Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

I've been assigned to make sense of this, and I realized that as weak as my Hebrew is, I actually know less about Twitter, which is where this supposed meme comes from. It apparently translates to "To whomever stopped following me."

I'm actually surprised that the phrase doesn't show up more commonly, as it seems like it would be all over Twitter. Does anyone know any thing about the relationship between Twitter and Israel that might shed some light on the subject? (Did Twitter not support Hebrew tweets before 2010, for instance?)

The first appearance I can find is in a tweet from April 2010, in which "{Tortured?} Nattie" dedicates the song "Since You've Been Gone" to whomever stopped following her tweets.

The phrase shows up a few times a month after that until apparently the turning point here when noyalooshemusic posts something that roughly translates to "Whoever stopped following me: Hypocrite, you see some porn and so it's not big brother?" Whatever this means, apparently it's very funny or at least popular, and it gets retweeted. "לעוקב שעזב" blows up as a catchphrase on Twitter from that moment onward and noyalooshemusic appears to become some sort of Twitter celebrity.

Okay, all that being said, can anyone help me with pointers on how to research a Twitter trend?

In particular, can someone show me how to find any of the following:

1. noyalooshemusic's tweets for December 10th, 2010
2. A history of noyalooshemusic's Twitter followers
3. A history of retweets of noyalooshemusic

…or anything else that might shed light on this topic.

It's turning out to be very frustrating finding out how much I don't know about Twitter. I tried comparing some English results and found odd patterns as well. Some time around 9:40 on May 10, 2010, there was a huge spike of the word "follower" on twitter that lasted for about two hours. (article)

Anyway, whatever the nature of this possible meme, there was also a large upswing in usage of the terms "unfollower" and "unfollowed" on December 10th. This may simply be the Hebrew equivalent.

Have I ever mentioned how much fun I have talking to myself on the forums?

<crickets chirping>

Well, I've been out of KYM for a while so I didn't notice this post :\ Sorry.
Well yeah, being one of the probably ONLIEST Israeli researchers, I think I could help you with this.
The thing is, I don't know much about twitter either, but I can help with translation and / or other stuff. So if you need something tell me and I might be able to help :3

http://trendistic.com/

did you try this?

you could probably force this meme on /b/ in a day (in english)

OP post some porn so i know yr not big brother ……………..lol

Holy quadruple post batman!

Correction: as seen in the notes on the meme's page, apparently the proper translation is "To the follower that left: Hypocrite! You'll watch porn, but you're too good for 'Big Brother'?" (Apparently, the tweeter had recently posted some stuff featuring people from the (Israeli "Big Brother" show.)

I tried Trendistic.com and for whatever reason, it's completely unhelpful in this case, but thanks for the suggestion.

Okay, any of our fluent readers want to tell me what this tweet was about?
http://twitter.com/El_i/status/14699061856702464
It seems to have been very popular one, having been retweeted six times.

סיכום השנה בטוויטר: 1. פות 2. פתיתים 3. לעוקב שעזב 4. טרוסטורי 5. חבר שואל 6. מין 7. חמין 8. ללאמין 9. רוביזובי 10. המרכז

the translation to this tweet is :

this year in twitter:
1. pussy 2.flakes (a sort of food) 3.to the follower that left 4.terostory 5.a friend asks 6. sex 7. hamin (a sort of food) 8. lelaamin (no idea… i think this means "to to believe"… lol idunno.) 9.rubizubi (again,no idea.) 10. the center.

i have no clue what some of these are,i think more memes…

want me to look into it ?

I won't be able to be of any use today since I have work/tons of hw, but before I go, I'd like to point out that Trendistic was also totally useless for tracking Chinese Twitter Trends (as in the ones where people jump over "the great firewall of china"); we seriously need some better way to track foreign twitter trends :/

Anyway, sorry, maybe tomorrow when I have more time, I can be of more help.

@OGW: Obviously there needs to be some sort of new strategy discovered for researching foreign-language memes, as many of the standard methods don't work so well. I have a great deal of newfound respect for all your work on Chinese memes (Which says a lot since I was already highly impressed)!

@ DS: While I tend to avoid vulgarity, so long as it's already out there… פתיתים must be pretty good if it's second only to pussy. &troll;

Grrr… Automated Hebrew-to-English translation sucks. This blog post seems to be giving pointers for new users of טוויטר (Twitter), and I can tell that running it through Google translate is giving me a lot of meaningless garbage.

One point in particular is that section dalet mentions "מימים", which translates to "days", but I'm pretty sure the writer meant "memes"*. Could one of the Hebrew speakers give me proper translation of these key terms:

"הפיד" – translated "torch", does it mean "feed"?
"וואינט " – untranslated
"צייצנים" – untranslated
"ריטווטים" – untranslated, does it mean "retweets"?

*Google translates section dalet like so
Wed. Days – the meme – a trend squeaks topic. It is unclear who starts the water, but a utopian world he probably would have received on this salary. For more information use the search bar and look for Section 6: "stalker who left", "Soviet Russia" and "people that" (to kill, by the way).

Original:
ד. מימים – meme – טרנד ציוצים בנושא מסויים. לא ברור מי מתחיל את המִים, אבל בעולם אוטופי הוא בטח היה מקבל על זה משכורת. לפרטים נוספים השתמשו בשורת החיפוש מסעיף 6 וחפשו: "לעוקב שעזב", "ברוסיה הסובייטית" ו"אנשים ש" (צריך להרוג, by the way).

My suspected correct translation:
5. Memes ("meme") – a trendy tweet topic. It is unknown who invented a meme, but in a perfect world, that person would be receiving royalties for it. To find out more, use the search bar and look for "To the follower who left:", "In Soviet Russia…" and "People who…" (…we have to kill, by the way)

Wow, these are understandably incredibly difficult to translate, but this Tweeter sums it up well when she says In Soviet Russia, memes make Twitter! I wonder if a note should be added to the "In Soviet Russia…" article? I get the impression that this meme is far more popular in Israel than it is here.

Original:
ד. מימים – meme – טרנד ציוצים בנושא מסויים. לא ברור מי מתחיל את המִים, אבל בעולם אוטופי הוא בטח היה מקבל על זה משכורת. לפרטים נוספים השתמשו בשורת החיפוש מסעיף 6 וחפשו: “לעוקב שעזב”, “ברוסיה הסובייטית” ו"אנשים ש" (צריך להרוג, by the way).

this is a bit word fucked but the translation would roughtly be :

a tweeting trend on a certain topic. it is unclear who starts the meme,but in a Utopia world he must be getting paid a salary witch a "per-meme" commission.
for more detail use the search function from part 6 and look for:
"to the follower that left","in soviet russia" and "people who"(need to be killed).

people who need to be killed is another popular meme in isreal.

also-

“הפיד” – the feed. (the letter ה in front of a word means "the")
“וואינט " – Ynet,a popular news website run by a major news network.
“צייצנים” – twitters,people who use twitter.
“ריטווטים” – retweets.

סיכום השנה בטוויטר: 1. פות 2. פתיתים 3. לעוקב שעזב 4. טרוסטורי 5. חבר שואל 6. מין 7. חמין 8. ללאמין 9. רוביזובי 10. המרכז

i looked into some of these…
some of them are still a mystery to me but…

4- its the phrase "true story" written as one word in Hebrew letters (trustory)
and is added to tweets with a boring and overly mundane topic.
example:
"i have no yogurt in my fridge. #trustory."

5- "a friend asks" is referencing and advice column run on the website "nana10".
where readers would ask things and add: "a friend of mine is asking" as if it's not their question.
and the columnist would in turn mock them.
it is now used in Israeli twitter ass a suffix to a question.
example:
"am i going to fail my math test ?.a friend asks"

9- "lelomin" a combination of the words "lelo" and "min",meaning "without sex".
added to any tweet that can be interpreted sexually,and some that can't.
example:
"my knees hurt… #lelomin"
or:
"i'm going to the mall #lelomin"

… rubizubi is a some guy on "flix"… a kind humor video website in Israel.
ill look at it later.

@Brucker
מים / מימים = meme / memes
צייצן = Twitter
וואינט = Ynet, A popular online news website in Israel.
tl;dr, make a list of stuff you want me to translate

bullshit update.
the video noy aloosh posted on youtube,of "big brother" contestant "Jacky". (possibly the dumbest person in the country.) in remix form ! mind you !
has now been shown on two television programs.

here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zHpN-9X_8c

the song is called:
התחת שלי במים- my ass is in the water.

>DarkSpaWn
Well, Jack is now Israel's celebrity, he made his own catchphrases from parody shows and such.
He has been shown on more TV shows though.
He was on The Big Brother (the origin), both channel 10 and channel 2 (the 2 major news channels in israel) on their news program. On channel's 2 Erets Nehedert (A parody show).

I'm curious, does "מימים" sound as goofy to native speakers as it does to me, because it sounds pretty goofy.

>Brucker
Well, you pronounce it as "meemeem", And it does sound a bit dumb, so people mosltly say "memes" (just like in english).
Also, 1 מים (meem), many מימים (memes).

>My ass Underwater
Well, I've asked some freinds in school about this phenomenon (I don't watch the Big Brother very often ^^") and some of them said they heard it on the radio a few times, and as I said before, at the news. It's getting REALLY popular REALLY fast, mainly not on the internet.

yeah,it does.
we still don't have our own word for it…
although,my guess is that it'll stay "מימים".

as you've seen already,here in Israel it's funny to incorrectly turn English words into Hebrew ones.

It doesn't really translate that well.
wall of shame