Tumblr & Reddit Reaction

2007 — 2012. Two platforms invent the modern reaction layer. Tumblr (2007) makes the reblog its central verb and turns the animated GIF into a vocabulary item: a Tumblr post is rarely a thought, more often a strip of borrowed expressions stitched together. Reddit's image-board-adjacent culture industrialises the rage comic, drawn in MS Paint with reusable face panels: FFFFFUUUU, Forever Alone, Me Gusta, Y U NO, Trollface, Cereal Guy. The taxonomy explodes into hundreds of named faces with consistent character logic. The advice-animal genre matures alongside: Philosoraptor, Bad Luck Brian, Success Kid, Socially Awkward Penguin, Scumbag Steve, Good Guy Greg. Each is a fixed background, a fixed font, a fixed character voice. Memes get faces, names, and inner lives. Fandom Tumblr discovers that GIF-sets of Sherlock reaction shots are themselves a creative form. These five years are the chronicle's noisiest. The volume of meme production per capita peaks. Mainstream media still treats it as a curiosity.

Part of The Meme Oracle

55 moments in this segment.

2006 — Lonelygirl15. Date: 16 June 2006 to 1 August 2008 · Place: YouTube, produced in Los Angeles, California · Figures: Jessica Lee Rose, performer · Miles Beckett, co-creator · Mesh Flinders, co-creator · Greg Goodfried, co-creator · Tags: Vlog Fiction, ARG, Parasocial 01. A Teenager In Her Bedroom On 16 June 2006 a YouTube account named lonelygirl15 begins posting first-person vlogs by Bree, a sixteen-year-old homeschooled girl with religious parents. The videos accumulate millions of views and a devoted community that treats Bree as a real friend in crisis. On 12 September 2006 the Los Angeles Times confirms that Bree is the New Zealand actress Jessica Lee Rose and that the channel is a scripted production by filmmakers Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders, and Greg Goodfried. The reveal does not end the show. It continues for two years across more than five hundred episodes. 02. The Vlog As Native Fiction Lonelygirl15 is the first major work to treat the YouTube vlog as a fictional form on its own terms, with serialized narrative, in-character comment replies, and an alternate reality game branching into MySpace pages and forum posts. The structure prefigures every later parasocial creator economy. It also exposes the platform's truth problem. Authenticity becomes a marketing claim rather than a property, and audiences learn that the camera-in-bedroom genre is a costume anyone can wear. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'lonelygirl15' • Los Angeles Times, 'Lonelygirl15's Suitors' (12 September 2006) • Wired, 'The Secret World of Lonelygirl' (December 2006)
2006 — Will It Blend?. Date: 30 October 2006 onward · Place: Orem, Utah · Figures: Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder · George Wright, marketing director · Tags: Branded Viral, YouTube Series 01. A Lab Coat And A Blender Tom Dickson, founder of the Utah blender manufacturer Blendtec, films himself in a lab coat destroying objects in his commercial-grade Total Blender. Marketing director George Wright produces the series with a 50 dollar budget. Episodes begin appearing on YouTube on 30 October 2006. Within a year the series has demolished an iPhone, a video camera, golf balls, marbles, glow sticks, and a rake handle. Blendtec consumer sales rise 700 percent in the first three years. 02. The Template For Branded Content Will It Blend? is the first sustained, episodic, native-YouTube branded series. It demonstrates that product demonstration, framed as spectacle and uploaded for free, can outperform paid television advertising on conversion metrics. Every subsequent corporate YouTube channel from Old Spice to Wendy's traces back to Dickson in goggles holding a smoking blender pitcher. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Will It Blend?' • Blendtec YouTube channel (willitblend.com) • Wired, 'How Blendtec Crushed It on YouTube' (15 December 2008)
2007 — LOLcats and I Can Has Cheezburger?. Date: 11 January 2007 · Place: Honolulu, Hawaii · Figures: Eric Nakagawa, founder · Kari Unebasami, co-founder · Tags: Image Macro, LOLspeak, Blog Network 01. A Single Picture On A Hawaiian Server On 11 January 2007, Eric Nakagawa posts a single picture to a free domain he registers as icanhascheezburger.com. The image, a grey British Shorthair with mouth agape and the caption I Can Has Cheezburger?, has circulated on the Something Awful forums since 2006. Nakagawa and his collaborator Kari Unebasami begin posting one captioned cat per day. Within ten months the site is doing 1.5 million page views per day. Pet Holdings Inc. acquires it for a reported 2 million dollars in September 2007, the first major financialization of a single meme format. 02. LOLspeak As A Constructed Dialect The captioning convention, called LOLspeak or kitty pidgin, stabilizes a grammar with broken verb agreement, present participle overuse, and the dropped article. Linguist Lauren Gawne and others study it as a constructed online dialect, a written register with no spoken correlate. Impact font white with black stroke, top and bottom of frame, becomes the default image macro typographic skin for the next decade. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'LOLcats' • Time Magazine, 'Lolcats Goes Big Time' (16 July 2007) • Lauren Gawne and Jill Vaughan, 'I Can Haz Language Play' (Australian Linguistic Society, 2011)
2007 — Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria. Date: 1 January 2007 · Place: YouTube, broadcast from Indianapolis and Missoula · Figures: John Green, novelist · Hank Green, musician and educator · Tags: Vlog, Community, Earnest 01. Brotherhood 2.0 On 1 January 2007 the novelist John Green and his brother Hank Green begin a year-long project called Brotherhood 2.0. Every weekday one brother posts a video to the other, with no textual communication allowed. The format outlasts the year and continues as Vlogbrothers, now nearly two decades on. The audience self-identifies as Nerdfighters and the imagined community as Nerdfighteria. Its rallying slogan is to decrease worldsuck. 02. The Earnest Counterprogramming Vlogbrothers establishes a model of YouTube creator culture explicitly opposed to ironic detachment: high-information, dense-edit, civic-minded. It spawns VidCon (founded 2010), the Crash Course education channel (2011), and the Project for Awesome charity fundraiser (annual from 2007). The channel is the proof that the platform can sustain long-form intellectual community, not only viral comedy. Most of the early YouTube education economy descends from it. Sources • Vlogbrothers YouTube channel archive (2007-present) • The New Yorker, 'The Reluctant Mr. Green' (12 June 2014) • VidCon press materials (2010 founding announcement)
2007 — Tumblr Launches. Date: 19 February 2007 · Place: New York City · Figures: David Karp, founder · Marco Arment, lead developer · Tags: Platform, Reblog, Tumblelog 01. Two Weeks Of Code David Karp, twenty years old and based in New York, launches Tumblr on 19 February 2007 after two weeks of focused work with Marco Arment as lead developer. The format is the tumblelog, a stripped-down personal blog optimized for posting images, quotes, links, and video without the friction of a CMS. Within two weeks the site has 75,000 users. By 2013, when Yahoo acquires it for 1.1 billion dollars, it hosts more than 100 million blogs. 02. The Reblog Becomes A Verb Tumblr's central innovation is the reblog. Any post can be reposted to a follower's blog with attribution preserved as a chain, mutated with added commentary or images, then reblogged again. The mechanism makes images travel as native objects rather than embedded links, creating a circulatory system optimized for visual culture. Subcultures form around the affordance: fandom (Superwholock, One Direction), social-justice discourse, aesthetic blogs (vaporwave, seapunk), and the queer reaction-image archive that defines 2010s internet humor. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Tumblr' • The New York Times, 'David Karp, the Pied Piper of Tumblr' (12 December 2008) • Marco Arment, 'Tumblr' (marco.org archive, 2007-2010)
2007 — Chocolate Rain. Date: 22 April 2007 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota · Figures: Adam Nyerere Bahner aka Tay Zonday, performer · Tags: YouTube Music, Earnest Viral, Vocal Texture 01. A Doctoral Student At A Cheap Microphone Adam Nyerere Bahner, a doctoral student in American Studies at the University of Minnesota performing as Tay Zonday, uploads Chocolate Rain to YouTube on 22 April 2007. The song is a sincere protest piece about institutional racism, sung in a startling baritone by a slight twenty-four year old who steps away from the microphone to breathe. Picked up by 4chan's /b/ board in July 2007, it becomes one of the first YouTube videos to cross the threshold from forum joke to mass culture, peaking at the top of the site's most-viewed chart. "I move away from the mic to breathe in." — on-screen annotation, Chocolate Rain, 22 April 2007 02. The Sincerity Engine Chocolate Rain establishes a template: an earnest amateur performance becomes viral less for mockery than for the uncategorizable affect it produces. Bahner appears on Jimmy Kimmel, records with Dr. Pepper, and continues making music for two decades, never disowning the original. It is among the first internet artifacts to make critics ask whether the audience is laughing with or at the work, a question the subsequent decade refuses to settle. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Chocolate Rain' • Tay Zonday, original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA) • The Guardian, 'Tay Zonday on Chocolate Rain' (24 August 2007)
