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PATIENT ZERO: HOW THINGS GO VIRAL by Mr Biffo

12/8/2015

21 Comments

 
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So, here's a funny thing. 

Last Sunday, I was looking for images online for a Digi2000 listicle that would be entitled 10 Weirdest Game Controllers (or something).

I was specifically looking for bizarre computer interfaces - which led me to a handful of images of people putting their hands inside simulated rectums; trainee vets up to their elbows inside horse bottoms and cow holes, and a trainee proctologist giving a prostate examination to a fake bum. Three pictures does not a listicle make, so I thought there might instead be something in medical trainee dummies. I struck gold - particularly with the hideous dummies used by dental trainees.

I figured they were too good/horrifying not to share immediately, and quickly whipped up a montage of four of the best, to shove up on Twitter. From beginning to end, the process took no more than ten minutes. 

Here we are on Wednesday, and that image has been shared or liked - at a conservative estimate - by upwards of 100,000 people around the world. 

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FOUR DUMMIES
Oddly, the dummies pic seemed to start going viral when certain people in the US comics community started sharing it - DC Comics artists like Phil Jiminez and Kevin Maguire. After they passed it on, I began to lose track of who else had done so. I had to switch off my phone, because the notifications were becoming too much.

Only around 4,000 of those people saw the image on my own Twitter feed - the rest were on Buzzfeed Australia, Gizmodo, Imgur, Metro newspaper's website, Reddit, a website called Viral Links, or The Poke. 

Only three of those sites correctly credited me - Buzzfeed, Gizmodo and The Poke (though when the latter shared it on their Twitter feed, they sort of grudgingly gave me a "Via @mrbiffo" tag, rather than retweet the original message). Metro put it up without mentioning the original source, but did - to be fair - wrongly attribute the image to some Reddit user, who'd passed it off as his own.

Thing is, this was the second time in a week that such a thing had happened.

UP ABOVE THE STREETS AND HOUSES
A week ago I had a flash of inspiration that came out of nowhere. I realised - this is how my brain works - that Bungle in the old kids TV show Rainbow looked a bit like Chewbacca. It took about three minutes to find a picture of Bungle with his lover Geoffrey that resembled the famous Han/Chewie still from The Force Awakens trailer. It took barely any time at all to stick them together. And it proved popular.

The picture went viral after being shared by the actor Colin Baker - an actual Doctor Who - and movie director Duncan Jones (who made the brilliant Moon, and is currently directing World of Warcraft, and who has a really famous dad). Which was particularly nice for me, as it was my birthday that day, and I follow them both on Twitter.


Admittedly, the pic proved less popular than the dental mannequins one - it's only going to be got by those of a certain age who grew up in the UK after all - but it has been shared nearly 1,000 times. And then it turned up on Digital Spy's Facebook page, without credit. 

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WHINGED WARRIOR
To be fair, once I whinged about it, Digital Spy apologised and gave me acknowledgement. But by that time, it had been seen by a lot of people who just figured it was another anonymous meme, or something DS had come up with itself.

Now, before you get me wrong, this article isn't some rant about people pinching my work - anything I put up on Twitter is meant to be shared, and I was dumb enough not to realise the potential popularity of the two images in question that I didn't watermark them with the Digi2000 address (which would've at least driven some people to this site). Plus, I've probably wrongly used lots of photos on this without credit. I'm glad people were as amused/appalled as I was by those two pics.

The only bit that really rankles in that Digi2000 is a small site - our budget, such as it is, is only what our donors provide us with, we don't get anywhere near as much traffic as any of the aforementioned websites, and we're effectively a one-and-a-half-man operation. Surely, the least we deserve is a bit of a leg-up in the form of a credit?

Or maybe that's not how the Internet works. Maybe everything that is out there online is fair game to be used, and reused, and take on a life of its own, with nobody really caring where it came from. Everything is free, everything is there to be taken without so much as a thank you, and I shouldn't be surprised. 

So with that in mind, that's all this is. As someone who loves a good meme, or funny pic or video, I just wanted to document my own moment. 


