Better Names For Things
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About
Better Names For Things is an image macro series in which various photographs of subjects and objects, such as animals, food and instruments, are intentionally captioned with made-up, troll-scientific names for comedic effect, in a similar vein to the proper anatomical charts of animals.
Origin
On January 11th, 2011, pop culture blog The Tangential ran an article titled "Better Names for Infomercial Products," which suggested alternative labels for an array of novelty products that are advertised through TV infomercials. However, the earliest known blogger to propose alternative names for everyday things that are humorously oversimplified can be attributed to Jeff Wysaski of PleatedJeans, who wrote and published the article "Better Names for Things (10 Pics)" on his comedy blog on December 6th (shown below).
Spread
Throughout the first half of 2012, Wysaki's original post on Pleated Jeans was picked up by many Internet humor blogs and communities, including CollegeHumor, SMOSH, AcidCow and BuzzFeed, among others. On March 14th, by popular demand, Wysaki ran a second article with a new batch of "Better Names For Things" (shown below).
On June 28th, SMOSH ran an original article titled "20 Original Names for Famous Snacks & Foods" (shown below), which was subsequently picked up by Pleated Jeans on July 1st (shown below).
On August 29th, 2012, Wysaki published the first video edition of his "Better Names for Things" series, in which he takes a trip to a local Target superstore and slaps on stickers featuring better names for things over a variety of products on display. (shown below, left) The immense viral success of the video quickly provided further boost to his "Better Names" series, as well as his blog Pleated Jeans. On May 8th, 2013, Wysaki released the second installment of the video series, this time, documenting a similar prank he staged during a visit to a Lowe's hardware store (shown below, right).
Jenna Marbles' Video Series
Meanwhile, taking after the viral success of Pleated Jeans' "Better Names for Things" series, YouTube personality Jenna Marbles posted a video titled "Better Names For Animals" based on a similar premise on February 14th, 2013 (shown below). Over the next three years, the video gained more than 4.2 million views on YouTube.
Between 2013 and 2014, Marbles released two additional episodes titled "Better Names For Foods" and "Better Names For Body Parts," which garnered 3.4 million and 4 million views, respectively, over the next three years (shown below).
In January 2013, Redditor Wardcannon created /r/betternamesforthings as a subreddit devoted to highlighting humorous suggestions of "better names" for various things. In 2014 and 2015, after "Better Names for Things" became adopted as a popular trope in image macro comedy, many Redditors and Imgur users shared their own contributions to the ever-growing collection of humorous misnomers for ordinary things under the alternative title "Imgur names for things."
#TheInternetNamesSpace and #TheInternetNamesAnimals
On March 17th, 2016, a poll launched by the British scientific research agency NERC to name its new research vessel was raided by pranksters who voted in the submission Boaty McBoatface. Four days later, astronomer Alex Parker[45] tweeted a picture of a comet along with the caption "Comet McCometface #TheInternetNamesSpace" (shown below, left). Minutes later, Parker posted another #TheInternetNamesSpace[50] tweet[46] featuring a photograph of an anticyclonic storm on Jupiter with the caption "The Big Swirly Swirly" (shown below, right).
Also on March 21st, other Twitter users posted similar captioned space photographs along with the hashtag "#TheInternetNamesSpace," including astrophysicist Jillian Scudder[47] (shown below, left) and science writer Miriam Kramer[48] (shown below, right).
Meanwhile, zoologist Rob O' Sullivan launched the hashtag #TheInternetNamesAnimals[49] along with animation of a spider named "Nopey McNoMyGod" (shown below, left). Shortly after, other Twitter users posted pictures of animals with made-up names and the hashtag "#TheInternetNamesAnimals" (shown below, middle, right). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the hashtags, including The Daily Dot,[51] LiveScience,[52] Tor[53] and IFL Science.[54]
Welcome To My Meme Page Edits
On March 6th, 2017, Weird Facebook page Welcome To My Meme Page[55] posted the first of four mock-tourist brochure photoshops that utilized "Better Names For Things"-esque naming conventions. The first advertised the ocean with such attractions as "blobl blobl" and "Father Pelligrini" (shown below). It gained about 3,000 likes and reactions and over 4,000 shares.
The page created three more variations on the theme, all of which were posted to me_irl in the coming days. The most popular advertised the forest and gained over 14,800 points (shown below, left).
Search Interest
External References
[1] The Tangential – Better Names for Infomercial Products
[2] FunnyJunk – Better Names for your favorite foods!
[3] Pleated Jeans – Better Names for Things
[4] CollegeHumor – Better Names for Things
[5] Pleated Jeans – Better Names for Things
[6] AcidCow – Better Names for Things
[7] SMOSH – 20 Original Names for Famous Snacks & Foods
[8] Daily Dawdle – 20 Alternative Names for Junk Food That Are Way More Accurate
[9] The Frisky – Some Things Just Deserve Better Names
[10] Pleated Jeans – Better Names for Things
[11] Laughing Squid – Pleated Jeans Provides Some Better Names for Things at Target
[12] Gizmodo – Better Names for The Everyday Thingamajigs In Your Life
[13] BuzzFeed – Better Names For Things
[14] The Huffington Post – Better Names For Things By Pleated Jeans
[15] The Awl – 17 Better Names for the Color of the New NYC Taxi Cabs than 'Apple Green'
[16] YouTube – Better Names For Animals
[17] YouTube – Better Names For Foods
[18] YouTube – Better Names For Body Parts
[19] Pleated Jeans – Better Names for Groups of Animals
[20] Pleated Jeans – Round 2: Better Names for Things
[21] Reddit – /r/betternamesforthings
[22] BuzzFeed – 10 Potentially Better Names For The 'Millennial” Generation'
[23] Amplifying Glass – Better Names For 19 Everyday Things!
[24] Classic FM – A normal person's guide to the orchestra
[25] Pleated Jeans – 17 Better Names for Musical Instruments
[26] Sad and Useless – Better Names for Everyday Objects
[27] Imgur – Better Names for Body Parts
[28] BuzzFeed – 22 Slightly Wrong Names For Animals
[29] I Waste So Much Time – BETTER NAMES FOR THINGS
[30] Neatorama – If Animal Names Were Totally Honest
[31] Pleated Jeans – 16 Alternate Names for Animals
[32] Tumblr – Tagged Results for 'Better Names for Animals'
[33] Tumblr – Tagged Results for 'Better Names for Things'
[34] Imgur – A Larger Guide to Imgur Animal Names
[35] Imgur – A Larger Guide to Imgur Animal Names Part 2
[36] Imgur – A Guide to Imgur Animal Names [Second Edition]
[37] Imgur – Alternate Names for Animals
[38] Imgur – Animals according to Imgur
[39] Imgur – Other Names for Things
[40] Imgur – Alternative Names for Different Things
[41] Imgur – Different Names
[42] Imgur – New Names For Things
[43] Imgur – 20 Alternative Names for Everyday Objects
[44] Imgur – Search Results for 'Better Names'
[45] Twitter – @Alex_Parker
[46] Twitter – @Alex_Parker
[47] Twitter – @Jillian_Scudder
fn48 – @mirikramer
[49] Twitter – #TheInternetNamesAnimals
[51] The Daily Dot – The science community responds to Boaty McBoatface
[52] Live Science – #TheInternetNamesAnimals Do Animals Get the Monikers They Deserve
[53] Tor – Boaty McBoatface Inspires An Epic Naming Battle on Twitter!
[54] IFL Science – The Internet Is Hilariously Renaming Animals In The Spirit Of Boaty McBoatface
[55] Facebook – Welcome to my Meme Page Post
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