søndag 15. april 2012
mandag 19. mars 2012
mandag 5. mars 2012
Casually pepper spray everything cop - by Harald Smedal Stamsoe
Sociology 167
Harald Smedal Stamsoe
Assignment on memes
Casually pepper spray anything cop
On November 18th,
2011, a group of students were arranging a protest on the campus of UC Davis as
part of the larger nationwide Occupy protests. The police tried to break up the
protests. The students, sitting down with their arms linked together, refused
to leave. One of the police officers, Lieutenant John Pike, started to pepper
spray the students in an effort to break up the protest.. Unfortunately for Lt
Pike, this was 2011, meaning that everyone and their brother had easy access to
recording equipment. The footage of the police officer pepper spraying the
seemingly peaceful protesters quickly found its way to both the internet and
traditional media. Much of the public was outraged by this apparent police
brutality. The most famous picture of Lt Pike pepper spraying students was
uploaded to the social news site Reddit on November 19th. On
November 20th two edited versions of the picture appeared on Reddit.
In the first one, Lt Pike was replaced by a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio
strutting happily along the students. The second picture depicted Lt Pike
pepper spraying the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. This
quickly caught on, and images of Lt Pike peppery spraying anything and
everything showed up online. Searching through forums and social media sites,
on can find pictures of Lt Pike pepper spraying the Tiananmen Square protester,
the self-immolating Buddhist monk, Jesus, New York City construction workers
and native Americans just to mention a few. These pictures quickly spread
throughout the Internet, spurred on by extensive news coverage of the incident
and widespread sharing and reposting on various social websites. The popularity
of this meme is arguably due to the seemingly casual way the police officer
pepper sprays the students, as if it was a daily routine.
On November 21st, Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly of Fox News discussed the event on air. As was to be expected, Fox’s people immediately defended the police officer, citing the fact that pepper spray is “a food product, essentially”. This statement by Megyn Kelly spawned a meme of Kelly’s face superimposed over a statement downplaying the seriousness of various things like war, torture and rape.
Sources:
Knowyourmeme: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/204843-pepper-spray-cop-casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop
Google Trends: http://www.google.com/trends/?q=%22Casually+pepper+spray+everything+cop%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd
Leeroy Jenkins - by Lars Blakstvedt
Leeroy Jenkins
meme
by Lars
Christensen Blakstvedt
Leeroy Jenkins is a video from the MMORPG
World of Warcraft(WoW), where a character named Leeroy Jenkins is away form his
keyboard(AFK) because he is warming up a plate of chicken. He then comes back,
and without warning runs into a group of enemies while screaming his characters
name and ruins his allies carefully laid plans.
I think some of the reasons this video
became so popular is that WoW was and still is a very popular online game, and
that people find it amusing how a game can bring out emotions in the people
involved. There was an explosion of new videos of people reacting emotionally
from events in WoW after the Leeroy
Jenkins video became popular. So I guess its more entertaining to hear or see
human reactions from factors in a online game than a video from the game
itself.
Examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PmyYZqoGIw
(guy freaks out after account is deleted) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GJ7eueZ1wY
(red shirt guy)
The character Leeroy Jenkins is played by
Ben Schulz, who’s become well known in the World of Warcraft community.
There has been questions if the Leeroy
Jenkins video is staged, Ben Schulz answered following: I like people to decide
for themselves, it is more fun that way”.
The video was first uploaded to Warcraft
Movies on May 11, 2005 by the guild PalsForLife. The guild posted the video and
asked for constructive criticism on their tactics. The first YouTube video was
uploaded on November 19, 2005. The most viewed youtube video has now over 29 000 000 views. The name Leeroy
Jenkins has even been used in a Jeopardy question.
Kim Jong-Un looking at things - by Ida Maria Saxebøl
Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things
The Kim
Jong-Un looking at things-meme actually started out with a number of pictures
showing his father, Kim Jong-Il looking at different things. The photos of the
late North Korean leader show him inspecting a number of different facilities,
published by the government of North Korea to give the impression of a
dedicated leader. The photos were soon published on a Tumblr-blog called ”Kim
Jong-ll Looking at Things.”
Kim Jong-Il
looking at cafeteria. Kim
Jong-Il looking at potatoes.
After being
posted on Reddit in early December 2010, the blog was soon discover by several
well-known online medias and the meme had its peak in December 2010.
After the
death of Kim Jong-Il, his son Kim Jong-Un took over as the leader of North
Korea, and soon after, the state-run Korean Central News Agency started
publishing pictures of the new leader also looking at things. This lead to the
blog www.kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com, which is updated as soon as North
Korea posts a new photo of the “brilliant comrade and great successor” looking
at something new.
Kim Jong-Un
looking at a big cheese. Kim
Jong-Un looking at bath water.
Kim Jong-Un
looking at gym floor. Kim
Jong-Un looking at guitar.
This meme
peaked in December 2011, but has kept on being somewhat popular the first few
months of 2012.
The cinnamon challenge - by Espen Winger Karlsen
The cinnamon challenge
By: Espen
Winger Karlsen
The
cinnamon challenge has been around for decades but in the resent years it has
also become a meme. The rules are simple. Eat a spoonful of cinnamon in less
than a minute whit out drinking water.
Thousands of people have posted their attempts of beating this challenge
on video-communities like You Tube.
It sounds
easy to do, but completing it is very difficult. The cinnamon dries up the
contestant’s mouths making it very hard to swallow. This results in him coughing up a small cloud
of cinnamon. The earliest video of the
cinnamon challenge was posted on You Tube April 2nd, 2006. It shows
how a young guy attempts to eat a spoonful of cinnamon. As he eats the spoon he
has a unique reaction to the cinnamon.
There seem
to be two factors that compel people to beat the cinnamon challenge. First of
all, it sounds much easier than it is. This makes some people try it to see if
they can beat all the people who have attempted before them.
The second
compelling factor is their funny reaction. Everyone make faces when they try
swallowing it. This gives people a lot of attention on You Tube. There are lots
of videos with over a million views each of people eating cinnamon.
A few different of those reactions can be seen
here:
Some people
actually beats the challenge aswell:
 cinnamon challenge |
The cinnamon challenge phenomenon reached its
peak in Google trends in early 2012
after the Chicago tribune posted an article on dangers with cinnamon. The
article can be seen here. This article seems to have fuelled the
phenomena making it even more popular than before.
Sources:
søndag 4. mars 2012
Paula Deen Riding Things - by Mari Jørstad
Assignment #2
Mari Jørstad
“PAULA
DEEN RIDING THINGS”
On February 28th 2011 a photographer took a
picture of Paula Deen while she was barebacking Robert Irving, a Food Network
host, at a South Beach Wine and Food festival.
The first “Paula Deen Riding Things” meme was posted
28th February 2011; the same day the original picture was posted
online. It became popular rather fast, and according to Google insights most
pictures of “Paula Deen Riding Things” were posted in March 2011. After this the
interest dropped for some time, but became a little popular again in December
2011. Google insights also show that this meme was only popular in the United
States. http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=paula%20deen%20riding%20things&cmpt=q
Paula Deen is a celebrity chef, and a well-known TV-personality.
She is known for cooking Southern food with a high content of fat, salt and
sugar. On the first picture of “Paula Deen Riding Things” that was posted, she
is riding a package of butter; “Paula Deen Riding Butter”. After this photo was
posted there was soon new memes appearing were Deen is riding on different things
and people.
“Hugh Jackman Can Ride Anything” meme came in December
2010 http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/hugh-jackman-can-ride-anything,
after he was zip-lining at the Oprah show. Other memes that have emerged from
this is “Frank Iero Riding on Things”, and “Brendon Urie Riding Shit”. Both of
these came in April and May in the year of 2011, but have not become as popular
as “Paula Deen Riding Things”. Paula Deen also has other memes http://memebase.com/category/paula-deen-yall/.
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