Noelisme
Added 14 years ago by Tomberry • Updated about a year ago by Tomberry
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| About • Origins • Going Out of the Dark • Aftermath • Noelification of the French Web • Not restricted to the French Web • The Drawball incident • Complementary resources • |
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Tags: smiley forum anonymous jeuxvideo ironic trolling france french non-english
About
Noelisme is a controversial social movement within the French-speaking web responsible for a range of activities ranging from vigilante justice to cyber-bullying; it is sometimes seen as a French internet "gang". Its members, the "Noelistes", use a common vernacular with peculiar meanings having roots in many inside jokes between users.
Noelistes can be viewed as a French juvenile equivalent of Anonymous or even the Chinese renrou sousuo yinqing or "human flesh search engine" in the sense that they have raided websites and blogs, targeting juvenile users that they called "kikoolol", "kikoo" or "pyj".
Origins
The Noeliste movement began on a well-known French video game site called jeuxvideo.com in 2006. The site has a unique, yet old-fashioned forum system that has been reused by some other French gaming websites. There are forums and sub-forums classified by themes and by age; specifically those between ages of 15-35.
On the Bla-Bla 15-18 ans forum (teenagers from 15 to 18 years old), a user named Triplepatte (translated) started using one of the site's many smilies. => 
; a face with a Christmas hat in each of his posts.
As with any community, inside jokes and wordplay were common, and soon the use of this specific smiley grew popular among some users.
It had a precise use. Placed at the end of a sentence, the Santa-hat smiley transforms the sentences' meaning into irony, due to what many perceived as an ironic pairing of a malicious grin with a festive hat.
Soon afterward a French variant of Leetspeak was developed based upon the use of the Santa-hat Smiley.
Many users attracted by this new concept created a movement moving around the timeless use of the smiley. The group soon became known as the Noelisme because of the name for the code used for the smiley => :noel: from Noël, another term for Christmas.
The main features of that brand new group was (and still is) to worship Chuck Norris as a God and to have forums war between them and the ones who used the "Happy" smiley: 
which were called Hapistes (translated)
For roughly two years, use of the :noel: tag remained an inside joke between users.
Going Out of the Dark
In February of 2008, an underground French rapper called Moha Morsay posted a video of one of his songs to Dailymotion:
The lyrics contain a lot of profanity and bravado, with a title that roughly says "We don't give a fuck".
The Noelistes decided to raid this video, commenting on the doubtful "quality" of the video and song. They left strange messages, all signed with the :noel: code.
There were so many :noel: replies that Morsay made a video in response, called Message à "Internet" (Message to the Internet):
In the video, Morsay makes the mistake of calling out his haters, essentially "feeding the trolls." As a result, the comment section quickly filled with replies from Noelistes who also created video responses on both Dailymotion and Youtube.
The most notable response created came from a user called "Doctor Léon" who became something of spearhead for Noelistes.
This "Internet war" between the "Noelistes" (especially "Doctor Leon" who left his anonymous status by posting his video response) and so-called gangsta Morsay was parodied in many videos:
Morsay Roll
Cisla ft. 15-18 ft. Edith Piaf – Allez venay Morsay (special remix)
Aftermath
Following this virtual "war", French internet media portrayed Noelistes in a negative light, accusing them of racism and cyberbullying. Because the Noelistes were quickly gaining attention from a mainstream media that did not fully understand them, many articles (translated) began to appear that raised questions about whether Noelisme was a sect, a religion, or a fascist group.
A Noeliste "political party" blog was created, which serves as a satire contributing to the inside jokes:
http://partinoeliste.blogspace.fr/1/
Noelification of the French Web
Jumping on the increasing popularity, some Noelistes created "Noël" parodies of famous websites, such as:
- Noelshack version of Imageshack
- Noelfic a fanfiction site.
- Noelbook parody of Facebook
- Noelpedia parody of Wikipedia
- Noelswf a parody of Pown it
Not restricted to the French Web
In February of 2009, one member of the Noelisme hacked the front page of the US army website (translated).
This action has been covered by some other websites as well.
The Drawball incident
On June 5th 2010, the noelistes raided the drawball website in an attempt to draw a giant santa hat-faced smiley on it, while some anonymous were trying to draw a pedobear. Their "victory" was taken on screenshot, and granted them to have it covered by Encyclopedia Dramatica :
Soon after that, bucked up by their successful takover, and according to ED :
they started flooding /b/, making dumb topics, attempting to troll and insulting 4chan with pictures.
It inevitably provoked 4chan's retaliation.
