About

Scarce is a YouTube news channel that is owned and run by John Scarce. The channel generally focuses on trending topics throughout YouTube in a manner similar to that of DramaAlert. As of September 2016 Scarce has over 2.7 million subscribers.

Online History

Scarce opened his channel on January 25, 2012 under the name “GoScarce” and initially uploaded Call of Duty gameplay videos, his first one being “MW2 Commentary: 2 Sick Clips! (AMAZING)”(below,left). The video ended up successful and Scared followed up with a video celebrating reaching 100 subscribers(below, right).

Spread

News Reporting

In October 23, 2013, John uploaded his first news video titled “(IRL) SB Apparel Site & Former SoaR Ollie Tries to Hack SoaR – SB Scarce”(shown below). This video gained over 50,000 views, and prompted Scarce to eventually abandon COD videos in favor of news-reporting.

GradeAUnderA Shoutout

Scarce’s biggest growth however, came from fellow YouTuber GradeAUnderA and his video “GradeAUnderA vs Keemstar (Part 2) How To REALLY Piss Keem Off”(shown below) which was uploaded on June 25, 2016. In this video, Grade brought up Scarce’s channel as an alternative to Keemstar, and that if Scarce were to get more subscribers than Keemstar, it would make DramaAlert irrelevant. Scarce ended up gaining 993,000 new subscribers and became the fastest growing channel of June 2016 thanks to Grade’s video.^[2]

Current Day

To date Scarce has made 1,246 videos, and over 357 million views. His most popular video: “YouTuber Sees MURDER While Streaming, PewDiePie Calls Out Comments, TmarTn’s Back, Joey Salads”(shown below) has over 4 million views and 30,000 comments.

Tributes

On August 2016, a Twitter account named “@TheScarceFiles” was created^[1], which posted screenshots of past tweets from Scarce’s Twitter. The account immediately got noticed by Scarce’s fans who began spreading @TheScarceFiles’s tweets. Scarce himself came to find out about the account and proceeded to delete many of his old tweets out of embarrassment.

Search History

External Links

^[1]Twitter – @TheScarceFiles

^[2]TubeFilter – Top 100 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide • June 2016

This came from a couple of Google images quickly slapped together in paint. This is the only variation so far.

About

This Cheeto is a cheeto with a mustache.

Spread

In 2011, the Know Your Meme user “Sweatie Killer” has posted in the Know Your Meme Forums a thread made specially for This Cheeto^[1]. In 4 years, the thread has gained 15.514 views and 614 posts.

Various examples

Search Interest

External Reference

^[1]Know Your Meme Forums – [Riff Raff] This cheeto…

The Day We Sold the World

You all may know me. I’m the one who you’ll sometimes see on the forums, either lurking or posting haphazardly, waiting to be accepted. In fact, I never expected I’d be as accepted as I was. You all welcomed me… But that’s not what this is about. On April 1, 2012, the bigwigs of Know Your Meme decided it was time to give it all away. I don’t know about everyone else, but everything turned grey for me then. I never imagined I’d live past that day… The day the world turned upside-down… The day we literally sold our beliefs… The day we gave away our entire world.

We all know Brad, our beloved Community Manager. The man who leads us. We do what he says in a display of childlike follow-the-leader in which the leader never changes. Ah, Brad. Look what you’ve done. Chaos has erupted in a mad rush to own memes that we so cherish. Power. The object is power. But why is it so appealing to us to have power? In the grand scheme of things, we need it.

Some people want respect.
Others do it for the sheer sake of having power.
But I, like a few others, want power simply for the lulz.

The Aftermath and What’s To Come

At the end of a long day, it’s nice to know that we have power after working for RandomManPanTheMan The Man all day long. But at what cost? We gave away all of our tacos rights, privileges, and beliefs for this. And do you know what?

It seems we still may never learn what it truly means…
To be in a marching band.

About

Goat-tan is a character created for the database styled website, Know Your Meme. The character is known for her love of both the NES^[1] coop platformer Battletoads^[2] and anything that comes off as being lewd in nature. Initially founded within Know Your Meme’s Hentai Quotes image gallery, the character eventually moved onto the rest of the site via fanmade images which placed the character in other settings. After sometime the character along with two deadpooled entries on the site known as Super Robo Jesus and The Cheeto all of which were deified into a collective known as The KYMtheon.

Origin

Originally created as a character in the h-manga, Yotsunoha Legs, she would come to later fame when an edited version of the manga was uploaded to 4chan’s /V/^[3] board which replaced all sexual situations with images of both an NES and a cartridge of Battletoads. On August 14, 2013, the first page of the edited manga was posted in Know Your Meme’s Hentai Quotes gallery by user Habanero-tan. In the following days the rest of the manga would be uploaded by users ImmaHeMan and SirBrownBear. Each new post garnered comments which generally expressed shock and disgust with the manga, yet at the same time, excitement over the idea of a community adventure that all had been able to take a part in. Approximately one month later user ImmaHeMan tried to garner the same response by posting an image from an Attack on Titan doujin. This caught the attention of several users, most notably Deustodo and Deltamelon

The Goat-tan We Know Today

Both Deustodo and Deltamelon both made fanmade images placing Goat-tan in several different situations. It was during this time that the character was named Goat-tan, in honor of Know Your Meme’s mascot, KYM-tan. Using the former two users as inspiration, a slew of new images were created involving Goat-tan. It was then that user ImmaHeMan decided to create the immagoat tag for images in order to have a collective banner for all images to be posted under. Also around this time Goat-tan, Super Robo Jesus, and The Cheeto were grouped together into the KYMtheon, a fictional spiritual trinity.

Backlash

Hundreds of posts involving both Goat-tan and the KYMtheon were uploaded onto the site in the span of only a few weeks. Many Know Your Meme users were caught up in the hype that Goat-tan had created, but others felt distinctly the polar opposite, that Goat-tan was nothing more than another cancerous forced entry, and that it had no real place on the site. In October of 2013 Know Your Meme user, Shrekette created the Goat-tan article in which they express their hatred for Goat-tan and everything that involves it on the site.

Notable Developments

In October 2013 Know Your Meme user, Blue Screen of Death created the This Goat forum entry in the Know Your Meme forums, which became a place for fans of Goat-tan to post Goat-tan related images and discuss Goat-tan in general. The forum entry was later locked by mods in May of 2014. In early to mid 2014, Know Your Meme mods relocated many posts involving Goat-tan to the Goat-tan entry, which was then Deadpooled.

References

Herculoon, also referred to as Circules, is an inside joke started from the Cringeworthy gallery on this site. This in-joke started when someone posted the picture in the gallery, and this GIF image was posted:

This GIF image’s page had comments that had to do with it becoming the new “time to killed people” and the new “i need blood”, and Herculoon is here to take the spot.

NEEDSEDITORSNEEDSEDITORSNEEDSEDITORSNEEDSEDITORSNEEDSEDITORS

About

Time to killed people is a trending term quoted from a piece of CreepyPasta fanart made with MSPaint featuring a crude drawing of the the popular CreepyPasta character “The Rake” quoting the phrase “Time to killed people”.

