About
“Ola K Ase” or “Ole Ke Ase” is a catchphrase that is a play on the Spanish expression “Hola Que Haces?”, which literally means “Hi, What are you doing?” While it can be colloquially used as “Hey, what’s up?” the phrase has been adopted as a Twitter hashtag and an image macro series, similarly to Whatcha Thinkin’ Bout?
Origin
One of the earliest instances of the phrase “Ola K Ase” in image macros appeared on the automobile enthusiast forum ForoCoches[2] on November 1st, 2012. The first post contained a set of three photos featuring a llama and two different dogs with variations of the phrase overlaid on them.
Spread
The Twitter account @OlaKAseTu[2] was created on November 11th, 2012, gaining more than 155,000 followers by December 19th. On November 15th, 2012, a Facebook page[1] for the phrase was launched, gaining more than 45,000 likes in just over a month. A week later, A blog post appeared on the CocaCola Happing social network[8] attempting to explain the images, linking the spread of them back to the @OlaKAseTu Twitter account. A few days later, a blogger named Antonio Ortiz looked into the trend on his personal blog, Error 500[9], yielding discussion about the evolution of language memes, specifically in Spanish-speaking countries.
On November 29th, a question about the origin of the phrase was asked on Mexico Yahoo! Answers.[7] By December 2nd, the news site SDP Noticias[10] covered the trend, noting that the hashtags were Twitter trending topics in Mexico for two days. As of December 19th, the hashtag #OlaKAse[3] has been used on Twitter more than 9000 times[4] and #OlaKeAse[5] has been used more than 5700 times.[6]
Notable Examples
Twitter Feed
Search Interest
External References
[1]Facebook – OLA K ASE?
[3]Twitter – Tweet results for “#olakase”
[4]Topsy – Results for #olakase
[5]Twitter – Tweet results for #olakease
[6]Topsy – Results for #olakease
[7]Mexico Yahoo! Answers – ¿Por que ponen “OLA K ASE” en twitter?
[8]CocaCola Happing – ‘OLA KE ASE’, las imágenes más divertidas con llamas de por medio
[9]Error 500 – OLA K ASE y el nuevo lenguaje de la chavalada en internet
[10]SDPnoticias – El origen del “ola k ase”