First on Drawball, the 8th of June, when they tried to draw the 4chan's 4-leafed clover, which eventually got overcome, a second time, by a drawing of the French flag :
Anonymous then proceeded to organize a flood raid against jeuxvideo.com forums, starting around the 6th of June, as a result.
That event, as well as jeuxvideo.com mods' reaction to it, was parodied in the following youtube video. (embedding deactivated)
It remains unclear if 4chan was the real instigator on that raid, as jeuxvideo.com mods assert it came from within their website.
Here is a screenshot from that incident, dating from the 9th of June :
The Drawball war lasted until the 13th of June with 3 other drawing attempts :
- A pokeball drawing to cover an anonymous' slowpoke drawing
- A successful "happy face" drawing, representing the hapistes
- An Eiffel tower drawing
All of the things concerning that Drawball war itself can be read on the ED's article dealing with those events.
Complementary resources
- http://www.come4news.com/nouvelle-secte-internet-le-noelisme-528043
- http://mew-mew-power.forumactif.fr/la-salle-de-discussion-f5/le-noelisme-by-smf-t486.htm
- http://ahokay.magix.net/website/
- http://www.abstrait-concret.com/2009/08/04/les-noelistes-incarnation-numerique-dun-pan-ladolescence-francaise/
- Detailed lexicon
Entry Editors ( 4 )
Recent Videos ( 3 )
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VINCENEIL REPOND A MORSAY & JEAN ARMAND NOUVEAU CLASH !!!!!
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Roulroul répond à Morsay.
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Quand Morsay rencontre Doctor Leon !
Comments ( 57 )
So, you just HAPPENED to be on the forums when this became "a phenomenon"? Seems suspicious.
I checked google trends, it was dead almost before it started.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=noelisme&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
I never happened to be on that forums when it came to life.
Actually, I've been confronted to this "phenomenon" for some time, but from a distance.
Others French "nerds" groups are talking about it, not in a very nice way though. Several websites proposed guides to understand this sub-forum culture.
Moreover, the members of that community became more popular for their actions than the community itself, hence the difference between "Noelisme" and "Noeliste" in google trends.
"Noeliste" Was less searched then Noelisme and is decreasing fast. Also;
tl:dr
The GAME, Taryn, THE GAME !
This is pretty interesting stuff.
I think it's worth documenting.
long article is looonnnng.
I'm not sure what to do with this article.
Is there anything that can be added or something?
It looks confirmable but I know very little about memes from France.
I don't have anything to add.
But I hoped that someone that heard about it would come up and add something… anything.
Any French speaking country, like Belgium, Switzerland or Quebec could have, at one time or another, be in touch with this thing.
Sshhh Québec isn't a country!
Don't give them any ideas!
Oh, I kid la belle province.
Well I'm a member of jeuxvideo.com and Noelisme is anh pretty large gang and when noeliste begin to appear on Forums it may mean that theyre launching an invasion and may cause the death of the forum.
They alos like to cyberbully yougner people that they call ''kikoo'' or''pyj''
I cleaned up the article a bit.
I can't make something less longer than that though.
Maybe can you speak about the increasing number of websites with noel in their names, made by some noelistes and made for the jeuxvideo.com users :
_noelshack (for image hosting)
_noelfic (for keeping good fictions)
_noelswf (a french clone of "pown it")
_noelflash (like noelswf but even coming before it just have failed)
_noelbook (a clone of facebook)
_noelpedia (a wiki)
…
Oh, you have posted too many useless videos, maybe should you replace them with that :
http://www.noelswf.info/149.html
Whoa, Merci l'ami.
There, it must be quasi-complete now.
T'as faut une faute, ça vient pas de "jeuxvideos.com" mais de "jeuxvideo.com", faut enlever le s.
Voilà, grammar nazi.
Pas faux :p
Je sais pas si ça vaut le coup de caser celle-là aussi :
http://noelswf.info/222.html
Thank you very much for the big clean up on it Brad and Chris !
I added more links, hoping that it’s more complete that way.
I'm lurking a lot on french forums (after all it's my mother language), and I can say the noelisme is by far the biggest French internet phenomenon ever created.
These are (unofficial) stats of jeuxvideo.com : http://jvstats.forum-stats.org/stats/1/
You can see that :noel: is by far the first smiley used :-)
And you forgot "Allay venay Morsay" which is nice I think
Les Hapistes > Noelistes
Onche onche :hap:
Pyj is the abreviation for pyjama, means they're still wearing one, also used in video games because of their voices. kikoolol or kikoulol could be translated by heylol or hilol, those people are also refered as Kevin, surely in reference to Kevin Thompson in the animated serie Daria, who's very stupid. Boulet (drag) can also be used to name them as they can't do anything by themselves except when it's not usefull.
