The Latest Internet Celebrity: The Turtle Zombie Boy
posted by Daniel Solove
There’s a new Internet celebrity in the making — the Turtle Zombie Boy. On YouTube, a brief news clip of a 10-year old boy at a fair, his face painted as a zombie, has become a mega hit. The reporter asks the boy: “You’re looking good, Jonathon. Jonathon just got an awesome face paint job. What do you think?” He responds: “I like turtles!”
From the Washington Post:
Which makes the fallout from his appearance seem like the purest possible form of inanity — meaninglessness squared. One fan spliced Jonathon into the guest spot of a recent and hostile interview conducted by Bill O’Reilly on “The O’Reilly Factor.” (An increasingly irate O’Reilly appears to grill Jonathon about Iran and he bats away each question with “I like turtles.”) Someone else did a Turtle Boy version of “The Shining,” wherein the word “SELTRUT” is painted on a door, instead of “REDRUM.” This list could go on and on.
The O’Reilly remix video is here. The Shining remix is here. And yet another is here.
This case resembles that of other Internet sensations, such as the Star Wars Kid — a young teenager whose awkward mimicry of a Star Wars character became one of the most widely viewed online videos of all time, with hundreds of millions tuning in and with scores of remixed videos being made.
I cannot resist making a shameless plug — I’ve written about some of the problems of unwitting Internet celebrities in my forthcoming book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale Univ. Press, Oct. 2007). Most often, their popularity stems from people laughing at them, not with them. Is there a problem with cases like the Turtle Zombie Boy? Or are people just having good fun online when they remix the clip?
I remain perplexed at why the Turtle Zombie Boy is so popular. The clip is funny, but not outrageously so. Why has it struck such a nerve online? What is it that turns something into such an Internet sensation? My book explores the implications of online gossip, rumor, and shaming for privacy and reputation. I don’t have an answer, though, for the questions above. It still makes little sense to me just why certain things become so popular online.
July 30, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Posted in: Privacy (Gossip & Shaming)
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Responses (1)
Bruce Boyden - July 31, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Why is “All your base are belong to us” so funny? I think part of it is that past a certain critical mass, something gets more funny just because other people think it’s funny. It’s a massive in-joke.
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