Know Your Meme: Insanity Wolf

Insanity Wolf is insane, plain and simple. Insanity Wolf is a meme that is yet another advice dog spin-off and is a progression from Courage Wolf. Insanity wolf often tells his viewers to rape, kill, and commit other acts of insanity. Although the Insanity Wolf meme began in 2009, the wolf image from which this meme is derived has been online since at least 2006. On October 21st, 2006, YTMND user deathtoll5000x created OMGWTFHOLYSHI-!. This YTMND has under 800 views but is not responsible for making the image popular. A TinEye Image Search shows that this wolf has been used as a forum avatar for a number of years. Given the immense presence of this photo and the different ways it has been used, it is likely that it is a commonly available piece of stock photography..
Although the image has been around since as early as 1999, the Insanity wolf meme has recently gained large popularity in early 2009. Insanity Wolf is the 6th member on memegenerator's God Tier. There is even a Facebook app for Insanity Wolf.

Know Your Meme: An Hero

Mitchell Henderson was a seventh grader from Rochester, Minnesota. In 2006, for reasons not entirely known, Mitchell shot himself in the head with a .22-caliber rifle from his parents’ bedroom. Following Mitchell’s suicide, his friends and classmates created a Myspace memorial to him. This is where the meme begins. Classmate's made a memorial page for Mitchell.
One of his classmates wrote this comment on Mitchell.

“He was such an hero, to take it all away. We miss him so, That you should know, And we honor him this day. He was an hero, to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back, And now he’s on our minds. Mitchell was an hero, to leave us feeling like this, Our minds are rubber, our joints don’t work, Our tears fall into abyss. He was an hero, to take that shot, In life it wasn’t his task, He shouldn’t have had to go that way, before an decade’d past. Now he sits there in my heart, this hero of mine, Always there to make me smile, Make me feel just fine. He had courage,that boy did, courage in his heart. To take that shot, To end his pain, To tear us all apart. But in the end, he died in courage. Lacking, nevermore, He died a hero, Mitchell did, And we’ll love him forevermore. We love you like an brother. We miss you so much. We will always love you, kid. Rest In Peace Mitch. ~Lila”

To most, the fact that Lila called Mitch a hero for killing himself is strange. We could speculate that this was a seventh grader who had a difficult time reconciling her feelings about the death of a friend but needed to voice her feelings in order to cope. But to a troll, this was exploitable. The "joke" is how someone could think it it implicitly heroic to kill yourself. The grammatical error is an essential part of the meme, but only for the sake of categorization. Any humor derived from a misspelling is secondary to the “Shock Value” hoped for by the trolls who use it.

Shortly after Mitchell’s obituary was published, a clipping was posted to MyDeathSpace.com, and eventually to /b/.

On many boards on the internet if you want someone to leave or kill themselves, you tell them to be "an hero.."

Know Your Meme: Foul Bachelor Frog

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100 Wiscontreprenuer Challenge: Common Scents Reflection

First let me say that this was a pretty fun project. Like most projects it needs some tweaking, but overall it wasn't too difficult and it was actually pretty fun. Second, my group was pretty great. From the first time we met, I knew we were going to get things accomplished and hash out a pretty great project.

When I showed up to the first group meeting all we had was a box of garbage. Britta talked about an idea her and Giotto came up with but we kept brainstorming anyways. When Giotto arrived he elaborated on the idea and with some more ideas from other group members we ran with it. Immediately we needed to find out if the motor was up to snuff. Britta was brave enough to hold it while I plugged it in. Some sparks flew from the machine, and we were both pretty surprised, but no one was hurt and we knew we could execute our idea. The group thought we could use some supplies so we headed down the stairs of the CA and went dumpster divin. We didn't find much, but we did get some filters which were used in the final product. The next day we worked on it in class, we got a lot accomplished. Half the group started decorating it, while the other half worked on a way to start piecing it together to get a final prototype. Once the prototype was finished, it was easy from there. It was all about uploading videos and pictures, and making a few website pages. All in all, it wasn't too bad workwise, and it turned out pretty well.