You forgot to mention that Noelisme is part of the far-right political party. They have been joined by some racists and nationalists.
Just write down "Noelisme extreme-droite" on Dailymotion (even on google) and check this out.
So… how long until someone starts shooping a red hat onto the Awesomeface and spreads nöelisme to the English-speaking web?
I am gonna start a war between these two great powers of anon, and noel.
just added a game about Morsay
peace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5rhk8a7loI
so French anons?
Not really. French Anons exist already, on an imageboard called "Underfoule" (not counting French anons visiting other chans). Noelistes are a younger version of anons, if anything.
Not a meme at all, it's only another pointless crap made in a french video-games forum and it only stays into this forum.
I don't see this stuff anywhere else, and nobody here seems to care about that, so I can tell you this "phenomenon" is something like the cancer killing this database.
People who are nicely commenting on this are mostly french, and almost of them are just fanboys of this stuff.
This doesn't have a place on this website because :
- Seriously, no one cares about it.
- This is not funny at all.
- Call me if one day you see this shit on /b/.
- They've created nothing, the "noel" smiley was taken from their own forum, they don't even own it.
- They are taking a lot of known memes as Pedobear, pretending they've made that themselves.
- This is not a meme, just a ridiculous phenomenon.
- This crap is even not on EncyclopediaDramatica.
- What the fuck is this doing here ?
And I'm sure lot of people would agree.
Bye.
aw, we made the Lil /b/tard mad…
Not mad, just telling truth.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Forced_Meme
If you weren’t coming back to try to troll some more, I probably wouldn’t have answered but I love to feed trolls :
- No one care about the reproduction process of the North Artican penguins but it exists anyway.
- You can laugh at everything, but not with everyone.
- I have witnessed some French threads on /b/ (the ones usually made of “omelette du fromage” and “GTFO French pussies”) containing :noel: things.
- They aren’t original, that’s for sure, but what about Noelpedia ? Noelhack ? Noelswf ? Noelbook ? Noelfic ? The US Army front page hack ? The Morsay raids ? That’s not “nothing” in my list.
- Yeah, they took pedobear, Chuck Norris, an already existing smiley. So what ? They transformed it into something else.
- Project Chanology/Party hard was also a ridiculous phenomenon considered a failure by many so-called oldfags. Is there a difference ?
- The Invisible Pink Unicorn isn’t on Encyclopedia Dramatica. ‘Nuff said ? It’s not a “complete” archive for all kinds of memes, just a satirical wiki-like with many members putting their two penn’orth.
- What the fuck is this doing here ? Are you blind ? It’s a meme. Simple as that.
And I’m sure a lot of people would agree too. So farewell charmant jeune homme tas de bois verdoyant.
Served.
Excuse me ? Trolling ?
It's called giving an opinion about something.
By reading your reply, I'd like to know what you're actually doing if my comment was a troll, you wrote it the same way I did with the "-", and giving your best to argue with it.
Well, let me DO your food delivery attempt :
- Yeah, I don't care but I wasn't talking about it, you're trying to go elsewhere to find something to say about that LOL.
- Well, I believe it's normal to laugh at something that's funny, but I don't give a crap about that, if these guys laugh everyday when they see a resized smiley, it's their problem, not mine.
- Yeah, some FRENCH threads, it's not international.
- They aren’t original, that’s for sure, but what about Noelpedia ? Noelhack ? Noelswf ? Noelbook ? Noelfic ? The US Army front page hack ? The Morsay raids ? That’s not “nothing” in my list.
- Alright, you've got a point for the US Army front page hack and the Morsay raids. But there's a difference between "made" and "re-made", noelpedia took from wikipedia,…
- I didn't understand that one well, Pedobear stayed Pedobear, same pic, okay you have another point.
- Yeah, but there are a lot of people around the world accessing these boards. There are only frenchs in 15-18.
- Invisible Pink Unicorn looks like a rip-off from FSM, but that's not the topic.
- had to cut in two parts, but here's the most interesting one -
I'm still asking the question "What the fuck is this doing here?", because it's very weird. When I read the comments from the beginning, it really seems that you, Mr Entry Moderator noeliste, abused your powers by confirming this entry yourself immediately, then it's a Forced Meme for me, looks like you've created the entry yourself then confirmed it in the next second.
You can correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just telling what I think, I see no comment containing a "confirm" or "deadpool" message, and I don't understand why this entry should be treated with a higher priority than some others that were funny but gone in deadpool.
