Video Game Macro (Halolz)

About

Halolz is a website where videos and image macros such as demotivators are created on the theme of popular video games. Memes such as “Falcon Punch” have a large presence on the site. Further investigation is needed to verify how much influence the Halolz community has had on the propagation of specific memes.

Origin

1. September 25th, 2007

On the release of Bungie’s Halo 3™, it featured a new Theater mode where players can record video and even take screenshots of their gameplay, thus inspiring people to caption their screenshots in Halo 3.

Halolz Origin

1. Janurary 2008

Shawn Handyside opened a website focusing on video-game themed image macros which he viewed as being “like lolcats” consisting Halo 3™ image captioning entitled Halolz.com, posting new content daily.

Expanding

Shawn Handyside started recieving other Video Game image macros. They were from other various video games like The Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Brothers, etc.

Halo 3™ obviously couldn’t become an internet phenonmon itself, the similarity to Lolcats was too superficial to call a true lolcat derivative as it was based solely on the premise of creating image macros.

Halolz as an influential Memetic Hub

Can’t Let You Do That

There are a few memes present on Halolz that may have either originated there, or grew in popularity there. Further investigation is needed in order to verify this.

Memes of interest to Halolz include:

• Falcon Punch
• Can’t let you do that

Super Smash Brothers. LAWL

On the relase of Super Smash Brothers, players were also allowed to take screenshots of gameplay, which spawned numerous amounts of captionings that Halolz made a distinctive page for it entitled “Super Smash Brothers. Lawl”

Merchandise

1. June 24th, 2007

Shark Robot™ and Ninja-Bot™ released clothing, toys, and even buttons in honor of Halolz captioning devices.

Insight