ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS by Iselin Roberg

Nyan Cat:  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4‎

The Nyan Cat became popular through the YouTube clip called Nyan Cat [Original]. The video is an 8-bit animated cartoon cat with a Pop-Tart body, flying through space and leaving a trail of rainbow behind itself, with a Japanese pop song in the background singing nyan continuously. It was uploaded on the YouTube-channel of saraj00n on April 5^th 2011. Picture source: http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/Nyan_Cat_Wide.jpg

Description of the meme:

The animation was made by Christopher Torres from Dallas, Texas. Two different people had asked him to draw a combination of a Pop-Tart and a cat, and this GIF was the result. He posted it without any music on his webpage April 2^nd 2011, and called it the Pop Tart Cat. "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" is the Japanese song played in the background of the video on YouTube. The Japanese word 'nyan' means the same as the English word 'meow', imitating the call of a cat. The song used in the video is a remix of a Japanese pop-song, with female vocals singing nyan throughout the song.

Popularity of the meme:

It was ranked at #5 on the list of most viewed videos on YouTube in 2011, and by the end of April 2011 it had 7.2 million views. As of November 2013 it has reached over 100 million views. Due to it's popularity, a lot of remixes, games, animations, and lots of other stuff have been made with the now iconic Pop Tart Cat or Nyan Cat. The popularity of the cat with the rainbow trail was enormous, and I tried to do the Google Trend search, but my computer did not manage to do that.

Slipknot’s Psychosocial Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mtOdT9LBOg

Viewers of the Nyan Cat video was encouraged by xDaZJMx on the comment feed to view the Nyan Cat song in the background with Slipknot’s Psychosocial video played on mute. This resulted in over 111,000 comments on the Slipknot’s video reading “NYANNYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYANYA.” To much confusion among the listeners of Slipknot, and it spread the meme even further. The two were put together in a YouTube video on April 17^th and has now more than half a million hits.

Single-Serving sites: http://www.nyan.cat/

This website was published on April 13^th of 2011. The nyan.cat website was originally a fake, but is now controlled by Christopher Torres and shows the real version of the 8-bit GIF animations of the cat. This is a page that shows how many seconds you have been on it, and creates a game where you can share the seconds with your friends. The sharing with friends adds to the hype and generates more users.

Games:

There are a wide range of different games connected to the Nyan Cat animation, according to knowyourmeme.com, there are games “such as Nyan Cat Lost in Space, Snake Nyan Cat, Nyanicorn (Robot Unicorn Attack variant), and Nyan Cat Fly, among others.” These are mostly 8-bit-styled games who are simple to play. Picture source: http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/nyan-cat-fly/screen4.jpg

Nyan Cat Progress Bar:

On June 16^th of 2011, YouTube created a customized progress bar showing the animated Nyan Cat moving across the progress bar and leaving a rainbow trail.

 

Resources:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nyan-cat-pop-tart-cat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS by Anine Jorstad Paulsen

Planking

By Anine Jorstad Paulsen

Planking, or the Lying Down Game, is an activity where you’re lying face down, often in an unusual position or location. The phenomenon was first introduced by two teenage boys from England in 1997, where they started lying face-down in public places to amuse themselves. They’re names were Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon, and they were 15 and 12 years old at the time. They called it the Lying Down Game. It became known on the Internet in 2007, when one of their friends Daniel Hoppin created a Facebook page, to see who could take the craziest photo. The term “planking” was then later introduced by Sam Weckert from Australia, who also created a Facebook page where people could share their photos. The media started reporting the practice, and by 2009 it was a global phenomenon.

I think the reason it became so popular on the Internet was because a lot of people had the goal of posting the best “planking” photo. It became a competition where people would “plank” almost anywhere for a good photo, even if it left them in a dangerous situation. It has been reported at lest one death as a result from the activity. Some examples of where people have been planking is on top of dangerous animals like tigers and whales, on top of tall buildings, on top of moving cars etc.

There are very specific rules you have to follow when planking:

1) You must always lay face down, ensuring your face remains expressionless for the duration of the Plank.

2) Your legs must remain straight, and together with toes pointed.

3) Your arms must be placed by your side, held straight and fingers pointed.

4) You must make it known that you are Planking. Saying 'I am Planking' usually get this across. Sternly announcing it will ensure a good result.

5) Your safety should always be considered. Properly thought through Planking procedures should always go to plan. Never put your self at undue risk.

6) Every Plank that is captured must be named.

