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I wished to select a nascent meme for my case study – something that hasn’t yet reached its viral potential but at least appears to have achieved the critical mass necessary to reach a large audience.
Production value: Professional (comedy performance) / Prosumer (cosplay) / Amateur (YouTube videos)
Summary / Description:
At the center of this viral structure lies a small section of a stand-up comedy routine by Chris Hardwick, known as the Nerdist, in which Hardwick suggests that nerds could scare off muggers by “pretending you’re more crazy than you are.” He follows up with a skit in which he intends to “buy a dragon-shaped sabre” and “keep it in the back of [his] pants,” confronting potential muggers by “looking [the mugger] in the eye, saying ‘they told me you would come,’ drawing the sword and slicing it across [his] chest” while exclaiming “the prophecy is almost complete!” He would then ride off on a tiger. “Who would fuck with you if you’re riding a tiger?” he asks. “Nobody, that’s who. You could go tearin’ through a mall on a tiger dressed like a mermaid wearing a cape made out of dicks flapping in the wind and no one would say a word.” He has repeated this routine in comedy monologues since. [1]
Reaching multiple communities and spreading via online forums, the “cape of dicks” has become a verbal meme, spawning new media in the form of cosplay -- physical capes bearing symbolic and literal penises -- as well as videos depicting the presentation of these fan-created capes to Hardwick and geek culture presence Wil Wheaton. With the first such presentation only weeks ago (at the gaming convention PAX 2011 in late August), a search of YouTube returns nine videos, accumulating a total of several thousand views. More significantly, Wheaton (@wil) tweeted about his cape on numerous occasions to his over 1.8 million followers, as did Hardwick (@nerdist, 1.5+ million followers). Felicia Day (@feliciaday, 1.8+ million followers) engaged with Wheaton in Twitter conversation about the cape and posted about it to her over 120,000-follower Google+ account.
Appeal and Audience
Not surprisingly, humor provides the basis for the appeal of this viral structure. The original comedy routine offers appeal in terms of superiority (the stereotypically weak nerd scaring off a physically superior mugger) and absurdity (riding a tiger, slicing one’s self with a sword), and it also includes a pop-culture reference to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a cartoon in which the titular character rides a tiger wearing only a loincloth and a strapped halter reminiscent of bondage attire.
In-references to pop-culture media objects, from widely recognized tropes (“Han Shot First”) to the obscure (He-Man and his tiger mount), “evoke fans’ shared cultural knowledge and competency [2],” serving simultaneously as flags to help fans recognize those with similar interests and opportunities for individuals -- and the community collectively -- to claim the media as their own, remixing and actualizing it. [3] Viral payloads attached to in-references are therefore afforded ample transmedia pathways; remixes can take the form of verbal mutations (“+2 cape of dicks,” see Timeline below and reference [6]), cosplay (in-referenced costumes like “Iron Man” or “Lego Star Wars”), or even the passive consumer purchase of in-reference shirts from T-of-the-day sites like TeeFury, Shirt.Woot, or RiptApparel.
Social Vectors
Hardwick’s comedy routine is targeted at “geeks,” recently -- and arguably -- defined as extreme enthusiasts, or people who wish to delve deeper than the average person into specific subject matter, fueling an expansion of geekdom from the most stereotypical examples -- science fiction, fantasy, gaming, and computer technology -- to encompass other obsessions ranging from fantasy football to music. This expansion has enabled (and monetized) crossover events such as PAX and W00tstock, and has further popularized existing conventions such as the San Diego Comic Con and Dragon*Con, expanding their attendance to astronomical levels. [4]
When Hardwick performed his comedy routine at W00tstock, he performed for members of multiple geek communities, including paper-and-dice roleplaying gamers (who came to see Wheaton), science lovers (who came to see Phil Plait, known as @BadAstronmer on Twitter and the Discover channel), comic fans (who came to see Matt Fraction), and filk enthusiasts (who came to see Molly Lewis). Each of these communities provided a separate social vector for the “cape of dicks” contagion. Furthermore, internet/geek personalities like as Wheaton and Day blur the line between celebrity and fan, both creating and consuming the media in which they excel. As fans, they remix material created both by them and by other fans, then as celebrities broadcast it to their significant audiences, passing the remixed contagion via large-scale outbreaks. (Think of this like the cesspool/water pump contamination in The Ghost Map, but with a non-destructive entertainment payload.) We can see these effects already in the “cape of dicks” viral structure:
History/Timeline
2010: Hardwick incorporates the He-Man/”cape of dicks” component into his stand-up routine, performing it for varied audiences throughout the year.
