Monthly Review: May 2012

Monthly Review: May 2012

The month of May kicked off with an exciting weekend of ROFLCon III at the MIT in Boston, MA, where hundreds of Internet-minded folks, including accidental celebrities, gathered to discuss the current state of Internet culture, talk about their fames and what nots; Two pop hit singles "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye and "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen spearheaded May's image macro madness with lyrical snowclones "Now You're Some (X) That I Used to (Y)" and "Hey I Just Met You and This is Crazy, But I'm Your (X), So (Y) Me, Maybe?"; Hollywood actor Shia Labeouf rose to a trending topic on Tumblr as a subject of a viral comedy song titled "Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf", which portrays the actor as a psychopathic cannibal for no apparent reason but the lulz. The wildly popular My Face When… posts have taken another level-up with the trend of What Should We Call Me blogs and the erotic Twilight fanfiction Fifty Shades of Grey established itself as the latest literary sensation on the web after a number of celebrities uploaded videos of themselves reading excerpts from the book.

Search Interest

In terms of search volume, this year's summer hits "Call Me Maybe" and "Somebody That I Used to Know" carried on their momentum and dominated Google search interest, followed by the sensational Twilight fanfiction and the New York Times bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey, as well as upsurges from the chaotic launch of Blizzard's role-playing game Diablo III and Google's Doodle tribute to Robert Moog, an American engineer whose invention of Moog synthesizer is credited with pioneering electronica music.

The Rest of the Best

• As the 2012 presidential election boils down to Mitt Romney vs. Barack Obama, both campaigns have been cranking up the efforts in social media outreach with fancy infographics and mobiel apps, albeit not without FAIL: The Obama campaign's Life of Julia, which sought to juxtapose an average American's life under the presidencies of Obama and Romney, suffered a backfire when bloggers and critics began creating parody infographics. Mitt Romney's campaign also launched an iPhone app that could've been a minor feat if it wasn't for the misspelling of America

• Google Moogle introduced an interactive Doodle object designed after the Moog synthesizer in celebrating the 78th birthday of Robert Moog, who is often credited with pioneering the electronic music. Similar to Google Guitar, visitors could actually play the virtual instrument by clicking on the individual keys or typing on the keyboard. Shortly after its launch on May 23rd, Google’s Moog Doodle quickly made its rounds across various tech blogs and news aggregators as well as mainstream news outlets around the world, with many articles describing it as one of the most detailed and interactive Doodles to date.

• Toothpasting is a prank that involves putting toothpaste on one’s nipples for recreational high. The term was coined in a 4chan thread that urged its readers to make it spread to major news sites.

• Skywalking is a photo fad in which people attempt to take pictures of themselves standing or walking atop very tall structures at dangerous heights. Due to its beginnings on the Russian web, it is sometimes referred to as “Russia’s Planking.”

• Meanwhile in the Advice Animals department: Redneck Randal's slightly more moderate cousin Almost Politically Correct Redneck, The Internet n00bs' juvenile sense of humor gets made fun of by Immature High Schoolers, Reddit's upvoting / downvoting war enters a new stage with Upvoting Obama and fans of the British TV series Sherlock saw a fan tribute macro series called Defensively Heterosexual John Watson.

• Survey of the Brony culture!: Know Your Meme's very own Verbose and Opspe released an in-depth 33-page report surveying the scale and demographics of the Brony fandom as we know it.

Back on the Radar

• The online grassroots campaign Bring Back Toonami reaped its harvest earlier this month when the popular 90s Cartoon Network programming block made its return by popular demand on May 26th.

• The identity of Engineering Professor has been revealed as Dr. Richard Gitlin at the University of South Florida, an electrical engineering professor and cofounder of digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies.

• Feminist Ryan Gosling, the trailblazer blog behind Tumblr's ongoing "Gosling Bubble," will be published into a book, joining an exclusive offline club of single topic blogs like "Look at This F**ing Hipster" and "This is Why You're Fat."

• The shooting of Trayvon Martin took a disturbing turn online with an unsavory photo fad known as Trayvoning, which involves people lying on the ground with a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. Since being picked up by Clutch Magazine in mid-May, this highly controversial meme has continued to spread on Tumblr, leading to an emotionally-charged debate over its appropriateness.

Rest in Peace, Trololo Guy

• The Internet mourned the death of Eduard Khil, the Russian singer behind the viral "Trololo" song that captivated the online audiences across the world two years ago. According to the local news, Khil died at a hospital in St. Petersburg on June 4th, after suffering a heart stroke.