Monthly Review: November 2010

Wheeew, drama. November was full of it. Here's some of the headlines & highlights from this month, hope you guys enjoy! If you're looking for the past issues of KYM reviews, please check out our Tumblr archives here. For more detailed info on each entry, please refer to the "Related Memes" section at the bottom.

Waffles & Carrots on Reddit

"Waffles? Don't You Mean Carrots?" is a completely random question that spread across Reddit's comment sections on the afternoon of October 30th, 2010, while many of Reddit's daily subscribers were attending the Rally To Restore Sanity in Washington D.C. Upon returning online, many users noticed the mentions of waffles and carrots across the site, leading them to believe a meme was born while they were offline. Many questions followed and lulz ensued.

George Takei Calls Out on Anti-Gay School Board Member

George Takei, Japanese American actor best known for his supporting role as "Sulu" in the Star Trek series, gave bigotry a punch in the face earlier this month, when he posted a YouTube video publicly shaming an Arkansas school board member for waging highly homophobic and intolerant comments via Facebook. Soon, the video went viral and spawned a number of parodies and remixes based on the sampling of Takei's words "You are a douchebag. That's right. A douchebag." Facing pressure from all sides and organized protests via Facebook, the Arkansas educator eventually resigned from the board, days after the incident was turned into a nationwide scandal. Check out the meme entry for more video examples!

4chan & Tumblr Feud

4chan's /b/ community brought on a lot of heat with two separate raids this month, beginning with a revenge against Tumblr "hipsters" for hosting images and videos once thought to be in the domain of 4chan imageboards. Codenamed Operation Overlord, the Anon campaign sought to destabilize the microblogging service by overloading their servers with gore images & low-orbit ion cannon, but tension quickly died out as 4chan's moderators intervened. Meanwhile, the subsequent birth of 4chumblr romance suggested that there is a considerable overlap between the audiences of two communities. In addition to its run-in with Tumblr, Anons also launched another sabotage mission Operation Black Rage, a clever attempt to take Hot Topic's latest meme shirt off the market by spreading false instances of Rageguy comics filled with blatantly racist jokes. For more info, check out KYM staff's editorial post: "Rage Guy Goes to Hot Topic".

Return of Boxxy?

The alleged return of Boxxy, a.k.a the Queen of /b/, stirred up a lot of gossips when a never-seen-before photo of her surfaced in an eBay auction for an InuYasha collectible messenger bag. The news of eBay auction spread like a wildfire, driving up the bid price of an ordinary messenger bag to a whopping $99,999 before it was invalidated. Soon, fans of Boxxy began debating the validity of eBay auction and photos, including our staff researcher AJ who wrote a detailed comparison & analysis of Boxxy's old vs. new photographs.

Tenso, Brazil's #1 4-Pane Series

Internet scientist Patrick analyzes the basic elements of Tenso (Portuguese for “tense”), a series of image macros featuring a photograph edited to form a multi-pane sequence that progressively zooms in on a particular subject to emphasize a “tense” face or situation depicted within the frame. Also relevant, check out KYM researcher Chris Menning's editorial post on progressive reforms of copyright laws in Brazil!

G.I. Joe Public Service Announcements

Internet scientist Mike takes us on a nostalgic journey through the GI Joe PSA videos, a popular parody of the 80s cartoon series made by Fensler Films in 2004. Although the videos were initially taken down due to copyright infringement, that didn't stop the fans from sharing the videos, not to mention it went on to inspire a number of spin-off projects. Meanwhile, KYM's veteran staff researcher Chris Menning becomes a casualty of laser tag freak accident, sacrificing his life in the name of Internet scientism.

Past Issues

• KYM Monthly Review – Complete Listing of Past Issues