What was really cool about this whole experience was how quickly everyone came together. We all knew we didn't have a lot of time to work on it, and that's kind of what pushed that along. If you have 4 weeks to work on a project, you may never even see your group members until the final presentation. The 100-hour challenge however, made us all start conversing and working together right away with no down time. As I reflect on the project, I wish so many group members (including myself) didn't have to work over the weekend, but I still feel that everyone in the group contributed something, and that's cool. Overall, the project wasn't too taxing, and it was pretty fun (or as fun as a school project can be). I'm pleased with the way things turned out, except for the fact that our product kind of looks like a death trap. Our group was good, everyone contributed, we finished within 100 hours... Good time.

Know Your Meme: Epic Beard Man

Epic Beard Man became a meme literally overnight. On February 16th, 2010 Iyanna Washington, a college student from Oakland, CA uploaded the video “AC TRANSIT BUS FIGHT I AM A MOTHERFUCKER” to Youtube. The video she recorded she recorded featured a 50 year old black man and a 67 year old white man wearing a T-shirt that reads “I AM A MOTHERFUCKER” having a heated argument fueled by racial ignorance resulting in a violent fight. I actually saw the video the day it was posted, but I didn't think it would spin-off into something this huge.




Within 24 hours, the video amassed over one million views and spawned countless threads on 4chan’s /b/ where hundreds of various image macros have been created. The older white man in the video has been identified as Thomas Bruso, AKA Tom Slick, AKA Vietnam Tom; infamous in Oakland for his reputation of belligerence. Prior to the discovery of his identity, the internet had already dubbed him Epic Beard Man.
After the black man’s nose is broken, he says “bring an ambulance” which has been misheard as both “bring M&M’s” and “bring Amber Lamps” due to a combination of his dialect and facial injury. Amber Lamps has also come to be used as a pseudonym for the girl sitting next to the black man in the video. "Amber Lamps" is now also becoming very popular over the internet with people wanting to find out her true identity.

With Epic Beard Man being so new. It's amazing at how fast information on the confrontation and the members involved have been discovered. The video is only 6 days old, yet CBS has done a story on the video, as well as interview Iyanna Washington. Washington has also already posted a reaction video to the raid done by youtubers and people who frequent /b/. This meme is still being researched and it will be interesting to see if it has already reached its peak, or if it will keep getting bigger.

Know Your Meme: Philosoraptor

One of the more thoughtful (and successful) Advice Dog variations, Philosoraptor challenges the reader with his deep, existential, Paleolithic questions. One of the earliest mentions of a philosoraptor on the web was posted by Hope, age 10, KY, USA; December 28, 1998 on the children’s site echantedlearning.com. Hope made a referece to how awesome velociraptors are, but spelled it Philosoraptor. The Philosoraptor image actually started out as a T-shirt design on Lonelydinosaur.com. Sam Smith registered his copyright on the image on October 8th, 2008. The beginnings of the meme started on http://www.4chan.org/ where someone posted the dinosaur image with the text, "Philosoraptor" The second post in the thread was a blank exploitable. People then started posting responses having the dinosaur say things that sound profound, but are usually really dumb or funny...or both. On http://www.memegenerator.net/, Philosoraptor is #7 in popularity, on the Demigod Tier, with just under 20,000 images total. As Memegenerator memes go, the common comparison of measure is “Advice Dog”, the meme that gave memegenerator a reason for being. The largest peak in Philosoraptor queries began in December of 2008, two months following Smith’s copyright.

Know your Meme: RAMIREZ, DO EVERYTHING!!!

If you're a male college student like me, you probably just sit around drinking beer and playing copious amounts of Modern Warfare 2. While I mostly play online, I have dabbled in the campaign mode. This is where the origins of the meme started. As you play through the game, Seargent Foley constantly orders Private Ramirez (the person you play as) to do all sorts of demanding tasks.




The meme started where most memes start...www.4chan.org. It was originally seen on the /v/ (videogame) board. The first piture depicting this meme was a picture of Private Ramirez's face with the words, "Ramirez" on top, and "Do everything" on the bottom. The earliest known template for the meme on http://www.memegenerator.com/ was posted on Nov. 19th 2009. With that in place people would start telling Ramirez to do absurd, impossible, or everyday mundane things. Everyone loved it on the /v/ board and began showing up on other boards, particularly video game message boards such as Gamefaqs and Gamespot.

I think this meme is pretty funny because when you watch the youtube video of all the things Foley tells you do one after the other, it's just like, man get off Ramirez's back. As of February 2010, the meme has spawned 10,000 variations. Because of this meme, when we play Modern Warfare 2, I tell my friends to do over the top things, and then I get empties thrown at me. Worth it. Good meme.