Five things worth sharing from the last week (or so), brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Vic.
1. Bill Cosby ‘Meme Me’ Mega Fail
This couldn’t have gone much worse. Bill Cosby invited the good people of Twitter to create a hilarious meme of him.
“Go ahead. Meme me! #CosbyMeme”
— Bill Cosby (@BillCosby)
Given that he has a history of sexual assault accusations, in hindsight, perhaps giving social media users this opportunity wasn’t the best idea.
Despite tweaking the generator to prevent certain words and phrases being entered, those creating the memes soon found a way around it.
A Twitter search for #CosbyMeme reveals how horribly wrong this went. The original Tweet by Cosby, and the link to the meme generator on his site have since been removed.
2. Free beer. Yes please!
OK, so technically you have to drink a beer before you get the free one, but free beer is free beer, right?
Fullers Brewery are offering a lovely pint of London Pride to Twitter users who follow @London_Pride on Twitter and tweet a picture of their empty pint glass with the hashtag #EmptyPint until November 16th.
Sadly, when I tried to find a participating pub to get my delicious free pint, there were none anywhere near me. Boo hoo!
See if you have more luck – http://www.fullers.co.uk/emptypint
3. Dapper Laughs is Dead
It’s not been a good week for Daniel O’Reilly, AKA Dapper Laughs.
For those unfamiliar with his ‘comedy’ routines, Dapper Laughs’ material often contains references to rape and sexual violence. During one routine, he told a female audience member that “She’s gagging for a rape.” What a nice chap.
Things kicked off on Twitter after UsVsTh3m reviewed his Christmas album. Dapper Laughs stated that the royalties generated from streams of the album on Spotify would be given to Shelter. Which is jolly nice of him.
Except, UsVsTh3m did the maths, and it turned out to not be a particularly generous offer after all…
Each stream earns about $0.007 per play. That’s less than half a penny – £0.004
This means, in the unlikely event, the general public listen to 10,000 Dapper Laughs songs – the cash raised would only be £40.
£40!
In addition to this, UsVsTh3m also pointed out that Dapper Laughs “literally put out a song where he shouts at a ‘tramp’ “you smell like s**t” – because he wants to help homeless people”.
And after he Tweeted a female member of staff at UsVsTh3m, she began getting threatening and abusive Tweets from Dapper Laughs’ ‘fans’.
It wasn’t long before Shelter confirmed that they would be refusing to accept any donations from Dapper Laughs’ album. And then, people started a petition to have his show cancelled on ITV2.
Around 60,000 people signed the petition calling on Adam Crozier, ITV2’s network’s chief executive, to pull the show. And he did.
Following this, tour dates were cancelled for a number of top venues including the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and the O2 Academy in Leeds after outrage over content that derides women.
Daniel O’Reilly then made the decision to ‘kill off’ the Dapper Laughs ‘character’. Which in my opinion, is a good thing.
4. Comet Landing
This week, the robotic probe Philae landed on a comet.
Everyone at the European Space Agency mission control went completely bananas after they received a signal confirming a successful touchdown on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (which apparently looks like a rubber duck).
This is the shirt that the Rosetta lead scientist decided to wear when being interviewed about the Philae lander making history.
What a bawse.
Unfortunately, the probe seems to have had a little bounce around for itself after the harpoons failed to anchor it to the surface. Scientists are now hoping that Philae remains stable and providing that it can be properly secured, it will engage in several months of experiments.
5. Kim Kardashian Attempts to Break the Internet
Not by doing anything clever or worthwhile – she just gets her big shiny bum out. Enjoy.