If we look at Google Insights, planking was the most popular in the period between April 2011 and December 2011. After that, the searches for the term decreased. The news about a person dying after the attempt of taking a planking photo was probably one of the reasons the term was a popular search in May 2011. Even though the craze is less searched for now, it’s still a popular phenomenon, and you can still see people posting planking photos of themselves online.

There are a lot of other memes that has been influenced by planking, and the most popular ones are probably “owling”, “batmanning” and “horsemanning”. Owling is when a person squats “like an owl” in populated and uncommon areas, while making noises similar to an owl. Batmanning is a meme which involves hanging upside down by the feet, and Horsemanning requires two people, appearing to be a single person with a detached head. Other memes that has been influenced by planking is “hadoukening”, “vadering”, “teapotting”, “springing”, “tebowing”, “gronking”, “bradying”, “griffining”, and “kaepernicking”.

https://docs.google.com/a/bstv.no/document/d/1glYxtqXva6HOpkf7f8y8UrFkxYQfN8FIguOz_r2ya0U/edit?hl=en_US

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=planking#q=planking&cmpt=q

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS by Mia Helen Roos

“Epic Beard Man (& Amber Lamps)” 

The “Epic Beard Man” Internet-meme became known after a video was posted on YouTube on the 16^th of February 2010. The video-content was two men on a bus having an argument that heated up so bad that one of the guys ended up breaking the other one´s nose.

There has been given several explanations on why the video ended up getting so much attention and becoming so popular. One of the reasons given is that 67-year-old Thomas Bruso was probably seen as an unlikely candidate to beat up the much younger black man, Michael, that he argued with. Also, Thomas Bruso was wearing a t-shirt that said, “I am a motherfucker” which is funny thinking of the actual incident that took place. Another thing people thought were funny about this video was when Michael tried to say, “Bring an ambulance” at the end of the video, because it sounded like “Bring M&M´s” or “Bring amber lamps”.

The video was taped on a bus in Oakland in 2010 by one of the passengers on the bus, Iyanna Washington. When the video starts the two men, Thomas Bruso and Michael, were already in the middle of an argument. As the intense conversation went on the arguing was heating up and both men were getting more and more angry at each other. Eventually Michael told Bruso to go sit in front of the bus since he was so “pissed off”. Bruso went to the front of the bus, but the two men kept on arguing. Finally Michael got up from his seat in the back and walked towards the front of the bus. After a lot of arguing back and forth Michael took the first step towards taking the conflict to a physical level. Bruso managed to deflect Michael´s first hit and starts punching him back instead, about 9 punches can be seen on the video. When he stopped hitting Michael, the bus had stopped and Bruso got off while he kept yelling and shouting.

On www.knowyourmeme.com it is written that Anonymous had nicknamed Thomas Bruso “Epic Beard Man” even before his identity was found. Mr. Bruso is from Oakland and known among citizens as “Tom Slick” or “Vietnam Tom” even before this incident due to his fierce temper.

The video became popular relatively fast regarding www.knowyourmeme.com. The video got over 1million views during the first 24 hours it was posted. Looking at the original video on YouTube today it has more than 6million views. If searching for “Epic Beard Man” on Google today (11.22.2013), one gets 9.3million hits.

In the wake of this incident there were created an “Epic Beard Man” fan page on Facebook and an “Epic Beard Guy” twitter account, and articles on the incident have been posted on Metafilter, Deadspin,Holy Taco and Urlesque (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/epic-beard-man). Also there´s been some video responses to the original video, and most of the responses expresses impression by the fact that 67-year-old Bruso managed to beat up much younger Michael.

After the incident, the expression “Amber lamps” first lead to some people creating images with amber-colored lights but later, the girl that sat next to Michael on the video got this as a nickname. The reason why she became almost like a meme herself was her “casual, unaffected facial expression” during the whole scene (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/epic-beard-man).

Link to the original video (have to log into Google account to view due to the violent content):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJFv9SMSMQ&feature=player_embedded

Source:

< http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/epic-beard-man> (11.22.2013)

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS by Kristine Paulsrud Brenna

Student: Kristine P. Brenna

SELECTED MEME: COCHOLATE RAIN

An American student from Minneapolis in Minnesota, Tay Zonday, published in April 2007 this video on YouTube, and it became a huge hit! In the beginning, Zonday said that the song was made to make people think about what they really meant, but later on Zonday said that the meaning of the song was «institusional racism» (Know Your Meme, 2007).

