Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Cho,WooHyeon
"Gingers Do Have Souls!"
Ⅰ. Background & Origin
- A red-headed, 18-year old boy named 'Coppercab' uploaded a video called "Gingers Do Have Souls!" on his Youtube Account On January 14th, 2010. Coppercab had been exasperated about being bullied by peers at school for his red hair color. Thus, he took a movie of himself as a monologue, giving a firm message to the watchers. Throughout the movie, he keeps saying "Gingers Do Have Souls!" and "I'm Ginger, and proud of it!" with frequent abusive languages.
In order to deliver his point clearly, Coppercab refutes against the phrase "gingers have no soul". He appeals to the watchers with wrath that he has a right to be respected, and no more bullying upon him should be allowed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY39fkmqKBM

- At this point, "gingers have no soul" was originated from the episode "Ginger Kids" in 'The South Park', which first aired on November 9th, 2005. The beginning of the episode deals with the class presentation made by the character Eric Cartman, on the subject of a fake disease called "Gingervitis" and red-haired children.
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103645/gingervitus
Ⅱ. Spread & Effects
- The spread was rapid. Over 3.1 million views and over 600 response videos took place in the first month right after "Gingers Do Have Souls" was uploaded.

- Also, various events and controversies occurred in Canada and US
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/22/california.redhead.attack.facebook/index.html
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=ac06eaac-1cb1-4ee7-8e17-a9b8b314af71

- In order to make fun of Coppercab, many memes have been produced
- Response movies have been produced so far
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjVGEr-6MSI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBAbdwpyjW0

Works Cited

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gingers-do-have-souls#fn4
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lilshowstoppa
http://www.facebook.com/search/results.php?flt=1&q=kick+a+ginger+day&type=groups

Julia Stahl

Nyan Cat
Julia Stahl
23130480

The beloved Pop-Tart cat, Nyan Cat, “mascot of the internet and friend to everyone”# took the internet by cheerful rainbow storm on April 5th 2011 when a Youtuber with the handle saraj00n posted a video using a gif of the adorable gray cat with a cherry pop-tart body bounding through space, leaving a rainbow trail, while the Japanese Vocaloid song “Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya” by Daniwell-P looped in the background; this bizarrely adorable video reached over one million views in just two weeks.# The meme originated with a gif created by a 25 year-old Dallas cartoonist, Christopher Torres--or prguitarman--on his webcomic site LOL-Comics (prguitarman.com). Torres created the gif in response to two separate fan requests that he draw a poptart and a cat, so he combined the two, using his own cat Marty as the model, to unforseeably infectious effect.#

Following the hysteria prompted by the saraj00n video, Nyan Cat’s popularity continued to soar, reaching its peak in June 2011.# As the Nyan craze spread, the rainbow cat seized media attention, rating number nine on Business Insider’s top ten viral videos of 2011 at an astonishing 7.2 million views worldwide, and popping up all over Tumblr, College Humor, G4, and news stations.# Who knows just why this video became so beloved, other than its oddball kawaii factor, but the Pop-Tart cat dominated media and has spawned a litter of imitations, spoofs, video games, musical tributes, and even jewelry, clothing and plush toys.# Nyancat Lost in Space, and Nyanicorn (the robot attack unicorn spinoff) have proved to be such highly popular games for iPhones and iPads that Nintendo was prompted to offer Nyancat games as well.#

The Pop-Tart kitten has been used for some nefarious purposes, for those ever-tempting Lulz, as well: on May 29th, 2011, the hacker group LulzSec attacked the PBS website and defaced it with multi-meme pranks like this one:

The attack was apparently spurred by a PBS documentary about WikiLeaks, called WikiSecrets, which LulzSec members found to be biased against WikiLeaks. They explained their motivations in an iconically snarky Anonymous-esque statement:
Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further… perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third shitty Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz. Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside… wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they’re sailing next time.#

Nyan Cat’s tale has something of a tragic twist, as Marty--Torres’ cat who inspired the original gif--passed away in November 2012, after battling Feline Infectious Peritonitis; Torres tweeted the saga of Marty’s adoption, life, and death, endearing the real cat to his many followers and received a flood of empathy and concern, demonstrating the strength of connections that bizarre internet communities can forge#. Marty’s death, however tragic for Torres and his fanbase, has a silver lining in the enduring popularity of his adorable legacy Nyan Cat; in Torres’ own words:
“A hero has fallen, but will live on forever.” #

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

Xiao Xuan Zhang

Xiao Xuan Zhang

Soc. 167, Assignment 2

Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop

This Photoshop meme also known as “Pepper Spray Cop” and it began to become famous on the Internet in November 2011. This meme is about an incident of campus occupy. Occupy movement is a very important social movement in our society. Thus, this incident and the topic of campus occupy lead people to have many different opinions. This is the reason why “casually pepper spray everything cop” can become so popular.

