Internet meme – Leeroy Jenkins
In this assignment I have chosen to focus
about the Internet meme called “Leeroy Jenkins”.
Description of the “Meme”
On May 11th in 2005 a video was
uploaded to World of Warcraft´s fansite called “Warcraft Movies”. Purpose of
posting the video was to get criticism and perspectives from other players
regarding a group´s gameplay. The video starts with the group discussion
strategies of how to enter a dangerous zone where dragons are known to tear the
players apart.
Suddenly one of the players says “alright, let’s
do this” and runs into the dragon zone while yelling “Leeroy Jenkins”. Leeroy
Jenkins is the name of the character running into the zone. The rest of the
group are surprised and run after him, which result in all of them getting
killed by the dragons. Ben Schultz is the man behind the Leeroy Jenkins
character, and rumors say that he did not participate in the discussion about
strategies because he was heating up KFC. At the end of the video, when every
group member is dead and blaming Leeroy Jenkins, he says, “at least I have my
chicken”.
After releasing the video on the fansite, WoW
players use Leeroy Jenkins as a term for actions that seem dangerous or are
incredibly stupid.
When and Why it Got Popular
After being posted on the World of Warcraft
fansite, the video also appeared on YouTube. It had two postings; one in
November 2005 and the second one in August 2006. The video started gaining
views after the second post, and in May 2012 it had 30 615 841 views. In
addition to many views on YouTube, the name Leeroy Jenkins has 832 000 hits if
you do a search on Google.
November 17 in 2005 the term was
mainstreamed and used as a clue on the famous game show Jeopardy!. In 2009
Leeroy Jenkins was used in an article in Armed Forced Journal called “Let´s Do
This!: Leeroy Jenkins and the American Way of Advising”. American approach to
advising Iraq got compare to Leeroy Jenkins. In addition to Jeopardy! and the
article in Armed Forces Journal, the way Ben Schultz yell his WoW character´s
name has been referenced in many TV shows, games and films. I have added an
example from the TV show called How I Met Your Mother:
In my discussion about why the video has
developed to an Internet meme, I will focus on two different explanations. The
first explanation I want to emphasize is the fact that WoW players uses the
term in relation to possibly dangerous or stupid actions done by themselves or
other players. World of Warcraft has approximately 8 million players and is a
worldwide social experience, thus the term spread quickly.
The second explanation I want to focus on
is humor. It is funny to see how serious the players are in their discussion,
and how frustrated they get when Leeroy runs in the dragons´ cave. The humor
part is mainly caused by the element of surprise. WoW players are serious, and they
use weeks or months playing the game. When looking at the video you don´t
expect one of the characters to act like that.
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar