Chuck Norris Facts

Chuck Norris Facts

Team Member: Tone Helgesen

Chuck Norris facts originally started appearing on the Internet in early 2005. The jokes are normally about Norris` toughness, virility, masculinity, sophistication and attitude. Chuck Norris facts are satirical factoids about the famous actor and martial artist Chuck Norris.

           Every night the boogeyman checks under his bed for Chuck Norris.

           Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.

Jesus can walk on water, but Chuck Norris can swim on land.

This is only 3 of many jokes about Chuck Norris. And it`s so popular that it`s not only about him anymore, but also other celebrities and the facts are also translated into many languages.

The joke started first with “Post Your Vin Diesel Facts” after Vin Diesel was actor in the movie “The Pacifier” as a Navy SEAL-turned-babysitter. A guy, Mr. Ian Spector made a website so people could share and submit new jokes. That was a great hit. People send in so much, and the first day he had received 20,000 hits.

The fact about Vin Diesel lost it`s luster after a while, so Mr. Spector asked people to find a new name for the next fact generator. He had 12 candidates, but people picked Chuck Norris although he was not on the list.                          

The Chuck Norris fact is still going on, but not even close to how popular it was in 2006.

 Chuck Norris think this was funny, so also videos of him reading the jokes about himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA_hMq-JUOE

I think these jokes became so popular because he was a hero in the movies. He fights in the movies and he was an epic character. So I think people found it so funny to make fun out of the character and pretend like it is Chuck Norris in person. But it`s not so funny jokes, but it`s maybe because of that they are so popular.

I think it became popular because people pretended like it was real and not jokes. They maybe pictured the jokes in their head and make it funny in their own way.

 Thing around internet becomes popular all the time, and it`s hard to really know why it become that popular. For me it`s like that with Chuck Norris facts. If you have seen some movies with him, maybe it`s funny, but for me it`s hard to understand why it became so funny.

Planking

Planking

Team Member: Areli Espinoza

When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why? 

Planking became popular in social networks, like Facebook, around 2009. It is not clear exactly where it started and when, majority of individuals are fixated with Australia or England being the locations of the first sightings of the planking meme. This meme goes to the extremes with its disregard of safety of the individual. Planking is probably popular because of the ridicule, attention they get from spectators, and adrenaline individuals seek and adore, which is what most teenagers consider as “cool.”

 The details/description of the "meme"

Planking consists of laying face down, putting one’s hands to the sides, and having one’s toes touching the ground. A photo must be taken of the event and shared on an online social network. The larger the group and the more public the planking the popular the meme and individuals will get.

 How popular did it become and over what time span?

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

In 2009 planking was getting momentum and by 2011 it reached its highest peak. Thanks to social networks like Facebook and YouTube planking became a worldwide phenomenon. Every country had its own name for the game like “Playing Dead” in South Korean and “The Lying Down Game” for the United Kingdom. 

Other memes that have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.

Some memes that are affiliated with planking are:

Teapotting (2011)- which consist of bending the arms into the shape of a teapot.

Batmanning (2011)- which consists of hanging upside down by one’s feet.

Owling (2011)- which consist of an individual squatting like an owl and owl impressions usually follow with the act.

Horsemanning (2011)- which consists of two individuals creating the illusion that they are a single body with a detached head.

The Results of Planking:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1387272/Planking-claims-victim-Acton-Beale-falls-balcony-death.html

Death of Acton Beale!

Nyan Cat

NYAN CAT

Team Member: Julianne Dragseth

Nyan Cat, also known as Pop Tart Cat, is an animated character that was first seen on the daily comic site LOL-COMICS on April 2nd, 2011. The Nyan Cat is an 8-bit animation that portrays a cat with a body consisting of a cherry pop tart that is flying through outer space. The illustrator is Chris Torres (also known as prguitarman), which found the inspiration for the Pop Tart Cat from his own Russian Blue cat, and the idea of the Pop Tart came during a  Red Cross charity drawing event on Livestream.