Origin

The Image was first created by the user name “thenewalfmonster68” on DeviantART. On February 19, “thenewalfmonster68” uploaded a picture called “Rake’s Have Time To Killed” where it stayed dormant till the user named ""uploaded the image on the KnowYourMeme Cringeworthy gallery where it notable gained the attention of several users.who started posting their own variants of the image
(WIP, requesting editors)

About

“I need blood” is a series of exploitable images parodying or mocking an image created by Deviantart user TDIGURL12. The original image depicts two individuals resembling characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. In it, one of them remorsefully confesses he ‘needs blood’, while the other assures him that he may take hers.

Origin

The original image was titled “Jake_and_Maribelle” and was uploaded to Deviantart by user TDIGURL12. The image has since been removed from the site and the account deactivated, but the image continues to resurface throughout the Internet.

Spread

As a result of its low level of quality the image was posted to various websites including SomethingAwful, NeoGaf, and Reddit; mostly in response to This image. The Reddit thread on r/WTF accumulated nearly 2 thousand up votes before being archived.

The phrase ‘I need blood’ has resurfaced regularly throughout the board, most commonly used to mock an image intended to have excessive levels of depth and meaning, though in reality its poor quality and choice of subject matter detracts any chance of the image being taken seriously.

The phrase has also been used to label an uninspiring original character, in a similar fashion to ‘donut steel’.

Notable Images

Spread

About

Don “Advice Animals” McHashtags, also referred to as “Based Don” by the Cult of Caldwell, is an enigmatic internet-based entity who scours the deepest and darkestdankest parts of cyberspace, feeding upon social media and Google images in a relentless bid to satisfy his eternal thirst for web culture. Don’s meme documentation abilities are legendary; rumor has it that he is capable of transforming a handful of tweets and a news article from an irrelevant publication into a full-fledged meme in a matter of minutes.

You merely adopted the memes. Don was born in it. Molded by it. Fear him.

Origin

It is said that Don was created in the year 42069 on the standard Gregorian calendar, referred to henceforth as 0 A.D. (After Don). Humanity had been devastated in an intergalactic war between federations attempting to resolve the issue of who had the best memes. Internet scientist Jamie Dubs sat in his lab, trying in vain to create the world’s dankest and most potent meme weapon as part of a project codenamed D.O.N., so that his homeworld would be victorious. But suddenly, the experiment went horribly wrong, and all of the memetic energy fused together into a single being. The sheer amount of power present resulted in the creation of an intelligent life-form capable of time travel.

Looking around and becoming aware of the damage that memes had done to humanity, the newly formed Don realized that fate had brought him to life for a purpose: he would travel to the year 2008 and begin documenting and dissecting every meme he could find for the next forty thousand years, in the hope that there would be enough memes to quench humanity’s thirst, preventing a war over meme resources in the distant future. Thus, Know Your Meme was born.

Spread

Soon after creating KYM, Don decided to recruit a loyal group of people who would assist him in his quest to discover every meme in existence. Referred to as “moderators”, these individuals sold their souls to him in exchange for being given a portion of his memetic prowess. As a result, they were reduced to naught but automatons, cursed to feel nothing but an urge to document internet phenomena until the end of days.

Soon, netizens began to immigrate to Know Your Meme, enticed by Don’s offerings of dank memes such as “le ron paul face” and “epic meme frog”. It was around this time that KYM forged an alliance with /r/AdviceAnimals: the subreddit would provide KYM with content, in exchange for Don turning every single image there into a meme. This worked flawlessly for a while, but the userbase of KYM eventually grew tired and wary of the unending stream of Advice Animals. Don responded by directing his attention towards Twitter; for the next six months, every entry on the site was based around hashtags.

Trivia

You’ve Just Been Memed On

The phrase “You’ve just been memed on” is a complex Hebrew curse that dooms a man’s soul to hell for all eternity. It was invented by resident KYM Canadian, Captain Blubber on the IRC. Don made this his catchphrase after a sexual encounter with Blubber. He says it at least 40 times a day. He has a large painting in his apartment that has the phrase written on it. Ever since he started saying “You’ve just been memed on” it became a meme itself. People were buying shirts of it, wristbands, hats, action figures, dildos, etc. It became so popular, Don asked someone to shove its origin into this entry.

In 2014, Know Your Meme user CocoaCannon, an ISIS member, nazi and anti-meme terrorist, made public his attack against the memes. Offended by this and fueled by pure patriotism the meme team quickly proceeded to defend the memes at all cost until Don himself memed on the user. He was never seen again. He is suspected to be in Pakistan, causing mischief and hooliganism.

As a matter of fact, you are being memed on in this exact moment. You see, Don is such a powerful memer that he has created a constant flow of memes, thus constantly memeing on every living organism simultaneously at a rapid rate. Human beings have become so conditioned to being memed on, most don’t feel it. Cancer and autism are the side effects of being memed on too hard. The scientists on Meme Mountain have worked on fixing this for years and years, to no avail. The power of memes is simply too strong.

Obligatory Notable Examples Section

The Creation of /don/

Professional site memer and Don cultist Lil B decided to make an image board for Based Don himself. It took blood, sweat and tears to forge the perfect board for Don. It took 7 years, and over 11 thousand memers died in the building of the board. After its creation it was flooded with activity and became the #1 board on 8chan. Hotwheels himself came to Don’s house and had an interview with him. After that, the board died and no one used it. Though it may be dead, it will live on forever in our hearts. RIP in piece /don/.

Totally Legit Search Interest

Internal References

About

Herobrine, also known as “HIM”, is a mysterious character from a Minecraft creepypasta story. He is portrayed as a non-player character in single-player Minecraft with the default skin and completely white eyes. (See also: Majora’s Mask Creepypasta, Slender Man)

Origin

IGN^[7] reported that the first posting of the original creepypasta story was on the Minecraft forums.

Herobrine began as a single, foggy screenshot of a distant figure posted on the Minecraft forums. The picture was accompanied by the story of a Minecraft player finding strange, unexplained constructions in their world, apparently the sign of someone or something else being present.

The earliest known thread on the Minecraft forums^[8] that mentions Herobrine was posted on August 30th, 2010.

Creepypasta

Hoax

The Herobrine story was popularized with a hoax that was staged on August 30, 2010 on the Minecraft video stream “Brocraft”, now called “Ghost in the Stream.” Copeeland, the stream’s creator, showed Herobrine, suspected to actually just be a retextured painting or iron door, near the end of the stream at 20:45. The video has since been deleted.

In another stream, Copeeland’s friend Patimoose faked a game crash, then put up a page with a default Minecraft face with actual human eyes photoshopped on. According to Minecraft Wiki, the page’s source had the following secret message:

It has been reportedd that some victims of torture, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not WAKE UP. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being tortured. The only way that they realized they needed to WAKE UP was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to WAKE UP. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and PLEASEWAKE UP.^[4]

Spread

The creepypasta image was submitted to FunnyJunk^[11] on September 25th, 2010. The first Urban Dictionary^[10] definition was submitted on October 12th, 2010. A Creepypasta Wiki^[9] entry was created on October 30th, 2010. Several Facebook^[12] fan pages have been created, and the most popular page has 8,898 likes as of November 2nd, 2011. The website deviantArt has several pages worth of fan art under the #herobrine tag.^[13] On TV Tropes he is referred to as an “Urban Legend Of Zelda”, a trope regarding strange rumors about video games that reach urban legend status.^[1]

Notch’s Response

Notch has addressed the subject of Herobrine via Twitter and claimed that he is not a real character in the game. There were initial reports that Notch confirmed the inclusion of Herobrine at Minecraftcon 2010, but on October 19th, 2010, he tweeted that he had “no plans of adding herobrine.”^[5]

Minecraft Update

On May 31st, 2011, Notch posted patch notes to his site and the Minecraft launcher with the last item reading “Removed Herobrine”.^[3] The following patch ended with the same remark. This is most likely a joke as Notch has publicly stated that Herobrine is not a real character in the game. It could also be Notch’s way of saying that he removed glitches/bugs related to a recent patch.