Description: On November 18th, 2011, a group of students at the University of California, Davis campus, gather for an occupy protest. When they refuse to obey with the police officers’ request to leave, UC Davis Police officer Lt. John Puke and other officers walked across the campus, and spraying pepper spray directly down to the faces of those sitting students. The action of spraying pepper spray by the police officers caused a great amount of reactions.

Numerous videos of the incident from different aspects were uploaded to You Tube within the first 24 hours of the incident. This video of the incident has been viewed almost two million times so far and has spread the story.

Search for “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop” began in October 2011 on Google (Google Trends):

The video link for this event on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AdDLhPwpp4

This Tumblr blog provided a lot of Photoshop pictures for this event: http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/

Monday, February 25, 2013

Giselle Waters

"so I herd u liek mudkipz"

Giselle Waters

23181383

When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why? Provide a context and offer an analysis of why you think this became so popular (if no obvious reason presents itself).

The well known Mudkip meme became very popular in 2006. While the pokemon “Mudkip” had come out 2 years before the meme’s origin, after an inexplicable upsurgance of drawings and fanart of mudkips on devianArt, where a “mudkip fan club” commented on people’s pokemon fan art “so i herd u like mudkipz” to invite them to the “Mudkip Club” on devianART. It was also particularly memorable, when the moderators/runners of devianART changed all of the users avatars to a mudkip saying “i herd u like mudkipz” Reasons why this became popular range from it’s prevelance in a copypasta campaign ranging from 4chan to other “nerd forums” from Playstation to NeoGAF. It was also used as an identifier for 4chan members. Not just that, but Mudkips are a super cute pokemon-- lending them to easy memability for similar reasons that things like Nyan cat are popular.

• The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.

The meme itself is often just the words “I herd u like mudkipz” but can range to drawings of mudkip, asking in various ways if you like them. It was used somtimes simply to troll those unused to forums, and went so far as being a way to identify other members of the project Chanology protests in 2008.

• How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest).
“i herd u liek mudkipz” was the most popular in December 2010, and its first spike of popularity was around 2007 when it first started getting used as a common identifier in the 4chan community.

• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.

Mudkipz is a variation of lolcats (i.e. why it’s misspelled), and Slowpoke is an evolution in many ways.

Works Cited

http://ohinternet.com/So_i_herd_u_liek_mudkip

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-herd-u-like-mudkips#fn27

http://meme.wikia.com/wiki/I_herd_u_liek_Mudkips

ZHIYUN YU

Zhiyun Yu's Assignment

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Yazhuo Chen (SID:22983961)

“Chocolate Rain” ——Written By Yazhuo Chen (SID:22983961)

Singer: Tay Zonday.

Description: It is a hip-hop music video made in a studio, and Tay Zonday wrote and produced it by himself. In the video, Tay Zonday wears a white T-shirt and sings directly into a condenser microphone, and also there are some scenes that show Tay is playing a Yamaha digital piano. The title “Chocolate Rain” is a euphemism for racism made by Zonday.

It is a song and music video by Tay Zonday on Youtube. First, it was first posted on Youtube on April 22^nd, 2007, and then it soon became so popular. This video has been watched online over 88 million times till this month.

Though Tay’s music and voice are not professional, his music with the deep voice in his heart does attract people. This music video shows his natural manner. And considering Tay Zonday’s ethnicity and the title “Chocolate Rain,” people shows more interest into this connection.

This music video has been watched online over million times from 2007 till now. And it is ranked as the hottest video of summer 2007 by CTV. It also won the 2007 Youtube Award in the category “Music.” The caption in the video— “I move away from the mic to breathe in,” has also become so popular, and many people start to imitate the music and this caption. Tay Zonday became the pop star in Internet, especially on Youtube; he sings from the Internet to the real life. Many TV talk shows and live shows invited him to sing his song in 2007. Besides, this song has created big commercial effect. Some professional singers bought the copyright from Zonday, and re-made the music in a professional way.

The link of the original video on Youtube (April 22, 2007): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA

The similar meme: Epic Beard Man