Prior to the Pop Tart Cat/Nyan Cat Chris Torres aka prguitarman had already received some attention for his comics, and hence gained a relatively large audience. This might be why this specific GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) got so popular. The existing audience was big enough to circulate the GIF enough so it would receive attention. The GIF was reblogged via Tumblr on April 2nd, 2011, which resulted in over 3,000 likes or reblogs during the first two weeks.

Also, in addition to this previous audience, and the reblogging, one other person helped give attention to the Pop Tart Cat. On April 5th 2011, Youtube saraj00n posted a video titled "Nyan Cat" with the Pop Tart Cat animation set to the Japanese Vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya by Japanese artist Daniwell-P looping in the background. This video accumulated over one million views in its first two weeks on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QH2-TGUlwu4

Nyan Cat has also been spread onto different platforms and to different social networking sites. This mainly started happening on April 10th when the Nyan Cat video was making its appearance on Facebook, Memebase, Tumblr, Buzzfeed and other blogs and social networking sites.

After a short period of time, there was created several spin offs and remixes of the video, with either alternative background music or characters. Here are some examples:

Hello Kitty Nyan Cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dslp-JXTjiE

Tac Nayn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM-9Q0ac6Zs

In addition to these spin offs there has been created games, single-serving sites, a Nyan Cat progress bar among other things. In addition there has also been made a dubbed version of a Slipknot song, where the video is played with the song, which is now associated with the Nyan Cat, in the background.

Nyan Cat had its peak in June 2011, but thereafter the interest has been decreasing according to the Google Trends table.

What might have caused the Meme's publicity might be because the animator had a known blog that had loyal followers. This might make them more accessible to sharing the meme and hence contributing to the spread and popularity of the meme. Also the amounts of spin offs that have been created might have made this meme even more popular.

Paula Deen Riding Things

Paula Deen Riding Things

Team Member: Jennifer Hansen

The First Paula Deen Riding Things Meme

Paula Deen Riding Things is an Internet meme that began circulating in late February/early March of 2011. The meme consists of photoshopping a picture of American cook show host Paula Deen onto images of objects or people to make it appear as though she is riding them.

Most of the meme's images are of Deen riding food, particularly butter and bacon, as the chef is known to love these unhealthy ingredients.

Also popular is placing Paula Deen upon the shoulders of celebrities, movie characters, or otherwise well-known people.

The meme originated after an appearance by Paula Deen at the South Beach Wine and Food Festival on February 27, 2011. At one point during a tasting event Deen was hosting, her co-host Robert Irvine, a fellow celebrity chef, got down on all fours and Paula climbed onto his back and pretended to be a horse jockey. (Of course copious amounts of wine were involved).

Here's a video of the incident:        www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeaUA1Dt-mM


The following day, February 28,  two college students, known to the Internet as Nick and Robbie, created a Tumblr blog called "Paula Deen Riding Things." They posted 13 photoshopped images of Paula Deen's riding pose, including the gif above. The tumblr also provided two templates which enabled others to participate more easily in the production of the meme. The meme did not take off in popularity until the next day,March 1, after comedian and talk show host Jimmy Fallon tweeted a link to the blog. The meme spread quickly and was featured on numerous websites and even shown to Deen herself during a television appearance on March 16. The meme's popularity was highest during the month of March 2011 and decreased significantly once the "buzz" had passed (see the Google Trends graph below).The Paula Deen Riding Things website (http://pauladeenridingthings.com/) had 212 posts during March 2011, 106 more over the next three months, and only 91 in the 22 months since August 2011, including three submissions in 2013. Additionally, the popularity of this meme was restricted to the United States (according to Google trends), which would suggest the meme's humor is cultural specific.

