Avery Sebastian
Assignment
5: The Cinnamon Challenge
The
Cinnamon Challenge started in 2001 and hit its peak of popularity in 2011. The
challenge became an interesting phenomenon because it was a popular dare game
that involves attempting to swallow a tablespoon of cinnamon without vomiting
or inhaling the powder. The game became well known for its extreme difficulty
as thousands of videos with people attempting the challenge have been uploaded
onto YouTube.
The meme was
created by Michael Buffington and played by Erik Goodlad on the Buffington’s
blog in 2001. The earliest YouTube video of the Cinnamon Challenge began in
2006, titled “Pipe Attempts the Cinnamon Challenge”. The challenge is: in one
mouthful, consume a tablespoon of McCormick Brand Ground Cinnamon without
spitting it out or vomitting.
Search queries
began to peak in October 2007 which corresponded with YouTube videos that
accumulated the most views ever in 2011, with over 1 million. The phenomenon
saw its largest resurgent in late 2011 when Anna Diaz recorded a video of
herself attempting the challenge, which was uploaded via YouTube on December
14th, 2011. This video that she uploaded received over 3.9 million views in the
first two months of existence. The video was also covered by numerous Internet
culture blogs and imitated by other YouTubers in the following weeks. The
Cinnamon Challenge became more popular as several news programs created the
controversy saying that the game is the newest teen fad that parents should
advise from their children.
The
establishment of this controversy led to the Cinnamon Challenge fame. Yahoo
Answers began to create Discussion and Q&A threads regarding the subject,
Wikipedia developed a article of “Cinnamon” that contains a subsection on the
phenomenon. Several Facebook fan pages were established and
CinnamonChallenge.com(5,500 likes) was created which led to the Urban
Dictionary having a definition entry for the Cinnamon Challenge created on May
21st, 2008. Recently, there has been a couple of challenges emerge from the
Cinnamon Challenge. Those challenges are: The Wasabi Challenge, The Habanero
Pepper Challenge, Chili Powder Challenge, Sprite and Banana Challenge, and the
Vinegar Challenge.
YouTube
features over 30,000 videos of teens and others embarking on the Cinnamon
challenge, usually only to end up choking, coughing, gasping, and spitting out
the cinnamon. Some popular videos are:
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdM_u5y5m5A Anna Diaz
Cinnamon Challenge 10M views
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyk7utV_D2I Glozell
Cinnamon Challenge 34M views
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZcf5qelq54
Kim Kardashian Cinnamon Challenge 320K views
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhogNOW3pAM
Slingshot Ride Challenge 23K views
Anna Gaia
The “Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things” meme
originated from the “Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things” meme, which began on
October 28th 2010 with a blog on tumblr (http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/)
showing photographs of the North Korean leader looking at things during
inspection processes. Around one month later, on December 2nd 2010,
it became popular after being mentioned more than once on Reddit. Soon after,
the images appeared and/or were mentioned on other forums and the mainstream
media, such as MSNBC and NPR. All photos were taken by the Korean Central News
Agency, which publishes propaganda promoting the leader’s image and the state
ideology. After Kim Jong-Il passed away in December 2011 a new blog featuring
the leader’s son (and new leader), “Kim Jong-Un Looking at Things” was born (http://kimjongunlookingatthings.tumblr.com/).
Hence, the Kim Jong-Un meme was immediately
popular because the process of gaining recognition had already occurred through
the original meme. “Kim Jong-Un looking
at things” has been popular from December 2011 until now, and achieved its peak
in popularity, as shown on Google Trends, with a maximum value of 100 in April
2013. At the moment, the meme’s popularity has diminished, showing a value of
6, as opposed to a value of 50 in the beginning (December 2011). It is most popular in Germany, the United Kingdom,
and the United States (in that order).
It is likely so popular because North Korea is
discussed a considerable amount in the mainstream media given the country’s
isolationist and dictatorial political situation and its human rights abuses.
In particular the American media has voiced fears about North Korea possessing
and utilizing nuclear weapons. It appears that this meme became famous because
it mocks the absolute reverence expected of the North Koreans toward their
leader by showing him doing something common to all classes of people, “looking
at things.” The tumblr’s description/motto, “the
dear respected leader likes to look at things, too”, clearly depicts
this humorous mocking of the fact that the North Korean propaganda portrays the
leader as a god. The image below recognizes this mockery:
The majority of the material which appears when
conducting a google search is pictures of Kim Jong-Un looking at random objects
or people, such as this one from the original tumblr blog, which, like all other
photos on the blog, has an accompanying caption at the bottom:
looking at packaged food
Aside from the original
pictures, a new trend emerged of placing text on these originals, in particular
in reference to Kim Jong-Un eating food, especially cake. They depict Kim
Jong-Un as having an insatiable appetite. This may have more than one
interpretation. For example, it may be a reference to the fact that in a
country full of starving people the leader’s chubby appearance suggests he is
living a life of excess. On the other hand, this could also be a more indirect
allusion to the dictator’s hunger for power and control. The images below are
examples of this trend:
Written by: Sissel-Merete Pedersen
I have chosen the Internet
meme “planking”. This is an Internet meme because it is a trend on social
websites. The trend started in Australia. The planking meme was most popular in
2011-12, but it has roots from 2006 when a facebook group played a game posting
pictures with people playing the “Lying down game”. The term “planking” was
created by Paul Carran in 2008.
(http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=enUS#q=%22planking%22).
