-
– Viral Video: Herman Cain Smoking Campaign Ad
Could the GOP presidential nominee candidate Herman Cain be the next Sarah Palin? The Chicago-based businessman dominated the election gossips on the web this week, after releasing a controversial YouTube campaign ad in which Cain’s chief advisor signs off the message by blowing smoke into the camera. Due to its unconventional display of cigarette smoking in a political campaign ad, the video has sparked widespread confusion over the true intent and spawned numerous online parodies.
On the same day of the release, a number of spoof videos emerged from various tiers of video producers, including YouTube video-bloggers, comedy groups and cable TV pundits like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. In addition, the daughter of another Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. also contributed to the parody phenomenon.
– Photo Fad: Tebowing
Just when you had thought photo fads were on their way out, somebody’s brought it back in again! The latest pose in the (seemingly) never-ending chain of photo fads is called Tebowing, named after the Denver Broncos’ quarterback Tim Tebow who was photographed dropping to one knee after the Broncos came from behind to beat the Miami Dolphins 18-15. The first “Tebowing” image was taken by Jared Kleinstein outside of the Sidebar in NYC on the same night and the Tumblr blog Tebowing.com was launched on the next day. Throughout the week, the fad was covered by numerous sports news sites and internet blogs and the Twitter hashtag #tebowing rose to a trending topic in the United States.
– Biblical Advice Animal: Good Guy Lucifer
The Biblical character Lucifer became the subject of a captioned image series that questions the moral character of the fallen angel. The original image was taken from the cover of the DC Comics series “Lucifer” and captions were added that reference Bible stories where the devil seems like he might not be such a bad guy after all.
– Google Easter Egg: Do A Barrel Roll!
Google enabled an easter egg search query on Thursday that honored the Nintendo video game series Star Fox. Searching for “do a barrel roll” causes the entire search window to rotate 360 degrees, mimicking the aerial maneuver used in dogfights. The phrase became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter and reached .68% of all tweets at its peak according to the tweet stats site Trendistic.
– Johansson-Gate Update: Scarlett Johannson Responds to Leaked Photos
In an interview with Vanity Fair this week, Scarlett Johannson revealed that the infamous nude photos that spread like wildfire across the Internet, were originally taken for her former husband Ryan Reynolds. The actress explained that she did not see anything wrong with taking the photos and added “I know my best angles.”
– Best & Worst Week Ever: Justin Beiber
The teeange idol singer Justin Bieber went through an emotional rollercoaster this week with some good news and some (potentially) bad news: The good news is that the singer set a new milestone of being the first YouTuber to reach 2 billion views; the bad news is that the baby-faced celebrity may be facing a paternity test after a 20-year-old woman claimed that Justin Bieber could be the father of her 3-month-old baby.
