Afro Ninja
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About
A short video clip that became popular during the pre-youtube era of a guy named Mark Hicks who fails while auditioning for a role in a martial-arts movie.
Origin
The video of a man performing ninja moves in an afro was posted in 2005 for a series of commercials for the PS2 game Tekken 5 (shown below).
The exact origin of its first posting is not known. As Encyclopedia Dramatica offensively put it, "one interesting thing to note about the Afro Ninja video is that very few people seem to have any clue where it actually came from, so everyone just assumed it was some stupid nigger with a misdirected desire to become a martial artist. This has led to numerous retards making up stories and trying to claim the video as their own finding."[1]
A video titled afro ninja containing the meme was uploaded to YouTube January 17th, 2007 by user airmoney, in which a man with an afro tries to do ninja-like moves (shown below). As of April 24th, 2016 the video has 17.3 million views and 49.9k likes.[2] This video was posted with a hefty amount of eBaum's World advertised on it, but they are not the original owners of the video.
Spread
On June 4th, 2009, Comedy Central uploaded a web redemption of Afro Ninja on Tosh.0 (shown below).[3]
On August 24th, 2010, an interview discussing where Afro Ninja is now was posted to Business Insider.[5]
Search Interest
External References
[1] Encyclopedia Dramatica – Afro Ninja
[2] YouTube – afro ninja
[3] Comedy Central – Afro Ninja (redirect to Tosh.0)
[4] YouTube – Playstation 2 (PS2) Tekken 5 TV commercials
[5] Business Insider – WHERE ARE THEY NOW? "Afro Ninja" Picked Himself Up And Made A Movie Based On His Viral Video
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