What Is Air?

About

“What is Air?” is a catchphrase that is used as a form of trolling on online chat rooms. It has been linked to 4chan’s war with Tumblr known as Operation Overlord.

Origin

According to an Urlesque^[1] article by writer Cole Stryker, the phrase began as a trolling technique on the online chat website Omegle (see also What is OP?).

I searched on Tumblr for “What is air” and found hundreds of posts featuring Tumblr users posting the mysterious phrase to Omegle, the anonymous chatting site. I don’t really get it. The troll seems boring and lame. Basically you just go on Omegle and ask strangers “what is air?” until they get so annoyed that they disconnect.

Operation Overlord

4chan responded to the “what is air?” Omegle spam by launching an attack on Tumblr called “Operation Overlord.” Initially, Tumblr accounts were made to spam gore, porn and child pornography but eventually DDoS attacks were used in various attempts to take down the site. As a result of the 4chan vs. Tumblr war, the anthropomorphic site mascot 4chumblr was created as an attempt to make peace between the two sites.

Spread

The first relevant Urban Dictionary^[3] definition was submitted on November 9th, 2010.

Basically, the new HNNG of tumblr.
On Omegle:

You: WHAT IS AIR?
Stranger: example1.tumblr.com
You: example2.tumblr.com

STRANGER HAS DISCONNECTED.

The same day, a Yahoo Answers^[4] question was posted asking "What is this whole “what is air” thing on tumblr?" On November 14th, Gawker staff writer Adrian Chen covered Operation Overlord and quoted a Tumblr user mentioning “what is air” as a tactic against the raid.

Search Interest

Search queries for “what is air?” spiked in November of 2010, the same month that Operation Overlord took place.

External References