2007 — Charlie Bit My Finger. Date: 22 May 2007 · Place: Buckinghamshire, England · Figures: Howard Davies-Carr, father and uploader · Harry Davies-Carr, three years old · Charlie Davies-Carr, one year old · Tags: Home Video Viral, YouTube 01. Fifty-Six Seconds Filmed For The Grandfather Howard Davies-Carr films his two sons on 22 May 2007 in their home in Buckinghamshire and uploads the fifty-six second clip to YouTube to share with the boys' grandfather in Colorado who cannot access email attachments. Harry, three, puts his finger in baby Charlie's mouth. Charlie bites. Harry yelps, then laughs. The video is, for several years, the most-viewed user-generated clip on YouTube, passing 800 million views before being intentionally removed. 02. Sold As An NFT, Reuploaded On 23 May 2021 the family auctions the original upload as a non-fungible token for 760,999 dollars and removes the video from YouTube. The buyer reuploads it. The reuploaded version, with reset view counter, continues to accumulate views. The clip stands as the founding artifact of the YouTube home-video economy, the genre that produces every subsequent family vlog and reaction-channel format. "Charlie bit me. And that really hurt, Charlie. And it's still hurting." — Harry Davies-Carr, 22 May 2007 Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Charlie Bit My Finger' • Howard Davies-Carr, original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM) • BBC News, 'Charlie Bit My Finger video sold as NFT for £500,000' (24 May 2021)
2007 — Rickroll. Date: May 2007 · Place: 4chan /v/, then YouTube · Figures: Anonymous 4chan /v/ user known as Brad, originator · Rick Astley, unwitting subject · Tags: Bait And Switch, Long Tail Meme, 4chan Origin 01. Duckroll To Rickroll The duckroll begins on 4chan in 2006: a hyperlink promising one thing redirects to an image of a duck on wheels. By May 2007 a user on /v/, the video games board, swaps the duck for the music video of Rick Astley's 1987 single Never Gonna Give You Up. The bait-and-switch sticks because the song's opening synth is instantly recognizable and entirely unrelated to whatever was promised. By 2008, Rickrolling is mainstream. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is Rickrolled on national television in November 2008 when Astley himself appears mid-broadcast. 02. The Longest-Lived Bait The Rickroll outlasts every other 2007-era meme. The original YouTube upload, taken down for copyright in 2014 and restored, passes one billion views in July 2021. By 2026 it remains in active use as a prank format, the longest continuously-deployed image-redirect joke in internet history. Astley re-recorded the song for charity, performed it at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards after a fan vote, and treats the meme as a windfall. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Rickroll' • The New York Times, 'Rick Astley, Brought Back by a Web Joke' (15 March 2008) • Rick Astley, 'Never Gonna Give You Up' (original RCA upload, 25 October 2009)
2007 — Soulja Boy, Crank That. Date: 2 May 2007 · Place: Batesville, Mississippi, then YouTube and MySpace · Figures: DeAndre Cortez Way aka Soulja Boy, performer · Tags: Native Internet Music, Dance Tutorial, Soundclick 01. A Sixteen Year Old Distributing Through SoundClick DeAndre Cortez Way, sixteen and recording in Batesville, Mississippi, releases Crank That (Soulja Boy) through SoundClick in 2007 and uploads the dance tutorial to YouTube on 2 May 2007. The instrumental is built in FL Studio using a steel drum preset from the free Fruity DrumSynth Live plugin. The song reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 15 September 2007 and stays there for seven weeks, the first song to do so on the basis of independent online distribution before label signing. 02. The First Native-Internet Pop Star Soulja Boy proves the YouTube-MySpace-SoundClick stack can produce a chart-topping hit without traditional radio or A&R infrastructure. The accompanying dance, demonstrated in his tutorial video, becomes the first widely-imitated viral dance, a format every subsequent platform from Vine to TikTok inherits. He is the prototype the industry studies for the next decade as it attempts to engineer what he produced alone. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Crank That' • Billboard, 'Soulja Boy, Crank That chart history' • Soulja Boy, original YouTube tutorial (youtube.com/watch?v=8UFIYGkROII)
2007 — Keyboard Cat. Date: 7 June 2007 upload, viral remix 22 May 2009 · Place: Spokane, Washington · Figures: Charlie Schmidt, original footage shot 1984 · Fatso, the cat (d. 1987) · Brad O'Farrell, remix curator · Tags: Outro Format, Video Mashup 01. Footage From 1984 Charlie Schmidt films his orange tabby Fatso in 1984 wearing a blue t-shirt, paws guided by Schmidt's hands beneath the keyboard, appearing to play a cheerful upbeat melody. The cat dies in 1987. Schmidt uploads the digitized footage to YouTube on 7 June 2007 with the title Cool Cat. The clip languishes until 22 May 2009 when Brad O'Farrell remixes it as a coda to a video of a stage performer falling. The remix popularizes the play him off, keyboard cat outro format. 02. The Universal Failure Outro Through 2009 and 2010 Keyboard Cat is appended to clips of public failures, blooper reels, and political stumbles. The format becomes the default video punchline of the era, deployed on Letterman, Stephen Colbert, and SportsCenter. Fatso's licensing rights generate steady income for Schmidt for the next decade. A successor cat, Bento, performs the role from 2010 until his death in 2018. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Keyboard Cat' • Charlie Schmidt, original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=J---aiyznGQ) • Brad O'Farrell, 'Play him off, keyboard cat' remix (May 2009)
2007 — Dramatic Chipmunk. Date: 30 August 2007 · Place: YouTube, source clip from NTV Japan · Figures: Yoshiko Hara, animal handler · uploader 'pixelface' · Tags: Reaction Loop, Television Recut, Five Seconds 01. A Prairie Dog On Japanese Television The original clip airs on the Japanese variety show Hello! Morning in 2006 and features a pet prairie dog, not a chipmunk, owned by Yoshiko Hara. On 30 August 2007 a five-second cut of the animal whipping its head toward the camera, scored with a stinger from the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, is uploaded to YouTube as Dramatic Chipmunk. Within weeks the clip has tens of millions of views. It is the canonical example of the YouTube loop as a unit of comedic punctuation. 02. The Reaction As Standalone Object Dramatic Chipmunk arrives before the GIF revival of the early 2010s but functions as a GIF: a short cyclic reaction that the viewer summons to react on another's behalf. It teaches the platform that durations under ten seconds can carry as much social weight as a feature film. The misnaming, chipmunk for prairie dog, sticks because correction has no advantage in a culture that has already adopted the wrong word. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Dramatic Chipmunk' • NTV Japan, 'Hello! Morning' episode broadcast 2006 • The Guardian, 'The Year in Internet Video' (29 December 2007)
2007 — Success Kid. Date: photo 26 August 2007, meme circulation by 2010 · Place: Jones Beach State Park, New York · Figures: Sammy Griner, eleven-month-old subject · Laney Griner, photographer and mother · Justin Griner, father · Tags: Advice Animal, Photo Macro 01. Eleven Months Old Eating Sand On 26 August 2007 Laney Griner photographs her eleven month old son Sammy at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island, New York. Sammy holds a fistful of sand and makes a clenched-fist expression of pure determination. Laney uploads the photo to Flickr the same day. By 2010 the cropped image, often captioned I Hate Sandcastles or simply paired with a moment of small triumph, is circulating widely as an image macro. The character is named Success Kid. 02. Kidney Transplant And Trademark In 2015 the Griner family raises 100,000 dollars through a GoFundMe to fund a kidney transplant for Justin Griner, Sammy's father. The campaign goes viral on the back of the meme's recognition. Laney Griner secures trademark control of the image. In 2020 she pursues a successful cease-and-desist against U.S. Representative Steve King's campaign for unauthorized use, establishing a precedent for meme-subject control. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Success Kid' • Laney Griner, original Flickr upload (26 August 2007) • NPR, 'Success Kid's Family Used The Meme To Pay For A Kidney Transplant' (8 April 2015)
2007 — Yo Dawg I Heard You Like. Date: Summer 2007 · Place: Something Awful and 4chan · Figures: Alvin Joiner aka Xzibit, host of Pimp My Ride · anonymous macro authors · Tags: Image Macro, Recursion, Catchphrase 01. A Car Inside A Car Pimp My Ride airs on MTV from 2004 to 2007 with rapper Xzibit overseeing absurd vehicle modifications. The show's signature gag is installing a thing inside a thing, a fish tank in the trunk or a television in the steering wheel. Around mid-2007 the show's promotional photo of a grinning Xzibit becomes an image macro that names the joke. The grammar is fixed. Yo dawg, I heard you like X, so we put an X in your X so you can verb while you verb. The template makes recursion legible as humor. 02. The Joke About Embedding Yo Dawg is the meme that teaches a generation of users to recognize and laugh at nested structures. It thrives during the years when feed readers, embeds, and iframes are reshaping the web into objects within objects. It also marks the moment when a Black celebrity is conscripted as the unwitting face of an Anglo internet template, a pattern that will repeat through the decade. "Yo dawg I herd you like cars so we put a car in yo car so you can drive while you drive." — Canonical Xzibit macro, circa 2007 Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Xzibit Yo Dawg' • MTV, 'Pimp My Ride' production records (2004-2007) • Limor Shifman, 'Memes in Digital Culture' (MIT Press 2014)
2008 — Philosoraptor. Date: January 2008 · Place: Atlanta, Georgia, then LolDinosaurs.com · Figures: Sam Smith aka LandsharkRides, illustrator · Tags: Image Macro, Stock Character 01. A T-Shirt Design Sam Smith, an Atlanta-based designer working under the name LandsharkRides, draws a velociraptor with one claw pensively raised to its chin in January 2008. The image is first sold as a t-shirt design on LaughingSquid and his personal store. It is lifted to LolDinosaurs.com and then to 4chan, where users overlay the standard Impact font with self-undermining philosophical questions. The character is named Philosoraptor. 02. The Stoner Syllogism Format Philosoraptor captions follow a strict grammar of pseudo-paradox: If poison expires, is it more poisonous or no longer poisonous? The format is the first stock-character image macro to spawn a recognizable genre of recursive logical-joke writing. Smith trademarks the character in 2012 after years of unauthorized merchandise. The trademark is upheld and Smith continues to license the image. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Philosoraptor' • Sam Smith / LandsharkRides original art portfolio • Forbes, 'How Philosoraptor Became Big Business' (12 March 2012)
2008 — Trollface. Date: 19 September 2008 · Place: deviantART · Figures: Carlos Ramirez aka Whynne, illustrator · Tags: Rage Face, deviantART, Trolling Iconography 01. Coolface Posted To deviantART Carlos Ramirez, an eighteen year old Oakland art student posting as Whynne, uploads a comic titled Trolls to deviantART on 19 September 2008. The final panel features a face with a sinister wide grin, half-closed eyes, and the caption Problem? The face, sometimes called Coolface in its early circulation, is lifted to 4chan and YouTube comment sections within weeks. It becomes the universal pictograph for trolling intent. 02. The Iconography Of Bad Faith Trollface fixes a vocabulary. To troll is no longer abstract; it has a face. The grin is appropriated for everything from anti-piracy memes to political graffiti, eventually appearing on hand-painted signs at protests in Egypt and Hong Kong. Ramirez registers the copyright in 2010 and successfully pursues unauthorized commercial use, earning a reported six-figure income from licensing through the 2010s. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Trollface' • Whynne, 'Trolls' (deviantART, 19 September 2008) • Vice, 'The Man Who Drew Trollface Made Six Figures Off Memes' (12 February 2015)
2008 — Boxxy. Date: 27 October 2008 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Bishop, California · Figures: Catherine Wayne aka Catie, performer · Tags: Webcam Girl, 4chan Worship, Parasocial 01. A Teenage Girl Says Hi To Gaia On 27 October 2008 fourteen-year-old Catherine Wayne uploads a webcam introduction to the social network Gaia Online under the username Boxxybabee. The video, two minutes of caffeinated direct address with thick eyeliner, migrates to YouTube in January 2009 and is discovered by 4chan's /b/ board. Wayne is declared empress of /b/. A faction war breaks out between users who love her and users who hate that other users love her. The board is briefly taken offline by the volume of activity. 02. The First Parasocial Object Boxxy is the prototype of the audience-captured webcam girl, a figure later iterated as the YouTuber, the streamer, the TikToker. Wayne herself goes silent for years to escape the harassment, then returns in 2010 with the channel ANewHopeee on her own terms. She is also the first internet celebrity whose fame is openly understood by its participants as a sociological event about themselves, not about her. "Hi, I'm Boxxy, and you be Boxxy too!" — Boxxybabee, Gaia introduction video, 27 October 2008 Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Boxxy' • Encyclopedia Dramatica, 'Boxxy' (archived 2009-2012) • The Daily Dot, 'The Strange Saga of Boxxy' (24 January 2014)
2008 — Three Wolf Moon Amazon Reviews. Date: November 2008 onward · Place: Amazon.com · Figures: Antonia Neshev, illustrator · The Mountain Corporation, manufacturer · Brian Govern, originating reviewer · Tags: Ironic Commerce, Review Genre, Object Meme 01. A Shirt Becomes A Joke The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt, illustrated by Antonia Neshev and sold by The Mountain Corporation since 2003, depicts three howling wolves under a full moon. In November 2008 a New Jersey law student named Brian Govern posts a sarcastic five-star review on Amazon describing the magical effects of wearing it. Hundreds of imitators follow. Within six months the shirt is the best-selling apparel item on Amazon. It accumulates more than three thousand reviews, the great majority ironic. 02. The Review As Performance Three Wolf Moon establishes the user review section as a venue for collaborative comedy writing. The format becomes a recurring genre: BIC for Her pens, Haribo sugar-free gummy bears, banana slicers, the Tuscan whole milk one-gallon listing. It is also the first proof that an object's meaning can be rewritten in public by strangers faster than its manufacturer can object. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Three Wolf Moon' • The New York Times, 'Wolf Shirt Goes Viral' (5 June 2009) • Amazon product page reviews B002HJ377A (archived 2009)
2009 — Socially Awkward Penguin. Date: 2009, photo origin 1996 National Geographic · Place: Reddit, photo by George F. Mobley for National Geographic · Figures: George F. Mobley, photographer · Anonymous Reddit user, format originator · Tags: Advice Animal, Reddit, National Geographic 01. An Adélie Penguin On A Blue Diamond The base image is a 1996 photograph by George F. Mobley for National Geographic showing a single Adélie penguin against an ice-blue diamond background. By 2009 Reddit users have isolated the bird on the diamond as an advice-animal template captioned with mundane social embarrassments. The format reaches saturation by 2011 on r/AdviceAnimals, spawning Socially Awesome Penguin (the diamond flipped to orange) and a dozen subspecies. 02. Copyright Letter From Getty In 2015 Getty Images, which licenses the National Geographic archive, sends settlement demands to German blogs that have reproduced Socially Awkward Penguin images, reportedly seeking hundreds of euros per use. The case prompts wide discussion of who, if anyone, owns a meme built on copyrighted material. No definitive ruling emerges. The template continues to circulate. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Socially Awkward Penguin' • Wired, 'Getty Hits Meme Lovers With Copyright Demands' (8 September 2015) • George F. Mobley, original photograph (National Geographic, 1996)
2009 — David After Dentist. Date: 30 January 2009 · Place: Cape Coral, Florida · Figures: David DeVore Jr., seven years old · David DeVore Sr., father and uploader · Tags: Home Video Viral, YouTube 01. Post-Anesthesia In The Back Seat On 30 January 2009 David DeVore Sr. films his seven year old son in the back seat of the family car after a dental procedure to remove a supernumerary tooth. David Jr., still under the effects of the anesthesia, asks his father Is this real life? and screams in confusion. DeVore uploads the one minute fifty-eight second clip to YouTube to share with relatives. It is reposted by Buzzfeed and others within days. "Is this real life? Is this gonna be forever?" — David DeVore Jr., 30 January 2009 02. The Family Monetization Template The DeVores license merchandise, set up a website, and earn a reported 150,000 dollars in the first year through YouTube revenue, merchandise, and licensing. They donate a portion to charity. David After Dentist is a template study for the family-channel economy that follows, demonstrating that a single accidental upload can fund a college tuition. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'David After Dentist' • David DeVore Sr., original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=txqiwrbYGrs) • The Wall Street Journal, 'YouTube Stars: David After Dentist' (29 May 2009)
2009 — Susan Boyle, Britain's Got Talent. Date: 11 April 2009 · Place: Blackburn, West Lothian, Scotland, broadcast on ITV · Figures: Susan Boyle, singer · Simon Cowell, judge · Piers Morgan, judge · Amanda Holden, judge · Tags: Television Viral, Earnest Performance 01. I Dreamed A Dream On ITV On 11 April 2009 the third series of Britain's Got Talent broadcasts the audition of Susan Boyle, a forty-seven year old unemployed Scottish woman from Blackburn. The judges and audience visibly expect a poor performance. Boyle sings I Dreamed a Dream from Les Misérables. The clip is uploaded to YouTube the same evening. Within nine days it has been viewed 100 million times across multiple uploads, the fastest accumulation of internet video views to that point. 02. The Algorithm Of Lowered Expectations Boyle's moment formalizes a viral story structure: setup the audience for failure, deliver competence, document the visible reversal of judgment. The structure is replicated, often cynically, by talent shows worldwide. Boyle releases six albums, the first of which is the best-selling debut by a UK artist in history. She is later open about her Asperger's diagnosis, received in 2012. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Susan Boyle' • ITV, Britain's Got Talent series 3 (broadcast 11 April 2009) • The Guardian, 'Susan Boyle: 100m hits and counting' (20 April 2009)
2009 — Slenderman. Date: 10 June 2009 · Place: Something Awful forums, Create Paranormal Images thread · Figures: Eric Knudsen aka Victor Surge, creator · Tags: Creepypasta, Collaborative Folklore, Something Awful 01. Two Photoshopped Black And White Photographs On 10 June 2009 Eric Knudsen, posting as Victor Surge on the Something Awful forums, contributes two black and white photographs to a thread titled Create Paranormal Images. Each shows children with a tall, thin, faceless figure in a black suit standing behind them. The captions reference disappearances. The character has no name in the original post. Knudsen calls him The Slender Man in a follow-up reply two days later. 02. The First Collaboratively Authored Internet Monster Slenderman becomes the first widely-adopted collaborative folklore figure of the internet, mythology built additively by thousands of unaffiliated writers, video makers, and artists. The Marble Hornets YouTube series, launched June 2009, develops the canon. The video game Slender: The Eight Pages establishes the gameplay template. In May 2014 two twelve year old girls in Waukesha, Wisconsin stab a classmate citing Slenderman as motivation. The case forces a public reckoning with creepypasta culture and the limits of folklore liability. HBO produces the 2016 documentary Beware the Slenderman. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Slender Man' • Eric Knudsen, original Something Awful thread post (10 June 2009) • The New Yorker, 'The Professor of Internet Monsters' (5 May 2018)
2009 — Annoying Orange. Date: 9 October 2009 · Place: YouTube, produced in Bakersfield, California · Figures: Dane Boedigheimer, creator and voice · Tags: Kidcore, Live Action Animation, Pre-Algorithm 01. A Citrus Heckles A Knife On 9 October 2009 Dane Boedigheimer uploads The Annoying Orange, a four-minute video in which a CGI face composited onto a real orange torments other produce until a chef kills it. The video accumulates over one hundred million views and spawns a franchise. By 2012 the channel has produced a Cartoon Network series and is one of the ten most-subscribed accounts on YouTube. 02. The First Algorithmic Kidcore Annoying Orange is among the earliest channels to discover that YouTube's recommendation system disproportionately rewards content that holds the attention of unsupervised children. Its formula, bright colors, repetitive humor, looping voice, anticipates the YouTube Kids economy by half a decade. It is the entry point for the conversation about platform incentives and child viewership that will become urgent in the 2017 Elsagate scandal. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Annoying Orange' • Variety, 'Annoying Orange to Get Cartoon Network Series' (8 December 2010) • Daily Beast, 'How Annoying Orange Conquered YouTube' (19 May 2012)
2010 — Double Rainbow. Date: 8 January 2010 upload, viral 3 July 2010 · Place: Yosemite National Park, California · Figures: Paul Vasquez aka Bear Vasquez, videographer (d. 2020) · Tags: Reaction Video, Sincerity 01. Outside The Trailer In Mariposa Paul Vasquez, a forty-six year old former cage fighter living in a trailer outside Yosemite, films a vivid double rainbow on 8 January 2010. His voice breaks repeatedly as he weeps and asks What does this mean? The clip sits unwatched on YouTube until comedian Jimmy Kimmel tweets it on 3 July 2010. Within weeks the video has 21 million views. The Gregory Brothers release an autotuned version on 31 July 2010 that itself accumulates tens of millions of plays. 02. Earnest Wonder As Genre Double Rainbow formalizes the earnest-wonder reaction video genre, the inverse of the cynical reaction clip. Vasquez became a minor folk figure, appeared in advertisements, and continued posting nature videos until his death from a heart attack in May 2020. The Gregory Brothers' Songify treatment of his audio establishes their workflow that produces the Bed Intruder Song three weeks later. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Double Rainbow' • Paul Vasquez, original YouTube upload (youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI) • The New York Times, 'Paul Vasquez, the Double Rainbow Guy, Is Dead at 57' (12 May 2020)
2010 — Old Spice Guy, Smell Like A Man, Man. Date: 4 February 2010 · Place: Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, Oregon · Figures: Isaiah Mustafa, actor · Wieden+Kennedy creative team · Craig Allen and Eric Kallman, copywriters · Tags: Branded Viral, Single Take, Super Bowl Adjacent 01. The Man Your Man Could Smell Like Wieden+Kennedy launches the Old Spice campaign Smell Like a Man, Man on 4 February 2010 around the Super Bowl. The thirty-second spot stars former NFL practice-squad receiver Isaiah Mustafa addressing women directly while moving through a shower, a yacht, and a beach in what appears to be a single continuous take. The ad's success comes less from the broadcast than from the YouTube upload, which accumulates 40 million views within months. 02. The Real-Time Response Campaign In July 2010 Wieden+Kennedy and Mustafa film 186 short personalized response videos in two days, answering tweets and Reddit comments in character. The campaign is the first major real-time social-response brand activation. Old Spice body wash sales rise 107 percent year over year. The format is studied as the proof case for branded responsiveness, replicated by Wendy's, Denny's, and Burger King through the next decade. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Old Spice Guy' • Wieden+Kennedy campaign archive • Advertising Age, 'Old Spice Sales Double in Three Months' (28 July 2010)
2010 — Trololo / Eduard Khil. Date: 27 February 2010 · Place: YouTube, source recording from Soviet Central Television 1976 · Figures: Eduard Khil, baritone · Arkady Ostrovsky, composer · Tags: Found Footage, Cross-Cultural Viral, Vocalise 01. A Soviet Vocalise Returns On 27 February 2010 a YouTube user uploads a 1976 Soviet Central Television performance of the Arkady Ostrovsky composition I Am Glad To Finally Be Going Home, sung wordlessly by baritone Eduard Khil. The piece, originally a vocalise because its English lyric about a cowboy could not be broadcast in the USSR, is rechristened Trololo by Anglophone viewers. Khil, then seventy-five and largely forgotten in Russia, becomes a global figure in his final years. He dies in 2012. 02. The Late Recognition Trololo is the rare meme that delivers a second career to its subject during his lifetime. Khil is interviewed by the New York Times, performs the song at international concerts, and launches an online competition for new lyrics. The episode is also a case study in YouTube as an archival engine that exhumes Cold War television and reframes it as global comedy without acknowledging the original political constraint that produced the wordless form. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Trololo' • The New York Times, 'A Russian Singer's Improbable Second Act' (8 March 2010) • BBC News, 'Eduard Khil Obituary' (4 June 2012)
2010 — Hyperbole and a Half: ALL THE THINGS. Date: 17 June 2010 · Place: hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com · Figures: Allie Brosh, author and illustrator · Tags: Webcomic, Mental Health, MS Paint 01. This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult On 17 June 2010 Allie Brosh publishes the post This Is Why I'll Never Be An Adult on her Blogger site Hyperbole and a Half. The post's central image, a wild-eyed figure shouting CLEAN ALL THE THINGS, is excerpted as a freestanding macro within days. It becomes the canonical template for manic over-commitment. Brosh's deliberately crude MS Paint style, square-pupil figures and pink hair, sets the visual register for a generation of confessional webcomics. 02. The Webcomic As Memoir Hyperbole and a Half is the bridge between the gag-strip webcomic and the autobiographical illustrated essay. Brosh's 2013 two-part post Depression and Depression Part Two is widely cited as the most accurate first-person account of clinical depression on the open web. Her Touchstone book Hyperbole and a Half (October 2013) reaches number one on the New York Times bestseller list, the first blog-to-book crossover of its kind for the medium. "CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!" — Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half, 17 June 2010 Sources • Hyperbole and a Half blog archive (2010-2013) • The New York Times, 'A Cartoonist's Funny, Fearful Confessional' (29 October 2013) • KnowYourMeme, 'X All the Y'
2010 — Bed Intruder Song. Date: 31 July 2010 · Place: Huntsville, Alabama, original WAFF 48 News broadcast · Figures: Antoine Dodson, interview subject · Kelly Dodson, sister · The Gregory Brothers (Michael, Andrew, Evan, Sarah Fullen) · Tags: Autotune Remix, News Clip Viral, Race And Virality 01. A Local News Interview On 28 July 2010 WAFF 48 News in Huntsville, Alabama broadcasts an interview with Antoine Dodson after an intruder enters his sister Kelly's bedroom. Dodson, animated and direct to camera, warns the assailant. The clip is uploaded to YouTube the same day. Three days later the Gregory Brothers release an autotuned musical version. The song reaches number 89 on the Billboard Hot 100, the first viral autotuned news clip to chart. 02. Revenue Sharing And Critique The Gregory Brothers split iTunes revenue with Dodson, who uses the proceeds to move his family out of public housing. Dodson is open about the financial arrangement in subsequent interviews. The artifact is also a frequent reference point in media-studies discussion of the racial dynamics of viral news clips in the period, particularly the editing of Black interviewees into spectacle. The song's commercial success and Dodson's stated benefit complicate but do not erase the critique. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Bed Intruder Song' • The Gregory Brothers, 'Bed Intruder Song' (iTunes release, 31 July 2010) • The Awl, 'How Antoine Dodson Got Paid' (16 August 2010)
2010 — Jenna Marbles: How To Trick People Into Thinking You're Good Looking. Date: 9 July 2010 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Cambridge, Massachusetts · Figures: Jenna Mourey aka Jenna Marbles, performer · Tags: YouTube Comedy, Femme Confessional, Bedroom Channel 01. Five Million Views In One Week On 9 July 2010 Jenna Mourey, a graduate student at Boston University, posts a comedic three-minute monologue titled How To Trick People Into Thinking You're Good Looking. The video accumulates more than five million views in seven days. By 2014 her channel is the most-subscribed by a woman on YouTube. The format is fixed for a decade of imitators: a single performer talking directly to a webcam in a bedroom or living room, fast-cut and unscripted in feel, soundtracked by self-conscious mockery of femininity. 02. The Femme Vlogger Template Marbles' channel proves that the YouTube creator economy is not only a sketch-comedy or vlog-confessional medium but a vehicle for women's confessional comedy at scale. The format will be inherited by Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, Lilly Singh, Liza Koshy, Trisha Paytas, and countless others. Her 2020 retirement, in response to old videos containing blackface and other content, is among the first major creator exits driven by archive accountability rather than burnout. Sources • Jenna Marbles YouTube channel archive (2010-2020) • The New York Times, 'Jenna Marbles, The YouTube Star Reaching A Generation' (12 April 2014) • Vox, 'Jenna Marbles, an Internet Pioneer, Is Leaving YouTube' (26 June 2020)
2010 — We Need To Go Deeper. Date: 16 July 2010 · Place: Reddit and 4chan, source image from Inception (Warner Bros.) · Figures: Christopher Nolan, director · Leonardo DiCaprio, source still · Tags: Image Macro, Recursion, Film Capture 01. Inception Releases Christopher Nolan's Inception opens in North America on 16 July 2010. Within days a screenshot of Leonardo DiCaprio with the caption WE NEED TO GO DEEPER is in circulation on Reddit and 4chan as the punchline to nested-premise jokes. The macro becomes the standard caption for any image with embedded images, recursive Photoshops, or arguments that escalate by adding qualifiers. 02. The Film That Memes Itself Inception is among the first major studio releases whose dialogue is mass-memed in real time during its theatrical run. The phenomenon prefigures the social media marketing logic that will dominate later franchises. The recursion joke also forms a pair with Yo Dawg as the era's two canonical templates for nested structure. Where Yo Dawg names the recursion, We Need To Go Deeper proposes that one should commit to it. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'We Need to Go Deeper' • Warner Bros., Inception press kit (July 2010) • The Awl, 'Inception Memes' (22 July 2010)
2010 — Instagram Launches. Date: 6 October 2010 · Place: San Francisco, California · Figures: Kevin Systrom, co-founder · Mike Krieger, co-founder · Mark Zuckerberg, acquirer · Tags: Platform, Mobile First, Filter 01. Twenty-Five Thousand Users On Day One On 6 October 2010 Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger release Instagram on the iOS App Store. The app, a pared-down pivot from their location-based product Burbn, registers twenty-five thousand users on its first day. By December it has one million. On 9 April 2012 Facebook acquires Instagram for one billion dollars in cash and stock, the largest acquisition of a venture-backed startup with no revenue to that point. 02. The Filter As Native Vocabulary Instagram's twenty-eight launch filters, X-Pro II, Valencia, Earlybird, Inkwell, supply the first mass-market vocabulary for image post-processing as social currency. Before Instagram, the photo filter is a Photoshop specialty. After Instagram, it is a verb. The platform is also the proof that mobile-first social media can outscale the desktop web. It anticipates Snapchat, TikTok, and the entire post-2012 social-app economy. Tumblr, optimized for desktop, never makes the transition. Sources • TechCrunch, 'Instagram Launches With The Hope Of Igniting Mobile Photography' (6 October 2010) • The New York Times, 'Facebook Buys Instagram for $1 Billion' (9 April 2012) • Sarah Frier, 'No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram' (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
2010 — Kim Jong-il Looking At Things. Date: 9 November 2010 · Place: Tumblr, source images from KCNA state press service · Figures: Kim Jong-il, subject · Joao Rocha, blog curator · Tags: Single-Serving Tumblr, Found Imagery, State Photography 01. A Blog With One Joke On 9 November 2010 the Lisbon-based copywriter Joao Rocha launches the Tumblr blog Kim Jong-il Looking At Things. The site reposts North Korean state press photographs of the Dear Leader inspecting factories, agricultural products, and military hardware, captioned only with the object being inspected. The blog runs for fourteen months until Kim's death on 17 December 2011. Rocha then opens a successor for Kim Jong-un. 02. The Single-Serving Tumblr Format Looking At Things crystallizes a Tumblr genre: one premise, one URL, indefinite scroll. Selleck Waterfall Sandwich, Animals Talking In All Caps, Texts From Bennett, and Garfield Minus Garfield share the form. The format depends on Tumblr's reblog mechanism, which lets a single observation circulate and accumulate as collective ritual rather than authored joke. The blog is studied as an example of editorial restraint at internet scale, the curator who writes nothing but the captions. Sources • Kim Jong-il Looking At Things, Tumblr archive (2010-2011) • The Atlantic, 'A Brief History of Kim Jong-il Looking At Things' (19 December 2011) • Wired UK, 'Joao Rocha on Curating Authoritarian Photography' (5 March 2012)
2010 — Hide The Pain Harold. Date: stock shoots 2010, meme by 2011 · Place: Budapest, Hungary · Figures: András Arató, electrical engineer and retired pensioner, photo subject · Tags: Stock Photo Meme, Forced Smile 01. A Hungarian Engineer In A Stock Shoot András Arató, a Hungarian electrical engineer, sits for a stock-photo shoot in Budapest in 2010 after the photographer notices his vacation photographs on a social network. The resulting hundreds of images are sold through stock libraries and circulate widely in advertising and presentations. By 2011 Arató's images are appearing on 4chan and Reddit captioned with situations of barely-concealed psychological distress masked by his characteristic forced smile. The character is named Hide the Pain Harold. 02. Arató Embraces The Character Arató, initially distressed by the meme, embraces it. He gives a TEDx talk in 2018, becomes a brand ambassador, and tours conferences as Harold. He retains his original career as an electrical engineer. Hide the Pain Harold is the first meme to grow steadily over a full decade without a viral peak, expanding by accumulation rather than spike, and the first to make a stock-photo subject a named persistent character. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Hide the Pain Harold' • András Arató, 'How I became the Hide the Pain Harold meme' (TEDxKyiv, October 2018) • BBC News, 'Hide the Pain Harold: How a sad-looking grandpa became a meme' (6 May 2017)
2010 — Superwholock. Date: Mid-2010 through 2014 · Place: Tumblr · Figures: Supernatural, BBC Sherlock, Doctor Who source fandoms · Tags: Tumblr Fandom, Megafandom, Crossover 01. Three Shows One Dashboard Beginning in mid-2010 with the launch of BBC's Sherlock and continuing through the Eleventh Doctor era of Doctor Who and the post-fifth-season run of Supernatural, Tumblr users begin tagging fan content across all three with the portmanteau Superwholock. The crossover indicates allegiance to all three properties simultaneously. By 2012 the trio dominates the Tumblr fandom landscape. Crossover gifsets, ships, and AUs are produced at industrial scale. 02. The Megafandom As Identity Superwholock is the first true Tumblr-native megafandom, defined less by the source texts than by the platform's reblog mechanics and gif culture. Its dominant aesthetic, color-graded gif edits with hand-coded title typography, sets the visual idiom for the platform. Its decline after 2014, accelerated by Steven Moffat showrunner fatigue and the Sherlock fourth-season backlash, becomes the cautionary tale of fandom infrastructure outlasting fandom enthusiasm. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Superwholock' • The Mary Sue, 'A History of Superwholock on Tumblr' (24 February 2014) • Henry Jenkins, 'Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers' (NYU Press, second edition)
2011 — Honey Badger Don't Care. Date: 18 January 2011 · Place: YouTube, narration recorded in Los Angeles · Figures: Christopher Gordon aka Randall, narrator · National Geographic, original footage · Tags: Narration Mashup, Nature Footage 01. A Three Minute Voiceover On 18 January 2011 a Los Angeles-based performer named Christopher Gordon, posting as Randall, uploads a three minute twenty second narration over a National Geographic clip of a honey badger digging up and eating a cobra. Randall's voice is unhurried, archly enthusiastic, deeply profane. The video crosses 50 million views by year end. The phrase honey badger don't care enters general usage. "Honey badger don't care. Honey badger don't give a shit." — Randall, The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, 18 January 2011 02. Branded Apathy Randall and Gordon publish a 2011 book and produce a line of merchandise. The phrase is appropriated by an LSU football player as a self-nickname. The clip is the first major narration-over-found-footage viral, a format echoed by the entire essayistic YouTube genre of the 2010s. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Honey Badger' • Randall, 'The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger' (YouTube, 18 January 2011) • Time Magazine, '100 Best YouTube Videos: Honey Badger' (28 March 2012)
2011 — Scumbag Steve. Date: January 2011 · Place: Reddit r/AdviceAnimals, photo taken Boston, Massachusetts · Figures: Blake Boston, photo subject · Suzanne Boston, photographer and mother · Tags: Advice Animal, Backwards Cap 01. A 2006 Photo Of A Massachusetts Teenager Suzanne Boston photographs her son Blake, then a teenager, in 2006 in their Massachusetts home. Blake wears an oversized white tank top, gold chain, and a sideways flat-brim cap. The photo is used as cover art for Blake's rap project Beantown Mafia. On 5 January 2011 the photo, isolated and superimposed on a lime-green background, appears on Reddit captioned with examples of egregious bad-friend behavior. The character is named Scumbag Steve. 02. The Hat As Modifier The flat-brim cap is later extracted and superimposed on other faces (politicians, athletes, fictional characters) to mark them as scumbags in context. The cap becomes one of the first detachable modifier-objects in meme grammar. Blake Boston speaks publicly about the meme, releasing a response track and discussing the persistent association in interviews. He continues to be recognized by the photograph nearly two decades later. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Scumbag Steve' • Reddit r/AdviceAnimals, original post (5 January 2011) • Vice, 'I Am Scumbag Steve' (16 May 2014)
