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| Type of site | Specialized website community |
|---|---|
| Owner | Max/YTMND Inc. |
| Created by | Max Goldberg |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Yes |
YTMND, an acronym for "You're The Man Now, Dog!", is a website community that centers on the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated and/or tiled, along with optional large zooming text and a looping sound file. Most of these images are created or edited by users. Most YTMNDs are meant to expose or reflect the more inane facets of pop culture.
Origins
The first YTMND was created in 2001 by Max Goldberg at his yourethemannowdog.com website. It consists of a juxtaposed photograph of actor Sean Connery and, in large zooming text, the words "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM." A soundbite of Connery saying "You're the man now, dog!" from the film Finding Forrester repeats continuously. Goldberg bought the domain for the site after seeing a commercial for the film, and originally the site just contained the text "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG.COM" written using Figlet.
Goldberg's new creation inspired others to make similar sites with other movie and television quotations. At first, Goldberg maintained a list and mirror of these sites, but the list soon became exceptionally long. In 2004, rather than continuing to maintain the list, Goldberg created ytmnd.com. His site lets anyone become a member and create their own YTMND by uploading a sound file, uploading a graphic file, and optionally entering text to display. The site caught on in popularity and became an Internet phenomenon when major weblogs began linking to the YTMND Picard Song.
History
When ytmnd.com first opened, newly created YTMNDs were unmoderated and therefore a certain portion of them were highly offensive. The site's forums were shut down on October 14th, 2004 after Max Goldberg banned its chief users. Goldberg cited tension between himself and the website's host as his reasoning for the closure. The site as a whole was closed in December 2004 when Goldberg forwarded the site to yourethemannowdog.com without notice.
The site was briefly reopened in January 2005, and then in late March 2005 it relaunched with a number of new features, including moderation of YTMNDs. The site's forums were resurrected soon after the relaunch. In October 2005 a stricter moderation system went into effect that prompted deletion of many YTMNDs and the addition of age verification. YTMNDs deemed "not safe for work" were placed in the domain ytmnsfw.com.
On November 25th 2005, ytmnd.com relaunched on new servers with an entirely redesigned layout. Updates included user names replacing numbers in each YTMND's URL, faster caching, and new content boxes. A feature debuted soon after allowing users to donate money in exchange for increased exposure of their YTMNDs through the main site.
A significant portion of YTMND history unfolded in January 2006 in what was known as the "YTMND/eBaum's World War". After Eric Bauman - the owner of eBaum's World - hosted and watermarked a Lindsay Lohan montage created by a ytmnd.com user on his site without crediting the original author (while the creator also used images that he did not credit to the original photographers). In response to Bauman's actions, users from ytmnd.com joined users from other internet communities, namely Something Awful, LUElinks, Newgrounds, 4chan, FARK and IGN. These groups invaded using spam posts, DDoS, repeatedly crashing and ultimately cracking the eBaum's World forums. The attacks began shortly after 11:00 PM EST on January 7, 2006 and ended on January 10, 2006. Max Goldberg did not promote or endorse the attacks but rather condemned them. He stated that they "really the line," that they were a "vulgar display of power" and went on to say that any YTMND author whose site promoted attacks would have their account deleted . Goldberg elaborated by saying that the recent conflict had placed both himself and his hosting company in a negative light . On January 10th eBaum's World alleged the attacks, were a form of cyber-terrorism and on January 11 Neil Bauman (Eric Bauman's father, who works under his son as the Executive Vice President of ebaumsworld), stated publicly that arrests were being made in relation to the attacks . Eventually Goldberg and Bauman came to an agreement, with Bauman removing the image from his site in return for Goldberg removing any reference to "eBaum" from ytmnd.com . Despite the resolution of the conflict, ytmnd.com experienced DDoS attacks on the morning of January 12th . There are numerous sites promoting and glorifying the attacks, particularly a YTMND Hall of Famer by the username of Boomaga in which Bauman's cease-and-desist letters is read in the manner of a Shakespearean actor.
On March 3, 2006, YTMND unexpectedly suffered from severe errors believed to originate in the site's PHP code. YTMNDers immediately began turning this glitch into a fad. Countless YTMNDs were made about the glitches. Some even mixed it with other fads for added humor. Some have even cited these attacks to be caused by eBaumsworld.com, but no proof has surfaced.
On April 1, 2006 as an April Fool's Joke, YTMND lost the 'Internet Battle' against Ebaum's World and officially and permanently merged with its once rival site. YTMND mocked the layout of eBaum's World; however, clicking a certain link would go back to the old YTMND homepage. The site proclaims "Lindsay Lohan had no comment."
On April 5, 2006, a new loading feature, written by a YTMND user by the name of Syncan, was implemented on the site. The new feature synchronizes the loading of the image and sound file to match up, resolving a previously known significant flaw on the site.
On April 12, 2006, Max announced the launch of YTMND Radio , featuring streaming audio of songs featured in popular ytmnds
Fads and memes
- For more information about YTMND fads and memes please see the list of YTMND fads article.
The content of each YTMND site remains one of the most definitive examples of memes and memetics on the Internet. The format of the original YTMND has obviously become self-replicating in nature, and fads in the subject matter of YTMNDs are fairly rampant. As memetic "mutations" occur, new influences come in, intertextuality builds and some YTMNDs become phenomenally popular. On the heels of such popularity, other members come up with ways to create alternate "spins" on these YTMNDs, after which more "spins" are formed. Many of these fads end up spreading to the web as a whole, if they had not already done so. By this point, the topic of the original YTMND could be, and usually is, considered a fad. Dozens of new fads have sprung up since.