The Paula Deen Riding Things Google Trends graph: 


The popularity of Paula Deen Riding Things is, like many memes, a strange phenomena. One possible factor in its proliferation is the joy of participatory humor. By providing an easily accessible template on their blog, Nick and Robbie encouraged others to modify the already funny situation of Paula Deen riding a man's back along with them. In addition, America's celebrity fixation, as well as emulation, may be a factor. Paula Deen's actions only garner so much attention if people are watching and interested in what she is doing, which is only the case because of a tv show and media attention. Media attention also helped spread the meme in their coverage of both the original incident and the meme's creation. The role that Jimmy Fallon's tweet had in the spread of this meme indicates the desire of Americans to emulate their stars, to be interested in what interests or amuses them. Finally, the meme is popular because it is funny. It is humor of the reducto ad absurdum type. Taking a picture of Paula Deen and placing her on a killer whale (http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/369/290/5fb.png) expands her behavior from its original playfulness to absurd. Also, Paula Dean herself is an exaggeration of a Southern identity, from her accent to her love of butter. The Internet meme allows people a disinhibited space to poke fun at her identity. All of these factors help explain why Paula Dean Riding Things rose quickly in popularity.

Although the Paula Deen Riding Things did not spawn other memes, a common practice is to incorporate Paula Deen into other memes.

Paula Deen Rides Ridiculously Photogenic Guy

Paula Rides Nyan Cat

In October 2011, a blog was created devoted entirely to the mash-up of the Paula Dean Riding Things meme with another meme known as Kim Jong Il Looking At Things.

http://kimjongillookingatpauladeen.tumblr.com/

In conclusion, Paula Deen Riding Things is a Photoshop meme that arose in March 2011 and has largely died out today, but not before providing us with unforgettable images such as...

Gingers Do Have Souls

GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS

Team Member: Sara Hareide Wagland

The phenomenon with “Gingers do have souls”, started out with a South Park episode from the 9^th November 2005 called “Ginger Kids”. In that episode one of the main characters, Eric Cartman, gives a speech to the class about how ginger kids are born with a special disease. The disease is called “gingervitus” and occurs because ginger kids apparently have no soul.

South Park – “Ginger Kids”

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103645/gingervitus

South Park is a very popular, animated sit-com show for adults. The show is known for mocking and satirizing social and political issues, and in this particular episode they focus on ginger kids and ginger discrimination. It was almost like everyone was waiting for a ginger kid to come along and confront this.

And it happened. On the 14^th of January 2010 an 18-year-old boy called Michael Copper (alias “CopperCab”) uploaded a video on YouTube called “GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS!!” In this video he is angry at South Park and everyone else who makes fun of redheads. With highly exploitable quotes “CopperCab” shares his frustrations about ginger discrimination; “my feelings are really hurt”, and “I am a Christian, and I do have a soul!” At the same time he screams and makes a lot of strange faces.

The real video, “GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS!!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EY39fkmqKBM

The monologue made the video a popular target for further remixes and mash-ups, and it became really popular in a short time. The first month after the video was uploaded on YouTube, it reached 3.1 million views and over 600 response videos. According to Google Insight Interests (look at the graph below), its top peak was in April 2010. But it is still a really popular video, with 32,683,342 views as of the 25^th of February 2013. 

The video led to a lot of other video responses, and even South Park responded in March 2010. The promo for their 14^th season was a spoof of “CopperCab”´s video; a ginger-haired Eric Cartman impersonating “CopperCab”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I30ScaB4Ak&feature=player_embedded

A lot of memes have been created as a response to the “CopperCab”´s video. I think the reason these memes and the video have become so popular, is that they both lie on the line of what is inappropriate and appropriate (the concept of humor and schema). It is no doubt discriminating (and racist) against gingers, but since it is about hair color it is more socially acceptable (rather than skin color). That may be a reason for why people find it so funny.

Chocolate Rain

Chocolate rain

Team Member: Anniken Boye

The meme chocolate rain started with Tay Zondays song and music video “Chocolate rain”. The song became quickly popular after being posted on youtube on April, 22, 2007. Zonday was a grad student from Minneapolis, Minnesota when he uploaded the video Chocolate rain. He is singing in a condenser microphone in a recording studio where he is wearing a white T-shirt. “I move away from the mic to breath in” is a caption which appears early in the video, and after it´s appearance it has been parodied many times. Many viewers tried to figure out what Zonday meant with his strange lyrics like “chocolate rain, some stay dry while other feel the pain”. Zonday claim that the song was meant to be about institutional racism.

