The Dark Side of Becoming a Meme

this video is sponsored by North EPN Facebook Twitter Instagram ready they're everywhere thousands engineered day-to-day completely for free by people who put blood sweat and tears into their work and the results absolutely incredible the process of making a meme is simple grab an expressive or well-known image imported to Photoshop then recontextualize it by adding relatable or accurate captions alternatively just deep-fry the living she can't help it then upload it to a platform of your choice and if it's popular enough it might even be taken by others rhe captioned and then re-upload it to other platforms in the cycle that lasts for weeks until the meme has been exhausted of all of its humor and finally laid to rest the last few years have seen memes explode and reach it's even gotten to the point where politicians and political parties are posting them memes have become massive but they aren't anything new in fact they've actually been around since the mid 90s they have changed forms pretty considerably though it's the year 2000 the y2k bug has not caused the untold devastation that somewhat predicted and people are optimistic the Internet has been publicly available for nine years now and it's still in this very early stages the sites like YouTube and Facebook still another four years away [Music] but by this point the memes had already started for an idea of some of the Internet's first memes one was a gift of a dancing baby another were line from a poorly translated arcade game social media was incredibly bare-bones at the time so if you wanted to share one of these bad boys it was either through bulletin boards direct messaging or good old email when it came to text-based memes the late 90s introduced the motivational posters posters that subverted the comment motivational posters for comedic effect then in 2005 someone on 4chan decided to put text over pictures of cats and the people loved them this text format within adopted to other images if you're older than 13 you've probably seen at least one of these memes have since evolved over the years and at this point they're almost universally known for good or for bad but it wasn't just pictures of cats with text on a baby gifts that went viral actual people did too if you fulfill this fate you'd be launched to stardom in a matter of days some people lavish this newfound celebrity status living the life of a rock star and possibly even becoming elected but becoming a meme was not such a great experience for everyone lies lawsuits hit pieces and just overall embarrassment could seep through the cracks of the glory and would plague those unfortunate souls for years on end these are their stories 2002 a time characterised by an overwhelming amount of Nokia bricks the Harry Potter films and afresh the elected Bush administration but more importantly the Star Wars prequels enthusiast lane Raza miss Lane was just a regular 14 year old attending High School in Troy Riviere Canada however very soon he would come to be known worldwide as a Jedi Knight on November the 4th Justine was in the studio room of his high school and wielding nothing but a golf ball retriever nice recorded himself pretending to be a Jedi that recording was never supposed to leave the room purchase Lane made a fatal mistake the incriminating tape was left in a basement of the school and in April 2003 a few other students discovered the footage one of them turned the tape into video then distributed it around the school soon everyone in the school had seen it it didn't take long for it to spread around the internet and needless to say it blows the [ __ ] up it's estimated that by November of 2006 the clip had been viewed around 1 billion times once again the video is going round at a time before YouTube this was the most viewed video on the internet by far at this point naturally he was dubbed Star Wars kid and then came the edits Star Wars kid nikka new Star Wars kid in the matrix Star Wars kid in Star Wars it was featured and alluded to in countless television shows and she's lame said that almost every talk show in North America asked him to come on he declined all of them a petition was even made to include him in the next Star Wars film the petition reached 140,000 signatures but unfortunately he was not offered the cameo but what seemed to be nothing more than the funny joke turned out to be a bit more sinister than what met the eye after the video went around the school she's Lane's classmates could apparently jump on tables in front of other students and proceeded to hurl insults to him about it when it hit the web things got a lot worse random people were sending him messages they were not nice he lost friends at school and he got so bad that he actually to leave the school substituting it with private tutoring he also had to see a therapist he went through such an ordeal that four years after the event he would do his best to distance himself from the identity of the Star Wars kid but there was a problem people kept recognizing him eventually he ended up just giving up and coming out in 2003 he sued the families of the children who put a video on the internet for around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars they reached an undisclosed settle in three years later but the money you received ended up not even covering the costs of therapy and private tutoring we haven't heard much since quickly before we move on did you know that browsing the Internet is dangerous here are the facts there is a man at the NSA at this very moment watching your every move so don't skip this ad he might be interested in Lourdes VPN to fact number two Internet service providers like Verizon and BT track your internet use and then sell it on to advertisers in fact number three hackers can exploit unsecured connections to get inside your system and from there they can steal your precious data what can you do about these severe privacy risks well luckily the boys over at 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history books a rough