Monthly Review: December 2012

Grumpy Cat

Grumpy Cat is the nickname given to Tard, a snowshoe cat from Arizona who rose to internet fame for her adorably angry looking face. Tard's viral stardom began in late September when her caretaker's brother posted a picture on Reddit and steadily grew stronger throughout the last quarter of the year, spawning a slew of grumpy jokes about the holiday seasons and the Mayan doomsday rumor on December 21st, 2012.

IKEA Monkey

IKEA Monkey is the nickname given to Darwin, a Japanese snow macaque that was found wandering around an IKEA store in Toronto, Canada in early December. According to the owner Yasmin Nakhuda, Darwin escaped from the crate in her car while she was shopping in the store and roamed around the area for almost an hour before being taken in by animal control. And it certainly didn't take long until pictures of the monkey reached the pipelines of Twitter and Reddit, where he was met with instant approval, not to mention a handful of photoshopped images, a parody Twitter account and even some fancy fan artworks.

Actual Advice Mallard

Actual Advice Mallard is an advice animal series featuring a photograph of a male wild duck accompanied by life hacks and other practical tips for our everyday lives. Although a few instances of Actual Advice Mallard have been circulating on Reddit since June 2011, the meme didn't gain momentum until recently in December, when Redditor Gonten's tip on microwaving pizza reached the front page with more than 16,600 upvotes and 900 comments. In addition, the surge in its popularity also gave way to its antithetical character Malicious Advice Mallard.

The Hawkeye Initiative

The Hawkeye Initiative is an art movement in which illustrators and fan artists swap out images of seductive looking female super heroes with the male Marvel superhero Hawkeye, one of The Avengers. The character swapping fad began in early December after webcomic artist Noelle Stevenson proposed on her Tumblr blog that all sex-symbolic or seductive depictions of female superheroins should be replaced with Hawkeye posing in the same manner. Throughout the month, many other artists on Tumblr responded to Stevenson's call with fan art illustrations featuring gender-swapped superheroes as well as a single topic blog to curate them, culminating in what is now known as the Hawkeye Test: “If your female character can be replaced by Hawkeye in the same pose without looking silly or stupid, then it’s acceptable and probably non-sexist.”

Golden Eagle Snatches Kid

Golden Eagle Snatches Kid is a viral video hoax purportedly showing a large golden eagle trying to carry away a toddler. Following its release via YouTube in December, the video gained several millions of views in the first 24 hours and sparked an in-depth, multimedia discussion over its authenticity. After a few debunking attempts later, the video was confirmed as a CGI hoax created by a group of students at the Centre NAD art school in Montreal, Canada.

The Rest of the Best

• Premature Peter is an advice animal series based on a yearbook photograph of a teenage boy wearing a t-shirt that is partially cropped out of frame to read "I came." Not surprisingly, Redditors began captioning the image with not-so-subtle jokes about premature ejaculation, but the joke itself also came to a premature end after the images were removed from several hubsites in consideration of the subject's minor status and complaints from his parents.

• Aristocat is an advice animal series featuring a black-and-white photograph of a cat dressed in a suit and top hat. The captions typically portray the cat as a member of the wealthy elite class who orders his servants to do chores and run errands for him.

• "Your Tears Are Delicious" is a catchphrase often used on message boards or in image macros as a retort to someone complaining about an unpopular opinion or whining about trivial inconveniences like first world problems in excess.

Back on the Radar

• GNAA, the notorious trolling and hacking collective with ties to Goatse Security and Weev, scored a major exploit last month for infiltrating Tumblr with an infective spam post that replicates itself whenever clicked upon.

• The Westboro Baptist Church returned to the spotlight of controversy after attempting to stage a picket protest during the funeral processions of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims in Newtown, Connecticut. While the religious group has been known to pull off similar stunts in the past, some people were so fed up that an official White House petition was launched to press the government to recognize the church as a hate group. The petition quickly went onto gain more than 300,000 signatures in the matter of a few days, becoming the most popular movement ever started on the site.

• PSY's 2012 mega hit Gangnam Style set an unprecedented milestone on YouTube after reaching one billion views on December 21st, 2012, which also happened to be the day that the world was supposed to come to an end. Aside from the honor of becoming the first YouTube with more than one billion views in a single video, the South Korean singer/entertainer also appeared on several "Best of 2012" reports published by Google, Facebook and others.

• Krispy Kreme, one of the most underground underdog rappers on YouTube, was forced to change his stage name after receiving a formal complaint from the eponymous American doughnut company. After fielding suggestions for his new rap name, the rapper announced that he will go by "Froggy Fresh" from now on.