Derivatives

Herobrine Mods

Several mod packs for Minecraft have included Herobrine in them. On December 10th, 2010, Minecraft Forums^[6] member Mr. okushama posted a thread indicating that he had added Herobrine to his Humans mod. YouTube user x01011000 uploaded a video titled “12 Let’s play Minecraft – Simple Herobrine Mod” that showed footage of his mod that replaced zombie skins with that of Herobrine:

Fan Art

Search

Search queries for “herobrine” started picking up in September of 2010, around the same time the hoax was live streamed.

External Links

About

BuzzFeed^[1] is a viral content and entertainment news site founded by American Internet entrepreneur Jonah Peretti in 2006. The site is comprised of more than 20 verticals dedicated to curating a wide variety of viral media and news content, ranging from politics, business, sports, and music to internet memes, animals and celebrities, as well as its own original content.

History

BuzzFeed launched on November 1st, 2006 with seven articles containing 10-20 links to other articles on a specific topic, including homosexual Republicans^[23], Borat^[24] and eating endangered animal species.^[25] BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti (shown below) had previously been involved with viral web content while studying at the MIT Media Lab. In January 2001, he attempted to order custom Nike sneakers with the word “sweatshop” embroidered on them. After his request was denied, his shared the email correspondence online, which quickly went viral. In May 2005, he co-founded The Huffington Post with Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer and Andrew Breitbart.

Buzzfeed Motion Pictures

On August 10th, 2014, The New York Times^[32] reported BuzzFeed had recieved a $50 million investment from the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz to expand their original video production division under the newly-branded umbrella of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures. The article went on to suggest that Buzzfeed Motion Pictures would be able to launch full-length films as well as strengthen its shorter video production efforts on YouTube. That same day, the investment deal was announced on the blog of Chris Dixon^[34], a tech business mogul and partner of the investing firm.^[33] In it, Dixon explained:

“As a small, early investor in BuzzFeed, I got to observe firsthand how effectively Jonah and the team executed in recent years. The results speak for themselves: BuzzFeed now reaches over 150M people per month, is consistently profitable, and will generate triple digit millions in revenues this year. I believe the future of BuzzFeed – and the media industry more generally – will only get brighter as the number of people with internet-connected smartphones grows, and the internet solidifies its place as the central communication medium of our time.”

The investment and focus on Buzzfeed Motion Pictures was covered by many sites including The Wrap^[35] and Philly.com.^[37] Buzzfeed^[36] published its official press release regarding the investment on August 11th, which stated:

“Digital video is the future of the media industry and after two years of growth and success, BuzzFeed will expand its video division and become BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. Ze Frank will lead the division as President of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures and will expand to focus on all moving images from a GIF to feature film. BuzzFeed Video will exist under the new organization to focus on current short form video, while the BuzzFeed Live Development team will create mid-form serialized content, focused on building characters and genres. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures will launch a “Future of Fiction” team to explore the future of long-form, television and trans-media video. Hollywood producer Michael Shamberg and actor/comedian Jordan Peele will join BuzzFeed Motion Pictures as advisors.”

Criticism

Listicles

Much of BuzzFeed’s content is list-based articles known as “listicles” consisting of a specific number of curated photos or GIFs centered on a certain topic, for example 15 Curious Things Found in Library Books^[26], 21 Reasons You’re A True Hillbilly^[27] and 16 Problems Every Petite Girl Deals With.^[28] As early as July 2012, this format has been parodied by other blogs and magazines including McSweeney’s^[22], Eater^[23] and Vanity Fair.^[29] Other news sites have criticized BuzzFeed for using this format to explain serious news^[17], including explaining the political climate in Egypt with GIFs from Jurassic Park (shown below).

Parodies

FeedBuzz

On April 5th, 2013, BuzzFeed’s tech vertical FWD posted an oral history of Weird Twitter, containing a number of interviews with Twitter users about their participation in the loosely aligned group of comedic accounts. Two days later, Nate Lamagna, who goes by the handle @vrunt^[9], launched the parody blog FeedBuzz.^[10] That day, he made the first two posts parodying BuzzFeed’s stereotypical listicle content: 7 Unexpected Breakfast Fails^[11] and Top Five Bad Search Engines Throughout History.^[12]

Lamagna invited his Twitter followers to contribute, resulting in more than 400 satirical articles within two months, including pieces by Something Awful writer Jon Hendren, Toothpaste for DInner cartoonist Drew and #ExilePitbull co-creator David Thorpe. In April 2013, FeedBuzz was featured in a satirical review on Fishbowl NY.^[13] In early June, FeedBuzz was featured on the Daily Dot.^[14]

Lawsuit Trolling

On March 27th, 2016, Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology executive, filed suit against BuzzFeed for libel and took this opportunity to troll the media company through the title of his suit, naming it “SIXWAYSBUZZFEEDHASMISLEDTHECOURT (NUMBERTWOWILLAMAZEYOU) … AND A PICTURE OF A KITTEN!”^[38]

</

Gubarev and his company are suing BuzzFeed for including his name in the infamous Trump Dossier. BuzzFeed has since redacted his name and apologized.

According to Buisness Insider, the filing really did include a picture of a kitten in the suit as Exhibit 41 (shown below).

In a statement to Mashable, a Buzzfeed spokesperson responded to the listicle filing.^[39]

“We’re surprised by the plaintiffs’ desire to make light of this matter, and we are confident in our motion to dismiss Mr. Gubarev’s suit,” a Buzzfeed spokesperson said via email.

BuzzFeed Minus GIFs

On October 17th, 2013, a single topic blog titled “BuzzFeed Minus GIFs”^[31] was launched on Tumblr as a parody of BuzzFeed’s signature GIF-driven article format, highlighting the text without any images that usually comprise the centerpiece of the articles.

read the original article                                                             read the original article




read the original article                                                             read the original article



read the original article                                                             read the original article

Related Memes

Aretha’s Hat

Aretha’s Hat is a photoshop meme featuring the bow-style hat worn by singer-songwriter Aretha Franklin during Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration on January 20th, 2009. That day, a photo of the singer wearing the hat was posted to BuzzFeed and commenters began to photoshop the hat onto other photos of humans and animals. Within hours, BuzzFeed made a second post highlighting some of the submitted photoshopped images.

Horsemaning

Horsemaning is a photo fad started by BuzzFeed in August 2011. After posting a sepia-toned photo^[5] (shown below, left) claiming the forced perspective photography had come from the 1920s, the article called it “the new ”/memes/planking">planking and invited readers to take their own photos. However, the astroturfing led writers from Gawker^[6] and Rocketboom^[7] to criticize BuzzFeed for attempting to force a meme.

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket

Tobias Fünke’s Blanket is a photoshop meme that spread on 4chan and Tumblr after a behind-the-scenes photo of actor David Cross wearing a blanket on set was leaked on BuzzFeed on August 9th, 2012, who highlighted a series of photoshopped images based on this strange outfit the following day.

