Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

I was thinking just yesterday about that gif/flash animation of Spider-Man dancing that's all over the web. Anyone think that's a meme, or is it just a bit of viral animation, since it doesn't really have derivatives?

(…or does it have derivatives, and I just don't know about them?)

http://i268.photobucket.com/albums/jj29/ehtycsarbil/Animated/th_Animated-dancing_spiderman.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQqpsKmh6PA

There are other dancing spider-man gifs that I have seen. I'll try to find them again and check to see if it's memetic while I'm at it.

The thing is, I've seen them all over, and set to various sorts of music, but I have no idea where it originates from, nor whether just being all over the web makes something qualify as a meme.

Often, it's known as gay Spider-man or Ketchup dance Spider-man, each for a specific song frequently associated.

Yes, this is quite an old meme. It would be interesting to get some good research on this one.

A quick check tells me that the earliest appearance of this flash is June 30, 2002 when it was featured on a site called PantsonHead.com. The simplistic flash would be reused on September 30, 2002 when a man named Rob Manuel overdubs it with a song about "not being gay" (probably an original one by him). The flash itself is titled Spiderman Will Make You Gay.

LYRICS:

I'm not gay, I'm not gay, I just dance around in a gay gay way. I'm not gay, no no way, but watching me dance will make YOU gay

The rest of the information, such as the spread of the meme as well as the different instances of the meme, I leave to whoever wants to make the article.

Although the original video seems to be gone, it appears that setting dancing Spider-man to "Asereje (The Ketchup Song?)" goes back about as far as the pantsonhead.com posting:

http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=31289