Sociology Knights: 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.