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.