YTMND

Yourethemannowdog.com, the original YTMND site.

YTMND, an initialism for "You're The Man Now, Dog!", is a website community that centers around the creation of YTMNDs, which are pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image, optionally animated and/or tiled, along with large zooming text and a looping sound file. YTMND is also the general term used to describe any such site.

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, "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 DOT COM" written with Figlet.[1]

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 work safe" 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 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. In response to Bauman's actions, users from ytmnd.com joined users from other internet communities to invade, DDoS, repeatedly crash and ultimately hack the eBaum's World forums. The attacks began shortly after 11:00 PM EST on January 7, 2006 and ended on January 8, 2006. Max Goldberg did not promote or endorse the attacks but instead condemned them. He stated that they "really [crossed] the line," that they were a "vulgar display of power" [2] and went on to say that any YTMND author whose site promotes attacks would have their account deleted [3]. On January 10th eBaum's World alleged the attacks were a form of cyber-terrorism [4] and on January 11 Neil Bauman stated publicly that arrests were being made in relation to the attacks [5]. 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 [6]. Despite the resolution of the conflict, ytmnd.com experienced DDoS attacks on the morning of January 12th [7].

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.

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 in which the YTMND is based on has also been mentioned on VH1's show "Web Junk 20".

On the January 12, 2006 episode of Jeopardy!, host Alex Trebek read an answer in which he quoted Sean Connery's line "You're the man now, dog!" from Finding Forrester. This reference, coupled with a reference to popular YTMND subject Leeroy Jenkins on a 2005 episode of the show, has led some to believe that Jeopardy!'s staff are fans of ytmnd.com. Some believe that this suspicion is supported by the aforementioned answer being in the "Easily imitated" category, potentially referring to the manner in which the original site was imitated soon after its conception; however, it's far more likely that the presence of Sean Connery in the "Easily Imitated" category is a reference to the [[Celebrity Jeopardy! (Saturday Night Live)][Saturday Night Live "Celebrity Jeopardy!"]] skits, which regularly features a Sean Connery impersonation by Darrell Hammond.

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. [8]

See also

• List of YTMND fads

External links

• ytmnd - Official site
• ytmnsfw - Companion site for offensive YTMNDs
• yourethemannowdog.com - The "original" YTMND site
• yourethemannowdog.com - Image 1 - The first ever image on yourethemannowdog.com
• YTMND the screensaver - Windows screensaver using live YTMND data