OBEY
| OBEY |
|---|
| Original YTMND: |
| OBEY Nixon |
|
| by spotz |
| March 30, 2006 |
| Worthy Spinoffs: |
|
The OBEY ... fad began with Spotz YTMND OBEY nixon. The original OBEY YTMND consisted of a tiled image of a cel-shaded Richard Nixon superimposed upon a video monitor with an adolescent staring into the monitor. It is accompanied by a short sound clip from Marilyn Manson's Rock is Dead, specifically the quote "God is in the TV."
YTMND Characteristics
OBEY sites usually have the original image with Nixon replaced, with another celebrity or character appearing on the screen. This person demand something out of the viewer, both of the monitor and of the site itself(the thing demanded is typically a five-star vote). Usually the character in question is photoshopped to appear more menacing or frightening (in order to force you to obey). There is hardly any similarity between audio tracks featured, though the most common song choice is "Shinra Building Inc." from Final Fantasy VII.
Journey to Fad Status and, Ultimately, to Death
The weekend after the first OBEY site "OBEY Nixon" was created, it was featured on the infamous The Price is LOL forums, and the YTMND was quickly transformed into a forced fad. This sudden explosion of popularity saw the creation of many spinoffs, including many YTMND heavy-hitters including Jean-Luc Picard, Donald Rumsfeld and Sean Connery.
The fad was quickly met with massive criticism. Somes users wanted to know "how is a man staring at a random computer image funny?". The fad was so detested, even anti-OBEY sites with little effort picked up high scores. A rather huge amount of OBEY sites generated ratings less than 3.00. Just like most forced-fads, it quickly died out, and on June 11th, user TheSlacker created a site announcing that OBEY had been put to rest, with the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark edited so the contents of the crate read 'YTMND FAD:OBEY'.
