UNITINU / UNITIИU

UNITINU / UNITIИU

Updated Apr 05, 2021 at 04:30AM EDT by Y F.

Added Apr 11, 2010 at 10:31AM EDT by aybabtu2010.

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About

UNITIИU (also commonly spelled UNITINU) is a photoshop meme in which each subject has been mirrored to appear rather ridiculous in bilateral symmetry. Since emerging through a mirrored photograph of the former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006, the series has grown into an internet legend surrounding the fictional nation-state of UNITINU..

Origin

The palindromic name "UNITINU" comes from the first known instance of the series, which depicts the former U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice standing with her hand raised at a United Nations Security Council meeting on August 11th, 2006.


ARGENTINA UNITED STATES

The original news photograph was taken in 2006 by Getty Image photographer Stephen Chernin.[1] The image shows a strong and determined Madame Secretary Rice casting a vote on behalf of U.S. government for the passage of UN Resolution 1701[2]. As a result of mirroring, the official plaque of the "United States" was turned into a non-existent palindromic word "UNITINU." The photoshopped image first appeared on 4chan's /b/ (random) board[3] in late 2006.


UNITIMU

Spread

In the following years, symmetrical UNITINU image threads continued to appear on 4chan's various imageboards, resulting in hundreds of mirrored images based on photos of public figures as well as popular videogame and anime characters. Some of the more notable threads appeared on /a/ (anime) board[12] in November 2007, /v/ (videogames) board[13][15] in March 2008, /r9k/ (experimental) board[14] in April 2008 and /b/ (random) board[16] in May 2010.

The meme has since spread outside of 4chan imageboards to other online art communities like deviantArt[5], YTMND[6] and Tumblr[11], where similarly mirrored images can be found under the tag "UNITINU." Also in October 2007, a Steam Community group named "UNITINU" was created and a Team Fortress 2 server was launched under the domain name Unitinu.net[10]. The first Urban Dictionary[7] entry for "UNITINU" was submitted in April 2008:

A meme from late 2006, UNITINU refers to "funny" mirrored images. The most notable of these images is a photo of Condoleeza Rice raising her arms and looking like an evil horde dictator, with the word UNITINU in front of her on the podium.

On February 26th, 2009, YouTuber SirMootles posted a video featuring the original instance of Condoleezza Rice set to a theme from the first person role-playing game Final Fantasy VII. A few months later in May, the video was reposted on the flash-animation sharing community Newgrounds[19] by the user UNITINU.



In addition to its presence in media-sharing communities, there are several pages and groups dedicated to the original UNITINU image on Facebook, including "UNITINU"[8] and "OBABO"[9], which have accumulated more than 40 likes and 360 likes respectively (as of April 2012). The symmetric mirroring technique was also turned into a free application available for Mac OS X by Steven Frank[20] in December 2011.


UNITINU File Edit Window UNITINU Center: Flip Mirror

Various Examples

Inspired by the strange mirrored image of Condoleeza Rice, people began building onto the mythology of UNITINU by photoshopping other political leaders and officials representing various nations in the same manner.


THE STUDY GROuP OBAac
BUSQUa

AMITNTINA KHADAHK OSA20

The Nation of UNITINU


U. S UNITIM U MEXIOIXEM HAWAII IIAWAH au S. GUATEM3TAUD UNITIHU THE HOLY EMPIRE OF UNITIMU

Search Interest

External References

[1] LIFE Magazine – Stephen Chernin (Getty Images)

[2] Wikipedia – UN Resolution 1701

[3] 4chanarchive – Search results for UNITINU

[4] 4chanarchive – Search results for UNITIИU

[5] DeviantArt – UNITIИU

[6] YTMND – Search Results for UNITINU

[5] Urban Dictionary – UNITIИU

[8] Facebook – UNITINU

[9] Facebook – OBABO

[10] Unitinu.net – UNITINU

[11] Tumblr – Tagged Results for UNITINU

[12] Chanarchive – UNITIИU & flipped thread on /a/ (252 posts)

[13] Chanarchive – Brawl Goes Unitinu (210 posts)

[14] Chanarchive – Unitinu (90 posts)

[15] Chanarchive – Unitinu (113 posts)

[16] Chanarchive – Mirrored Images (285 posts)

[17] Reddit – Weirdly Funny

[18] Reddit – Mirror Effect

[19] Newgrounds – UNITINU

[20] iTunes App Store – Unitinu

Recent Videos 10 total

Recent Images 619 total



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