Just a few months (about three) after the video was published on YouTube it had more than 90 million views (Wikipedia, 2013). In writing (11.28.13, 3:30 pm), the video have 94,543,935 hits on YouTube. By looking at «Google Insights», I found that the interest for this video was highest in August 2007. This was right after Tay attended the American television show «Best Week Ever» and Jimmy Kimmel Live show (Know Your Meme, 2007). There was then an interest reduction in the end of 2007, while it increased again after the first quarter of 2008. Since summer 2008 the interest has been stabil – just a slight decrease. The song was most popular in Hong Kong, the United States and Canada (Google Insight, 2013).

Source: Google Trends (2013). Chocolate Rain.  http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Chocolate%20Rain&cmpt=q

Thousands of people have made a parody of the song (even in South Park). In addition to this, the video has been remixed a large number of times and Tay him self has performed the song on several televison shows and different commercials (e.g. for Dr. Pepper, Vizio Super Bowl with Beyoncé and Firefox). Even the parodies have got millions of views on YouTube, which gives us an even better picture of this song´s crazy popularity. The first parody was made after 4chan published it and made a lot of fun with the song, in honor to mr. Zonday. As we understand, the new published video was seen by millions of people and got a lot of attention, and the hacktivist and activist group Anonymous is no exception. Tay was really cool when this happened and responed to them by doing a cover hit of a song from another of Anonymous´ interests, Rick Astley (Know Your Meme, 2007).

When I first watched the video, I thought «What on earth made this video so popular? It is just wierd». But when I had watched it a few more times, I changed my mind. The reason why I think the video has became so popular is first of all that Tay Zonday looks like a sharming and modest boy which has made a video just because he wanted to. It doesn´t look like he planned to be a popular YouTube video maker. I think these personal characteristics and such appearance captivates the viewers' attention. When he starts to sing, his voice is surprisingly deep. How can this «little» boy has that deep voice? It is almost hard to believe that it is his real voice. I think this is another thing that catched peoples attention. People get impressed and surprised, and will gladly share it with friends, family and other acquaintances. A third reason I will highlight is the lyrics and the point of the video. Racism is a topic many people care about, and since he is a boy with darker skin which sings about this topic, it is easier for him to be well-liked among the population. The lyrics and the melody also sticks to your head once you have heard it.

Sources

 Know Your Meme (2012). Tay Zonday/Chocolate Rain. Recruited 11.28.13 from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tay-zonday-chocolate-rain

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2013). Chocolate Rain. Recruited 11.28.13 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_Rain

Google Trends (2013). Chocolate Rain. Recruited 11.28.13 from http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#q=Chocolate%20Rain&cmpt=q

 YouTube (2007). "Chocolate Rain" Original Song by Tay Zonday. Recruited 11.28.13 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA

ASSIGNMENT #5 - "MEMES" and DIFFUSION of INTERNET TRENDS by Renate Torgersen

The Cinnamon challenge

The Cinnamon challenge is a dare game who involves the attempt to swallow a spoon of cinnamon. Since the early 2000s, the game has been well known because it is extremely difficult to do. Today, the cinnamon challenge is a well-known phenomenon on YouTube, and there are thousands of videos about the challenge.

The earliest known attempt is the Cinnamon challenge in 2001, and it was hosted by Michael Buffington and played by Erik Goodlad. The challenge was posted as a blog article on Buffington’s blog. 

However, the earliest YouTube version was not uploaded until April 2006. This video was called “Pipe Attempts the Cinnamon challenge”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMDceZM8KRs

After 2006, many similar videos was posted on YouTube, and it became a great hit. The number of YouTube videos have increased greatly the last couple of years, and they are only getting funnier and funnier. You will absolutely find one video you like. One of the funniest videos I have seen is one uploaded by GloZell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyk7utV_D2I

The reason why it became so popular have to be because it is hilarious to watch people trying to eat a spoon of cinnamon. People do not think it is hard to eat cinnamon, and do not understand why this should be funny, which makes it even more hilarious. They are coughing cinnamon and looking for water.

The cinnamon challenge today is really famous, and people are still uploading new videos. A google search of cinnamon challenge gives us 18 800 000 hits, and there are over 40.000 videos of the Cinnamon challenge on YouTube. This meme have been there for several year, and I think it is going to be popular for a long time. It is easy to find it entertaining, and people are enjoying this kind of jokes or pranks.

However, this challenges actually more dangerous than it appears, people are being poisoned and sickened because of this. Inhaling the cinnamon powder into the lung can be dangerous. On the other hand, I do not this will affect the popularity and people will still do and laugh of this dare.

Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cinnamon-challenge