go first appears on a world of warcraft video hosting site called warcraft movies the video starts with ben's in-game character Leroy Jenkins standing at the gates of a raid with a group of friends while they carefully plan the odds of survival but there's a twist Boehner's chug two pints of G fuel beforehand it quickly becomes the most downloaded video on the site and people flocked to warcraft movies just to witness it the following week see the forum's flooded with Leroy Jenkins comments in August 2006 the video blows up on YouTube and Leroy Jenkins goes mainstream it becomes such a staple in the fanbase of World of Warcraft that the developers actually tried to embrace it but Leroy Jenkins becoming a trading card in a few of their games and a character in a World of Warcraft expansion Ben was also invited to their annual conventions where he would ascend on stage and shout Leroy Jenkins as loud as he could into the audience but it wasn't all sunshine and roses an insane amount of people had seen the video this meant Leroy had fans a lot of them this made playing the game a bit more difficult than it used to be as forever Ben would go an army of fans would be marching behind him uttering those famous words this went on for months apparently on one occasion and the actual enraged mother logged on and shouted at Ben because her son wouldn't stop shouting Leroy Jenkins in another instance he had an actual online stalker named Leroy's apprentice Leroy's apprentice would apparently follow him around the game religiously and wanted to hang out with him all the time but it wasn't just the fans as it turned out that some people actually weren't too happy about the viral video and so Ben got his fair share of hate as well shortly after the video blew up when the boys tried to cash in on the insane spread of Leroy Jenkins so they made some merchandise unfortunately the clothing couldn't compete with the sea of Jenkins merchandise already on the market although they did manage to sell a thong bands face on it they also had no way of trademarking Leroy Jenkins because it wasn't associated with the product or service and the game developers owned the rights to the original video and everything in it they gave up on this business venture not long after then then took up some voice lessons and was soon offered a few announcement gigs at some video game tournaments but that didn't last too long either it looked like Ben was out of luck when it came to making much money from the video but then rumors of a Leroy Jenkins character written for the recent Warcraft movie cropped up apparently legendary pictures even flew him out to Hollywood to meet some of their staff but it would turn out that this character was in an early version of the script and was quickly scrapped at least he was invited to the premiere Byrne ask the people at legendary pictures that he be included in the next film the director has since stated that there would be no sequel June 2004 a German boy by the name of Norman cocky now Sookie celebrates his 13th birthday he receives an expensive camcorder he would use this camcorder to become one of the very first proposed his on the Internet a bit of context before any of this Norman frequented a mixtape website run by a rapper whom he admired one line from one of the rappers mixtapes goes I'm a real gangsta I Drive a car get out Norman thought he'd parody this line and in 2005 he shot and uploaded a video that would come to be known as I'm a real gangster I'm gangster I'm stealing the bread shop this video ends up getting shared around online a Norman then goes on to create a fictional alter-ego around the video called leopold slikk and would continue to upload gangster videos online under this persona these videos would range from exploding Coca Cola on his face to singing in imitations eventually in 2006 he makes a video called PC spielen and everything changes now 2006 was a time not to unlike today where the media was intent on turning to video games to answer why children could turn violent the media in Germany was pushing this narrative strongly at the time and a few German politicians were actively discussing it one even called for an outright ban on them so keeping that in mind Norman uploads PC spielen a video where he pretends to play Unreal Tournament and get a bit angry the video gets around online and eventually doorman is approached by German media company Focus TV who asked if they can use the clip for a documentary he agrees they were then given the rights to PC stealing and subsequently shot a documentary called Leopold this is when things started to turn sour the documentary ended up making Norman out to be some sort of deranged kid that violent video games had negatively affected they even went to the lengths of making a completely fake backstory for the video suggesting that the father had set up a hidden camera to get footage of his ADHD son playing a video game that was just a shameless lie but then the documentary started to gain some traction as a result pieces being went viral spawning dozens of edits and Norman's worldwide recognition as the angry german kid he was famous there was just one problem everyone absolutely hated him now 2006 was also a time when YouTube was more of an authentic place than it is today a time where most of the videos were breakdown DIY and otherwise educationally oriented in other words Norman was very ahead of his time people thought the videos were real they thought he was really weird thousands of hate comments appeared under the numerous uploads of PC spielen he also started to get bullied at school he tried writing an online post explaining that the videos were staged but no one was listening he would end up pulling the original gangster videos but it was too late dozens of reuploads but already around it was out of Norman's hands he announced that no more videos would be released because of the situation and disappeared from the internet without a trace there would be no more real gangster although six years later he would come back to