2011 — Friday by Rebecca Black. Date: 10 February 2011 upload, viral 11 March 2011 · Place: Ark Music Factory, Los Angeles · Figures: Rebecca Black, performer at thirteen · Patrice Wilson, Ark Music Factory songwriter · Clarence Jey, producer · Tags: Pay-To-Play Pop, Hate Watch, YouTube Native 01. A Four Thousand Dollar Music Video Rebecca Black, a thirteen year old from Anaheim Hills, California, records Friday with Ark Music Factory, a pay-to-play vanity label run by Patrice Wilson and Clarence Jey. Black's mother pays 4,000 dollars for the song and accompanying music video, uploaded to YouTube on 10 February 2011. On 11 March 2011 the comedy site Tosh.0 features the clip. Within a week it accumulates 30 million views, becoming the most-discussed pop artifact of the year. 02. Hate-Watch As Mainstream Mode Friday formalizes hate-watching as a mainstream consumption mode. The song reaches number 58 on the Billboard Hot 100 on the basis of paid downloads from viewers who acquire it specifically to mock it. Black, then thirteen, receives death threats. She speaks publicly about the experience for the next decade and re-releases a queer-affirming remix of the song in February 2021 with Dorian Electra, Big Freedia, and 3OH!3 for the tenth anniversary. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Friday' • Rebecca Black, original YouTube upload (10 February 2011) • The New York Times, 'Rebecca Black, Pop Star Whose Song Friday Went Viral, Survived Online Hate' (5 February 2021)
2011 — Nyan Cat. Date: 2 April 2011 · Place: Dallas, Texas · Figures: Christopher Torres aka PRguitarman, illustrator · Daniwell-P aka Daniel Asadi, composer of the Vocaloid song · Tags: Loop Video, Pop Tart Cat, NFT Auction 01. Pop Tart Cat With A Rainbow Tail Christopher Torres, a Dallas illustrator posting as PRguitarman, draws a pixel-art cat with a strawberry pop-tart body on 2 April 2011. He posts it to his LiveJournal as Pop Tart Cat. Five days later a YouTube user combines the image, looped on a starfield, with the Vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! by Daniwell-P. The combined upload accumulates 30 million views by year end. The dedicated stream site nyan.cat hosts the loop continuously through the 2010s. 02. Auctioned For Three Hundred Ether On 18 February 2021 Torres auctions a remastered Nyan Cat as a non-fungible token on Foundation for 300 ETH, then roughly 580,000 dollars. The sale is one of the first major NFT auctions of a born-digital meme artifact and helps trigger the spring 2021 NFT boom. Daniwell-P, the song's composer, is credited but not financially included in the auction. Discussion of the omission becomes part of the longer conversation about credit in collaborative meme objects. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Nyan Cat' • Christopher Torres, original LiveJournal post (2 April 2011) • The Verge, 'Nyan Cat is being sold as a one-of-a-kind piece of crypto art' (18 February 2021)
2011 — Planking. Date: viral peak May-July 2011 · Place: Australia (peak), with antecedents in the UK · Figures: Acton Beale, Australian planker (d. 15 May 2011) · Sam Weckert and Gary Clarkson, UK Lying Down Game originators (2007) · Tags: Pose Meme, Performance Photography 01. The Lying Down Game Renamed The pose, lying face-down with body rigid and arms at the sides on increasingly unusual surfaces, originates as the Lying Down Game in 2007 with UK players Sam Weckert and Gary Clarkson documenting it on Facebook. In early 2011 the practice is renamed planking in Australia and explodes across Facebook and Twitter. By May 2011 dedicated Facebook pages have hundreds of thousands of followers and planks are documented on roofs, statues, livestock, and police vehicles. 02. A Death And A Reckoning On 15 May 2011 Acton Beale, a twenty year old in Brisbane, falls seven stories to his death while planking on a balcony railing. The Queensland Police Service issues a public warning. The fad recedes through the summer. Planking is the first major pose-photography viral, the template for subsequent stunts such as Owling, Horsemaning, and Tebowing. It is also the first viral practice to produce a widely-publicized fatality, prompting early discussion of platform responsibility for trend-driven physical risk. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Planking' • BBC News, 'Australian planking craze claims first life' (15 May 2011) • The Sydney Morning Herald, 'The lying down game: planking history' (16 May 2011)
2011 — Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. Date: 29 July 2011 · Place: YouTube, produced in London · Figures: Becky Sloan, co-creator · Joseph Pelling, co-creator · Baker Terry, co-creator · Tags: Web Series, Surrealist Horror, Childrens TV Parody 01. Notebook Sings A Song On 29 July 2011 the London-based filmmakers Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling upload Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, a four-minute pastiche of children's television in which three felt puppets are taught a creativity lesson by a sentient notebook. The lesson dissolves into graphic body horror. Five further episodes are released between 2014 and 2016, each addressing a different educational topic: time, love, technology, food, dreams. A six-part Channel 4 series follows in September 2022. 02. The Education Of The Internet Child Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is the canonical short-form work of internet surrealist horror. Its imagery, the singing flesh, the green tongue, the smiling clock, becomes a permanent reference set for analog-horror creators on YouTube and TikTok for the next decade. It is also a critique of educational media as ideological apparatus, a sharper cousin to Wonder Showzen. The series is funded by Kickstarter in 2014 for its episodes two through six, making it an early proof of the patron-funded online auteur. Sources • Don't Hug Me I'm Scared YouTube channel archive (2011-2016) • The Guardian, 'Don't Hug Me I'm Scared and the New Surrealist Horror' (12 June 2016) • Channel 4 press release (September 2022)
2011 — Tebowing. Date: 23 October 2011 · Place: Sports Authority Field, Denver, Colorado · Figures: Tim Tebow, quarterback · Jared Kleinstein, originator of Tebowing.com · Tags: Posed Photo, Sports Meme, Single-Serving Tumblr 01. A Knee On The Field On 23 October 2011 Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow drops to one knee in prayer after leading a comeback win over the Miami Dolphins. New York fan Jared Kleinstein photographs himself and friends imitating the pose at a Manhattan bar that night and registers Tebowing.com. Within a week the site is collecting hundreds of submissions per day. Tebow himself trademarks the term Tebowing in October 2012. 02. The Imitation Pose Genre Tebowing is the first major imitation-pose meme of the Instagram era, predating Planking's full mainstream peak and sharing structural logic with the Lying-Down Game, Owling, and Horsemaning. The format requires the meme to be photographically reproduced rather than verbally cited. It also marks the moment when the NFL recognizes that an athlete's spontaneous gesture can outpace the league's own branding and that the rights conversation about player gesture is no longer hypothetical. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Tebowing' • ESPN, 'Tebowing Goes Viral' (28 October 2011) • USPTO trademark registration 4585864 (October 2012)
2011 — Pepper Spray Cop. Date: 18 November 2011 · Place: University of California, Davis, Quad · Figures: Lieutenant John Pike, UC Davis Police · Linda P.B. Katehi, UC Davis chancellor at the time · Thomas K. Fowler, student videographer · Tags: Protest Image, Photoshop Cycle, Occupy 01. A Casual Walk Down A Line Of Seated Students On 18 November 2011 Lieutenant John Pike of the UC Davis Police walks down a line of seated Occupy protesters on the campus Quad in Davis, California, and discharges a canister of MK-9 pepper spray into their faces at point-blank range. Thomas K. Fowler and others film the scene from multiple angles. The video circulates within hours. The image of Pike, casual and unbothered, becomes the visual emblem of the Occupy movement's confrontation with institutional violence. 02. The Photoshop Cycle Within days Pike is composited into hundreds of historical and pop-culture scenes: spraying the seated subjects of Seurat's Sunday Afternoon, spraying the U.S. Constitution, spraying the dove from Picasso's Guernica. The composite cycle is a sustained collective political photoshop event. Pike sues UC Davis for workers' compensation and is awarded 38,000 dollars in 2013. UC Davis later pays 175,000 dollars to a public-relations firm to scrub the lieutenant's name from search results. The cover-up is itself reported and amplifies the original artifact. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop' • Thomas K. Fowler, original video (18 November 2011) • The Sacramento Bee, 'UC Davis paid $175,000 to scrub pepper-spray references' (14 April 2016)
2011 — The Most Interesting Man in the World. Date: Macro circulation peak 2011 · Place: Reddit and Quickmeme, source advertising for Dos Equis · Figures: Jonathan Goldsmith, actor · Euro RSCG Worldwide, ad agency · Dos Equis, Heineken USA brand · Tags: Advice Animal, Brand Capture, Catchphrase 01. An Ad Becomes A Template The advertising campaign for Dos Equis lager featuring actor Jonathan Goldsmith as a silver-bearded raconteur begins in 2007, developed by Euro RSCG Worldwide. The tagline is I don't always drink beer, but when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. By 2011 a still of Goldsmith leaning against a wall is the basis for a top Reddit advice-animal template. The template inverts the original: I don't always X, but when I do, I Y. It dominates the r/AdviceAnimals front page for most of 2011 and 2012. 02. When The Brand Surrenders Dos Equis embraces the macro rather than litigates it, with media buys that reference the meme's own circulation. The case becomes a standard business-school example of brand-meme coexistence and is cited in the early advertising literature on what is then called user-generated content. It is also the first time a beer brand fully cedes authorship of its own slogan to anonymous Quickmeme users while continuing to profit from it. "I don't always test my code, but when I do, I do it in production." — Canonical Most Interesting Man macro, Quickmeme, 2011 Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'The Most Interesting Man in the World' • Adweek, 'Dos Equis and the Meme Economy' (8 March 2012) • Heineken USA campaign records (2007-2016)
2012 — Bad Luck Brian. Date: 23 January 2012 · Place: Reddit r/AdviceAnimals, photo taken in Columbus, Ohio · Figures: Kyle Craven, photo subject · Ian Davies, photographer and Craven's friend · Tags: Advice Animal, Yearbook Photo 01. A Deliberately Disastrous Yearbook Photo In 2006 Kyle Craven, then a high school freshman in Columbus, Ohio, sits for his yearbook portrait in a powder-blue sweater vest, smiling broadly with eyes squinted. He retook the photo because the original was, by his account, deliberately ridiculous. The photographer is his friend Ian Davies. On 23 January 2012 Davies posts the photo to Reddit r/AdviceAnimals captioned Takes a driver's test, gets first DUI. The character is named Bad Luck Brian. 02. The Monetization Craven and Davies pursue licensing actively. The pair earn a reported low-six-figure sum from t-shirts, a Mountain Dew commercial, and image-licensing royalties between 2012 and 2015. Bad Luck Brian is the last canonical advice-animal of the genre's peak and the first whose subject and photographer actively built a business around the meme from week one. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Bad Luck Brian' • Reddit r/AdviceAnimals, original post by hejdamn (23 January 2012) • Bloomberg, 'Bad Luck Brian Is a Six-Figure Business' (24 February 2015)
2012 — KONY 2012. Date: 5 March 2012 · Place: San Diego, California, Invisible Children · Figures: Jason Russell, director and Invisible Children co-founder · Joseph Kony, subject of the campaign · Tags: Activist Video, Slacktivism, Virality Critique 01. Twenty Nine Minutes On YouTube On 5 March 2012 the San Diego nonprofit Invisible Children releases a twenty nine minute thirty second documentary directed by co-founder Jason Russell calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army. The video accumulates 100 million views within six days, the fastest such trajectory in YouTube history to that point. The campaign sells action kits for 30 dollars and calls for a coordinated postering event on 20 April 2012. 02. Backlash, Breakdown, And Aftermath Within weeks the campaign attracts substantial criticism from Ugandan journalists and African-studies scholars for oversimplification, inflated statistics, and a colonial savior framing. Invisible Children's financial structure is scrutinized. On 15 March 2012 Russell suffers a public mental health crisis in San Diego, naked and shouting in traffic, attributed to exhaustion and reactive psychosis. The 20 April action day produces minimal physical turnout. KONY 2012 becomes the canonical case study in viral activism's limits and the term slacktivism's mainstream entry. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'KONY 2012' • Invisible Children, KONY 2012 (YouTube, 5 March 2012) • Foreign Affairs, 'Joseph Kony Is Not in Uganda (and Other Complicated Things)' (12 March 2012)
2012 — Texts From Hillary. Date: 4 April 2012 · Place: Tumblr, source photo from Reuters · Figures: Hillary Clinton, subject · Diana Walker, photographer · Adam Smith, blog co-creator · Stacy Lambe, blog co-creator · Tags: Tumblr, Political Macro, Subject Participation 01. A Secretary Of State On A C-17 In October 2011 Time photographer Diana Walker captures Secretary of State Hillary Clinton looking at her BlackBerry aboard a C-17 military aircraft. On 4 April 2012 Washington political publicists Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe launch a Tumblr blog pairing the image with imagined text-message exchanges between Clinton and other figures. Within five days the blog has been featured by ABC News, CNN, and the Atlantic. On 9 April Clinton herself submits a post for inclusion, and the creators close the blog the same day. 02. The Politician Joins The Meme Texts From Hillary is the first major case in which a sitting cabinet official participates in her own meme, transforming the political-image macro from satire into a controlled communications channel. The episode lays groundwork for the meme-savvy politician personae of the late 2010s. Smith and Lambe end the blog at its peak rather than ride it down, an editorial decision that becomes a model for the single-serving Tumblr life cycle. "ROFL @ ur tumblr! g2g -hrc" — Hillary Clinton, submitted to Texts From Hillary, 9 April 2012 Sources • Texts From Hillary, Tumblr archive (April 2012) • The Atlantic, 'Texts From Hillary, A Meme Closes With Style' (10 April 2012) • Time, Diana Walker C-17 image (31 October 2011)
2012 — Overly Attached Girlfriend. Date: 6 June 2012 · Place: Denton, Texas, YouTube · Figures: Laina Morris, performer · Tags: Performance Meme, Wide Eyes, YouTube 01. A Justin Bieber Contest Entry On 6 June 2012 Laina Morris, a twenty year old from Denton, Texas, uploads a fifty-eight second parody to a Justin Bieber contest in which fans rewrite his single Boyfriend. Morris stares unblinking into the camera and rewrites the lyrics from the perspective of an obsessive partner. The thumbnail freeze frame, eyes wide and unwavering, is extracted within days as an image macro for clingy and surveillant behavior. The character is named Overly Attached Girlfriend. 02. The First Performance-Origin Image Macro Where Bad Luck Brian and Scumbag Steve are accidental, Morris deliberately constructed her face for the camera. Overly Attached Girlfriend is the first major image macro whose subject knowingly performed the originating image. Morris built a YouTube channel of more than a million subscribers on the persona, then announced her retirement from content creation in 2018 to focus on her mental health. Her departure post is widely circulated as an early statement on creator burnout. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Overly Attached Girlfriend' • Laina Morris, 'JB Fanvideo' (YouTube, 6 June 2012) • The Verge, 'Overly Attached Girlfriend retires from the internet' (28 May 2018)
2012 — Welcome to Night Vale. Date: 15 June 2012 · Place: Commonplace Books podcast, recorded in New York City · Figures: Joseph Fink, co-creator · Jeffrey Cranor, co-creator · Cecil Baldwin, narrator · Tags: Podcast, Tumblr Fandom, Surrealist Fiction 01. A Town In The Desert Southwest On 15 June 2012 Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor release the first episode of Welcome to Night Vale, a twice-monthly podcast formatted as community radio dispatches from a fictional desert town where every conspiracy theory is true. Cecil Baldwin narrates as the host Cecil Palmer. By July 2013 the show is the most-downloaded podcast on iTunes, displacing This American Life. A live touring production launches in 2013 and continues through the decade. 02. The Tumblr Fandom Engine Night Vale's audience consolidates on Tumblr, where fan art, fic, headcanons, and ship discourse around the Cecil and Carlos relationship create a self-sustaining promotional engine. The case becomes the canonical example of Tumblr fandom turning an independent property into a phenomenon without traditional press. It is also the first major podcast whose financial model, listener subscriptions and live performance, is built around a fan community rather than advertising sponsorship. Sources • Welcome to Night Vale podcast archive (2012-present) • The New York Times, 'A Podcast Mystery, Solved By Its Fans' (5 August 2013) • The Guardian, 'How Night Vale Conquered Tumblr' (11 October 2013)
2012 — Gangnam Style. Date: 15 July 2012 · Place: YouTube, recorded in Seoul · Figures: Park Jae-sang aka PSY, performer · Yoo Gun-hyung, co-composer · YG Entertainment, label · Tags: K-Pop Crossover, Dance Meme, Billion-View Threshold 01. Seoul Saddles The Globe On 15 July 2012 the South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang releases the music video for Gangnam Style on YouTube. By 21 December it becomes the first video to surpass one billion views, exceeding YouTube's then thirty-two-bit view counter and forcing an engineering migration to a sixty-four-bit field. PSY performs the horse-riding dance with Britney Spears on Ellen, with Madonna in Madison Square Garden, and at the White House Christmas tree lighting. 02. The First K-Pop Crossover At Scale Gangnam Style is the first non-Anglophone music video to achieve durable global virality. It precedes BTS's American breakthrough by five years and BLACKPINK's by six, and it is the proof of concept on which the second-wave Korean Wave is built. It is also the canonical case study in dance-replication virality, the structural precursor to TikTok's choreographic economy. The horse-riding step is now a standard reference in pop choreography. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Gangnam Style' • YouTube engineering blog, '64-bit View Counter' (December 2014) • Billboard, 'PSY and the Korean Wave' (28 September 2012)