This is the original video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA

After Zondan´s first appearance on 4chan, parodies began appearing on youtube of his video:

“Vanilla snow”

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

Chocolate rain by Chad Vader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6dUCOS1bM0

 

         

Why did this meme become so popular? I think some may say because of how random the song is and the strange lyrics. The song is also catchy and the sheer base in Zonday´s voice might be one of the reasons that the song becomes so popular. People love it and at one point the video was among the top 50 most viewed YouTube videos of all time. The video had 65 million views of April 21st, 2011 and it is ranked #96 of all time. Chocolate rain has 88 million views of January 26, 2013.

The interest for chocolate rain was highest of August 2007.

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

Team Member: Angela Liu   

http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/image/42969773819

“looking at a red ribbon”

http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/image/40079174911

“looking at fossils”

http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/image/39400166230

“looking at a workbench”

Who is Kim Jong Un?

Kim Jong Un is the current supreme leader of North Korea and the youngest son of Kim Jong Il. There is little information about the personal life of Kim Jong Un, but his birthdate is believed to be either in 1983 or 1984. He was seen as the heir apparent from late 2010 on, and was formally declared the supreme leader after the funeral for his father, Kim Jong Il, on December 28^th, 2011. Prior to 2010, Kim Jong Un’s eldest brother Kim Jong –nam had been the favorite to succeed their father, but quickly fell out of favor in 2001 when he was caught using a fake passport to attempt to enter Tokyo, Japan to visit Disneyland. Kim Jong Un has been described to be exactly like his father, while his elder brother was said to be too feminine for the role. Under these circumstances, Kim Jong Un became the apparent favorite of their father. Since the succession, Kim Jong Un has been featured widely in North Korean publications as a great and powerful leader. There are currently reports that Kim Jong Un is continuing his father’s policies in operating political prison camps and general human rights violations. However, there have been rumors that Kim Jong Un has loosened his grip in the strictness of censorship.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/2012/poypoll/un.jpg

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things

Kim Jong Un Looking at Things first launched on December 18^th 2012 as a parody of the original blog Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, which launched in October 2010. Most of the photographs used in the blog are taken off of propaganda photos issued by the North Korean press to bring greater presence of Kim Jong Un into North Korean society after his succession. The photos were originally meant to showcase how great and powerful he is. According to Google Trends, the first appearance of searches for Kim Jong Un Looking at Things took place in early 2011, though the searches were quite small. The number of searches shot up to its peak in late 2011 to early 2012 and declined since then, with a few spikes in searches in late 2012. The vast majority of the searches were done in the United States (including Alaska), Germany, and the United Kingdom, with the highest number of searches coming from Germany. The popularity and prevalence of the meme and sudden interest in early 2012 is most likely due to the launch date of the blog in conjunction to the death of Kim Jong Il and subsequent succession by Kim Jong Un. This critical time frame provided the most material in terms of photos released by the North Korean press. The decreasing interest in the meme was most likely due to a decline in exposure from the North Korean press as more time passed after the succession and the novelty started to wear off. The slight rises in search throughout late 2012 and early 2013 is most likely caused by international news regarding North Korea (which links to Kim Jong Un) in the popular media; one such example is the current nuclear missile threat made by the North Korean government towards the United States, accounting for the increased interest in early 2013.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mckpfsZwvj1r8asibo1_500.jpg

“looking at children’s socks”

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbvib0g9kY1r8asibo1_500.jpg

“looking at a tree trunk”

