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Language: en

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Digital Life

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News spreads over the internet faster than over any other media before.

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But not only world-moving news spread over forums, social networks or weblogs

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but nowadays also pictures and videos find an audience of millions.

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The head butt of Zinedine Zidane against Marco Matarazzi in the final game of the Soccer World Championship about five years ago had enormous resonance on the net.

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The following day a computer game existed with the goal to head butt as many Italian soccer players as possible.

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Head butt scenes were reenacted on open streets, filmed and uploaded.

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A perfect example for an internet hype, also called "meme".

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It is possible to call memes "thought units"

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that multiply through communication of their carriers,

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the simpler definition is "running gag" of a world wide internet community.

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In the frame of a three parted series Konnie Lee will present especially successful internet "memes" of this year.

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Part 1 focuses on the children cartoon series MLP that not least got an internet phenomenon because of the "Anonymous" hackers.

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In October 2010 the US-american TV station "The Hub" started to show the new series MLP:FIM.

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The series is based on the toy series MLP by Hasbro that was successful in the 1980s.

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Already back then a TV series existed about the talking ponies.

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To make the ponies popular with young girls again, Hasbro ordered a renewal of the series.

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With success.

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But nobody expected this type of success.

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The TV series MLP:FIM did not only hit the target demographic of little girls

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but also found a huge male fanbase online,

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ranging from teenagers to over 40 year olds.

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These male MLP fans, called "Bronies", let their enthusiasm for the series roam free on various platforms,

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post images of ponies or cut videos.

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The wired magazine calls this trend "neo-sincerity" and sees connections to the success of others like the musical TV series "Glee".

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The irony of the 1990s is out.

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"Guilty pleasures", secret preferences, no longer have to be defended with "I don't *really* like it, just ironically".

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The fan community of Bronies celebrates MLP openly, without irony.

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They like the humor of the series and also its core message about friendship and tolerance.

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Repeatedly the production quality of the show gets lauded,

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which is for a big part thanks to the original english voices of the characters.

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Out of this fandom, every day countless amounts of images with funny texts and videos that use scenes from MLP and rearrange them.

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Very popular are film trailer mashups that combine the audio from known film trailers with the images from MLP.

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For example "300" becomes "300 ponies", "V for Vendetta" becomes "P for Pinketta" and "Inglorious Basterds" becomes "Inglorious Ponies".

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Or scenes from the series simply get looped.

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And out of that new videos get made.

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And so the MLP meme grows and creates even more memes.

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This week in "digital leben" we look at internet memes with special impact. Tomorrow it's the "Pepper spraying cop's" turn, whose image of treating "Occupy" protestants spread around the world.