meme-review

KYM Review: Events of 2014

7065 views

Published 10 years ago

This article is part of Know Your Meme’s 2014 State of the Internet series looking back at some of the most memorable and popular memes, events, subcultures, sites, apps and people that made their mark online this year.

he word "eventful" would be an understatement to describe the highs, the lows and everything in between that made 2014 yet another tumultuous year on the Internet. In North America, we began with online discussions about the drastic effects of climate change, starting with a whirlwind of snowstorms and record-breaking declines in temperature across the continent that became known as the Polar Vortex and followed by a series of unusual earthquakes across California in March. The year also kicked off with an explosive surge of viral moments in the world of professional sports, beginning with the Super Bowl XLVIII in the United States, followed by the 2014 Winer Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia (which rang in the new year with its fair share of viral videos, hashtags and memes) and culminating with the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Meanwhile, the globalization of viral media reached an unprecedented level as the usage of social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter continue to grow beyond the boundaries of languages and cultures across the world; when dozens of Nigerian schoolgirls and three Israeli students went missing in their respective countries, only weeks apart, the families of the missing students in both countries bonded through the sharing of the hashtags #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurBoys.

GamerGate

GamerGate refers to the online backlash against perceived breaches of journalistic integrity on video game news sites that occurred as a result of the Quinnspiracy, an online controversy surrounding indie game developer Zoe Quinn’s alleged affairs with a number of male writers working in the video game news industry.

Mike Brown's Death

Summary: The fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager from Ferguson, Missouri, by a St. Louis Police Department officer in August 2014, which took place less than a month after the controversial "chokehold" death of Eric Garner by an New York Police Department officer, instantly sparked a nationwide protest both online and offline against police brutality and racial profiling, similar to the large-scale protests that erupted in the wake of the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012.

The Fappening

Summary: A portmanteau of the words “happening” and “fap”, the Fappening was a massive nude photograph leak featuring various high profile celebrities that were posted on 4chan in late August 2014. Many speculated that the images were stolen via Apple’s iCloud service, which hosts photographs taken with iPhone mobile devices online.

Twitch Plays Pokemon

Summary: "Twitch Plays Pokemon" is an ongoing live-stream event hosted by the video-streaming platform Twitch in which any member of the site can participate in a massively multiplayer online co-op version of Nintendo’s 1996 role-playing video game Pokémon Red by inputting various commands in chat.

2014 FIFA World Cup

Summary: 2014 Brazil World Cup is the 20th international men’s football tournament organized by Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) that took place in Brazil from June 12th to July 13th, 2014.