A few years ago, while bored (as with when the vast majority of more interesting; wouldn't necessarily say "better" ideas come to me), I decided to create a joke account on DeviantArt as part of the "_plz" craze, or for those unfamiliar with the site and its memes, an account created for the sole purpose of using its User Icon as a large Emoticon on the site.
Thus, the OhShitPlz was born.
It was a nearly instant success. Within roughly a year, it had surpassed my actual account in terms of popularity and pageviews, despite only having three actual items in its gallery; all themed around the icon. As time passed, there came to be several pieces of fanart making reference to it, which I, of course, added to my Favorites with great pleasure.
A considerable length of time passes; the joke account now has 3 times the pageviews of my true account. There are even other accounts which are permutations of the original, made by others along the way. And then, just recently, while doing random searches on a whim I stumbled upon this.
Yes, it would appear that the OhShitPlz's influence has begun to spread beyond the sphere of DA, with a (albeit small) following even on such a major networking site.
Further searches revealed an OhShitPlz account on Photobucket for the utilization of the Emote on an even greater range of sites and forums; even a few hits on Gaia which link back to the original!
Such a wide-reaching propagation of a meme, with the only effort required on my part being a handful of drawings and occasionally logging into the original account on DA in order to interact with its fans.
Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?
No comments:
Post a Comment