Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf
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About
Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf is a comedy song portraying the actor Shia LaBeouf as a cannibal. The song inspired several photoshopped images and animated GIFs of LeBeouf after it began circulating on the microblogging site Tumblr in April 2012.
Origin
On March 3rd, 2012, musician Rob Cantor[11], a member of the indie rock group Tally Hall[19], uploaded a song titled “Shia LaBeouf” to his SoundCloud[1] page named after the American actor. The song detailed a terrifying encounter with a blood-soaked cannibal Shia LaBeouf in the woods in the manner of in an early 1900s radio drama.
Running for your life (From Shia Labeouf.)
He’s brandishing a knife. (It’s Shia Labeouf.)
Lurking in the shadows, Hollywood superstar Shia Labeouf.
Living in the woods, (Shia Labeouf.)
Killing for sport, (Shia Labeouf.)
Eating all the bodies, actual, cannibal Shia Labeouf.
You’re walking in the woods.
There’s no one around,
And your phone is dead.
Out of the corner of your eye you spot him,
Shia Labeouf.
He’s following you
About 30 feet back.
He gets down on all fours and breaks into a sprint.
He’s gaining on you.
Shia Labeouf.
You’re looking for your car,
But you’re all turned around.
He’s almost upon you now
And you can see there’s blood on his face!
My god, there’s blood everywhere!
Running for your life
(From Shia Labeouf.)
He’s brandishing a knife.
(It’s Shia Labeouf.)
Lurking in the shadows
Hollywood superstar Shia Labeouf.
Living in the woods,
(Shia Labeouf.)
Killing for sport,
(Shia Labeouf.)
Eating all the bodies
Actual, cannibal Shia Labeouf.
Now it’s dark and you seem to have lost him,
But you’re hopelessly lost yourself.
Stranded with a murderer,
You creep silently through the underbrush.
A-ha! In the distance,
A small cottage with a light on.
Hope!
You move stealthily toward it,
But your leg! AH! It’s caught in a bear trap!
Gnawing off your leg,
(Quiet, quiet.)
Limping toward the cottage,
(Quiet, quiet.)
Now you’re on the doorstep,
Sitting inside, Shia Labeouf.
Sharpening an ax,
(Shia Labeouf.)
But he doesn’t hear you enter,
(Shia Labeouf.)
You’re sneaking up behind him.
Strangling superstar Shia Labeouf.
Fighting for your life with Shia Labeouf,
Wrestling a knife from Shia Labeouf,
Stab it in his kidney.
Safe at last from Shia Labeouf.
You limp into the dark woods,
Blood oozing from your stump leg.
But you have won.
You have beaten Shia Labeouf.
Spread
On April 18th, 2012, Tally Hall fan site Hidden in the Sand posted a link to the song on their Facebook fan page.[12]The same day, the song was reposted to Reddit[14], BoingBoing[15] and ComicBookMovie.com.[16] The Tally Hall fan wiki[13] created a page with the song’s lyrics as well. Within 36 hours, the song had been played more than 14,000 times. On April 29th, The song was posted on Tumblr by Sarvel[2] with the description “I searched Shia LeBeouf in SoundCloud and found this," gaining more than 80,000 notes in 48 hours. On April 30th, the “Actual Cannibal Shia LeBeouf”[6] single topic blog launched, featuring photoshopped images and animated GIFs inspired by the song.
The same day, a post was submitted to political site Democratic Underground[4] by forum member Generic Brad, who asserted that several mentions of Shia LeBeouf on Wikipedia described him as an “actual cannibal.” Also on April 30th, YouTuber namefriend uploaded an animated music video for the song, which featured a bloody Shia LeBeouf hunting down a cartoon character with a Tumblr logo for a head. The video was shared on the viral content site BuzzFeed[3], Gawker[22], the World of Warcraft Wyrmrest Accord forums[5] and /r/Music.[7]
Remixes and parodies of the song have been found on YouTube[20] and SoundCloud[10], where a dubstep version of the song posted on April 30th saw more than 26,600 plays in its first 24 hours. Additional images and GIFs relating to the song have appeared on Tumblr[9] with the tag “#actual cannibal shia lebeouf.” As of December 2012, a Facebook[8] page for “Actual Cannibal Shia LeBeouf” has received more than 1200 likes. There have also been dozens of questions on Yahoo! Answers[21] asking whether or not LaBeouf really is a cannibal.
Cantor’s Response
In a Washington Post interview with Rob Cantor on May 2nd, 2012, the songwriter revealed the inspiration behind the song was “nothing but the sheer silliness of imagining Shia LaBeouf, face and clothes smeared with half-dried blood, terrorizing helpless victims in a dark wood…It was more that his name, when whispered really intensely, just made me giggle.” Cantor explains it was originally written in hopes Funny or Die “would want to use the song in a video featuring the actual LaBeouf. But that didn’t happen.”[17]
Search Interest
External References
[1]SoundCloud – Shia LaBeouf
[2]Tumblr – Sarvel’s post (Now deleted)
[3]BuzzFeed – Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf
[4]Democratic Underground – Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf
[5]Battle.net – Actual cannibal shia labeouf
[6]Tumblr – Actual Cannibal Shia Lebeouf
[7]Reddit – Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf
[8]Facebook – Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf
[9]Tumblr – #actual cannibal shia lebeouf
[10]Soundcloud – Rob Cantor – Shia Labeouf
[11]Robcantor.com – Music For The Stage
[12]HITS Facebook – Oh Rob Candor…you’ve been holding out on us, sir
[13]Hiddeninthesand.com – Tally Hallmanac – Shia Labeouf
[14]Reddit – The Shia Labeouf Song – by Rob Cantor
[15]BoingBoing.net – A song about Shia LaBeouf: mass murdering, cannibalistic superstar
[16]Comicbookmovie.com – A Catchy Song About Shia LaBeouf as a Cannibal
[17]washingtonpost.com – The Shia LaBeouf cannibal song: The story behind the viral track
[18]memebase.com – Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf
[20]YouTube – Search results for “actual cannibal shia labeouf”
[21]Yahoo! Answers – Search results for “shia labeouf cannibal”
[22]Gawker – Forget Everything You Know About Shia LaBeouf That Doesn’t Involve Him Being an Actual Cannibal
Recent Videos 8 total
Recent Images 64 total
Top Comments
Some dude called JAB
May 01, 2012 at 04:41PM EDT+32
Tumblr:
Week 1: #YOLO
Week 2: Ridiculously Photogenic Guy
Week 3: Actual Cannibal Shia Labeouf
Dr. Coolface
May 03, 2012 at 11:42AM EDT+32
Well, now we know why Megan Fox wasn’t in Transformers 3…
Comments 17 total
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