Feb 2011: Wheaton joins Hardwick on the Nerdist podcast, in which Wheaton jokes that “he want(s) a cape of dicks.” Hardwick responds that “some crafter is going to make you one now! You’re going to get a cape made of yarn dicks.” [5]
Apr 2011: On the GWC podcast, Hardwick muses about the “cape of dicks” as an armor class in the RPGer vein (“I have a +2 cape of dicks on, I have defended against your attack [6].”)
Aug 2011: “Aimee Evilpixie” presents Wheaton with her cape of (symbolic) dicks. Friends and other fans present at Wheaton’s PAX panel post video of the event to YouTube.
Sep 2011: During a performance at Nerdmelt in Los Angeles, separate fans present Hardwick with another “cape of dicks,” this one featuring physical representations of male genitals (probably sex toys) which flap as described in the stand-up routine. Friends and fans present at the event post videos to YouTube.
Sep 2011: Wheaton ceremonially brings his “cape of dicks” out on stage during a performance with Paul and Storm, who reportedly create an impromptu “cape of dicks theme song.”
Date discovered: Summer 2010
Peak popularity: Not yet reached
Original Site: Comedy Performance
Remixes / Parodies / Responses:
RPG connotation
Cosplay (two incidences so far, though this could become a popular in-reference costume at cosplay events)
Music/Filk (Paul and Storm)
Future
With access to multiple social and media vectors, exposure to large audiences at multiple conventions and performances, and adoption by highly (ideologically-) contagious internet/geek personalities, there’s no reason for us not to expect additional viral spread of the “cape of dicks” contagion.
Resources / Further Information
[1] I first heard this monologue at W00tstock 2.4 on July 22, 2010, coinciding with the San Diego Comic Con but hosted away from the Con’s convention center at the run-down 4th and B venue. Besides Hardwick’s set, W00tstock 2.4’s varied evening included a dramatic reading by Wheaton, a lecture on the cultural content of comics by Fraction, and ukelele tunes by Lewis. You can watch most of the evening via YouTube here, though it's missing Fraction's awesome, eye-opening lecture.
[2] Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. 256. Print.
[3] On pages 51-55 of Textual Poachers, Jenkins compares fan-claimed ownership of media through creative transformation to the story of the Skin Horse and rabbit from the Velveteen Rabbit. “The value of a new toy lies not in its material qualities (not “having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle”), the Skin Horse explains, but rather in how the toy is used, how it is integrated into the child’s imaginative experience (p. 51).”
[4] Only 145 people attended San Diego Comic Con in 1970, but attendance has soared to over 130,000 in 2010. Dragon*Con, hosted in Atlanta, GA, currently draws more than 35,000 and offers a significant cosplay experience with more than 2,000 cosplayers participating in the con’s costume parade.
[6] GWC #265, 1:19:00. Note: "+2" refers to modifiers applied to weapons and armor in the paper-and-dice role playing game (RPG) Dungeons & Dragons (as well as modifiers applied to other objects in similar games). Such modifiers increase or decrease the potency of the item. In this case, Hardwick (and Wheaton, who is famous as a proponent of tabletop RPGs) extend the joke by pondering the "cape of dicks" as an actual Dungeons & Dragons armor item where the "+2" would modify the item's armor class. Thanks to @ChurchHTucker who recommended this clarification.
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