About
What I Know About X are intentionally low quality slideshow presentations which give bad explanations of what is supposedly the author’s knowledge about the specific topic they only had a vague resource to rely on, created to look like Microsoft PowerPoint[1] presentation. Popular on Tumblr, these presentations are often used to explain popular fandoms and TV shows from the perspective of an outsider whose only knowledge of them comes from Tumblr. When seen on Tumblr, they are often titled “What I know about x from my dash,” referring to their Tumblr dashboards. Hallmarks of the meme include low quality copy and pasting, randomly placed narration and a"comic sans":http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/comic-sans font.
Origin
One of the earliest slideshows using this approach was posted to Tumblr on October 28th, 2012, by jacknoir-sexual[13], who used the format to explain the webcomic Homestuck from the perspective of his sister, who had never read it.
Precursors
Parody PowerPoint Presentations
Outside of Tumblr, there have been many parodies of stereotypical slideshow presentations. In 2000, the current Director of Research at Google Peter Norvig created a slideshow for the Gettysburg Address.[12] On YTMND[10], there are nearly 30 PowerPoint style pages. The most viewed site[11], which was created in 2006, depicts Obi-Wan Kenobi (a character from the Star Wars series) giving a presentation about what would happen if the Death Star was attacked. On January 23rd, 2012, the non-profit Growing Leaders[14] uploaded a video to their YouTube channel (shown below) on how to not give a PowerPoint presentation, parodying stereotypical over-the-top slideshows. As of March 2014, the video has over 270,000 views.
Spread
On November 2nd, 2013, Tumblr user thesquirtleshavethephonebox[15] created a post titled “What I Know About ’What I Know About My Dash” From My Dash" using the format to comment on the format. On November 11th, 2012, Tumblr user JinnyMoose[5] created a similarly meta post titled “What I Know About Tumblr” (shown below), containing a slideshow giving an explanation about Tumblr itself as well as popular topics on the site. In just over a week the post gained more than 35,000 notes, leading JinnyMoose creating a second part on November 15th.[6] Popular Tumblr tags for the slide shows include What I Know[3] and What I Know About.[4]
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Microsoft PowerPoint
[2]Tumblr – Tagged ‘Powerpoint’
[3]Tumblr – Tagged ‘What I Know’
[4]Tumblr – Tagged ‘What I Know About’
[5]Tumblr – JinnyMoose ‘There I made a thing’
[6]Tumblr – JinnyMoose ’’Because many people told me I missed things
[7]Tumblr – winchesterlicious | choice slides from my powerpoint on kittens
[8]Tumblr – absurdlyawkward | I made this powerpoint and posted it in my apartment because I’ve lost the ability to can.
[9]Tumblr – jacknoir-sexual | Homestuck according to my sister who’s never read it
[10]YTMND– Search results for “powerpoint”
[11]YTMND– PowerPoint: Death Star Attack
[12]Peter Norvig – The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
[14]YouTube – growingleadersinc
[15]Tumblr – thesquirtleshavethephonebox