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Not only 'Backrooms': 5 other Internet phenomena that had movies (even if they weren't very good)

Ten years ago, no one knew what backrooms were. Now, they have not only become an online phenomenon, but they also have their own movie that, to top it off, is going to crush the box office above The Mandalorian and Grogu. And I assure you that no one at Disney had predicted this. However, this is not the first time an Internet phenomenon has made the leap to the big screen, usually with rather laughable success but, on rare occasions, managing to create something that goes beyond the meme. Shall we dive into the backrooms of the strangest meme-movies […]

Ten years ago, no one knew what backrooms were. Now, they have not only become an online phenomenon, but they also have their own movie that, to top it off, is going to dominate the box office over The Mandalorian and Grogu.

And I assure you that no one at Disney saw this coming. However, this is not the first time an Internet phenomenon has made the leap to the big screen, usually with rather laughable success but, on rare occasions, managing to create something that goes beyond the meme. Shall we dive into the backrooms of the strangest and, at the same time, most incredible meme-movies in history?

Slender Man

On June 10, 2009, a user from Something Awful uploaded two montages of children with a strange creature behind them. Slender Man was born, unknowingly. Just four days later, there were already fanfics written about him, and the fandom began to grow monumental and uncontrollable. And, of course, he made it to Hollywood with a low-budget movie ($10 million) that grossed five times more. Everyone was happy, except for one thing: the character is not owned by anyone, which means there are dozens and dozens of low-budget movies featuring him as the protagonist.

There are a good handful of The Slender Man and Slender, with variations like Mystery of the Slender Man (which is a trilogy), Slender Man Stabbing, Slender: Demoniac, Slender The Arrival, Slender Man 2: Curse Book, The Slender Case, Beware the Slenderman… You might be wondering if any of these are good, and you can imagine the answer: not at all.

Karen

Surely you have heard the phrase “You are a Karen” or “She behaves like a Karen” at some point. The term originated in 2015 after the viral phrase “There’s always a Karen,” and even today it remains well-known and derogatory. Enough for movies to have been made about it, such as Karen, by Coke Daniels (which many confused with a bad sketch from Saturday Night Live), Amytiville Karen (where a “Karen” ends up possessed by a demonic spirit), or A Christmas Karen (which is basically the same, but at Christmas). To watch and forget.

This Man

All my life I have lived terrified by the idea that there is a man who appears to us in dreams and whose face we all remember. The idea was brilliantly exploited in Dream Scenario, with Nicolas Cage, but it was actually an idea from the Italian designer Andrea Natella, who first brought it to light in 2009 and it continues to this day. Surprisingly, the drawing of This Man gained international fame, and in Japan, a movie was made based on it titled, precisely, This Man, and there was even a Spanish-Italian co-production called Heste Hombre. Neither of the two gained relevance, and Dream Scenario overshadowed them forever. No one can compete with Nic Cage.

Grumpy Cat

In the early days of the Internet, when we were still satisfied with little, everyone was amazed by Grumpy Cat, one of the first memes that had the iconic combination of text above and text below: the cat’s constant angry face led to extrapolating it to hundreds of everyday situations. In fact, the cat was named Tardar Sauce and his face was the result of a disease. The cat lived only seven years, during which he became an Internet star and starred in his first (and only) movie, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, in 2014, where he appeared alongside Aubrey Plaza, who also provided his voice. Not many people liked it, and Grumpy Cat faded into the background, making his owners rich until today, where comics about him and his brother are still being published.

The Dancing Hamster

If you’ve been on the Internet as long as I have, you surely remember the dancing hamster with a song from Robin Hood, Whistle-Stop. The dancing hamster (sorry, “hampster”) was born in 1997 with the intention of making it an Internet star, and boy did it succeed, becoming one of the first and most satisfying memes in history. It even had its own album, digital hamsters were offered to celebrate all kinds of parties, and in 2009, years after it should have, How the Hampsters Saved Winter was released on DVD, selling only 2000 copies, which led it to become “lost media” until 2022, when someone uploaded it to YouTube. For better or for worse, once seen, it’s bad. Ew.

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The new arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was supposed to be the anime of the season, but Netflix has ruined it

A huge number of animes are released each year. For every one you hear about, there are five others you don’t even know are being released. For every one that reaches the mainstream, another fifty don’t even manage to become truly popular. The world of anime is extremely competitive, where talent is highly valued, and any advantage that can be taken to stand out must be seized. Few animes end up being true cultural events, for one reason or another, but some are predictable to be so. The most obvious one, at this point, is the premiere of a new arc of […]

Many animes are released each year. For every one you hear about, there are five others you don’t even know are being released. For every one that reaches the mainstream, another fifty don’t even manage to become truly popular. The world of anime is extremely competitive, where talent is highly valued, and any advantage that can be leveraged to stand out must be taken advantage of.

Few animes end up being true cultural events, for one reason or another, but some are predictable to be so. The most obvious, at this point, is the premiere of a new arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. The adaptation of the legendary manga by Hirohiko Araki, divided into different relatively self-contained arcs, is currently on its ninth arc in the manga, while the anime has started adapting the seventh: Steel Ball Run.

A beloved and mistreated anime

Released on March 19 on Netflix, the first episode, a special of almost 50 minutes, was a critical and public success. Celebrated for the quality of its animation, the elegance with which they had made some changes to the original script, and how they had managed to give great agility to an exemplary first episode, it received almost unanimous acclaim. Especially because, for the past two seasons, David Productions, the anime responsible for the series, had been having trouble maintaining the quality of the animation of the series.

The problem arose when Netflix refused to confirm when they would release subsequent episodes. On March 26, no other episode was released, which made fans nervous. But that weekend was Anime Expo, one of the most important celebrations in the industry, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure had a panel. Everyone assumed they would announce the date there, so the nerves remained normal.

But it didn’t happen. On March 28, they released a new trailer announcing that the next episode would premiere “sometime in 2026.” This set off a bombshell. Fans were not happy and they were going to make it known. From that moment on, they decided to flood Netflix’s social media with memes featuring a negative color inversion of the characters from Steel Ball Run, with Egyptian hieroglyphs, asking when the subsequent episodes would be released. They had unleashed a plague. Not biblical, but certainly from the fandom, and not very different from the curse of an angry pharaoh.

How has Netflix responded to this harassment? By doing nothing. For two weeks, it has communicated no changes. Something that has only further enraged the JoJo’s fandom, because this is not the first time they have done something like this.

The previous arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure suffered a treatment that is considered very poor by the platform. In addition to the fact that the quality of the animation suffered tremendously because the studio did not have enough time to carry it out properly, Netflix released the series in two batches of episodes, without a weekly release, almost as a surprise, something that enraged the fandom.

This may seem strange to many people, but anime fans are used to weekly releases. And they understand the importance of it. Commenting on episodes on social media, forums, and Discord, writing articles and comments on blogs, is an intrinsic part of anime culture. Something that includes JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Releasing two batches of episodes all at once took away their ability to enjoy it gradually, all at once, ruining the exposure to it and affecting, at least in the eyes of the fandom, the popularity of the series among the audience.

Under that prism, what Netflix is doing with Steel Ball Run could ruin the experience of watching the series, as well as damage its ability to reach an audience beyond its fandom. And they may be right. This is why they are so violently upset about the situation.

In any case, since April 6, we know the approximate date when we will have more episodes: next autumn. And for the safety of its fans, they will be weekly episodes, not groups of episodes released all at once. Something that has divided the fandom between those who are happy to have been heard, even though they will have to wait to finish watching the series probably at some point between now and 2029, and those who are upset about the situation, because they believe that Netflix’s communication has been terrible and releasing the first episode without context could end up harming the long-term popularity of the arc.

What seems certain is that this will give David Productions time to take care of the animation and ensure that the quality is exactly what fans expect so that what happened in previous seasons does not happen again. So, while this is not the result their fandom was hoping for, it seems that, at least, it will bring some positive things with it.

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From Internet Sensation to Mystery: The Untold Story of the ‘Star Wars Kid’ Meme

A fairly clean humor that was completely broken when in 2002 we all decided to laugh at one of the first great Internet memes: the Star Wars Kid.

In the early days of the internet, even before the “¡Y lo sabes!” memes, small viral videos began to emerge that still survive in collective memory: the animation of “Badger, badger, badger,” Edgar falls, “They’re taking the hobbits to Isengard”… a rather clean humor that was completely shattered when in 2002, we all decided to laugh at one of the first major internet memes: the Star Wars Kid.

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Not so long ago…

Overnight, a kid imitating Darth Maul from ‘Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace’ in his garage with a golf club appeared on everyone’s computers, whether downloaded in Realmedia, found on a magazine CD compiling “the best of the internet,” or through eMule. Nobody knew who that kid was; it was cruel but innocent humor, right?

Well, Ghyslain Raza doesn’t think so. At the age of fifteen, this student from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, saw his life turn into a nightmare overnight. In fact, the garage was the video studio of his high school, where he recorded the tape over a basketball game and then accidentally left it forgotten in a basement. A classmate found it, another digitized it, and a third one uploaded it to the internet under the name “Idiot_starwars_funny.wmv.”