The Origin – Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

The meme Kim Jong Un Looking at Things came about as a parody of Kim Jong Il Looking at Things, which launched on October 28^th, 2010 on Tumblr. The blog had received attention and traction from a Reddit thread featuring it, though the thread itself only received a few dozen upvotes. A second thread featuring the blog was posted on December 2^nd, 2010 and received over 2000 upvotes. Soon after, major mainstream media outlets picked up on the blog and contributed to the rapid spread to other news sites and humor blogs. The photos that stocked the blog came about from a North Korean propaganda campaign to promote his public image. The height of searches for Kim Jong Il Looking at Things was at the same time that the Reddit posts came out featuring the blog.  Kim Jong Un Looking at Things had surfaced mere hours after the official announcement of Kim Jong Il’s death.

http://cliptank.com/images/kim-jong-ill/003.jpg

The Spin-offs – Hungry Kim Jong Un

A day after the launch of Kim Jong Un Looking at Things, a redditor submitted a photo of Kim Jong Un pointing at something with the caption “Ok so…can I eat this?” onto the Funny subreddit. On the same day, a quickmeme was established for Hungry Kim Jong Un, and as of November 2012, it has over 220 submissions. A few days after the first Reddit post, a Tumblr blog entitled Kim Jong Un is Hungry was launched, using similar photos of Kim Jong Un with food related subtitles.

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/287/080/792.jpg

The Spin-Offs – 2012 Person of the Year Campaign

On November 26^th, 2012 4chan users on the random message board began to organize a way to make Kim Jong Un the number one voted person in Time Magazine’s annual Person of the Year event. Over the next few hours, multiple message boards posted the link for the voting event and got people to vote for Kim Jong Un en masse. The campaign was also related to a second campaign with the name #OpFuckMorsy to take down Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi as the top voted person of the year. The Kim Jong Un campaign gained traction as it was posted in threads on multiple sites including BetaBeat and Reddit. The campaign was a success as Kim Jong Un raked in over 3 million votes as compared to the second place Mohamed Morsi with just under 400,000 votes.

The Spin-Offs – Sexiest Man Alive

On November 4^th, 2012 The Onion (a satirical news outlet) posted an article naming Kim Jong Un as the Sexiest Man Alive for the 2012 calendar year. A few days later, the Korean Times published an article on The Onion piece, but left out the fact that the piece was meant to be satirical. A few days later, a Chinese newspaper (People’s Daily) published a story on the Onion piece complete with a slideshow deck of the North Korean leader. The Chinese story was then featured on prominent news outlets throughout the world such as the Los Angeles Times, BBC News, and others. The internet community picked up on the article and had multiple threads posted, and began to label Kim Jong Un as the Sexiest Man Alive as a parody, often accompanied by photos of him released by North Korean media.  

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/11/27/1354020727069/Kim-Jong-un-008.jpg

The Cinnamon Challenge

The Cinnamon Challenge

Team Member: Camilla Bryne

The Cinnamon Challenge is a popular dares game, and a form of competitive eating. The game involves trying to swallow a tablespoon of pure, ground cinnamon without inhaling or vomiting the powder. You are not allowed to drink anything, and you have to finish the challenge within 60 seconds. Afterwards you upload the video online. The challenge is very difficult and dangerous, and can even be life-threatening. Swallowing the cinnamon usually results in coughing, gagging or vomiting, and it can also cause serious damage to the lungs. 

The stunt has its origin in 2001, when the first challenge took place. The first video of the challenge, titled “Pipe Attempts the Cinnamon Challenge”, was uploaded at YouTube April 2^nd 2006.

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

After this first video was uploaded several different videos was posted in 2006, and it increased in popularity in 2007. A lot of people had posted videos of themselves attempting the Cinnamon Challenge by 2010. However, the challenge first became really popular in 2011 due to a video Anna Diaz recorded of herself attempting to do the stunt. During the two first months the video received 3.9 million views. It was also covered by a lot of Internet culture blogs and imitated by other YouTubers. Today the video has over 9.3 million views.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdM_u5y5m5A

The Cinnamon Challenge is still actively going on today, though it has drop rapidly since its peak in 2011. 