Traffic

As of July 2013, BuzzFeed reaches more than 60 million unique visitors per month.^[2] The site has an Alexa^[3] score of 85 in the United States and 315 globally. BuzzFeed also has a Quantcast^[4] rank of 36 in the U.S.

Search Interest

External References

About

The Emoji Movie is an upcoming 2017 computer-animated film featuring anthropomorphic, talking Emoji characters. The movie, set for released on August 4th, is directed by Tony Leondis, animated by Sony Pictures Animation and starring T. J. Miller as Gene, Ilana Glazer as Jailbreak and Patrick Stewart as Poop.^[1][2]

Origin

On July 21st, 2015, it was announced that Sony Pictures Animation had won a bidding war against Warner Bros and Paramount Pictures to produce an animated emoji film based on the script by Eric Siegel and Tony Leondis. At the 2016 CinemaCon, the film was officially announced, revealing that it would be set in the digital world of a smartphone. In July 2016, T. J. Miller was announced as protagonist Emoji Gene in a tweet by Sony Pictures Animation on World Emoji Day. In October 2016, it was announced that Ilana Glazer and James Corden will be joining the cast. In December 2016, the film’s title was renamed from Emojimovie: Express Yourself to The Emoji Movie. On December 20, 2016, a teaser trailer for the film was released (shown below).

On January 18th, 2017, @SonyPictures^[6] tweeted that Patrick Stewart had been cast as the voice of the Poop Emoji (shown below).

Online Presence

On September 9th, a Facebook^[10] page titled “The Emoji Movie” was created, garnering more than 11,800 likes over the next year. On October 10th, the /r/theemojimovie^[4] subreddit was launched for discussions about the upcoming film. On January 1st, 2017, promotional copy for the film was posted to the /r/copypasta^[5] subreddit.

Reception

Since the film’s announcement, many have mocked the premise for being cheesy and contrived. On October 10th, 2016, Redditor ArmVanDam submitted a post mocking a promotional image for the film to /r/FellowKids,^[7] which gained more than 7,500 votes (93% upvoted) and 730 comments within four months. On December 21st, Redditor zzzackk posted a two-pane image of an Emoji Movie poster above a picture of a man hanging himself to /r/dankmemes (shown below, left). Two days later, a the Sadchan Facebook page posted another two-pane image of the movie poster with the caption “There’s no way 2017 can be any wor-” (shown below, right).

Also on December 23rd, YouTuber LeafyIsHere uploaded a video titled “The Emoji Movie… (Yes Its Really That Bad)”, which accused the film of being “cancerous” (shown below). Over the next two months, the video gained upwards of 1.4 million views and 15,100 comments. On January 1st, 2017, The Inquisitr^[11] reporter that the trailer for the upcoming film had received more than 57,900 thumbs-down ratings.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Fire Emblem Fates Localization Controversy refers to the online backlash that occurred over the changes made to the English version of the Nintendo game Fire Emblem Fates, in which several aspects of the game appeared to be changed or removed. The localization of the game was handled by the Nintendo Treehouse, Nintendo of America’s product development division.^[1]

Background

Fire Emblem Fates is the fourteenth entry in the Fire Emblem series, a tactical role-playing game. On January 16th, 2015, Fire Emblem Fates was announced worldwide during the January 2015 Nintendo Direct Session. ^[2] The premise of the game features the main character, the avatar (default name Corrin in English and Kamui in Japanese), must make a choice whether to side with their birth family in the kingdom of Hoshido, their adoptive family in the kingdom of Nohr, or refuse to side with either kingdom.

Notable Developments

Online Petition

On June 25th, 2015, an online petition^[22] was submitted to Change.org requesting that Nintendo not provide localized versions of Fire Emblem Fates to audiences worldwide. As of February 20th, 2016, the petition has gained over 7,700 signatures.

Removal of Skinship

“Skinship” (also known by its fan nickname “Fire Emblem Amie”) is a mini-game that appears in Fire Emblem Fates. The player can go to their Private Quarters and invite a character in their army, regardless of gender, ^[3][4] to their home and pet them on the face using the Nintendo 3DS touch screen to strengthen their bonds with the character.

On January 26th, 2016, Nathan Grayson published an article to Kotaku titled, “The Other Ways Nintendo Is Changing The English Version of Fire Emblem Fates.”^[5] The article had stated that the face-petting mini-game had been removed from the English version of Fire Emblem Fates. The article had been updated on February 10th, 2016 with an exchange between Kotaku and Nintendo added for clarification (shown below).

Kotaku: I was told that a feature in which you can use the touch screen to directly touch/”pet” your characters is also out of the localized version. Is that the case?

Nintendo: Yes, that is the case. You might have heard somewhat misinterpreted or exaggerated information about the Japanese original game, but even in the Japanese original version, we have not included any features which are considered inappropriate in Japan.”

The removal of “Skinship” was reported to various video game websites, such as Nintendo Everything ^[6], Polygon ^[7], and the Fire Emblem fan site SerenesForest.^[8] Although face petting is not included in the English version of Fire Emblem Fates, the ability to invite someone to your home and receive support bonuses from them remains intact (shown below). ^[9]

Exclusion of Dual Audio

On January 30th, 2016, Geniux submitted a screenshot of an email response from Ash Erickson of Nintendo of America that Fire Emblem Fates will not have the Japanese audio track (shown below) to the r/fireemblem ^[11] subreddit. As of February 20th, 2016, the post has accumulated 0 points (50% upvoted), and 91 comments.

On February 5th, 2016, Nintendo released a statement to Polygon ^[12] that Fire Emblem Fates would be released in North America in English only. Shortly after, edibubble submitted a post to the r/games ^[13] subreddit reporting that the Japanese audio track would not be included in the English version of Fire Emblem Fates. The post has gained 712 points (82% upvoted), and 370 comments as of February 20th, 2016.

Although Nintendo did not comment on the reasoning behind the exclusion of the Japanese track, several people began theorizing on Nintendo’s decision. In the r/fireemblem subreddit ^[14], vkrili submitted a post suggesting that Nintendo may not have included dual audio because of licensing issues with the Japanese voice actors involved. As of February 20th, 2016, the post has accumulated 112 points (82% upvoted), and 111 comments.

Soleil & Male Avatar Support

After the Japanese release of Fire Emblem Fates on June 25th, 2015, a support conversation between the male avatar and Soleil was translated and submitted to Pastebin.^[15] In the original support, Soleil gets distracted from fighting cute girls in the battlefield and it greatly affects her performance. She asks for the male avatar’s help, and the male avatar agrees by putting a magic powder in Soleil’s drink that lets her see men as women, and women as men.

The support came under controversy during the summer of 2015 as the support was interpreted by some people as the male avatar drugging Soleil, and that Soleil was undergoing gay conversion therapy.^[16][17]

When asked about the Soleil support conversation, Nintendo released a statement to NintendoWorldReport (shown below) ^[18] that any implications of gay conversion or drugging will not be included the North American and European versions of Fire Emblem Fates.

“In the version of the game that ships in the U.S. and Europe, there is no expression which might be considered as gay conversion or drugging that occurs between characters.”

The localization keeps the basic premise of the support conversation (shown below) ^[19], but instead of using magic powder, the male avatar has Soleil wear a blindfold and asks for her to imagine him as a girl.

