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| Specialized website community/internet fad and meme website
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| Max Goldberg/YTMND, Inc.
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| Max Goldberg
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YTMND, an acronym for "You're The Man Now Dog!", is a websitecommunity that is centered around the creation of hosted web pages featuring a juxtaposition of a single image or a simple slideshow, which can be animated and/or tiled, along with optional large zooming text, and a looping sound file. Most of these images are created or edited by users. Most YTMNDs are meant to expose or reflect the more inane facets of pop culture.
A present-day screenshot of yourethemannowdog.com.
YTMND originated in 2001 from Max Goldberg's original website, "yourethemannowdog.com", which he registered along with "dustindiamond.com" after seeing a trailer for the movie Finding Forrester. Originally, the website featured the text "YOURE THE MAN NOW DOG DOT COM" drawn out in 3Dascii text with no sound. The advent of scrolling text currently on the website was seen in 2002, where the website also featured a photograph of Sean Connery and a sound loop from Finding Forrester reciting the phrase "you're the man now, dog!" Goldberg's new creation inspired others to make similar sites with other movie and television quotations (or any other sound clip they wished to use). At first, Goldberg maintained a list and mirror of these sites, but the list soon became exceptionally long.
In 2004, Goldberg wrote a press release after winning a lawsuit filed by Dustin Diamond for the "fan page" at the aforementioned dustindiamond.com. He mentioned yourethemannowdog.com, as well as a new website, YTMND, that would be ready by April 10. The website opened that day after rushing through the coding and design process. The site caught on in popularity and became an Internet phenomenon when major weblogs began linking to the Picard Song (picard.ytmnd.com) YTMND.
The "star" YTMND logo, which is used by default on user created sites (Can be changed to the original '#!' in User Preferences).
When YTMND first opened, newly created YTMNDs were unmoderated and therefore a certain portion of them were highly offensive. The website's forums were shut down on October 14, 2004, after Max Goldberg banned its chief users. Goldberg cited tension between himself and the website's host as his reasoning for the closure. The site as a whole was closed in December, 2004 when Goldberg forwarded the site to yourethemannowdog.com without notice.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
The site was briefly reopened in January, 2005, and then in late March, 2005, it relaunched with a number of new features, including moderation of YTMNDs. YTMNDs deemed "not safe for work" were placed on www.ytmnsfw.com (YTMNSFW). In addition, the site's forums were resurrected soon after the relaunch.[[Citing sources citation needed]] In November 2005, YTMND featured a new appearance as well as new features, including a comment management system and new lists for the main page.
On November 25, 2005, YTMND relaunched on new servers with an entirely redesigned layout. Updates included user names replacing numbers in each YTMND's URL, faster caching, and new content boxes. A feature debuted soon after allowing users to donate money in exchange for increased exposure of their YTMNDs through the main site.
Controversy
Conflict with eBaum's World
In January 2006, eBaum's World hosted and watermarked a Lindsay Lohanmontage created by YTMND user SpliceVW without crediting either SpliceVW or YTMND. In response to their actions, users from YTMND joined users from other Internet communities, namely Something Awful, LUElinks, Newgrounds, 4chan, FARK, Ugoplayer (Flashplayer.com), Weebls-Stuff, and IGN, launching the website EbaumsWorldSucks.com. However, some of the people in this collective decided to attack the forums on eBaum's World, using spam posting and DoS to repeatedly crash them.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
The attacks began shortly after 11:00 P.M. EST on January 7, 2006 and ended on January 10, 2006.[[Citing sources citation needed]] Max Goldberg, denounced the attacks; he stated that they had "really crossed the line" and were a "vulgar display of power." He later stated that any YTMND member whose site promoted attacks would have his or her account deleted. Goldberg elaborated by saying that the recent conflict had placed both himself and his hosting company in a negative light.
On January 10, eBaum's World alleged the attacks were a form of cyber-terrorism, and on January 11, Neil Bauman, the executive vice president of eBaum's World, [stated publicly] that arrests were being made in relation to the attacks. Eventually Goldberg and Bauman came to an agreement, with Bauman removing the montage from his website, in return for Goldberg removing any reference to "eBaum" from his website. Despite the resolution of the conflict, both sites experienced DDoS attacks on the morning of January 12, 2006.
