Assignment 5 - Inga Drågum Hallingbye

“Gingers do have souls”

In 2005, a South Park episode called “ginger kids” used the phrase “gingers have no soul”. In the episode one of the characters held a class presentation regarding “red-headed children” and a so-called disease “gingervitus”.

Five years later in 2010 a red headed boy (username CopperCab) posted a video at Youtube in response, to the phrase “gingers have no soul” he called the video “gingers do have souls”. In this monologue video the boy talks about how he has been bullied and discriminated because of his redheadness at school. The boy’s expressions in the video are clearly showing frustration regarding the topic, redheaded discrimination. The video was posted January 14^th and after a month it had over 3,1 million views (it now has over 3,4 million views). The interest for the video made it´s peak in April. Over 600 people also posted videos in respond to “gingers do have souls”. For example another “famous” Internet video blogger made a video called “leave ginger boy alone” which matched one of his other Youtube “hits” called, “leave britney alone”. The video became so popular that it eventually made South Park (in response to the video), incorporate the “gingers do have souls” monologue into a cartoon parody in promo for it´s new season (season 14). This meant that the boy, CopperCap actually gained profit from his Youtube success. It has also become common to make up pictures with text (macros) containing stuff said and done at the videos mentioned over.

Why I think this video had so much success after it´s release? Many of us are familiar with South Park and have somewhat seen or heard about it´s “ginger kids” jokes and the phrase “gingers have no soul”. Seeing a true red-headed boy stand up against the discrimination of gingers and being completely serious about it might be why this was seen as funny for people to watch. Because the phrases used in both the south park episode, the original video and the South Park promo have become so popular and well known, people have used them in the making of Internet macros. Multiple jokes have now been made about gingers as a result of these videos.

Google insights interest :

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=gingers+do+have+souls#q=gingers%20do%20have%20souls&cmpt=q

Example macro, someone has used shots from the original video and filled in text to make it funny (left). It also became popular to use other pictures of ginger kids and fill inn “humoristic” text (right). 

This Picture shows CobbCab in the original video and South Parks version in the promo for its 14th season. 

Assignment 5 - Tone Hanstad

“Imma let you finish” – Kanye West Interrupts
Tone Hanstad

The phrase “Imma let you finish” has it´s background from the MTV Music Awards in 2009 when Taylor Swift received an award for the Best Female Video. When Taylor Swift was on stage to receive the prize, holding her acceptance speech the rapper Kanye West suddenly came on stage, took her microphone and claimed that Beyonce had the best music video of all times. One part of the interruption was the words “Imma let you finish”. This phrase became frequently used in memes and macros after this evening.

After the MTV Music Awards the a lot of videos became uploaded on the Internet, containing Kanye West interruption on stage cut out of the real action and cut into other videos. One example is that Kanye interrupts Barrack Obama in a speech, another one he interrupts George Bush and in one he interrupts “The Return of The King”. The video with Obama had 4,7 million hits in 2012.

The video can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgCP-tLR5Rc

After a lot of videos being posted on the Internet, image macros also became more and more popular. The phrase “imma let you finish” was also used in these images. A lot of images with the phrase became posted on 4chan and also on a Twitter – account was created in the name “KanyeInterrupts”. In just a few days the macro images was all over the Internet. Between the 15^th and 18^th of September, just a couple of days after the MTV Music Awards load of images and videos was posted and the popularity was increasing.

In between the time span of seven days (13^th – 19^th of September 2009) the search volume on Google was 100. The reason these memes and macros became so popular must be the fact that Kanye West did a pretty huge deal out of himself on stage, and that he was acting in a way that affected both Taylor Swift and Beyonce. The way he was acting and talking was pretty direct and surprising for the audience. Since the MTV Music Awards was direct on-air, it didn´t take long before it was shared many different places on the Internet.

This is one example of an image macro that was posted one of the days after the Music Awards.

A meme that may have emerged from this will probably be the memes that presents Kanye West as a douche bag after doing his “stunt” at the Award, or the image macros based on the apology that West made to Taylor Swift on his Twitter account after the show.

Assignment 5 - Clémence Robineau

Scarlett Johansson Falling Down

The original:

Then Photoshopped:

According to the website, Knowyourmeme, Scarlett was photographed tumbling down a busy street of Scotland while filming in Glasgow in 2012. "On September 28th, 2013, Redditor ianiandinosour submitted the paparazzi photo to the /r/photoshopbattles subreddit, where it gained over 1,900 up votes and 100 comments in the first five days." explains the knowyourmeme website, as to the origin of the photoshop ensuing. After this post gained fame on reddit, other users started submitting in their own versions of the photo, photoshopped in the most hilarious ways. 

The meme spread like wildfire and in just a few days it reached popular websites like buzzfeed and mashable: "On October 3rd, Redditor pegasus_x posted an Imgur gallery featuring notable edited examples to the /r/pics subreddit, where it accumulated more than 1,800 up votes and 85 comments in the next 24 hours. The same day, Buzzfeed  reposted many of the images from the Imgur gallery and on October 4th, the news blogs UpRoxx and Mashable posted compilations of examples from the series. The photoshop meme has also spread to Tumblr and About."

This meme could have been influenced by the Paula Deen Riding Things which is also a photoshop battle. Here is a picture that shows the google interest insights of "Scarlett Johansson falling down:

Rethink how you conduct yourself online

Watch this interesting video Juliana Paolone found! We as human beings, think through social networks, we've somehow become more social creatures.

http://elitedaily.com/news/world/this-video-will-have-you-completely-rethink-how-you-conduct-yourself-online-and-in-person-video/

Juliana Paolone - Assignment 3

The Big Bang Theory is a popular American comedy television show that was first aired in 2007 on CBS. Going into it’s 7^th season, the show revolves around five main characters: roomates Loenard and Sheldon's equally geeky and socially awkward friends and co-workers, ,mechanical engineer Howard and astrophysicist Raj. In 2008 a Facebook page was launched for the show. It has 27,651,936 “likes” and 296,787 people are talking about The Big Bang Theory on Facebook.

Their Facebook page does a really good job at keeping the fans interacted. It constantly has new posts with links to recaps of the latest episodes, sneak peeks or with lyrics to songs. They also using the technique of having their fans share a certain post if they are currently tuned in and watching the newest episode on time. I think that is a really smart way of promoting the page while interacting with the fans. They also give away coupons for discounts or free yogurt and things of the sort.

Recently, for Halloween they started posting ideas of costumes, and other posts with pictures of Halloween and links to other feeds since the beginning of October. On their happy Halloween post they accumulated over one hundred thousand likes and over six thousand shares. They wish their fans happy holidays in every holiday there is, which I find it very cool.

Overall I believe the official Facebook page for The Big Bang Theory does an effiective job of social media marketing because they engage their fans, they constantly post new feeds, and they are always being talked about outside their own page.