In a SerenesForest thread ^[20], reactions to the new support conversation in general is seen as an improvement to the original Japanese support conversation.

Nintendo’s Statement

On February 15th, 2016, Nintendo released a statement (shown below) to Kotaku^[10] indicating that players would be able to interact with S-Level characters. However, these events were unrelated to the face-petting mini-game that was included Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates.

“In certain circumstances, S-Level characters are able to wake up their spouses by blowing into the microphone or by tapping the screen to touch their hair, face or shoulder. These randomly triggered events are unrelated to the mini-game in the Japanese version.”

Beruka and Saizo Support Cut

On February 21st, 2016, YouTube user stricknit posted a short video of a support conversation between Beruka and Saizo in which each character only speaks in ellipses (shown below). However, in further support conversations between the duo, the characters proceed as if the initial support conversation has happened.

In the Japanese version, the specific support conversation features the characters speaking about their personal histories and divulge personal details, mostly surrounding assassination. Game sites, like Crave^[23] and WCCF Tech,^[24] reported that they believed that the original dialogue might be restored at some point.

#TorrentialDownpour

#TorrentialDownpour ^[21] is a hashtag campaign launched in protest to the localization changes in Fire Emblem Fates (shown below, left) as early as January 27th, 2016. Prior to the campaign, the hashtag was used under a different context, by people tweeting about the weather conditions of where they live (shown below, right).

Alison Rapp’s Termination

As the aforementioned hashtag campaign and protests against Nintendo’s localization of Fire Emblem Fates continued to intensify, Alison Rapp, the spokesperson for Nintendo’s Treehouse division, which handles the translation of the company’s Japanese games, began engaging in heated debates with the critics of Nintendo’s localization policies, soon becoming a target of online harassment from angry fans of the game, as well as pro-Gamergaters and zealous critics of censorship in video games. Between late January and February 2016, Alison Rapp’s hostile exchanges with pro-Gamergaters and other critics of Nintendo’s localization were picked up by several video game news sites and communities, including Medium^[28], Kotaku^[25] and Reddit’s /r/KotakuInAction^[29]. On March 30th, 2016, Alison Rapp announced via her Twitter account^[30] that she had been terminated by Nintendo (shown below), while insinuating that the company’s decision was in part driven by online harassments she had come under in recent months.

Nintendo’s Response

Later that same day, Nintendo responded to Rapp’s Twitter comments by issuing an official statement to the press^[27], in which the company flat out denied any alleged connection between the termination of her employment and the Twitter feud she had become embroiled in, while offering an explanation that she was fired because she was “moonlighting” with a second job, a violation of the company’s internal policy.

“Alison Rapp was terminated due to violation of an internal company policy involving holding a second job in conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture. Though Ms. Rapp’s termination follows her being the subject of criticism from certain groups via social media several weeks ago, the two are absolutely not related. Nintendo is a company committed to fostering inclusion and diversity in both our company and the broader video game industry and we firmly reject the harassment of individuals based on gender, race or personal beliefs. We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors.”

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Innocence of Muslims is an anti-Islam film allegedly produced and directed by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and Alan Roberts, excerpts of which were uploaded onto YouTube in July 2012. The video rose to controversy months later in early September after an Arabic-translated version was aired on the Egyptian TV station Al-Nas.

Background

On July 2nd, 2012, YouTuber SamBacile uploaded two 13-minute video clips titled “The Real Life of Muhammad” and “Muhammad Movie Trailer,”^[1] which showed excerpts from a full-length feature film titled Innocence of Muslims, produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian living in Cerritos, California, and directed by American filmmaker Alan Roberts. Recorded in 2011 under the title Desert Warrior, the film features lewd scenes that could be interpreted as denigrating to Prophet Muhammad, whose depiction in any shape or form is strictly forbidden by the Islamic law.

The film remained largely obscure until early September 2012, when duplicate videos dubbed in the Arabic language were uploaded onto YouTube and picked up by Egyptian bloggers and news publications, triggering a series of anti-American protests in the wake of the videos that have been characterized as “anti-Islamic.” As of September 18th, the original YouTube clip uploaded by SamBacile has gained more than 9.5 million views.

Notable Developments

Protests

On September 8th, the video was picked up and broadcast by the Egyptian TV station Al-Nas, which upstarted its viral momentum on the web. On September 11th, 2012, anti-American protests began erupting outside the U.S. diplomatic mission compounds in Cairo, Egypt and Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans including the ambassador J. Christopher Stevens were killed after rocket-propelled grenades and small arms were fired. Though some U.S. officials claimed that the attack in Benghazi was planned in advance unrelated to the film, it was widely linked to the controversial reception of the YouTube video trailer in the news media. Further attacks have been claimed by the Taliban on the British military base Camp Bastion on September 14th and the Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami against a mini-bus carrying foreign aviation workers on September 18th. Throughout the week, protests spread across the rest of the Muslim world in Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.

On September 18, a female suicide bomber drove a car filled with explosives into a mini-bus with foreign aviation workers in Afghanistan, killing at least nine people, reportedly including eight South Africans and a British woman and possibly also a number of Afghans.^[91] The Islamist militant group Hizb-i-Islami claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the first reported suicide bombing by a woman in the country, and said it was in response to the film.^[92] The Taliban said they attacked the British military base Camp Bastion on September 14, killing two American soldiers, in a response to the film, and later claimed the base was chosen because Prince Harry was there.

News Media Coverage

The day after the attack in Benghazi, Libya, Associated Press^[2] identified a 55-year-old California resident Nakoula Basseley Nakoula as the producer of the film. Nakoula initially denied any affiliation to the YouTube handle Sam Bacile in the interview, but follow-up inquiries launched by the Associated Press and other news sites like Gawker^[4][5], Los Angeles Daily News and LA Weekly linked Nakoula to the account that was used to upload the video and confirm its origin via comment on the day of the Benghazi attack in a duplicate version uploaded by Egypt’s Al-Nahar TV. Written in Arabic, Sam Bacile’s comment read: “It is a 100 percent American movie, you cows.” In addition, New York Times^[6] and The Guardian^[8] provided real-time coverage of the anti-American protests in the Muslim countries.

Cast and Crew’s Response

That same on September 12th, CNN^[12] published an official statement release from the film’s 80 cast and crew members who denounced the film and asserted that the depiction of Muhammad was added post production through overdubbing without their knowledge or consent.

“The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. […] We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred.”

Restricted Access

In the wake of attacks on the U.S. embassies, YouTube announced that it had temporarily restricted access to the video in Egypt and Libya, while Afghanistan and Iran decided to block access to the video-sharing site altogether.

The Director’s Identity

On September 14th, Gawker^[3] published an article titled “The Director of ‘Innocence of Muslims’ Is a Schlocky Softcore Porn Director Named Alan Roberts,” linking the little-known director of the film to a number of adult films released in the 1970s and 1980s. That same day, Vice Magazine released a copy of the film’s post-production invoice records that listed a payee named Robert Brownell, which according to his associates is Alan Robert’s real name. interviews with Bacile

Newsweek Hashtag #MuslimRage

On September 17th, Newsweek^[15] featured a column essay titled “Muslim Rage & The Last Gasp of Islamic Hate” by Ayaan Hirsi Ali as its cover story of the week. To go along with the article, the magazine launched the Twitter hashtag #MuslimRage to encourage its readers to share their thoughts on the topic.

