About
“Vape Nation” is a satirical comedy sketch video produced by H3h3 Productions in which host Ethan Klein parodies the emerging subculture of vaping among stoners while visiting various locations in New York City. Upon its YouTube release in late March 2016, jokes and image macros featuring memorable quotes from the video began circulating on Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr.
Origin
On March 21st, 2016, H3h3productions uploaded the “Vape Nation” video, in which he portrays a vaping device user wearing a marijuana-leaf printed T-shirt and bandanna while repeatedly telling random pedestrians “go green” and “vape nation” while walking around New York City (shown below). Additionally, the video contains a electronic remix of the “I’m Ethan Bradberry” audio clip as background music. Within one week, the video gained over 2.75 million views and 33,000 comments.
Spread
That day, Redditor DemiPixel uploaded the video to the /r/videos subreddit, where it gathered more than 10,100 votes (64% upvoted) and 1600 comments. Meanwhile, the official @h3h3productions Twitter feed posted a video of himself vaping outside the WABC-TV New York news station filmed by anchor Bill Ritter (shown below).
VAPENATION ON THENEWS
billritter7</a> <a href="https://t.co/zXDa1NLV69">pic.twitter.com/zXDa1NLV69</a></p>— Ethan Klein (
h3h3productions) March 22, 2016
Also on March 21st, the Tumblr[5] blog Ethan Klein’s double chin posted an image macro of Klein dressed as the vaping character with the caption “so lit” (shown below, left). The following day, Tumblr user theprolapsedanus[6] highlighted an image macro of the character squatting in the street with the captions “#VapeNation” and “#GoGreen” (shown below, right).
On Twitch, an emote was enabled featuring an image of Klein’s head from the video, which can be displayed by typing “VapeNation” (shown below). In the coming days, many users posted tweets about the video accompanied by the hashtag “#vapenation.”[3]
Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Reddit – VAPENATION
[2]Tumblr – Search Results for Vape Nation
[3]Twitter – Hashtag – vapenation
[4]Reddit – VapeNation is now an emote on Twitch BTTV
[5]Tumblr – Ethan Kleins Double Chin
[6]Tumblr – theprolapsedanus