This Internet meme is
based upon that a person has to lay horizontally with his/her arms close to the
body and straight feet, and then the person has to take a picture and post it
in a social website. In the picture below my aunt is planking in a hiking trail
in beautiful Northern Norway. Facebook is often used to this purpose. Some
persons have done this in unsecure places like in heights, on a bridge with
cars crossing over etc. The police have made announcements that people have to
think about their own security when they are doing this. Actually a 20 year old
man died in Australia, because he felled down when he tried to plank on a rail
in the seventh floor of a building.
James Cardenas
The
“Imma Let You Finish” Internet meme gained popularity immediately after Kanye
West’s outburst at the 2009 MTV Music Awards on September 13, 2009. Where
he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video saying, “Yo
Taylor, I’m really happy for you, Imma let you finish but Beyonce had one of
the best videos of all time…one of the best videos of all time!” The
event immediately attracted controversy amongst other celebrities and millions
of fans of Taylor Swift and music alike. Immediately following the airing
of the MTV Music Awards, people expressed their entertainment and/or anger of
his actions all over the internet. Viewers began posting photos with
Kanye West’s words altered in order to spoof his “Imma let you finish” rant
(also known as a snowclone). Kanye’s rant remained popular for many days
following the MTV Music Awards and sites like 4chan, Twitter, and Tumblr were
crowded with images including his newly formed snowclone. The event
remained popular well into 2013 and apparently encouraged other celebrities to
steal awards from their fellow celebrities on a couple separate occasions
between Kanye’s outburst and 2011. This particular internet meme is still
well known today and many celebrities find humor
in reenacting variations of Kanye's actions at the 2009 MTV Awards.
PLANKING:
Planking is an activity where
you are lying on your stomach with the face down and the hands along the side
of the body and you must remain straight. The planking person can lie down in
different places, some places that might can be dangerous to do planking on, or
just weird places to plank.
The planking was first recorded
in 1994 as a stunt called “Dead Guy”. But it was never aired, not before July
12, 2011 that the “planker” – Tom Green, tweeted the video that he made in
1994. In 1997 two boys started to lay down in public places – and they called
it “The lying down game”. Ten years later their friends created a Facebook page
where people could post the photos of people who were lying down. The term
“planking” was used on a Facebook page in 2008 when the “game” appeared in Australia,
and with media’s help like Facebook pages where the plankers could post their
photos, this meme became a global phenomenon.
The Google insight search shows
that the planking trend got its Internet peak in July 2011 and especially in
the US, Australia and Philippines. Later has several memes emerged from
planking, such as “Batmanning”, “Owling”, “Teapotting” and “Horsemanning”.
I think the reason why planking
has become so popular, are that it is a very easy thing to do, you don’t need
any equipment to do the act – the only thing you need is a camera, someone to
take the picture and a funny place to do the planking at. The more dangerous or
funny place the picture is taken, the more views or likes on social medias you
will get.
Calvin Lu
“MissingNo”
MissingNo
is a meme that originates from the Pokemon game series. In Pokemon Red and Blue
versions, there is a glitch that results in meeting this weird looking pokemon.
(See: http://i.imgur.com/YYh0xwZ.jpg ) Despite
Nintendo's warning against encountering it, in 1999, players were discussing
and sharing the secrets to meeting MissingNo. Despite originating in 1999, we
can see from google trends ( http://i.imgur.com/OAyyV0a.png )
that searches for MissingNo have been increasing as of late. This could be due
to the releases of the newer pokemon games, which have caused a surge of
interest in pokemon, especially in America. There is a search for MissingNo in
every new game that appears.
I think
this meme was popularized because of the work involved to find MissingNo.
Discovery of MissingNo almost acts as a “rite of passage” for die-hard pokemon
fans. Especially finding the original MissingNo, acts sort of like “proof” of
your status as a pokemon fan. MissingNo appears on clothing, drawings, and
other merchandise. Buying / wearing / using this merchandise presents yourself
as a pokemon fan.
Roselind Westbye:
Assignment #5 - “Memes” and diffusion of Internet
trends
I have chosen to look at the meme called: “Casually pepper
spray everything cop”
This meme features a police officer by the name of John Pike,
spraying pepper spray on the declaration of independence in front of the
founding fathers.
The meme originated from a YouTube video featuring the
police officer spraying a group of occupy protesters at the university of
California Davis in November 2011. The group of protesters was gathered on
campus to protest as part of the occupied movement when they refused the police
request to leave. The police officer took action by casually walking up and
down the line of protesters spraying them with pepper spray. The comedy of the
situation is that the police officer walks relaxed, just like he’s taking his
dog for a walk, but at the same time soaking the unmoving students in the face
with pepper spray.
The meme was first posted on the Tumbler blog called “It
makes no sense” on November 20th 2011. That same day the meme
received over 2 400 comments. Two days later nearly all-major US News Media
sights picked up the meme. During the month of November the officer in question
received more than 10 000 text messages and 17 000 e-mails with people
commenting his actions.
I think this meme became so popular because it’s a
humoristic way to look at police violence. The officer is spraying pepper spray on the
most important document confirming our freedom, and the meme creator is trying
to show how the police officer disregards of our basic freedom.
This picture shows an alternative meme that expired out from
the original meme with the comment: “Don’t mind me, just watering my hippies.
This is also an alternative meme that expired out of the
original meme. This one features the police officer pepper spraying the
president Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest symbols of freedom, right in
the face.
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