2012 — Eastwooding. Date: 30 August 2012 · Place: Republican National Convention, Tampa, Florida · Figures: Clint Eastwood, performer · invisible Barack Obama, addressee · Mitt Romney, nominee · Tags: Live TV Meme, Political, Twitter Reaction 01. An Empty Chair At Tampa On the evening of 30 August 2012 the actor Clint Eastwood addresses the Republican National Convention with a twelve-minute improvised dialogue with an empty chair, treating it as Barack Obama. Within minutes a parody Twitter account @InvisibleObama accumulates more than thirty thousand followers. By morning the verb Eastwooding has been coined for the act of photographing an empty chair and posting it to Tumblr or Twitter. 02. Live Television Becomes A Format Eastwooding is the first political-convention moment whose dominant cultural artifact is a meme rather than a sound bite. It signals the arrival of Twitter as the live second screen for major political events, a role formalized over the following decade. It is also the first instance of an empty chair as canonical American political iconography, a vocabulary that will return in the 2020 Biden-Trump debate cycle and the 2025 Senate hearings. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Eastwooding' • The Washington Post, 'Clint Eastwood, the Empty Chair, and the Meme' (31 August 2012) • C-SPAN, RNC 2012 broadcast archive
2012 — Reddit AMA with President Obama. Date: 29 August 2012 · Place: Reddit r/IAmA, posted from a Charlottesville, Virginia campaign stop · Figures: Barack Obama, 44th president · Victoria Taylor, Reddit director of communications · Steve Huffman, co-founder · Alexis Ohanian, co-founder · Tags: Reddit AMA, Political Internet, Platform Legitimacy 01. I Am Barack Obama, President Of The United States On 29 August 2012, ten weeks before the general election, the sitting US president submits a post to Reddit's r/IAmA subreddit titled I Am Barack Obama, President of the United States. AMA. The thirty-minute session draws more than two hundred thousand concurrent visitors and briefly takes the site down. It is the first time a sitting head of state participates in a public Q&A on a user-generated platform without media intermediation. 02. The Format As Institutional Object The Obama AMA legitimizes the Ask Me Anything format as an institutional press object. After 29 August, AMAs are conducted by Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Madonna, and the Norwegian Prime Minister, among many others. It also exposes Reddit's editorial fragility. The 2015 firing of AMA coordinator Victoria Taylor will trigger a site-wide moderator revolt that brings down CEO Ellen Pao and reveals the volunteer-mod dependency at the heart of the platform. "By the way, if you want to know what I think about this whole reddit experience, NOT BAD!" — Barack Obama, r/IAmA, 29 August 2012 Sources • Reddit r/IAmA, Obama session archive (29 August 2012) • The Atlantic, 'Obama Does Reddit' (29 August 2012) • Wired, 'Reddit and the Obama Effect' (5 September 2012)
2012 — Binders Full of Women. Date: 16 October 2012 · Place: Second presidential debate, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York · Figures: Mitt Romney, Republican nominee · Barack Obama, incumbent · Candy Crowley, moderator · Veronica Brown-Moseley, Tumblr originator · Tags: Live Debate, Tumblr Macro, Political 01. A Phrase Hits Twitter In Minutes On 16 October 2012, during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Republican nominee Mitt Romney answers a question about pay equity by recalling that his transition team had collected binders full of women as cabinet candidates. Within minutes a Twitter account, a Tumblr blog, and a Facebook page bearing the phrase are in circulation. By morning the binders Tumblr has accumulated thousands of submissions, most of which juxtapose office-supply photographs with images of women. 02. The Real-Time Macro Cycle Binders is the canonical example of a campaign moment that is fully memed before the broadcast ends. It compresses what would once have taken a news cycle of editorial response into a forty-five-minute participatory event. It also exposes the fact-check problem at the core of meme politics. Romney's underlying claim, that the binders were prepared by his transition team unprompted, is contested by MassGAP, but the correction circulates at a fraction of the meme's reach. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Binders Full of Women' • Boston Phoenix, 'The Truth About Mitt Romney's Binders' (17 October 2012) • Commission on Presidential Debates, Hofstra transcript (16 October 2012)
2012 — Tumblr Sexyman: The Onceler Arc. Date: October 2012 · Place: Tumblr, source character from The Lorax (Universal, 2012) · Figures: The Onceler, animated character · Ed Helms, voice actor · Tumblr fandom curators · Tags: Fandom Archetype, Femme Gaze, Sexyman 01. A Lorax Villain Becomes A Heartthrob Universal's animated film The Lorax releases in March 2012 with Ed Helms voicing the young Onceler, a green-suited entrepreneur villain. Beginning in October 2012, Tumblr fandom appropriates the character into a sprawling romance and AU ecosystem: dozens of Onceler blogs, OC self-inserts, ship art, and song-fic. The phenomenon is documented in real time on Your Fave Is Problematic and other watchlog Tumblrs. 02. The Tumblr Sexyman Archetype The Onceler arc is the first articulated case of what fandom theorists later name the Tumblr Sexyman: a nominally minor or villainous male character, often tall and animated or low-rendered, who is collectively rewritten as the romantic protagonist of a parallel fandom. The lineage continues through Bill Cipher, Sans Undertale, Reigen Arataka, and the Murder Drones cast. It also illustrates Tumblr fandom's capacity to override a source text's authorial intent at scale. Universal's marketing of the Onceler as a cautionary capitalist is decisively overwritten. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Tumblr Sexyman' • Polygon, 'A Brief History of the Onceler Fandom' (5 April 2022) • Fanlore, 'Onceler Fandom' entry
2012 — Catfish: The TV Show. Date: 12 November 2012 · Place: MTV, produced in New York City · Figures: Yaniv 'Nev' Schulman, host · Max Joseph, co-host · Ariel Schulman, producer · Henry Joost, producer · Tags: Reality Television, Online Identity, Documentary 01. From 2010 Documentary To Weekly Series Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's 2010 documentary Catfish followed Ariel's brother Nev as he discovered that his online romantic partner was an invented persona maintained by an older woman in rural Michigan. On 12 November 2012 MTV launches a weekly series in which Nev and co-host Max Joseph investigate other online relationships built on fabricated identities. By the third season the verb catfish has entered general American usage to describe the deceptive practice. Merriam-Webster adds it in 2014. 02. A Word For The Internet Lie Catfish supplies a vocabulary for a phenomenon that was previously unnamed in mainstream culture. The show's house structure, hopeful subject, weekslong investigation, awkward meeting, becomes the template for a decade of online-identity reality television. It also legitimizes the documentary-as-reality-format on a music-television network, contributing to MTV's mid-2010s pivot away from music programming entirely. Sources • Catfish: The TV Show, MTV episode archive (2012-present) • The New York Times, 'MTV Finds a Hit in Catfish' (14 January 2013) • Merriam-Webster, 'New Words 2014' announcement (19 May 2014)
2012 — The Hawkeye Initiative. Date: 2 December 2012 · Place: Tumblr · Figures: noelle stevenson, originator · Skjalddis, Tumblr archive curator · Hawkeye, Marvel character · Tags: Tumblr, Feminist Critique, Fan Art 01. A Test For Comic-Book Posing On 2 December 2012 the cartoonist noelle stevenson posts an image on Tumblr in which she has redrawn Marvel's Hawkeye in the contorted spine-and-hip poses typical of female superhero art. The Tumblr user Skjalddis launches a dedicated submission archive within forty-eight hours. Within a week the archive holds hundreds of community contributions. The initiative is covered by Wired, the Mary Sue, and the Guardian. 02. A Test The Industry Cannot Pass The Hawkeye Initiative functions as a structural critique: if a male character cannot plausibly inhabit a pose, the pose is not anatomy but gendered convention. The argument is harder to dismiss than verbal critique because the test is reproducible by any reader with a pencil. By 2014 several major comics editors cite the initiative in interviews about editorial style guides. The campaign is among the earliest cases of Tumblr fandom critique directly altering mainstream industry practice. Sources • The Hawkeye Initiative, Tumblr archive (2012-2015) • The Mary Sue, 'The Hawkeye Initiative and the Anatomy of the Female Superhero' (4 December 2012) • Wired, 'How the Hawkeye Initiative Changed Comics' (8 March 2014)
2012 — Call Me Maybe Parody Wave. Date: Spring through Summer 2012 · Place: YouTube, originating from Mission, British Columbia · Figures: Carly Rae Jepsen, performer · Justin Bieber, accelerant · Selena Gomez, accelerant · Harvard baseball team, viral seed · Tags: Music Meme, Lip Dub, Viral Cover 01. A Tween Pop Single Eats The Year Carly Rae Jepsen's single Call Me Maybe is released in Canada in September 2011 but breaks globally after Justin Bieber tweets it on 30 December 2011 and posts a lip dub of it with Selena Gomez and Ashley Tisdale on 18 February 2012. A 2 March 2012 dugout video by the Harvard baseball team accelerates the cycle. By summer the song has been covered, parodied, and lip-dubbed by SMU's swim team, Cookie Monster, the United States Olympic swim team, the cast of Sesame Street, and Barack Obama via supercut. The single reaches number one in nineteen countries. 02. The Lip Dub As Native Form Call Me Maybe establishes the celebrity lip dub as a viral category in its own right, separate from the music video and from the cover song. The format will be inherited and industrialized by TikTok beginning in 2018. It is also the first instance of an artist's commercial success being measurably driven by participatory video rather than radio or sales, a transition that will define the pop economy of the decade that follows. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Call Me Maybe' • Billboard, 'How Call Me Maybe Took Over The Summer' (29 June 2012) • Harvard Crimson, 'Harvard Baseball Lip Dub Goes Viral' (5 March 2012)