Conflicts with the Church of Scientology
On June 10, 2006, a cease and desist form was sent to Max Goldberg by lawyers of the Church of Scientology, claiming that several Scientology based sites had infringed on their copyrights to some Scientology material. In response, Goldberg replied to the lawyer that the cease and desist form was "completely groundless" and he wouldn't be deleting any Scientologist sites. Days later, a Scientology page section had appeared on the front page along with a disclaimer on the bottom stating the following: "This website is in no way affiliated, sponsored or owned by the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, SeaOrg, Dianetics, volcanos or aliens of any sort. We are, however, sponsored by Citizens for the Release of Xenu, a not-for-sanity organization." The Scientology section has since been removed, but the disclaimer at the bottom still remains. According to Max Goldberg, there haven't been any recent updates regarding the potential lawsuit.
Conflicts with LiveJasmin
On June 23, 2006, following a series of YTMNDs requesting performers on the adult website LiveJasmin.com to place objects, especially shoes, on their heads, it was discovered on a message board that the owner of LiveJasmin knew about the fad. A YTMND was created featuring a screenshot of the message, which was a poorly worded legalese threat against YTMND's users, as well as Max Goldberg, made by one the moderators of the forums on behalf of LiveJasmin due to the harassment of performers and copyright infringement. This instigated an influx of YTMND users to the AWE message boards in a "raid" - in short, it did nothing to dissuade YTMND users from asking webcam performers to place shoes and other objects ontop of their heads and instead only inflamed the situation.
In a comment made on a YTMND site featuring a screenshot of LiveJasmin's legal threat, Max Goldberg wrote, "Last I checked, it isn't legal tender to make a cease and desist in the form of a forum post. I can't wait to be sued"
So far, no "shoe-on-head" sites containing the offending material have been deleted by the moderators (although several are said to have been taken down voluntarily by their creators), and no formal legal threat appears to have been received. A few parody sites of the lawyer's threat were posted on the website.
Community
Due to the nature of YTMND's humour, which primarily involves making variations of popular fads, as well as their impulsive nature, the YTMND community is well known for "jumping on the bandwagon." This makes YTMND a strong community, even though communication primarily consists of users voicing their opinion in the comments sections of YTMNDs. For example, users will downvote each other's sites for reasons such as using the preloader, the choice of music, a misspelling in the domain name, or "unoriginality" (although most YTMNDs are spin offs of other fads) .
The community has, on multiple occasions, demonstrated its ability to rise up and unite for a common goal - something which has been seen as both impressive and worrying by people from both within and outside the community. Goldberg used the words "A vulgar display of power" and a member of the AWEmpire.com community stated that "YTMND is powerful and has the potential to fuck folks over big time."
Fads and memes
YTMND features many memes and memetics as a result of intertextuality; where one YTMND makes a reference to another. Series of these similar YTMNDs are referred to as "fads." For example, one YTMND fad, "What is Love?", is based on a scene from Saturday Night Live paired with a repeating loop of Haddaway's What is Love?. Following that, permutations of that page were created, including What is NES?, the same scene set to 8-bit graphics and music. Fads can also be mixed with other fads. One example includes when the "What is Love?" fad was mixed with the "Tiger Handheld" fad to create What is Tiger?, lampooning the Tiger Handheld. Occasionally, a YTMND will be created trying to make as many references to fads as possible; these are generally referred to by the community as "fad conglomerates" or "fad compilations." YTMND's wiki maintains a list of these fads.
The music from popular YTMNDs are regularly published as a series of downloadable albums known as YTMND - The Soundtrack compiled by YTMND user Fyrestorm.
Media exposure
In 2005, Reuters wrote [an article] on Tom Cruise which made a reference to the Tom Cruise Kills Oprah YTMND. The site received further publicity when The Wall Street Journal published an article about YTMND, and mentioned several popular website creations, linking to many of them through their website. The original "Tom Cruise Kills Oprah" video, on which the YTMND is based, was mentioned on Dateline NBC's "The Mank Blog" segment, VH1's show "Web Junk 20", and CBC Newsworld's with George Stroumboulopoulos.
On the February 29, 2006 episode of Attack of the Show!, viewers were asked to "make a kickass YTMND" for the show's "user created" segment. In order for sites to qualify for this YTMND competition, members were required to add "aots" at the beginning of the site's URL.
In March 2006, [Gamerevolution] held a contest for video game-themed YTMNDs. The winner won a PSP as a prize.
In the March, 2006 issue of Stuff Magazine, there is a mention of the original "You're the Man Now Dog" website. YTMND was again mentioned in Stuff Magazine in June 2006 when a link to timetraveler.ytmnd.com was printed.
In May of 2006, Current TV host and producer Max Lugavere was spotted wearing a YTMND T-shirt on the network.