Want to discuss our latest cover? Let’s hear it with the hashtag: #MuslimRage.

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) September 17, 2012

Within half an hour of Newsweek’s tweet, the hashtag was overtaken by tweets illustrating trivial and innocuous moments of rage in mocking the magazine’s word choice on “Muslim” rage. The satire trend on Twitter was picked up by NPR^[17], Washington Post^[19], Al Jazeera^[18] and AFP on the same day.

Online Discussions

Meanwhile on Facebook^[21] and elsewhere, petitions and other forms of protests were launched to convince YouTube to remove the film trailer from the site, as well as editorials and image macro commentaries (shown below) on the issue of censorship and real life consequences of online media.^[22][23]

Director Sentenced

On November 7th, 2012, the LA Times^[24] reported that Mark Basseley Youssef, formerly known as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, has been sentenced by a federal judge to one year of imprisonment for violating the terms of release from his 2010 conviction on bank and credit card fraud, including the use of fake names and lying to his probation officer. Youssef was denied his request for home confinement by United States district court judge Christina Synder on the grounds of “continuing deception.”

Youssef’s attorney Steven Seiden told reporters that he believed his client was being punished by the government for making the Innocence of Muslims film and the probation case was being used as an excuse to violate his constitutional rights. While Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugale claimed Youssef was “not here because of the content of the movie,” he did mention that several cast members had received death threats and feared for their lives. The same day, The Huffington Post^[26] published an article reporting that after court was adjourned, Seiden approached the front steps of the courtroom to deliver a message from his client saying, “The one thing he wanted me to tell all of you is President Obama may have gotten Osama bin Laden, but he didn’t kill the ideology.”

Benghazi Report

On December 18th, 2012, a report^[29] authored by the Accountability Review Board was released based on an independent investigation which determined that there were no YouTube-inspired protests outside of the Benghazi embassy prior to the attack and blamed “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” for the lack of proper security.

“Responsibility for the tragic loss of life, injuries, and damage to U.S. facilities and property rests solely and completely with the terrorists who perpetrated the attacks. The Board concluded that there was no protest prior to the attacks, which were unanticipated in their scale and intensity.”

On the following day, the report was discovered by writer Alex Fitzpatrick from tech news blog Mashable,^[28] which published the findings in an article titled “Report: No YouTube-Inspired Protests Before Benghazi Attack.” On December 21st, CNN^[30] published an article reporting that State Department officials had promised to make security improvements at United States embassies around the world.

Search Interest

External References

Overview

Jada’s Sexual Assault Case refers to the recorded sexual assault of a 16-year-old Texas resident in June 2014. After footage of the assault began circulating via social media, the disturbing photo fad “#jadapose” was launched in which participants mimicked pictures of the victim’s unconscious body.

Background

On July 8th, 2014, a 16-year-old identifying herself as Jada came forward to the Houston news station KHOU^[4] after discovering images of herself naked and unconscious being shared by her peers via social media. Jada claimed the attack occurred at a party she attended one month prior and that she believed she had been drugged as she had no recollection of the events.

Notable Developments

Alleged Rapist’s Response

The same day, Jada’s accused rapist Innel Yahia posted several tweets defending himself and mocking his accuser (shown below). As of July 10th, 2014, the Twitter account has been removed.

#Jadapose

After images of her assault began circulating via social media, Twitter users began posting disturbing photos of themselves mimicking Jada’s photographed position with the hashtag #jadapose^[2] (shown below).

On July 10th, feminist activist and YouTuber Laci Green posted a graphic on her Facebook^[1] page condemning those who were mocking the alleged assault. In the first two hours, the post gained over 20,200 likes and 450 comments (shown below).

Meanwhile, other Twitter users began posting tweets in support of Jada with the hashtag “#jadacounterpose,” some of which included photographs of people holding signs with messages speaking out against rape culture (shown below).

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites reported on the assault and subsequent online reaction, including Slate,^[5] The Washington Post,^[6] The Huffington Post,^[7] Think Progress,^[8] The Daily Mail,^[9] The Blaze^[10] and The Root.^[11]

#IAMJada

On July 14th, 2014, MSNBC news program host Ronan Farrow tweeted^[13] a photo of Jada holding a whiteboard sign which featured the hashtag #IAMJada after she appeared^[12] on Ronan Daily. The tweet encouraged others to take pictures of themselves holding signs featuring the hashtag. Within 48 hours, the tweet gained over 500 retweets.

Within 48 hours the hashtag was tweeted out over 5,000 times, and the sign holding activism trend was covered on several websites including The Daily Dot and The Root.^[15]

Search Interest

Not available.

External References

Overview

Amanda Bieber (Twitter handle: @MandaSwaggie) is a Twitter user who began expressing her appreciation for the Canadian pop star Justin Bieber in March of 2012. After several bouts of insulting tweets against well-known artists such as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, the British boy band One Direction and Freddie Mercury of Queen, some Twitter users responded with harsh criticism towards the Twitter user for being ignorant and offensive. While some have suggested the account was created for trolling purposes, many have reacted to the tweets as if they were genuine.

Background

The @MandaSwaggie Twitter^[1] account was created on March 30th, 2012, with its first tweet proclaiming that Justin Bieber had become more famous than the deceased pop star Michael Jackson.

Michael Jackson fans saying Bieber will never be as big as Michael was. REALITYCHECK– he already is!!!

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) March 30, 2012

On June 13th, 2012, @MandaSwaggie published a tweet comparing Justin Bieber to the deceased rock star Kurt Cobain, saying Bieber was a bigger star for having one of the largest fanbases on Twitter.

Justin Bieber is much bigger than Kurt Cobain, so shut up. Did Kurt Cobain ever have the biggest fanbase on Twitter? NO.

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) June 13, 2012

Notable Developments

On June 14th, 2012, the day after the Cobain tweet was published, the women’s interest blog Jezebel^[13] published an article titled “Justin Bieber Superfan Burns Kurt Cobain By Saying He Wasn’t Huge on Twitter”, which criticized the tweet for failing to recognize that Cobain died in 1994 before Twitter was even invented. On June 16th, the entertainment news blog Digital Spy^[14] followed up with an article titled “Justin Bieber fan sparks controversy with Kurt Cobain remark”, which reported that @MandaSwaggie’s Cobain tweet had been retweeted over 5,000 times and further speculated that the tweets may have been intentionally written in a controversial manner for trolling purposes.

The same day, Redditor bigbenecu submitted a post to the /r/AdviceAnimals^[15] subreddit titled “My immediate thought after reading the infamous Amanda Bieber tweet”, which featured a Futurama Fry image macro implying that the Twitter user was actually a man causing trouble on the Internet (shown above). Also on June 16th, several of @MandaSwaggie’s tweets were posted in a compilation on the Internet humor site 9gag, which suggested nuking the state of California to eradicate the Twitter user. On June 18th, the “Amanda Biebers Tweets” Tumblr^[2] blog was created, which posted screenshots of tweets published via @MandaSwaggie. The same day, a Change.org^[11] petition calling to remove @MandaSwaggie from Twitter was created, which received over 375 signature within 10 days

Also on June 18th, the MSN music blog MusicFix^[16] published a post titled “Justin Bieber fan attacks Kurt Cobain on Twitter.” On June 19th, Redditor BerryKisses submitted a post to the f7u12^[12] subreddit titled “Amanda Bieber, The Fall of Humanity and Disgrace to all Amandas”, featuring a rage comic expressing frustration with two religiously insensitive @MandaSwaggie tweets. The post received over 275 up votes and 80 comments within eight days.

Identity

On June 21st, 2012, Yahoo Answers^[17] user AsteRisque submitted the question “I Have Found Amanda Bieber, aka @MandaSwaggie?”, which linked to a Pastebin page identifying the Twitter user as Amanda Nesheiwat. In the post, an anonymous commenter claimed that the information was incorrect and that @MandaSwaggie was actually created by the Lady Gaga fan @TobeyMonster.^[18] The commenter included a screenshot of a Twitter exchange remarking that the @MandaSwaggie account was created by someone named “Tobey”:

Other Controversial tweets

Several other tweets by @MandaSwaggie have been the subject of criticism, including statements supporting racism, homophobia and violence.

If I had to choose between killing my family or Justin Bieber, I would probably kill my family… #bieber4ever

— Amanda Bieber (@MandaSwaggie) June 18, 2012

Search Interest

External References

About

Cleverbot is a website that features an artificial intelligence (AI) application that chats with users in real-time. It is able to simulate human conversations by choosing phrases that other users have responded with in previous conversations.

History

In 1981, British programmer Rollo Carpenter coded the first incarnation of a chatterbot program that was created to trick people into thinking they were talking with another human, thereby passing the “Turing Test”. In 1997, the bot was called “Jabberywacky”, and was first launched on the Internet. Two Jabberwacky characters, George and Joan, won the Loebner prize in 2005 and 2006. In October of 2008, the Cleverbot variation of the chatterbot was released. In December 2010, a special high-powered version of Cleverbot won the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition^[8], where the events audience voted Cleverbot 42.1% Human (on average).^[9]

Chatterbots

One of the first chatterbot programs was called ELIZA^[5], which was developed by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum from 1964 to 1966. It was able to run custom scripts for interacting with humans, the most notable being it’s DOCTOR script which was meant to act like a therapist. It typically responded with questions about whatever phrase a user had previously entered.

The Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity (ALICE)^[6] chatterbot began development by computer scientist Richard Wallace in 1995. It was inspired by the ELIZA program, but used “heuristical pattern matching rules” to respond to human input.

Traffic

Cleverbot.com has an Alexa^[2] score of 29,733, a Compete^[3] rank of 3,383, and a Quantcast^[4] rank of 186,563.

Search

Search queries for “cleverbot” has been rising steadly since November of 2008, one month after Cleverbot was launched.

Features

h4. Conversation Examples

Highlights

Meme Responses

An article on Singularity Hub^[7] claimed that “talking to Cleverbot is a little like talking with the collective community of the internet”, referencing how it learns phrases from other Internet users. Like the web application Akinator, this has led to Cleverbot becoming familiar with various Internet memes. Inputting “O RLY” into Cleverbot may sometimes make it respond with “ya rly”. It will sometimes recite the Rickroll lyrics if part of the song is typed in. The same will happen with many other songs, including “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Still Alive”. If Chuck Norris is mentioned, it may recite Chuck Norris facts. Cleverbot also knows many Harry Potter spells, and if you write one, it will reply back with another spell, simulating a spell battle.

Turing Test

On September 4th, 2011, Cleverbot participated in a Turing test, an attempt to measure a computer program’s ability to trick someone into thinking it is a human, at a technology event in India. New Scientist reported on its performance in an article titled “Software tricks people into thinking it is human”^[11] on September 6th.

The Cleverbot test took place at the Techniche festival in Guwahati, India. Thirty volunteers conducted a typed 4-minute conversation with an unknown entity. Half of the volunteers spoke to humans while the rest chatted with Cleverbot. All the conversations were displayed on large screens for an audience to see.

Both the participants and the audience then rated the humanness of all the responses, with Cleverbot voted 59.3 per cent human, while the humans themselves were rated just 63.3 per cent human. A total of 1334 votes were cast – many more than in any previous Turing test, says Cleverbot’s developer and AI specialist Rollo Carpenter.

External Links

About

Twitch is an online live-streaming site where users can host and watch e-sports events and other video game-related feeds.

History

Justin.tv

On March 19th, 2007, the streaming video website Justin.tv was launched by co-founders Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt based in San Francisco, California. The site was originally a single channel for Kan’s personal video feed but was relaunched that summer with more than 60 different channels.

Twitch Launch

On June 6th, 2011, Justin.tv launched a public beta for the website Twitch for video game-related feeds. In July, Twitch launched a “Partner Program,” allowing gamers to share revenue with Twitch off ads viewed on their respective live-streams. In September 2012, Twitch raised a $15 million investment from Bessemer Venture Partners to expand e-sports broadcasts.^[3] On October 31st, 2013, Twitch announced that live-streamers on the platform had raised more than $8 million for charity donation drives.^[2] On February 10th, 2014, Twitch.tv and Justin.tv were rebranded as Twitch Interactive.

Rumors of Google Acquisition

On May 18th, 2014, Variety^[6] reported that Google’s YouTube has reached an acquisition deal with the video game streaming service for an all-cash offer of $1 billion, citing unnamed “sources familiar” with the process. In the following hours, the unconfirmed report quickly spread across the tech news blogosphere and financial news sites, with the Wall Street Journal^[7] casting some doubts over the finalization of the deal and adding that the company may be exploring other channels of revenue that wouldn’t entail selling the company. As of afternoon on May 19th, neither companies have released any statement surrounding the rumor.

Amazon Acquisition

On August 5th, 2014, Justin.tv was closed by the company in order to divert resources to Twitch, further fueling rumors of an imminent acquisition.^[9] On August 25th, Twitch announced that the service had been acquired by Amazon for $970 million. In a blog post published on the site, CEO Emmett Shear thanked the Twitch community for the company’s success.^[8]

Dear Twitch Community,

It’s almost unbelievable that slightly more than 3 years ago, Twitch didn’t exist. The moment we launched, we knew we had stumbled across something special. But what followed surprised us as much as anyone else, and the impact it’s had on both the community and us has been truly profound.

Your talent, your passion, your dedication to gaming, your memes, your brilliance – these have made Twitch what it is today. Every day, we strive to live up to the standard set by you, the community. We want to create the very best place to share your gaming and life online, and that mission continues to guide us.

The following day, Forbes^[10] published an article claiming sources revealed Google backed away from the deal due to concerns over antitrust issues that may have arisen due to the company’s ownership of YouTube.

Highlights

EVE Online: Battle of Asakai

The Battle of Asakai refers to a major multiplayer battle that occurred in the MMORPGEVE Online^[8] in late January 2013, which was broadcast live by Twitch streamer ShigsTV.

Twitch Plays Pokemon

Twitch Plays Pokemon was a live-streamed event that began on Twitch in February 2014 in which any member of the site can participate in a massively multiplayer online co-op version of Nintendo’s 1996 role-playing video game Pokémon Red by inputting various commands in chat. After 16 days, 7 hours, 45 minutes, and 30 seconds of continuous play, the game was beaten, having reached over 100,000 viewers at its peak. Several spin-off feeds were subsequently created for other games, including Pokémon Red and Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, QWOP, Pacman and DOOM.

Fish Plays Pokemon

Fish Plays Pokemon is an ongoing live-stream event on Twitch in which a pet fish named Grayson Hopper assumes the role of Red, the protagonist of Pokemon Red/Blue, and the task of completing the game by swimming in a custom-designed tank sectioned into a 3×3 square grid and equipped with a motion sensor detector. Created by two college students^[35], Catherine Moresco^[38] and Patrick Facheris, ^[39] for the HackNY summer fellowship program, the channel has gained more than 4.5 million views and over 60,000 likes in less than three weeks.

4chan Cup

4chan Cup is a series of e-sport tournaments in which 16 teams representing various boards on 4chan compete against each others in the Japanese football video game Pro Evolution Soccer. Each tournament match is webcast in real-time on the video game streaming platform Twitch.

Traffic

On June 5th, 2013, Tech Crunch^[1] reported that Twitch.tv was receiving more than 35 million unique visitors per month. On December 10th, Twitch announced they had gained over 100,000 new streamers using PlayStation 4 integration, bringing the total broadcasters to over 700,000.^[4] As of February 2014, Twitch has a Quantcast^[5] US ranking of 322.

Related Memes

FrankerZ

FrankerZ is a dog face emoticon used to convey sarcasm or playfulness on Twitch and is sometimes spammed in forums and chat rooms during raids.

Raise Your Dongers

Raise your dongers is a catchphrase coined by the League of Legends (LoL) Twitch streamer Michael Santana, better known by his online handle Imaqtipie, that is associated with the champion character Heimerdinger. Although its precise meaning is unclear, the phrase has since been adopted by his fans on Twitch, along with its emoticon form “ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ raise your dongers ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ.”

Search Interest

External References

About

Akinator is a website^[1] and mobile app that features a cartoon genie who asks several questions before attempting to guess the fictional or real character the player is thinking of. The was inspired by the game “20 questions”^[2], and was created by French programmers Jeff Deleau and Arnaud Olivi in 2007.

Gameplay

The genie will ask up to 20 yes or no questions before guessing what character the playing is thinking of. If Akinator guesses incorrectly, it will proceed to ask several more questions before guessing again. If it is unable to guess correctly 3 times, it will prompt the player to enter the actual character’s name.

The database covers a wide variety of characters and will even show you pictures of the ones he guesses.

Traffic

In April 2011 it was published as a mobile game and cost $1.99 from the iTunes store^[3], and $2.27 from the Android market^[4], and have received 4/5 starts on each platform.

As of June 2011, akinator.com has an Alexa^[5] rank of 8,856, and a Compete^[6] rank of 28,414.

Search

Search queries for “akinator” saw their first spike in January of 2010, and again in June of 2012.

Highlights

Meme Characters

Since Akinator is able to learn from players that manage to stump the AI, it frequently has Internet memes added to it’s database.

External References

About

IGN is a website containing video game-related news, cheats, reviews and media.

History

In September 1996, the Imagine Games Network was founded by Jonathan Simpson-Bint for the gaming websites PSXPower, Next-Generation, Saturnworld, Ultra Game Players Online and N64.com. In 1998, many of the sites consolidated to become channels at IGN.com.^[2]

Acquisition & Sales

In 1999, IGN purchased the role-playing video game website Vault Network.^[1] In 2005, Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch’s multimedia business empire News Corporation acquired IGN for $650 million. In 2011, News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment acquired its rival network UGO Entertainment, the parent company of 1UP.com, from Hearst Corporation, for an undisclosed amount in cash and stock with a plan to re-launch the website into a standalone, spin-off video game review site. On May 25th, 2011, IGN’s online game store Direct2Drive was sold to the video game rental service GameFly. In February 2013, News Corporation sold IGN to the publishing company Ziff Davis.

Localization

In 2006, IGN began launching regional variations of the website and licensed publishers in other countries under the IGN brand. If a user visits the IGN website from supported area, the website automatically redirects to that the custom regional version of the site. As of June 2014, there are 17 total supported regions on IGN World^[7] (shown below).

April Fools Pranks

IGN has participated in several notable April Fool’s Day pranks over the years. In 2008, they released a fake trailer featuring a live-action film for The Legend of Zelda franchise (shown below, left). In 2010, IGN posted a fake trailer for a Halo-themed Bollywood musical film (shown below, right).

In 2011, the IGN YouTube channel released a fake trailer for a Harry Potter-themed television show titled “The Aurors” (shown below, left). In 2012, the site posted a mock trailer for a Mass Effect-themed Saturday morning cartoon series (shown below, right).

In 2013, IGN released a parody advertisement for a fake Apple video game console called the “iPlay,” which is only capable of playing the game Angry Birds (shown below, left). In 2014, the site featured a mock trailer promoting a Transformers-themed DLC package for the battle game Titanfall (shown below, right).

Features

IGN contains video game news, information, podcasts and videos for a variety of platforms, including PlayStaion, Xbox, PC and Nintendo. In addition, the site contains sections for movies and television entertainment. The IGN Forums provide community boards for video games and other entertainment media discussions.

Scoring System

The original IGN scoring system gave games a score between .1 and 10.0 based on its performance in a variety of categories, including graphics, sound and gameplay. In August 2010, the scoring system was revised to increments of .5. In September 2012, IGN reverted back to a 100-point scale from .1 to 10.0 in .1 decimal increments. In 2014, a new policy was introducing allowing review scores to be revised in light of game updates and fixes.

Perfect Score Reviews

Highlights

Gaijin 4koma

Gaijin 4koma (Japanese: 外人四こま, “4-frame foreigners”) is a series of four-paned comics based on two photographs of IGN employees reacting to Nintendo’s announcement of new titles at the E3 conference in 2003 and 2004 respectively. The multi-pane set up is typically used to express one’s disappointment and excitement over two separate things, in similar vein to the “At first I was like X, but then I was like Y” snowclone.

Operation Rainfall

Operation Rainfall was an online campaign orchestrated by gamers on the IGN Forums urging Nintendo to release North American versions of the games Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower.

Didn’t Read LOL

"Didn’t Read, LOL” is an expression commonly used to taunt others online by announcing their comments and posts have been ignored. The first known GIF featuring the phrase surfaced on the IGN Forums in July 2008.

Criticisms

Video Game Scoring

IGN video game review scores, which rank games on a scale from 1-10, are often mocked online for being overly generous in light of the actual review commentary. On February 6th, 2012, the gaming blog Twenty Sided^[5] published an article criticizing IGN, which accused the site of “review-score prostitution.” On December 25th, an anonymous 4chan user replied to an illustration of a phallus with the comment “8/10 it’s okay – IGN,” mocking the lackluster reviews accompanied by above-average scores on the site. On October 16th, 2013, IGN reviews editor Dan Stapleton participated in an “ask me anything” (AMA) post on the /r/Games^[4] subreddit. In the comments section Redditor recklessfred pointed out that many people perceived IGN reviews being on a 7-10 scale rather than the stated 0-10 scale. On November 17th, a post was submitted to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] subreddit about IGN scoring jokes. On December 5th, Redditor cyanghost109- submitted an infographic accusing IGN of giving unfair favorable reviews to games in the Call of Duty franchise, gaining over 2,300 upvotes and 300 comments prior to being archived (shown below).

Traffic

In June 2005, IGN reported that the website was receiving 24 million unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users participating across different sections of the site. As of June 2014, IGN has a global rank of 312 and United States rank of 167 on the traffic analytics site Alexa.^[6]

Search Interest

External References