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:
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