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Minor Advice Marvin is an advice animal image macro series featuring a photograph of a young boy staring blankly at a distance and various captions detailing everyday episodes of regrettable mistakes that can unfold as a result of one’s own oversight.

Origin

On October 8th, 2014, Redditor marky_mark301 submitted a photograph of a young boy standing in front of a partially burned ramen noodle container inside a microwave to the /r/pics^[4] subreddit in a post titled “He just wanted some noodles” (shown below, left). On October 11th, Redditor onebigbagostupid posted an image macro using the photo with a caption about accidentally putting ice cream in a refrigerator titled “Introducing: Mistake Marvin” to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[1] subreddit, where it gained over 3,000 votes (84% upvoted) in the first 48 hours (shown below, right). The top-voted comment was submitted by Redditor McGotham, who suggested that the series be called “Minor Mistake Marvin.”

Spread

On the same day, Redditor BrojobBrojob submitted an image macro about forgetting to turn on a slow cooker before leaving for work to /r/AdviceAnimals^[2] (shown below, left). Also on October 11th, Redditor CakeSwag submitted a Minor Mistake Marvin image macro joking about accidentally calling a teacher “Mom” to /r/AdviceAnimals^[5] (shown below, right). In the following 48 hours, the posts gathered more than 3,400 votes (93% upvoted) and 3,000 votes (79% upvoted) respectively.

On October 12th, the /r/TodayIMarvinedUp^[3] subreddit was launched for notable Minor Mistake Marvin examples. The same day, Redditor BrojobBrojob’s image macro was reposted to 9gag,^[6] where it accumulated upwards of 2,900 points and 50 comments in 24 hours.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

John Lennon The Absolute Madman is an image fad featuring a photograph of The Beatles lead singer John Lennon striding in a goofy manner on the street with his wife Yoko Ono, which has often been paired with the phrase “The Absolute Madman” on 4chan’s music board /mu/.

Origin

While the authorship of the photograph remains unknown, the image has been circulating online for many years, including a Reddit post submitted to /r/beatles on April 30th, 2014. On February 15th, 2015, the image became associated with the phrase “absolute madman” in a thread about rare images of recording artists on 4chan’s /mu/ (music) board.^[1] Since then, the image has been referred to as “John Lennon the Absolute Madman.”

Spread

On September 11th and September 13th, 2015, two threads featuring the image of Lennon doing the walk (one which titled the image John “The Absolute Madman” Lennon) were posted on /mu/^[2][3], with multiple of the replies photoshopping the image into different variations before they were archived. on the day of the first thread a video featuring a jumpscare of Lennon walking from a distance to the screen was posted titled “Rare John”(shown below left). In the thread posted on September 13th, a video was posted by youtube user Hal9000ize, compiling all the Lennon images (shown below right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

John Cena (full name John Felix Anthony Cena) is an American professional wrestler, rapper and actor signed since 2002 to World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.^[3] Since then he has become one of the company’s most popular wrestlers and the modern face of the company. Cena has won the second-highest number of WWE World Championships of all time.

Online History

Rap Videos

In 2005, Cena released his debut rap album titled “You Can’t See Me”^[7] after his debut catchphrase. The album contained the single “My Time Is Now” which has become his current entrance song and a popular meme on sites like Vine and Youtube in the form of Unexpected John Cena. The song, which was uploaded to Youtube on May 20, 2007, has received 3.7 million views (shown below, left) as of September 2015. On January 5th, 2007 a video titled “JOHNCENARAPBATTLES A FAN” features a fan challenging Cena to a freestyle rap battle. As of September 2015, the video has gathered 3.1 million views (shown below, right). Cena is also known for challenging his in-ring opponents to rap battles.

Related Memes

Cena Wins Lol

Cena Wins Lol is a phrase referencing the predictability of Cena’s matches, which mostly result in his victory.

Unexpected John Cena / And His Name is John Cena

Unexpected John Cena (also known as “And His Name is John Cena” and “It’s John Cena”) refers to a video clip that loudly introduces Cena as his intro music plays. Initially, the short clip was often edited onto the end of a video or Vine either to produce a jumpscare or humorous effect, but has expanded so inserting the song anywhere is now referred to as an Unexpected John Cena.

Reputation

Cena is a polarizing figure within the professional wrestling franchise. He is known for being a superhero and a good role model for kids, which means he doesn’t generally swear, cheat or otherwise be excessively violent in public. This makes him popular amongst children, but the behavior is divisive among adult wrestling fans who prefer the more violent and mature “Attitude Era” of WWE.^[1] He is also unpopular for his near-invincibility, winning almost every major match, even when his win is improbable or illogical.^[2]

Despite this, Cena continues to be amongst the most lucrative, popular, and beloved wrestlers within the franchise.

Personal Life

Cena is currently dating Nikki Bella,^[5] a female wrestler also employed with WWE.^[4] He is a fan of Anime, and his favorite anime movie is Fist of the North Star. He also has fulfilled over 500 wishes through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the most by any celebrity in the history of the foundation.^[6]

Search Interest

External References

About

Topkek is a brand of small Turkish cupcakes produced by the ETi Company. The snack became popular with regulars of the imageboard 4chan’s [s4s] board due to the use of “kek” in its name.

Origin

In Turkish, kek means cake, and Topkek, a brand of cupcakes, was first produced in 1990 by ETi, a Turkish confectionery company.^[1] In 2011, the television show Workaholics aired an episode in which the character Adam Demamp wears a hat embroidered with Top Gun, and as this phrase spread in use, one of the mutations incorporated the phrase kek, creating “Topkek.” In May of 2013, an /s4s/ board user under the name “prime minister face” created a thread featuring the cake, which received over 6,000 replies before it was archived.^[2] In 2014, the meme aggregator site Top Kek was created.^[4]

Spread

An Encyclopedia Dramatica entry on Topkek was created on May 18th, 2013, around the same time of the original thread on /s4s/. An Urban Dictionary definition for “topkek” was created in September of 2013.^[3] Sometime in 2013, a Flash video was created which heavily features the cake; a censored version of this Flash was uploaded to YouTube where it has been viewed 90,000 times. In 2014, an edited clip of a Based Tyrone video in which he says “top kek” was uploaded to YouTube, were it has been viewed over 365,000 times. In addition, the subreddit /r/topkek was created in July of 2013.^[5]

Various Examples

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About

“MOMHOLYFUCK” is a quote featured in a fan-drawn comic inspired by Disney’s animated children’s TV show Phineas and Ferb, wherein the character Candace kicks a door open and yells the phrase in an over-the-top manner. Since surfacing on Tumblr in June 2013, the illustration has been parodied with dozens of characters from other well-known fictional universes, quite similar to the development of the “It’s Goofy Time” parodies.

Origin

On June 21st 2013, Tumblr user Juniorbizarre uploaded a hand-drawn parody comic as a tribute to Phineas and Ferb, directly scanned from the blogger’s personal sketchbook. In the series, the older sister of the main characters, Cadance, tries to tell their mother of her brother’s exploits, while in the fan comic many of the common features of episodes in the series are parodies or overblown. This posted gained over 275,000 notes in two years ^[1]

On June 28th of the same year, Juniorbizzare later posted the full comic in its entirety^[2] and said “this was just a silly thing i did quite a while ago to make myself laugh :D i’m so glad other people think it’s funny too omg”. The artist also has also called it the “crumpets comic” in reference to yet another odd quote featured in the same comic.

Spread

On November 20th, 2014 Tumblr user Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuurdock uploaded a version they had made from an anonymous request about the-then upcoming Marvel movieAvengers: Age of Ultron.^[3] Later that same day, Robert Downey Jr., the American actor well-known for his portrayal of Tony Stark and the superhero alter ego “Iron Man” in The Avengers, reblogged this image with the caption “The most accurate portrayal of Tony in Age of Ultron I’ve seen” and attribution to the original Tumblr blog on his Facebook page. The post garnered over 178,000 likes in less than one year.^[4] On April 30th, 2015, artist and voice actor Kylee Henke uploaded a dramatic reading of the scripted dialogue via her personal blog on Tumblr, where it gathered over 51,000 notes in the following four months.^[5]

Various Examples

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About

Carter the Banana Boy is a photoshop meme based on a picture of a young boy in sunglasses and looking at the camera while eating a banana. In this series, an exploitable cutout of the boy is photoshopped into a variety of base images to portray him as the star of an action film, in somewhat similar vein to The Action Movie Kid.

Origin

On May 12th, 2014, Redditor Theone211 submitted a photograph of a little boy eating a banana in a post titled “This is Carter. He knocked on my door to ask if he could have a banana then left” to the /r/funny^[1] subreddit (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the post gained over 73,100 upvotes and 2,600 comments.

In the comments section, Redditor FuriousGeorge06 suggested someone should “photoshop an explosion behind him,” which was promptly followed up by a set of three “explosive” photoshopped parodies from Redditor Saurongetti, along with a blank template of the boy eating the banana (shown below, far right).

Spread

That same day, Reddit sodelll posted an image macro of the photo with the caption “I’m here to fuck bitches and eat bananas / and I’m almost done with my banana” to /r/funny^[2] (shown below, left). Meanwhile, Redditor dayofgreed submitted the picture of Carter to the /r/photoshopbattles^[3] subreddit, where several Redditors posted images with Carter superimposed into the backgrounds of film posters (shown below, right).

Also on May 12th, 2014, other photoshopped images featuring Carter reached the front page of Reddit,^[4][5][6] many of which earned upwards of 10,000 upvotes in 24 hours (shown below). Later that day, compilations of notable examples were subsequently posted on BuzzFeed^[7] and Mashable.^[8]

On May 13th, actor Wil Wheaton tweeted that Carter was his “favorite person on the Internet today,” receiving over 240 favorites and 85 retweets in less than 12 hours.

3D-Printed Figurine

On May 23rd, a 3D-printed figurine of Carter was added to the 3D printing marketplace Shapeways^[9] (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Lauren Mayberry “Leave a Trace” Controversy is a debate in which posters of the music board of 4chan, /mu/ attacked Lauren Mayberry, lead singer of the band Chvrches, for her appearance in a music video for the band’s 2015 single “Leave a Trace.” The controversy spread to Twitter when a board poster invited Mayberry to join.

Origin

On August 17th, 2015 the official Chvrches Vevo uploaded a music video to the song “Leave A Trace,” the second single off their album Every Open Eye.

On the same day, a thread on /mu/^[2] was created showcasing the video. Much of the comments in the thread focused on two criticisms: firstly, that Lauren Mayberry was being sexually provocative in how she was clothed and styled in the video, and secondly, that the other Chvrches members Iain Cook and Martin Doherty were barely featured in the video, despite Mayberry’s previous claims that she was intent on not focusing on being a female figurehead for the band.^[8] Before it was archived, the post received 819 replies.

A few hours after the post went up, after it had accumulated several hundred replies, one poster tweeted a link to the thread to Mayberry(the account who did this has now been banned due to multiple reports from users). She responded by blocking the user who sent it, retweeting the link and writing: “Dear anyone who thinks misogyny isn’t real. It is and this is what it looks like.”

Spread

After Mayberry tweeted the thread, multiple news outlets, including the Mirror^[3], Music.mic^[4], Daily Records^[5], The Sidney Morning Herald ^[6] and The Independent^[7] wrote opinion articles commenting on the misogyny and abuse of the 4chan users, as well as their sexual objectification of Mayberry. The official Chvrches Twitter tweeted in support of Mayberry on the same day, along with fellow Chvrches member Martin Doherty, and Stuart Braithwaite, the lead guitarist of the post-rock band Mogwai.

External References

About

Make America Great Again is a slogan adopted by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his 2016 United States presidential campaign. The phrase first gained online fame in July 2015 after Trump was photographed wearing a hat bearing the slogan during a visit to the Mexican border, and since then, it has been used by both Trump supporters and critics in various discussions about the candidate.

Origin

Donald Trump adopted “Make America Great Again”^[1] as his official campaign slogan and simultaneously launched merchandise bearing the phrase in June 2015, shortly after announcing his bid for the Republican Party’s nomination in the 2016 United States presidential election. However, the slogan went largely unnoticed until Trump donned a hat during a visit to Laredo, Texas near the Mexican border in July 2015.

Precursor

“Let’s Make America Great Again” was first used as a campaign slogan by Ronald Reagan during his 1980 election campaign. Since then, it has often been used as a GOP refrain, most recently as part of the title of the 2011 book on Tea Party politics by Christine O’Donnell.^[2] Trump has claimed to have authored the phrase, but has not produced any proof.^[3]

Spread

Soon after photographs of Trump wearing the hat appeared in the mainstream media, users both began photoshopping new text onto the front of the hat, as well as ordering the hat in droves and using it in photographs, either ironically or not. The Washington Post reported on July 28th that the official hat had sold out from the retail location authorized to sell it; many bootleg versions became available online. ^[4][5]

Users on Instagram and Twitter began photographing themselves in the hat, often tagging the photo with the hashtag #MakeAmericaGreatAgain, which had over 7,600 posts as of August 10th, 2015 on Instagram.^[6][7] In addition, Funny or Die published a collection on July 24th, 2015, of other slogans photoshopped onto the hat, which inspired similar photoshops to become popular on Tumblr.^[8][9] On Reddit, user iamclaytonbigsby posted an image of Trump wearing the hat to /r/photoshopbattles, where it received 28 points.^[10]

The trend of people wearing the hat as a photo fad was covered in The Hollywood Reporter, and the Sun Times, while the photoshop editing was written about in E! Online and Bloomberg News.^{[11][12][13][14]} The hat itself has spawned two separate parody Twitter accounts, @trumphat, and @Donaldtrumphat, neither of which have more than a couple hundred followers as of August 10th, 2015.^[15]

Various Examples

People Wearing the Hat

Hat Photoshops

Search Interest

External References

About

I Wish I Could Talk to Ponies is an exploitable 4-panel webcomic featuring a young girl who wishes that she could speak to a pony, but upon its fulfillment, the talking animal blurts out a blunt or insensitive statement that leaves her disappointed and upset.

Origin

On February 21st, 2014, illustrator Jim Benton^[7] posted an original comic on Reddit in which a young girl is granted the power to speak with ponies by a magical fairy. In the final panel, a pony is shown tormenting the girl by asking her “why are you so ugly all the time” (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 2,000 votes (95% upvoted) on the /r/funny^[1] subreddit.

On November 8th, Redditor CloudCollapse posted an Imgur gallery featuring an exploitable template of the comic (shown below) along with several customized examples, purportedly collected from the /b/ (random) board on 4chan. In two months, the post accumulated upwards of 1,600 votes (90% upvoted) and 40 comments on the /4/chan^[4] subreddit.

Spread

The same day, Redditor Sir-SmokesALot submitted a version of the webcomic titled “Things a pony would say,” in which the horse informs the girl that “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” in reference to an argument made by conspiracy theorists who claim that the September 11th, 2001 attacks were orchestrated by the United States government (shown below, left).^[2] On November 16th, Redditor Corruptacy posted a version in which the pony says “Hitler did bring up some pretty valid points” (shown below, right).^[3] In two months, the posts gathered more than 4,400 votes (92% upvoted) and 1,200 votes (82% upvoted) on /r/funny respectively.

On July 27th, Redditor Nodebunny posted another version in an /r/funny^[6] post titled “Be Careful What You Wish For” (shown below, left). On December 13th, IGN Forums^[5] member SkywardNord submitted a comic in which the pony says the Islamic Arabic expression “Allahu Akbar” (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Crack Kid is the nickname given to Viner Brady Hartwig^[2] after several video clips of the young boy squealing and pulling other antics went viral on the the mobile video-sharing platform in June 2014.

Origin

On June 5th, 2014, Viner Nathan Moszyk^[3] uploaded a video of his little brother Brady making high-pitched squealing noises while being hit in the head with a basketball (shown below). In the first week, the Vine gained over 233,000 revines and 225,000 likes.

Spread

On the same day, Viner MilesHRLY^[4] uploaded a new video of Hartwig yelling while banging a basketball with his forehead, accumulating more than 30,000 revines and 26,000 likes in the next week (shown below, left). On June 9th, Moszyk uploaded a new video of his brother performing a twerk dance (shown below, right).

The same day Viner Duke Thurston uploaded a remix video combining the original Crack Kid video with the 2012 hip hop song “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” by Kendrick Lamar (shown below, left). In the next 72 hours, the vines garnered over 5,900 and 36,000 revines respectively. On June 10th, Viner Demontz uploaded a version of the Crack Kid clip edited to appear as if he were throwing a basketball at Hartwig’s head while babysitting him (shown below, right). In 48 hours, the video received more than 252,000 likes and 195,000 revines.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

Be Like Bill is an exploitable stick figure illustration of a man named “Bill” using a desktop computer, accompanied by a parable praising Bill’s choice to simply carry on after being provoked by a trigger while browsing the Internet. Since its emergence through English-language humor websites in late 2015, the single-pane comic has gone globally viral and spawned a large volume of derivative illustrations with similar messages highlighting other socially intelligent behaviors on the web and in real life.

Origin

The origin of the drawing is unknown, but it began showing up on forums like Funnyjunk^[1] and Reddit^[2] in October of 2015. The earliest instance of the image was in English, and was meant as an ironic jab at social justice warriors.

Precursor

On March 30th, 2010, JoyReactor user Anon uploaded a stick figure illustration of a character named “Tim” and a public service announcement (PSA) message praising his indifferent reaction to seeing offensive content while browsing the Internet.

In September 2011, this particular style of illustrations went viral with the launch of Australia’s Queensland Rail PSA posters designed to educate the public on passenger etiquettes, which quickly became a subject of dozens of parodies (shown below).

Spread

On December 21st, 2015, an Italian Facebook page was created called Sii come Bill (Be like Bill).^[3] The page, devoted to posted Italian version of the Be Like Bill meme, has received more than 226,000 likes in less than three weeks. A Spanish-language page, called Sé como José, was launched on January 2nd, and in less than four days has received more than 405,000 followers. Sé como José has received the most attention in the Spanish-speaking press, who have deemed it one of the first “virales” (memes) of 2016. In an interview with BuzzFeed, the anonymous administrator of the Spanish-speaking page said he decided to translate the Bill meme from Italian after seeing its popularity there.

Various Examples

Top row: Italian examples. Bottom row: Spanish examples, some of which are translations of the Italian examples.

Search Interest

External References

About

Logical Fallacy Ref is an image macro series featuring photographs of sports referees with captions calling out the use of logically invalid arguments used in online debate.

Origin

On July 11th, 2015, a gallery was uploaded to Imgur^[1] containing 32 image macros of sports referees calling out various logical fallacies, which credited film critic Glen Welch as the creator of the series. Within two weeks, the gallery received more than 230,000 views.

Precursor: Your Logical Fallacy Is

On September 24th, 2011, the website YourLogicalFallacyIs.com^[6] was launched, which features explanations of many formal and informal fallacies often used in discussions on the Internet.

Spread

On July 12th, 2015, Redditor rtphokie submitted the Imgur gallery to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[3] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 4,600 votes (88% upvoted) and 480 comments in the first two weeks. The following day, a Logical Fallacy Referee image about the “strawman” fallacy was reposted on 9gag.^[4] On July 15th, the political news site Dangerous Minds^[8] published an interview with Welch about the creation of the series. On July 16th, the “Fallacy Ref” Facebook^[7] page was launched, which highlights notable examples of the meme.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

About

“Leaf a Like” is a catchphrase used by the fans of the popular vlogger LeafyIsHere to spam the comment sections of popular video pages on YouTube. Initially coined as part of a photoshopped parody series depicting the video game commentator as a reptile, the in-joke has also spawned a number of other related terms used in the comments section of YouTube, including the Reptilian Army, Reptilian Brotherhood and most notably “Hisss…”, an onomatopoiea of the high-pitched sound commonly associated with reptilian creatures.

Origin

The origin of the reptilian brotherhood joke goes all the way back to August 14th, 2015 where Leafy made a video titled “KIDS THATYOUTUBE 2”

In this video, he discusses conspiracy theorist Youtubers. Throughout the video, he frequently makes jokes about the Illuminati, and he says things that joke around with the thought of these YouTubers being reptiles or reptillians.

This continued to carry on to August 24th, 2015 when LeafyIsHere uploaded a video titled “REPTILIANS” in which he talks about discovering a variety of fan artworks and photoshopped parodies dedicated to him on Twitter. Most notably the ones depicting him as a lizard and other reptilian creatures.

Spread

On YouTube

Between October 12th and 13th, the YouTube comments section was flooded with repetitive use of the Hisss, Reptilian Brotherhood, and Reptilian Army phrase. Most notably used on bigger YouTuber’s videos, sometimes even beating out first^[1]. Comments like these were almost always in the Top Comments section, even with minimal likes. Sometimes, the phrase would even turn to a form of harassment, or calling out certain YouTubers for not being as good as LeafyIsHere and saying they should be attacked or “overthrown”^[2].

On Twitch

It continued to grow and began to be spammed in numerous Twitch chats. When Streamers on Twitch would stream their chats would be flooded with “HISSSS…” and other forms of LeafyIsHere spam. Some Streamers would go as far as to use Sub-Mode Only in their chats, meaning their subscribers could only chat. This however did not work as they expected because even the subs were in on the joke and would spam. Many Youtubers and Twitch Streamers have complained by tweeting to Leafy, some just poking fun and laughing at the spam, others were genuinely mad and wanting Leafy to control his fan base.

LeafyIsHere’s Response

On October 13th, LeafyIsHere posted a response video to share his initial thoughts on the spam comments (shown below, left). LeafyIsHere also provided his own explanation as to why this happened on the DramaAlert video released October 14th, 2015 (shown below, right).

Alongside on October 14th, LeafyIsHere tweeted a similar message to address the backlash directed at him as a result of the spamming on YouTube; also commenting about how it was starting to act similar to a cult.

When you make a joke about the reptilians, then they start calling you a reptilian. Month later you somehow become the leader of a cult???

— Leafy (@LeafyIsHere) October 14, 2015

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References

^[1]YouTube – LeafyIsHere’s Channel

^[2]YouTube – REPTILIANS

^[3]Facebook – Leafy’s Profile Picture

^[4]Twitter – LeafyIsHere’s Tweet

^[5]Twitter – LeafyIsHere’s Tweet