If, in decades to come, the Internet is still standing, and you stumble across a picture of four horrific dental mannequins, or a pic linking Star Wars to Rainbow - know that this is where it started. I was the flashpoint: dental mannequins and Bungle as Chewbacca were, in one unexpectedly inspirational week, my own little contribution to the fabric of the Internet. Don't forget me. 

I was Patient Zero.

FROM THE ARCHIVE:
  • IT PEGGLES THE MIND by Mr Biffo
  • I WAS A BAFTA GAMES JUDGE by Mr Biffo
  • THE POWER OF NOWSTALGIA by Mr Biffo
21 Comments
Alastair
12/8/2015 04:56:00 am

I liked Digitiser pre-mannequin, back when you needed to use the reveal button.

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Mr Biffo
12/8/2015 05:07:25 am

Press reveal to sniff my bumbag.

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Mentski link
12/8/2015 04:58:23 am

I'm stealing this post for my blog.

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Mr Biffo
12/8/2015 05:11:52 am

Hussssss.

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Andrew Gillett
12/8/2015 05:04:02 am

It's freebooting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJrho1-SaPI

Reply
Mr Biffo
12/8/2015 05:11:34 am

That is a good vid!

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BRADY NOT IAN BRADY THE GOOD ONE FROM THE INTERNET
12/8/2015 12:07:02 pm

I LOVE BRADY HARAN HANDS OFF HIM HE'S MINE

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Voodoo76
12/8/2015 05:56:05 am

I think that horse has got more to worry about then what's up its backside. What happened did Tesco's take the front half?

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Gaijintendo
12/8/2015 09:58:55 am

Haha. I have been a bit and saw the Rainbow piccy completely independent of digi2k ,as I just called it.

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Mr Smith
12/8/2015 10:17:02 am

Crikey! You were responsible for that Star Wars meme? It's been all over my Facebook recently, and I had no idea where it came from.

If it's any consolation, this has happened to me a few times too with regards to work related content. Websites love talking about newly discovered stuff, but they're withered by apathy when it comes to attributing correct sourcing.

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MISTER P S B
12/8/2015 12:07:44 pm

POO POO

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Mr Biffo
12/8/2015 12:12:41 pm

Yeah, a mate told me today that he'd seen it and didn't know it was me. Oh well! That'll learn me.

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Deggstoid
12/8/2015 01:15:23 pm

We love you Dr Bisto (or whatever your name is!)

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Mr Biffo
12/8/2015 01:43:01 pm

I... love... you... too?!!!

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Gordon Ramsay's furrowed brow
12/8/2015 03:06:46 pm

Ive stolen that picture to use as my screensaver at work.
Anytime I get stressed I always think about smearing my toes in brylcreem, or sticking my arm up a horses ar$e to calm myself down, so this picture is ideal.
Avoid the gel brylcreem by the way people - its terrible.
Stick to the protein enriched original.

Or stick your hand up a horses ar$e..........

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Super Bad Advice
12/8/2015 04:40:46 pm

That horse's arse simulator looks like the worst Wii add-on ever.

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Lorfarius
13/8/2015 06:56:25 am

Couldn't you stick the digi logo in the corner of pics or even have a tiny watermark with the twitter tag on for future pics just in case?

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Mr Biffo
13/8/2015 07:01:15 am

That will be the plan in the unlikely event I ever come up with anything as good again...

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Keith
17/8/2015 05:45:35 am

This happened to me, too: if any of you saw the paragraph long defence of Emperor Palpatine on the grounds that he was old, as a critique of the "you can't say bad thing about Margaret thatcher!" consensus in the news, that was me - someone nicked it off my facebook wall unattributed, and it has appeared on thousands upon thousands of forums, blogs, tweets etc.

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Dan link
21/8/2015 11:41:34 am

I once had one of my Photoshops hit the front pages of the daily newspapers, national news reports etc. Nobody will ever know, or even care I made it, but I can brag to people that it happened. It's my fifteen minutes of anonymous fame. ;)

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Jay link
15/11/2015 12:01:49 am

Your wonderful Star Wars scripts from Phantom Menace era are without doubt an inspiration behind my Twitter feed, that can only be described as "mildly unpopular". So thanks for being The Beatles, while I am some crappy 90s pub band with a crap haircut.

Reply



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