“Epic Beard Man
(& Amber Lamps)”
The “Epic Beard Man” Internet-meme became known after
a video was posted on YouTube on the 16th 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):
Source:
<
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/epic-beard-man> (11.22.2013)
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar