1. Wei-ping Shih
Selected Meme: “I herd you like mudkips”“I herd you like mudkips” is a meme that became viral after a phrase that originated from a user group on deviantArt named “MudKidClub” where members of the group would share pokemon fan art. The phrase “I herd you like mudkips” was first used by the owner where he would leave this phrase as a comment on other users’ pages. This was around February 2005. A mudkip is a cute blue and orange water pokemon originated from the 3rd generation of pokemon. However, what actually got this phrase viral was a story that circulated on the 4chan and then the internet throughout 2005 to 2008, where it became a popular meme. The story was about a pokemon-obsessed boy who took off his pants in front of public and started humping a mudkip plushie that was given to him by the original poster. This led to subsequent mass attention of other students in the school and generated a fight as well as a riot. The original story can be read here:
Since then, the same story appeared on numerous internet forums, and people would use the phrase “I herd you like mudkips” as a nonsequitor comment. Furthermore, as only the “heard” was misspelled, variations of this phrase appeared and became equally popular: “I herd you liek mudkips” where ‘like’ is also misspelled on purpose. In 2009, “mudkips” was replaced with the internet plural form “mudkipz”, yielding the phrase “I herd you liek mudkipz”. Some people would add “so” in front of the phrase as a random comment “so I herd you liek mudkipz” in order to troll users on the internet. A more productive usage of this meme was that during Project Chanology, it was rumored that Anonymous protestors would ask each other if they liked mudkips in order to identify each other as Anonymous.
While there is no particular image for the meme, the popular means would include either an original artwork or fan work of mudkip with a caption suggesting the phrase “I herd you liek mudkipz”. 
I believe that the reason this meme became popular is due to the fact that is an adoption of the popular anime series Pokemon as well as the taste of randomness. Furthermore, the intentionally misspelled “herd” implies some form of internet trolling. Lastly, the 4chan story illustrates a rather sadistic form of humor about mudkip, and added together, the phrase was perfect to use in any situation, and most importantly, because it has no specific meaning.
Although no particular memes emerged, youtube videos regarding mudkips emerged:
For example, this video uses the essence of “Nyan Cat” where the annoying “mud” “kip” sounds would repeat continuously.
Selected meme: “Imma let you finish”
• 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).
After the MTV Awards incident on the 13th, many celebrities responded to Kanye’s act through social media such as tweeter. The event was reported the next day on many news sites and gossip blogs such as People Magazine, Oh No They Didn’t!, MTV, the New York Daily News and CNN. Negative attitude towards Kanye grew even more when ABC News reporter Terry Moran tweeted that President Obama had called Kanye a “jackass.” By September 14th, Kanye West-related threads appeared on 4chan and macros began to appear on Tumblr. On September 17th, 2009, “Imma Let You Finish” was chosen as the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day. The memes related to Kanye West’s rant became famous so quickly because nothing draws people’s attention faster than dramas between celebrities. Taylor Swift’s fans supported her, and many others simply felt sympathy towards the young girl who was shocked on stage and cried because of Kanye’s rude behavior. The meme hype on “Imma let you finish” is mostly fueled by the event itself.
• The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.
The meme started shortly after the incident at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony. The event was held at the Radio City Music Hall on September 13th and broadcasted live. Taylor Swift won the Best Female Video award, and when she went up stage to give her speech, Kanye West went up on stage and interrupted her by snatching the microphone from her. Kanye then said “Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time” before being booed off the stage. He handed the microphone back to Taylor Swift but MTV cut to commercial before the girl could continue.
http://www.mtv.com/videos/
• How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest).
According to the Google insight, “Imma let you finish” became popular and picked in September 2009 and the interests started to drop continuously until December of 2009, when the interest stopped dropping and remained quite stable around 6.
http://www.google.com/
Currently, an “Imma let you finish” search on Google search brings about 2,880,000 results and a search on Google image brings 1,240,000 pictures.
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
Countless memes were made based on Kanye’s speech at the Award, and some of the most notable are:
Some of the most famous video remixes are:
3. Karoline Leikanger
Selected meme: "The Cinnamon Challenge"
The cinnamon challenge is a dare game where the contestants try to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon. The body isn’t producing enough saliva to help with the swallowing and you’re not allowed to drink water, so the tricky part is doing this without vomiting or inhaling the powder. The result usually ends with a “dragon breath”; a powerful cloud of cinnamon sputtering out of the contestants mouth. CBS news wrote an article about the challenge potentially being deadly as to the cause of choking (http://www.cbsnews.com/
History
2001 the beginning of December:
A programmer named Michael Buffington “dares” Erik Goodlad and posts the results from a "cinnamon challenge" on his blog.
2001 December 22nd:
Jason Kottke gets aware of the blog.
2006 April 2nd:
The meme hits YouTube. A Video called "the Pipe Attempts the Cinnamon Challenge" gets posted.
2006 --->:
Several different videos are being uploaded on YouTube.
2011 December 14th:
"The cinnamon challenge" starred by Anna Diaz makes an incredible 3.9 millions YouTube views.
2012 Januar 31th:
Clinton Avenues schools principal Carmen A. Rodriguez failed trying to stop her students from doing the challenge in their lunch. The news reported the challenge being the new teen fad.
2012 late January:
Pennsylvania, Posttown school districts, bans the teens from wearing “open top boots” because of the problem with smuggling cinnamon into the school ground.
“The cinnamon challenge” stands out from other challenges like chugging a can of milk, eating habanero peppers or snorting powdered candy because finding cinnamon and swallowing a tablespoon seems effortless, takes no time, and makes for really entertaining videos. It’s just hilarious.
There’s no obvious reason to why the challenge became famous. But I would explain it in terms of “schadenfredude”; the giggles you get from watching other peoples misfortunes, like the self-injury program, “Jackass”. These types of shows, videos and reality TV “allows” us to laugh at random people making a fool out of themselves. And “everybody” seems to get a real kick out of this.
You'll get a lot of info on this meme by looking at Yahoo answers, Wikipedia or Urban dictionary. It even has its own promotional page; cinnamonchallenge.com and this page have got over 5,500 likes. And it has its own Facebook page, “Cinnamon challenge”, with 12 095 likes and new videos being uploaded.
Since the early 2000s thousands of videos have been uploaded to YouTube of people attempting to do this challenge. As the graph is showing popularity began to increase around October 2007 (http://www.google.com/
Anna Diaz attempt of the challenge was reloaded on YouTube on December 14th of 2011 making a remarkable 3.9 millions views by the two first months. The event was covered by numerous cultural internet bloggers and several other people made new videos the following weeks.
The phenomena also made real publicity through different newspapers (i.e The Washington Post) when the professional athletes, Nick Young and JaVale McGee, attempted the challenge sometime in November 2011.
Doing Google search and typing “the cinnamon challenge” you get 38 600 000 hits. Pictures: 13 700 000, videos: 35 300 and news: 2 280. This utterly confirms the popularity of the meme.
Other memes that may have emerged or been influenced by “The cinnamon challenge” is “The cookie challenge” and “The salt and Ice challenge”.
Videos and pictures:
(A mom)
(A grandmom)
(A 6 year old kid did it/ seen 2 371 876 times/most people claims it isn’t cinnamon but maybe nesquick)
(Pipe attempts the cinnamon challenge)
4. Alice Wang
Selected Meme: Chocolate Rain
The song “Chocolate Rain” by Tay Zonday, a grad student from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was first posted on YouTube on April 22, 2007. It soon became popular after its initial release. The music video shows Tay Zonday singing into a condenser microphone and also provides a caption of “**I move away from the mic to breath in” to explain his gesture. In 2007, it was ranked as the most popular viral video on YouTube. Aside from Zonday’s Baritone sounding voice, the caption is what led to the popularity of this video as more and more web surfers started this caption-related joke on 4chan.org.
Original video:
On July 11th, 2007, Chocolate Rain caught the attention of Anonymous, and Tay Zonday responded to this new audience by doing another cover of their favorites, which is Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. On July 26th, 2007, Tay’s Chocolate Rain appeared on YouTube’s Home page, which further publicized this video. In addition, 4chan featured Chocolate Rain all over the page to honor Tay Zonday, along with Zonday jokes and many remixed versions of his original song.
After Tay’s video hit thousands of views, he was invited on a number of television shows and was also parodied on South Park. Though this original song seemed almost completely random at first, Tay later claimed that his lyrics actually implied institutional racism.
From its initial date of release to June 2012, the video has over 80 million views. The search for chocolate rain on Google hits its peak in August 2007 according to Google Insight. At one point the video was among the top 50 most viewed videos of all time.
http://www.google.com/
Immediately after Zonday’s chocolate rain video spread on 4chan, many YouTube users began making chocolate rain parodies. Derivatives of Zonday’s video include the “Vanilla Snow”, “Chocolate Rain 8Bit Remix”, and “Chocolate Rain by Chad Vader”.
Vanilla Snow:
Chocolate Rain 8Bit Remix:
Chocolate Rain by Chad Vader:
5.
Selected meme: Chuck Norris Facts
In March 2005, the movie “The Pacifier“ was released to the theatres, starring Vin Diesel as the disgraced Navy SEAL Shane Wolfe who has to protect five kids from enemies of their recently deceased father. Due to this “sophisticated” story line a discussion arose on the SomethingAwful forums called “Post your Vin Diesel Facts”.
Ian Spector who was running a webhosting company back then decided to put the best facts on to an open source script. He posted a link to this website on the thread and on the next day the website had received 20,000 hits.
Vin Diesel Fact Generator- Google Insight [http://www.google.com/
When people started to lose the interest in the Vin Diesel Fact Generator, Ian Spector asked people in the summer of 2005 to vote on 12 candidates for the next fact generator or suggest candidates. Chuck Norris who wasn’t even on the list, won the voting without any comparison.
Why did Chuck Norris win the voting and became so popular?
At the end of 2003 NBC and Universal merged and Conan O’Brien host of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” started with jokes on Chuck Norris since the merger allowed him to play clips from the show Walker, Texas Ranger, an American TV action drama series airing from 1993 to 2001, without paying any royalties. It became a popular running gag and was definitely one of the reasons why Chuck Norris won the voting and therefore the Chuck Norris facts became so popular.
The Chuck Norris facts are satirical “facts” about Chuck Norris which tend to exaggerate claims of his masculinity, toughness, attitude, strength, etc. (ChuckNorrisfacts.com - with over nearly 12,000 facts about Chuck Norris)
Chuck Norris Facts – Google Insight [http://www.google.com/
The Chuck Norris Facts became much more popular in 2006. In April 29, 2007 the TV show “Family Guy” mentioned in one of their gags in the episode “Boys Do Cry” the Chuck Norris facts.
In November 2007, Ian Spector released his first book “The truth about Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the world’s greatest human”. Chuck Norris sued the publisher Penguine, the author Ian Spector and two websites which promoted the book. The lawsuite got dropped by Chuck Norris later in 2008.
Ian Spector who was running a webhosting company back then decided to put the best facts on to an open source script. He posted a link to this website on the thread and on the next day the website had received 20,000 hits.
Vin Diesel Fact Generator- Google Insight [http://www.google.com/
When people started to lose the interest in the Vin Diesel Fact Generator, Ian Spector asked people in the summer of 2005 to vote on 12 candidates for the next fact generator or suggest candidates. Chuck Norris who wasn’t even on the list, won the voting without any comparison.
Why did Chuck Norris win the voting and became so popular?
At the end of 2003 NBC and Universal merged and Conan O’Brien host of “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” started with jokes on Chuck Norris since the merger allowed him to play clips from the show Walker, Texas Ranger, an American TV action drama series airing from 1993 to 2001, without paying any royalties. It became a popular running gag and was definitely one of the reasons why Chuck Norris won the voting and therefore the Chuck Norris facts became so popular.
The Chuck Norris facts are satirical “facts” about Chuck Norris which tend to exaggerate claims of his masculinity, toughness, attitude, strength, etc. (ChuckNorrisfacts.com - with over nearly 12,000 facts about Chuck Norris)
Chuck Norris Facts – Google Insight [http://www.google.com/
The Chuck Norris Facts became much more popular in 2006. In April 29, 2007 the TV show “Family Guy” mentioned in one of their gags in the episode “Boys Do Cry” the Chuck Norris facts.
In November 2007, Ian Spector released his first book “The truth about Chuck Norris: 400 facts about the world’s greatest human”. Chuck Norris sued the publisher Penguine, the author Ian Spector and two websites which promoted the book. The lawsuite got dropped by Chuck Norris later in 2008.
In late November 2007 Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas and 2008 Presidential candidate launched an ad, Huck Chuck Facts. In this advertisement Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris are trading “facts”.
In October 2009 Chuck Norris himself published the book “The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book: 101 of Chuck’s Favorite Facts and Stories”.
In May 2010, Ian Spector published his second book “Chuck Norris cannot be stopped: 400 all-new facts about the man who knows neither fear nor mercy”.
Both books by Ian Spector made it on the Bestseller lists.
Worldwide there exist similar jokes in the same or similar form to the factoids of the Chuck Norris facts.
For Example:
- In India about the actor Rajinikanth
- In Germany about the football player Hans Sarpei
- In Russia about the journalist Anatoly Wasserman
Videos:
Ian Spector: On the Origins of Chuck Norris Facts
Chuck Norris reads his own top 10 facts on a talk show
6. David Hilmarsson
Selected Meme: Nyan Cat
The meme of this topic: Nyan Cat.
According to KnowYourMeme.com, the topical Nyan Cat, originally named Pop Tart Cat, was first created as a GIF-image and posted on the website of creator Chris Torres on April 2nd 2011. Chris, who also goes by the name prguitarman, created the image as a part of his own series of one off comic strips.
http://www.prguitarman.com/
The original concept was created when prguitarman was doing live drawings for charity via Livestream. One user suggested he should draw a ‘Cat’ and another ‘Pop Tart’, so prguitarman ended up creating a hybrid of the two. See picture below.
The original GIF image quickly spread from prguitarman’s own website and to other major humor and image sharing sites like tumblr. Within two weeks of its original posting the gif had received 3000 likes and reblogs. Three days later on April 5th Youtube user saraj00n posted a video of prguitarmans original animation with a song named Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! by Japanese artist Daniwell-P looping in the background. The video was named Nyan Cat, and thus creating the full version of the meme that we know today. Within two weeks of its original posting it had more than 1 million views, today that number has exceeded 84 milliion for the original video alone. A simple Youtube search nets about 48200 search results for the name ‘Nyan Cat’, so it is next to impossible to estimate the total number of views the video has received.
The original video:
According to KnowYourMeme.com, the topical Nyan Cat, originally named Pop Tart Cat, was first created as a GIF-image and posted on the website of creator Chris Torres on April 2nd 2011. Chris, who also goes by the name prguitarman, created the image as a part of his own series of one off comic strips.
http://www.prguitarman.com/
The original concept was created when prguitarman was doing live drawings for charity via Livestream. One user suggested he should draw a ‘Cat’ and another ‘Pop Tart’, so prguitarman ended up creating a hybrid of the two. See picture below.
The original GIF image quickly spread from prguitarman’s own website and to other major humor and image sharing sites like tumblr. Within two weeks of its original posting the gif had received 3000 likes and reblogs. Three days later on April 5th Youtube user saraj00n posted a video of prguitarmans original animation with a song named Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! by Japanese artist Daniwell-P looping in the background. The video was named Nyan Cat, and thus creating the full version of the meme that we know today. Within two weeks of its original posting it had more than 1 million views, today that number has exceeded 84 milliion for the original video alone. A simple Youtube search nets about 48200 search results for the name ‘Nyan Cat’, so it is next to impossible to estimate the total number of views the video has received.
The original video:
The spread of the video was very quick and within days of the original posting on youtube, it could be found on a number of sites known for posting humor and sites dedicated to finding the next big meme. Memebase, Collegehumr, Buzzfeed, Facebook, Tumblr and other similar sites where items of fancy quickly spread from person to person, group to group.
This Google Insight graph depicts the rapid grown in interest for Nyan Cat and also how failry stable the interest has been for more than a year. In the meme-age that is rare, as most memes only last for a short periods of time before interest fades and people get bored of the humor.
http://www.google.com/
Despite the theme of the meme, cute pixelated cat with a catchy Japanese tune to it, one would assume that the video would have a larger following in oriental Asia, but statistics show that the meme is predominantly followed by Europe, parts of South America, North America and Russia.
Why did it become so popular? A question not easily answered, but it all comes down to the simplicity and quirkiness of it. A half cat half pop tart flying through space to an upbeat catchy Japanese tune. There are no obvious reasons other than people like cute cats and ever ything innocently silly.
What separates Nyan Cat form many other memes is its versatility and transcendence into other memes, mainstay pop culture and everyday life. Since its original conception, Nyan Cat has been popular as a part of youtube mash-ups where two or more videos are played simultaneously side by side for comedic effect.
Youtube even released a minor update for their service that portrayed the Nyan Cat with rainbows as the progress bar in the original Nyan Cat video uploaded to Youtube. This however only lasted a few weeks before it was removed.
Inspired by this, several developers created software or hacks for various systems that allowed the Nyan Cat to replace any form of progress bar. This could be found in Windows, IOS and Android.
Since its creation the meme and image of Nyan Cat has spread to all kinds of different media. Songs have been made in tribute, numerous games have been made on different platforms, countless ‘Apps’ have been released on the IOS App store and Android Google Play and not to mention the different merchandise that have been created and sold.
Nyan Cat has as mention been infused with other memes for humerous effect, but the meme itself also directly inspired two different memes. Tac Nayn and Catception. Tac Nayn is simply a reverse “evil” version of Nyan Cat with a black cat on a Belgian waffle flying the opposite direction on a red background with skulls on it.
Catception started is a tribute to Nyan Cat with video of an actual cat watching the Nyan Cat video, and then progressing to other cats watching the video of the cat watching Nyan Cat. Thus a spiral is created. The name Catception itself is a mix of the words Cat and Inception, with Inception here referring to the hit movie Inception from 2010 which in itself inspired several memes.
7. Ditte Thestrup Foss
Hong, Won-young
Selected meme: “Gimme Pizza”Original version of “Gimme Pizza” is one of the Olsen twin’s title song featured in their own video named “You’re invited to Mary-kate and Ashley’s Sleepover Party”. In my perspective of view, first, I came out with “This is so cute” because pizza is delivered right after they ordered one, and their gestures and intonations were so teenaged. Then, I realized that ingredients are being weird. Five girls, including Mary-kate and Ashley, who are young enough to be naïve, try to make their own ideal pizza putting ludicrous toppings. Later, this toppings become the source to parody the video.
It’s somewhat weird video itself but this mid 90’s film reemerged in 2010 again through Youtube because of its slowed down version uploaded by user ‘philpmserious’ on September 22nd, 2010. About a month later, this video hit 1.6 million views and viewers cropped the slowed version into separate parts. Among those, “Alphabomb-Rabbit Hole” and “Whipped Cream Pouring Like Waterfalls” were the most popular ones. The former is because of its scene itself and the latter is because of its creepiness.
According to Google insight (http://www.google.com/
The most popular parody is “Rocketboom Episode : Gimme pizza Spoof” with 5 grown-up women. They specifically targeted Youtube as the audience to make themselves popular. They used same melody with original one and also followed basic structures. Compared to Olsen’s video, as they are women not girls, they are not that naïve and express their frank feelings. Also, it’s own slow downed video clip exists. Honestly, in my perspective, it’s not that funny.
Also, there are some other popular parodies such as
(
3 fat men are coming up)
(melvin’s music).
9. Emre Karaca
Selected meme: Puking Rainbows
When did this begin to become popular/famous on the Internet and why?
The 'puking rainbows'-meme first appeared in a blog-entry from 8/6/2006, in which it was used a metaphor to describe the colorfulness of packing in a Japanese supermarket in LA:
"I took a bunch o’ photos of these packages and I’ll be putting up a new Shorts piece to showcase them a little later this week. In all seriousness, it looks like a rainbow threw-up all over their snack section and forever stained the packages with a million bright colors.
Hmm, a rainbow throwing up a rainbow of colors. I don’t know why, but I like that idea. Tell ya what. To any of you who draw me picture of a rainbow throwing up a rainbow of colors: I will post your pictures here in the blog. Do we have a deal? Alright then, get to work on those nauseated rainbows and email your pics to me!"
Source: http://www.i-mockery.com/
The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.
Original: A rainbow puking another rainbow.
Variants: Different 'characters' throwing up 'rainbow-vomit' (e.g. pandas, unicorns, clouds, stick figures)
How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest)
The Site-Owner of the original blog-entry that came up with the idea registered the single-purpose domain rainbowpuke.com on 8/17/2006. This Website became a collection of many user-submitted 'rainbow-puke-images'.
Google-Insight: http://www.google.com/
---Other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this---
The web series Charlie the Unicorn referenced the Rainbow Puke in the Episode charlie the unicron episode 1 (Youtube, 6/28/2010). This started a meme of YoutubePoop videos known as Rainbow Bleh.
At Virginia Commonwealth University an art teacher even gave out an assignment based on puking rainbows.
---Images and Videos---
The 'puking rainbows'-meme first appeared in a blog-entry from 8/6/2006, in which it was used a metaphor to describe the colorfulness of packing in a Japanese supermarket in LA:
"I took a bunch o’ photos of these packages and I’ll be putting up a new Shorts piece to showcase them a little later this week. In all seriousness, it looks like a rainbow threw-up all over their snack section and forever stained the packages with a million bright colors.
Hmm, a rainbow throwing up a rainbow of colors. I don’t know why, but I like that idea. Tell ya what. To any of you who draw me picture of a rainbow throwing up a rainbow of colors: I will post your pictures here in the blog. Do we have a deal? Alright then, get to work on those nauseated rainbows and email your pics to me!"
Source: http://www.i-mockery.com/
The details/description of the "meme," person, event, etc.
Original: A rainbow puking another rainbow.
Variants: Different 'characters' throwing up 'rainbow-vomit' (e.g. pandas, unicorns, clouds, stick figures)
How popular did it become and over what time span? (include "Google Insights" interest)
The Site-Owner of the original blog-entry that came up with the idea registered the single-purpose domain rainbowpuke.com on 8/17/2006. This Website became a collection of many user-submitted 'rainbow-puke-images'.
Google-Insight: http://www.google.com/
---Other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this---
The web series Charlie the Unicorn referenced the Rainbow Puke in the Episode charlie the unicron episode 1 (Youtube, 6/28/2010). This started a meme of YoutubePoop videos known as Rainbow Bleh.
At Virginia Commonwealth University an art teacher even gave out an assignment based on puking rainbows.
---Images and Videos---
10. Christoffer Hvolbaek
Selected Meme: Planking
What is planking?
Planking is when a person lies face down sometime in strange places and areas.
Hands must touch the side of the body. The trend is to take a picture of it and posting it on the internet.
Rules of Planking
1. You must always lay face down, ensuring your face remains expressionless for the duration of the Plank.
2. Your legs must remain straight, and together with toes pointed.
3. Your arms must be placed by your side, held straight and fingers pointed.
4. You must make it known that you are Planking. Saying ‘I am Planking’ usually get this across. Sternly announcing it will ensure a good result.
5. Your safety should always be considered. Properly thought through Planking procedures should always go to plan. Never put your self at undue risk.
6. Every Plank that is captured must be named.
Planking is when a person lies face down sometime in strange places and areas.
Hands must touch the side of the body. The trend is to take a picture of it and posting it on the internet.
Rules of Planking
1. You must always lay face down, ensuring your face remains expressionless for the duration of the Plank.
2. Your legs must remain straight, and together with toes pointed.
3. Your arms must be placed by your side, held straight and fingers pointed.
4. You must make it known that you are Planking. Saying ‘I am Planking’ usually get this across. Sternly announcing it will ensure a good result.
5. Your safety should always be considered. Properly thought through Planking procedures should always go to plan. Never put your self at undue risk.
6. Every Plank that is captured must be named.
History:
There has been some discussion about where and when the first planking accord.
I Found some discussions that this is something that happened back when the slaves were taken on ships to the US. They where put on a plank face down and there arms where tide to there sides. This started when a known rapper named Xzibit posted a twitter on July 6th, 2011 (2011)
His twitter messages was :
“#Planking was a way to transport slaves on ships during the slave trade, its not funny. Educate yourselves.”
Tom Green tried to make a case that he did the first planking. He gave us a video where he is lying on the ground face down and with his hands down his side.
(video from 1994)
I found that the term “planking” was first reported by a man with the name Paul Carran in 2008, a man from New Zealand living in Sydney, Australia. He started with planking after hearing of a similar game from some friends he had in the UK. By this time this the meme was not big (2008)
There have been reported incidents from a hospital in the UK where some of the nurses and the doctors where doing “the laying game” another name for “planking”. Still not a big meme (2009)
But the brake true of the “Planking” meme started 27th of march 2011 in the UK. This corresponds with google insight ( http://www.google.com/
The big searching started in April of 2011 and is more or less dying down today. When the peak was on July 2011 until now where we can see a big decrease. The last big hype form this meme is November-December 2011.
Graph of the last 12 months http://www.google.com/
• 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).
It started with a popular game people had made on Facebook called “Lying Down Game” where people where lying down and taking pictures of it, then sharing it with friends.
This meme became most popular in march-april 2011 in the UK. People where taking pictures and posting it on the internet for friends and family to see.
Facebook and its popularity is one of the things that helped his meme to be as big as it was. It looks like people took after there heroes and friends by doing what they were doing .
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
When looking at Wikipedia (not a to reliable source) I find a lot of memes that is part of planking.
Other meme that have emerged from “Planking” is :
Teapotting -
Owling
Horsemanning
Batmanning
Tebowing
Gronking
Bradying
Griffining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
I found that the term “planking” was first reported by a man with the name Paul Carran in 2008, a man from New Zealand living in Sydney, Australia. He started with planking after hearing of a similar game from some friends he had in the UK. By this time this the meme was not big (2008)
There have been reported incidents from a hospital in the UK where some of the nurses and the doctors where doing “the laying game” another name for “planking”. Still not a big meme (2009)
But the brake true of the “Planking” meme started 27th of march 2011 in the UK. This corresponds with google insight ( http://www.google.com/
The big searching started in April of 2011 and is more or less dying down today. When the peak was on July 2011 until now where we can see a big decrease. The last big hype form this meme is November-December 2011.
Graph of the last 12 months http://www.google.com/
• 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).
It started with a popular game people had made on Facebook called “Lying Down Game” where people where lying down and taking pictures of it, then sharing it with friends.
This meme became most popular in march-april 2011 in the UK. People where taking pictures and posting it on the internet for friends and family to see.
Facebook and its popularity is one of the things that helped his meme to be as big as it was. It looks like people took after there heroes and friends by doing what they were doing .
• Include other memes that may have emerged from this or have been influenced by this.
When looking at Wikipedia (not a to reliable source) I find a lot of memes that is part of planking.
Other meme that have emerged from “Planking” is :
Teapotting -
Owling
Horsemanning
Batmanning
Tebowing
Gronking
Bradying
Griffining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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