A meme's first goal isn't to be "funny", it's to replicate.
When i said that I saw some "French threads", that was to point at the "no 4chan threads" claim. 4chan isn't the only place where memes are emerging.
There are Facebook groups and Youtube comments filled with the :noel: code, among other places.
The parodies of websites that are Noelpedia and co. ARE creations. Even if they are parodies, they are here, they are present on the web, the French web.
Memes aren't reserved to the Engish-speaking web. Japan has memes, China has memes, Korea has memes, Brazil has memes. Yeah, France has some too.
And for what you said about the Invisible Pink Unicorn, it was created in the 1990s and the first websites dedicated to it were at least created in 2001. Talking about a FSM rip-off, considering FSM appeared in 2006 ?
Now, for the "I'm a Noeliste" claim. I don't like them, I think they are self-deceiving to some extends, but this isn't a phenomenon to be left out.
Finally, the one who confirmed this entry (after 8 months of it being in submission and being filled in with information and datas) was Brad Kim, not me.
Brad Kim, are you a Noeliste ?
A "kikoolol" is some1 wu talk liek dat lulz roflmao.
And here's a french article about "kevins" http://desencyclopedie.wikia.com/wiki/Kevin
I'd love to see a fight between these and Anon.
Recently on drawball 4chan users were drawing a pedobear, then French guys came up and drew a :noel:. Thus I can upload many pictures for this page.
HOLY SHIT THE FRENCH BEAT THE AMERICANS AT SOMETHING!!!! THE WORD IS GOING TO END!!!! WHHHY!!!!
It almost happened. Following the drawball "win", some Noelistes planned to flood 4chan /b/ (yeah, I know..). The ones who got on /b/ recently may have noticed that there was an unusual amount of French thread in the past few days.
In retaliation, some people flooded the jeuxvideos.com forums and making it a mess, leading the mods to react, create a topic basically saying : "The flood was made by one French Anon. Please, don't talk about it and /b/ or you will get kicked/banned !" and that's about it.
I don't know if it's relevant to add all of this in an already wall of text-like article, but I can search a little more if necessary.
Hmm… It seems like a war is coming between the French noelisme(who always lose; cause they're French) and Anon. Maybe we could get some coverage on this?
I saw the drawball Noeliste incident. I was kind of amazed to see Noeliste action happening in /b/. This is something worth following and documenting when you see it.
During the story there were many pictures about noel, for example anon and noel doing peace, and I lost them :(
There, I could have edited the article to add the Drawball incident.
Well, noelisme certainly doesn't "stack" to the 15/18 part of "jeuxvideo.com". I, as a moderator on another french forum, am often confronted with them. Presentations with a lot of noël smiley are pretty common for instance.
Oh, and I think that article should change a few things about the "racisme noeliste". It is not just a media stigmatisation, it is sort of a reality. The number of racist threads on the 15/18 is quite astonishing and, if I don't claim that it is an integrant part of the phenomenon, which would be quite stupid in my opinion, it sure is widespread enough not to call it a mere media flaming.
BTW please Linaxys explain me what is a meme to you. Is it an american exclusive \b\ little delirium (I like memes and some parts of the internet culture but I happen to find 4chan quite ridiculous)? Is it supposed to be original? (A lot of 4Chan meme aren't original to my opinion but well) does that have to be on the EncyclopediaDramatica (Which is certainly not a reference)? Angry frenchfag around here.
:noel: vaincra mes frayres !
i dunno, just got one thing to say here.
Merry Christmas!
If Anon and Noelisme got into a fight, it's the "French Indian" war all over again… except Noelisme (The French) would win.
An ancient entry has awoken.
Any news about what Noelism has achieved in the past year? Any updates worth having?
Hello, I am what you call a Noeliste ( sort of … I'll explain that. )
There is many, many, many things that happened except Morsay …
But this article shouldn't be named "Noelisme" it should be "15 18" Noelisme was the principal movement of the 15 18 some years ago, but it's over now, Noelisme is kinda dead … There is also the Hapiste movement in the 15 18 … But it isn't really alive as well.
Still, the smileys :hap: and :noel: are a very strong symbol of our community
On the other hand, the 15 18 still exist, and the spirit of Noel has incarnated into many mind, we still pwn some people through the internet, we still play ARG, we still raid youtube and drawball, we still troll each others, we still hack website, we still fake death of famous people, we still bully people etc etc …
To be honest, sometime, it's a little bit stupid ( more like very stupid ) but heh, many people kinda deserve it though.
I will contact the 15 18, we have to recreate all those pages, there is many things to say.
Noel pue la merde
:hap: est beau
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