The video became a huge success; several famous bloggers, like Andy Baio, uploaded it to YouTube, and it began to be shared massively through P2P networks. Suddenly, everyone knew the “Star Wars Kid.” However, the comments he received were far from encouraging. In fact, there were people inciting him to commit suicide, and he had nowhere to hide at his school to avoid bullying. He lost his friends, left the school, and a year later, he sued four of his classmates for around $200,000.

In the end, an out-of-court settlement was reached in 2006, when Raza was already studying law, and he continued with his life. In 2013, he used the video to raise awareness about the dangers of bullying. Having made peace with his past, a decade later, he even starred in a documentary called ‘Star Wars Kid: The Rise of the Digital Shadows’ to draw attention to the dangers of the internet. Unfortunately, the documentary is not available on any streaming service in Spain.

The video ended up being referenced in ‘Arrested Development,’ and there were attempts to have Raza make a cameo in ‘Episode III.’ Gradually, the initial incomprehensible hatred gave way to affection, the kind that only fans can have towards situations like this. Because deep down, we have all wielded a mop as a lightsaber, imitated Leia with pastries, or put our hand to our mouth to mimic Darth Vader‘s voice. We simply had better luck than the Star Wars Kid.

I would like to say that in 2023, we are more careful with the people we mock on the internet, but experience tells us the opposite. Perhaps in 2033, we will know how to behave online, if the internet doesn’t control us completely by then!

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Katy Perry Reigns Supreme: Her Unforgettable Moment Dominates the Coronation’s Online Buzz

At the moment, the most important meme has had Katy Perry as its protagonist.

The Coronation of Charles III has begun in London, and with it the different memes and tweets: the salad bowl that Queen Letizia has put on her head, Death appearing in the Church (in the form of a cleaner dressed in black with a mop-scythe) or the comparisons with ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Shrek’. But, so far, the most important meme has been Katy Perry.

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Where do I sit?

The ‘I kissed a girl’ singer turned up in the middle of the ceremony at Westminster Abbey (not out of confusion, but because she will be singing at the concert afterwards with Take That) in a bubblegum pink dress and a pamela four times bigger than her face with the intention of sitting down. The problem is that the Americans don’t quite understand protocol, and she spent a long time looking for her seat among the more than 2000 people who will be there.

Andar más perdido que Kate Perry en la coronación de Carlos III. #Coronation ? pic.twitter.com/erHGBFOqgW
— Ibon Pérez (@ibonpereztv) May 6, 2023

Of course, on Twitter they’ve already made a good account of the mistake: “Katy Perry is you on the first day of college looking for your place”; “Katy Perry giving a whirl at the Coronation“… There are even those who say that the pink dress is a way of homanigning Lady Di, whose favourite colour was exactly that, and those who comment that the opening act is about to get married to make way for the real star of the show.

Two kings are to be crowned today, yes, but the official queen of the people is already more than chosen. Her partner, by the way, has been the editor-in-chief of ‘Vogue’, Edward Enninful. Not a moment of non-stop great moments.

Snapchat reaches historic technological milestone by creating selfie filters for cats

Uh, thanks, Snapchat.

Nearly 50 years ago, the greatest technological innovation ever seen was the moon landing.

When the Apollo 11’s lunar module landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong spoke his famous words, everyone watching knew that their lives were about to change forever. For centuries, humanity gazed at the moon, sitting brightly among the stars, humbled by its foreboding size and unending glow. At last, in 1969 humanity had conquered the moon and seemingly achieved technological control over the universe. For a long time, I wondered what my generation’s “moon landing” would be. Something that challenges the limits of human potential and achieves the impossible. While scrolling through Twitter on October 12, 2018, I finally received my answer.

Lenses. For cool cats ? and their cool cats ? Try them meow. pic.twitter.com/UFJtgt8ZWO

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) October 12, 2018

I sat, jaw agape. Was it possible? Had Snapchat truly done it? For years, cats being left in the dust while their human friends enjoyed the thrills and silliness of Snapchat filters had been the cause of countless suffering. Animal rights groups worldwide chanted the same question: If humans are so worthy of Snapchat filters, why aren’t cats? What unspeakable crime have cats committed that they aren’t able to enjoy a flower crown like the rest of us? Thankfully, cats and their human allies can now rest easy that their efforts weren’t in vain.

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With this new technological revelation, everything changes: politics, religion, questions on what it means to be human. No conversation will be the same after humanity was able to put bread on a cat.

It’s truly inspiring what humanity can accomplish when everyone works together towards some unobtainable, world-changing goal. For years, cat selfies seemed so far away that no one dared to even try. Snapchat should be proud, because they now have truly left their mark on the world for centuries to come. Edison had the lightbulb, the Wright brothers had the plane, Bell had the phone, and now, as we witness it today Snapchat has the cat selfie.

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