The reason why this Internet meme has become so popular is probably because people want to prove that they can do this crazy challenge, and their adventurous mind sets them up to it. It also might have spread due to people’s curiosity, because they want to figure out how difficult it actually is. The Cinnamon Challenge has resulted in other memes that has been influenced and emerged from this dares game. For instance we can find a lot of images of people’s faces and their hilarious reactions immediately after they have swallowed a spoon of cinnamon.

Leeroy Jenkins

Leeroy Jenkins

Team Member: Lars Loftaas

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

Leeroy Jenkins (LJ) is the name of Ben Schulz’s World of Warcraft (WOW) character. The name became a meme in 2005 after Ben Schulz ignored his companions’ battle strategy during a game, and ran into a battle by himself screaming out his own name; “Leeeroy Jenkins”. Schulz’s teammates follow him into the battle and everyone gets killed.  In the end of the video Schulz says, “at least I got chicken”.

The LJ video was first published on a WOW website in May 2005, and two months later the video got uploaded at YouTube.  According to Google Insight the search “Leeroy Jenkins” was most popular between June 2005 and November 2005. After its peak in November 2005 the video’s popularity has fallen gradually  (see illustration).  In total (as of February 2013), the video has over 33 million views at YouTube.

The main reason why I think the video became so popular is the context where it first was published. The WOW website is a place where players ask for help regarding their strategy, and people take their job quite serious.  The video shows a group seriously discussing their battle strategy, preparing themselves for a battle against a large group of dragonspawns. At this point, people probably analyze the video seriously.  Suddenly, one of the players runs into the battle, ignoring his team’s strategy. His teammates do not know how to react to this unexpected event and everyone just runs into the battle, ending up getting everyone killed.  This is an unexpected element is in contrast to the serious and boring character of the rest of the video and the website, and this action ruins everything that has been discussed for minutes.  

"Imma Let You Finish"

Kanye West- "Imma Let You Finish" 
Team Member: Janet Ho

When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why?
Imma let you finish or the Kanye West meme refers to a live incident during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Taylor Swift had just won Best Female Video but Kanye stormed the stage, took the microphone, and stated, “Imma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best music videos of all time.” This immediately went viral as photoshopped meme stills of Kanye West against multiple backgrounds and other situations with “Yo X, I’m really [adjective] for you. Imma Let you finish, but Y is the best Zs of all time. OF ALL TIME.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsnv6uYD7LA&feature=related 

Context and Analysis of how and why this became so popular. 
Multiple Tumblr and other social media sites/forums created threads and sites for variations of this meme. It became so popular because for some, they agreed that Beyonce was great, but this was part of a chain of Kanye’s outspoken events, one most famously during Hurricane Katrina where Kanye made rash comments of racism and looting. Viewers found it ridiculous but funny, in a trolling manner. It was so popular in part because almost every mainstream media outlet was covering it once it happened and in the following days. Even President Obama had a say during an off-the-record moment, calling Kanye a jackass.

Rise in popularity of the meme over time 
Within days the meme became extremely popular. The meme was everywhere September 13th and 14th, with Saturday Night Live parodies and multiple sites/tumblrs created specifically dedicated to the meme such as kanyegate.tumblr.com, immaletyoufinish.tumblr.com, and kanyeinterrupted.tumblr.com. 

On Twitter, Kanye was the #1 top Trending Topic on September 14th and15th. On Google, Searches for Kanye West on September 14th and 15th were the highest ever for Kanye. The meme became very popular very quickly in September 2009 and quickly lost popularity, as it was completely off the map in 2010. In 2009 it hit the “100” in Google Insights, which is the peak in terms of analyzing search volume. It only hit 100 in the U.S., Google Insights shows that it stayed at 0 everywhere else. It peaked and dropped quickly, although search volumes have increased slightly from 2011 until now, but only with a very small margin. This is probably due to new online scrutiny of Taylor Swift’s vast love life, and her frequencies of breaking up. Many people are now using the meme to applaud what he did, when previously it was frowned upon. This has not so much spun into any new memes, but variation of the old, or reposts of old creations. 

This image shows the popularity spike: