About

Ryan Gosling is a Canadian film actor who is known online for being the subject of several image macro series. These often involve photos of Gosling with a caption that begins with "Hey girl…"

Online History

Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling

In December 2008, Gosling became the subject of single-topic Tumblr Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling, run by Douglas Reinhardt.^[5] The first two posts were uncaptioned photos of the actor before the first "Hey girl" post^[4] on December 19th, 2008. The original Tumblr blog was first featured on Jezebel^[6] in January 2009.

2010 MTV Interview

The Ryan Gosling Tumblr meme did not take off until December 2010 when Gosling was asked to read several captions from image macros in an MTV^[7] interview. That month, both the interview and links to the site were featured on NY Magazine's Vulture^[8], Perez Hilton^[9], Nerve^[10], Buzzfeed^[11], and the Washington Post.^[12] In July 2011^[13], MTV After Hours did a second interview with Gosling in which he read more instances of the image macro out loud.

Ryan Gosling Tumblr Blogs

The first derivative blog, Feminist Ryan Gosling^[14], were created in October 2011. It was highlighted on the Huffington Post^[15], Feministing^[16] and TIME NewsFeed.^[17] Over the next two months, a considerable number of spin-off single topic Tumblrs were created, covering a wide variety of academic and topical subjects including typography, film studies, medieval history, Shakespearean literature, biostatistics, feminism, international development and political science among others. The lists of these were compiled by Buzzfeed^[22], the HIP Genius blog^[23], the Social Times^[24], Read Write Web^[25] in December 2011. The Daily Dot started the single topic Tumblr Gosblr^[26] to compile links to Ryan Gosling themed blogs.

Feminist Ryan Gosling[14]	Typographer Ryan Gosling[19]	Ryan Gosling, Disneyland, Cats[20]
Silicon Valley Ryan Gosling[32]	Shakespearean Ryan Gosling[33]	Hey girl. I like the library too.[31]

Ryan Gosling Easter Egg Hunt

On April 8th, New York-based copywriter Jenna Livingston launched the Twitter feed @GoslingEaster^[38], which revealed clues to the location of 200 plastic Easter eggs filled with notes and photos allegedly written by Gosling and planted throughout Manhattan. Later, it was revealed that Gosling had no involvement with the Easter Egg hunt.

Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal

On April 22nd, 2013, Vine user Ryan McHenry^[39] began uploading a series of videos titled Ryan Gosling Won't Eat His Cereal, pairing various screen projections of Gosling's intense acting scenes with a slowly approaching spoon full of cereal. On May 6th, McHenry's parody clips were first picked up on the actor's fan blog Gosloving^[40], followed by BuzzFeed's compilation coverage^[41] on May 9th. On the next day, dozens of other entertainment news outlets including Gawker, Vulture, E! Online, Daily Mail and The Sun featured McHenry's Vine clips, with many hailing it as one of the more notable memes yet to emerge from the platform.

Ryan Gosling Bookmarklet

On August 6th, 2013, Brooklyn-based web developer Katherine Champagne released "Hey Girl,"^[43] a Chrome bookmarklet app that replaces all images in a webpage with photographs of Ryan Gosling.^[44]

click through to download the bookmarklet

Personal Life

Ryan Gosling was born on November 12th, 1980 in Ontario.^[2] He began his television career in 1993 as a cast member on the Mickey Mouse Club^[3] before moving on to independent films, followed by major motion pictures. In 2004, Gosling garnered mainstream attention after appearing in the romantic film The Notebook.^[34] He plays piano and guitar in the indie rock band Dead Man's Bones^[35] and supports charities including PETA^[36] and Invisible Children.^[37]

Pregnancy News

On July 9th, 2014, American tabloid magazine OkMagazine^[45]published a post titled “OK! Breaking News: Eva Mendes is Pregnant with Ryan Gosling’s Baby!,” which alleged actress Eva Mendes is seven months pregnant and Gosling is the father, citing an unnamed source. Several celebrity gossip sites including E!Online^[46]and Access Hollywood^[47] covered the rumor that day, backing up the story with their own unnamed sources close to the couple; however, neither of the actors and their publicists have yet to confirm the report.

Fan Reactions

Meanwhile on Twitter, the fans of Ryan Gosling expressed their sadness over the news of Gosling’s possible impending fatherhood, which would put the actor off the list of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors. On July 9th, several sites featured roundups of these reaction tweets including Mashable^[48] and Buzzfeed.^[49]

Also on July 9th, Ellen DeGeneres tweeted^[50] a congratulations to Gosling and Mendes. Several websites speculated that this might confirm the pregnancy, including CeleBuzz^[51] and Mirror.^[52]

Fatherhood

On September 12th, Mendes and Gosling's daughter was born. On September 16th, the celebrity news blog Us Weekly^[59] was the first source to report the birth of their daughter but did not provide many details, including the child's name. On the same day, the entertainment news blog Bustle^[53] introduced an image macro series titled "Good Father Ryan Gosling," featuring photographs of Gosling captioned with fatherly advice directed toward his new daughter (shown below).

Also on September 16th, the Ryan Gosling's Baby Twitter^[54] feed was launched, featuring tweets written from the perspective of the actor's newborn child. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the novelty account, including The New Zealand Herland,^[55] The Sydney Morning Herald,^[56] Celebrity Fix^[57] and In Touch.^[58]

Search Interest

Search for Ryan Gosling coupled with the phrase "hey girl" had two small bumps in March and June of 2009. Search volume picked up in December 2010 and again in July 2011, coinciding with the two MTV interviews where Gosling read instances of the image macro aloud for MTV.

External References