YouTube as a bodybuilder in a wrapper [ __ ] parade Berle in July 2000 an experimental video artist by the name of Matthias fridge records a four-minute clip of an absolutely stacked Nordic looking man dancing down the street to techno music Matthias uploads it to his website and not much happens for about six years but then in 2006 he uploaded to YouTube and in 2007 it goes viral the techno viking becomes world-famous and Matthias earns around 10,000 dollars through YouTube ads and licensing over the first two years of it going viral but two years later a letter would arrive on Matthias his doorstep it was the Viking he wasn't happy it turned out to be a letter from the techno Vikings lawyer and upon opening it Matthias saw that the anonymous Viking was demanding he removed the video from the Internet and never use it for commercial purposes again this demands didn't make too much sense as there were dozens of reuploads already floating around online but it would be a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar fine if he failed to comply not only take down the videos but the Viking demanded thirteen thousand euros for damages that and the ten thousand euros in legal fees added up to twenty three thousand euros that matthias had to pay rendering him bankrupt the German Court ultimately ruled that everyone else in the world was free to upload the video besides Matthias matthias could never touch the video again the techno viking was not a big fan of the video it apparently took him two years to even find out about it and when he did he was not happy this was partly because the moms on copious amounts of speed at the time of recording he tried to stay off the radar for the following years after the video and his identity was never actually uncovered although rumors popped up here and there he's only revealed his actual identity in the last few years and what little information we now know of the man is that his first name is Gunther that's about in the rest is still a mystery also the techno viking is now a fortnight dance May 27th 1999 a young gorilla is born at Gladys Porter Zoo Texas his name is Harambee in 2014 he was transferred to Cincinnati Zoo and unfortunately harambe would meet his end here just two years later May 28 2016 Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden the time hits 4 o'clock and a three year old begins his journey into the guerrilla enclosure climbing a 3-foot fence crawling through four feet of bushes and then falling 15 feet into the shallow water of the pit things go south from there upon realizing that a child was in the pit the zookeepers signal for the three gorillas in the enclosure to return inside two of the gorillas follow orders but a third gorilla goes rogue this gorillas harambe instead he climbs down into the shallow waters to investigate the splashing now at this point the crowd is screaming at the sight of a 400-pound gorilla nearing a child Harambee can't take the pressure and gets agitated and defensive he stands over the child before dragging him through the shallow water this is not an ideal situation for anyone and the clock is ticking there were two main options option one they could tranquilize Harambee but this comes with a few problems the tranquilization could take a few minutes to kick in and his unconscious body could fall on the kid option 2 involves a hunting rifle eventually the head zookeeper makes the executive decision eliminate the ape they took the shot and tragically Harambee was no more this sparked r.i.p Harambee protests outside of the zoo for a few days and four weeks after the Apes demise the commemorative displays were being parodied online people targeted some of the memes as cincinnati zoo's social media accounts so many people in fact that the Cincinnati Zoo was actually begging people to stop people didn't stop Cincinnati Zoo had no choice they had to go offline petitions popped up on change.org demanding justice for Harambee one even reaching half a million signatures and the hashtag dicks out for Harambee went viral a harambe statue was erected people got tattoos of Harambee apparently people voted for Harambee he was everywhere and naturally this brought a lot of attention to their head zookeeper in the parents of the child and they started to have some problems first off was the head zookeeper it was his Twitter it kept getting hacked the since deleted tweets read I was planning this for a while so sorry it took so long brother have a good time in heaven hashtag Harambee and Harambee one cincinnati zoo zero the head zookeeper retrieved his account and deleted the tweets then came another tweet simply hashtag dicks alpha harambe the zookeeper Reeve retrieved his account and deleted the tweet the parents of the child also had problems hordes of people attacked the mother over Facebook and Twitter for not keeping an eye on her child and that petition I mentioned earlier it was made to incite an investigation into whether the parents were fit enough to raise their four kids the mother made the backlash even worse by posting a lengthy statement on Facebook thanking God and not really showing any sympathy for the gorilla she got so much hate that she ended up deleting her Facebook account and so the cautionary tales of internet fame gone wrong come to a close but one thing is certain becoming a meme is it dance with death it can shoot you to the stars shall we you with money and even unfortunately for us on to rap career but bankruptcy lawsuits and god forbid even being unable to play World of Warcraft is never off the table

Channel: big boss

Views: 2,874,923

Rating: 4.9228015 out of 5

Keywords: The Dark Side of Becoming a Meme, big boss, becoming a meme, the dark side of, being a meme, the star wars kid, leroy jenkins, the angry german kid, the techno viking, harambe, memes, meme, viral, going viral, dark side, dark side of memes, dark side of viral, dark side meme, internet fame, dark side of internet fame, the dark side

Id: iQtJ-9bzJqs

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 03 2020