On March 4, 2006, a YTMND was submitted including the scene in Finding Forrester which included both "You're the man now, dog!" and another line, "Punch the keys, for God's sake!" This second line has since generated a fad of its own . "Punch the keys, for God's sake!" (PTKFGS) explored the notion that the future of ytmnd.com would carry a Bradbury-esque facade with it; implying that if PTKFGS had been the line used by Max Goldberg instead of "You're the man now, dog!", the ytmnd.com website would have still been popular and successful but would offer idiosyncratic differences--in essence, a PTKFGS would be a bizzaro YTMND. Traditionally, it involves taking a popular YTMND, and creating a kind of parallel idea to it ("Secret Nazi Forest" becomes "Secret Communist Forest," "O RLY?" becomes "R U SHUR?", etc.). This is noted when the creator adds "PTKFGS" right next to the said YTMND; some also include a purple "PTKFGS" watermark attached to the top right corner of the image. Since then, the domain http://www.ptkfgs.com has been forwarded to several related YTMNDs, while http://www.punchthekeysforgodssake.com/ brings the user to the YTMND that may have started the fad. The time traveler, a popular ytmnd character, is often credited as having created the alternate PTKFGS universe. Recently in a similar vein, people have created YesYes and Typing Noises YTMNDs and the situation has not changed very much.
There has also been an OMFG fad. The user Stukas created a series of YTMND's that center around an inane object with the expression OMFG in bold letters. Most users of YTMND did not like the sites, and therefore downvoted them to oblivion. Still, they were a very huge cult hit and did manage to breakthrough to the number 1 on The Top 15 Most Viewed YTMND's many times.
Viewhacking
A new way to garner votes and views is to change the name of the site or to change the substance of the site to trick people into clicking the site and bumping it up to the top of the YTMND list. Since its inception and spread, the term "viewhacking" was coined for this practice and thus became the general phrase. The original person to do this, TDP, only did it to see how long it would take to get 100,000 views; he was successful, and the final version now lists the site's previous incarnations. However, several others followed after that, and has since become a fairly prominent nuisance. In November 2005, a group of users from the North Carolina State University forums led by the user 'justkeepthatinmind' artificially raised the number of views on their sites in order to get into the top 15 most viewed. When called on their actions by other YTMND users, they viewhacked their critics' sites as well in an attempt to confuse people. Such actions are generally frowned upon and subjected to low votes, much along with the practice of using misleading search terms or titles to attract viewers to a page. On rare occasion, the titles are updated to keep in relation to a site that has been only moderately changed, such as an update, fix, or response to attention. In January 2006, Max deleted hundreds of users who had upwards of 20 alternate accounts that they were using to upvote/downvote theirs and other user's sites. A more recent trick involves submitting a YTMND around midnight Central time and getting early morning viewers to click on an unknown YTMND which escalates to 15 thousand views a day.
Another form of viewhacking is the World of Warcraft forums. Due to the extremely high amount of people that play it, people on that forum commonly link to YTMNDs related to their game. This inflates views so much the YTMND ends up getting shot to the top of the most viewed list on the front page. Many YTMND regulars have expressed severe distaste in this and tend to downvote and set the YTMND to "not work safe" status. An idea was suggested, in the form of a YTMND, to redirect anyone coming from the World of Warcraft forum to the "Ridin' Spinnaz" YTMND.
Criticism
There is a large backlash against YTMND, the site, its users and its culture, that has been surfacing online since YTMND's inception. Criticism includes:
- Many YTMNDs borrow from several sources without giving credit to who created what was borrowed. Key examples include a YTMND with Cookie Monster as the tiled background, and the song "The Internet is for Porn" from Avenue Q as the background music, as well as the Picard Song. In most cases the YTMND becomes more famous than the source material, taking credit away when credit is due. The trend is much more potent and widespread in fanimutations, but generally is moot for two reasons: one, that YTMND is technically nonprofit, only raising funds to operate servers, and that most material is used entirely in a parodic nature; two, that again, almost entirely, this material is cut up and used as the body of the joke-- it is not used in the same way that it is in its original context.
- Some users on the site find the many fads annoying and show a lack of originality.
- Certain people find the site racist, particularly with the popularity of fads like "Nigga stole my bike."
- Many feel that the forum users are immature and stupid, and several YTMNDs have been made poking fun at them.
Media exposure
In 2005, CNN wrote an article that linked to ytmnd.com titled "Tom Cruise Kills Oprah", a reference to a popular YTMND. The site received further publicity when The Wall Street Journal published an article about ytmnd.com and mentioned several popular YTMND creations, linking to many of them through their website. The original "Tom Cruise Kills Oprah" video on which the YTMND is based has also been mentioned on VH1's show "Web Junk 20" and CBC Newsworld's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos.
On the February 1, 2006 episode of Attack of the Show! viewers were asked to "Make a kick ass YTMND" for the show's "User Created" segment.
In the March 2006 issue of Stuff Magazine, there is a mention of the original "You're the Man Now Dog" site.
In March 2006, Gamerevolution.com held a contest for video game themed YTMNDs. The winner won a PSP as a prize.
External links
- ytmnd - Official site
- SupCat - The original YTMND pet, that spawned the OMFG YTMND revolution.
- ytmnsfw - Companion site for YTMNDs deemed NSFW or 'Not Safe For Work'
- yourethemannowdog.com - The "original" YTMND site and first ever YTMND
- YTMND the screensaver - Windows screensaver using live YTMND data
- YTMND wiki page
- YTMND Radio