The Word of NEDM
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Revision as of 01:05, 7 September 2006
Praise Be the Word of the blessed NEDM! For some basic background, we, the Followers of NEDM, have taken a page from the YTMND wiki.
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NEDM, acronym for Not Even Doom Music, is a YTMND fad inspired in response to a YTMND site depicting animal cruelty. NEDM sites typically feature imagery of cats and/or chapstick, accompanied by the sound of the letters "N, E, D, M" (as spoken by a text-to-speech program), and music from Coburn's "We Interrupt This Programme (Jean Claude Ades remix)".
Background
According to the Template:Ytmnd, "HelterSkelter", a forum user at Ogrish.org posted a link to a video in July 2005, which featured a man setting a live cat on fire. Although Ogrish.com is dedicated to unpleasant and disturbing multimedia, the video struck a nerve with other forum users, and they demanded action be taken against the people behind the video. After tracing the video to a Belgian ISP, Ogrish.com administrators alerted the authorities and Template:W to the situation, and offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. Eventually, the teenager who first uploaded the video was arrested and shortly afterward the man who actually burned the cat turned himself in.
The Happy Cat image featured in many NEDM YTMND's can be originally traced to Happy Cat, a Russian cat food company.
Origin of the Fad
Following the arrests, authorities shut down all possible links to the video on the Internet. However, footage of the burning briefly resurfaced when when a YTMND site was created by user Baron. The site featured images from the video and music from the computer game "Doom". The site was deleted within hours of creation, but not before many YTMND users had voted on it. However, the comments on the original cat-burning YTMND disappeared with its deletion. Outraged that anyone would give Template:***** to a site glorifying cat immolation, user Titanium-Gecko began to downvote all sites created by users who had five-starred the burning kitten YTMND.
The site was upvoted by a number of people. Among them was user Spotz. After noticing that all of his sites had been downvoted by Titanium-Gecko, he explained that he only upvoted the burning kitten YTMND for the "irony of using the Doom bunny music", not because he condoned or approved of the actual burning of the cat as seen in the image. Even though Spotz explained this on one of Titanium-Gecko's Template:Ytmnd, on April 12, 2006 Titanium-Gecko left the now-legendary comment on Spotz's Template:Ytmnd: "Nothing justifies 5'ing burning kittens. Not even Doom music."
Inspired by this altercation, YTMND user moheevi created the Template:Ytmnd using Jean Claude Ades's remix of We Interrupt this Program, followed by several others. At first, NEDM sites simply featured the cryptic letters "NEDM", with no explanation given as to what they meant, such as AwesomeBob's "Template:Ytmnd" Eventually, moheevi created a site using the Template:Ytmnd image, which Stratos-the-Bratos saw and used for the third NEDM Template:Ytmnd. After seeing one of StarOnion's Template:Ytmnd, Moheevi updated the original site to include this picture, with the infamous 'chapstick' quote.
Few people understood the joke behind the NEDM sites until Spotz explained it on the YTMND forums, and revealed the story of the now-deleted burning kitten YTMND, and Titanium-Gecko's one-man crusade against it. Since then, the NEDM fad still remains somewhat misunderstood. The creators of the fad state that it in no way supports animal cruelty. It simply means "Not Even Doom Music can get you a rating of five stars" (because the site is usually bad or random); NEDM can be applied to anything, not only animal cruelty. Because of this, the fad is one of the most varied on YTMND.
Later, Titanium-Gecko then released his own satirical version of the NEDM story, Template:Ytmnd.
Baron has posted a replica of the original Template:Ytmnd complete with the image used and Doom music. In the site's comments, user OmniIcyshelf claims a role in the origin of the fad, but this as yet remains unconfirmed.
Notable Characteristics
- Cats.
- Since the NEDM phrase was coined in reference to cruelty to cats, cats have become a symbol for the fad itself. Although Happy Cat and the shaggy cat from Template:Ytmnd are usually used to represent NEDM, virtually any cat or cat imagery can be used. Some NEDM sites also incorporate an anti-animal cruelty moral into the concept. For example, Template:Ytmnd suggests that the nonsensical NEDM fad itself is divine retribution handed down by cat gods for humanity's sins against mortal cats.
- Chapstick.
- The original YTMND (Template:Ytmnd) contains an image of a firefighter carrying a cat from a burned house, with the firefighter reassuring the cat it wasn't Doom music. He then asked if the cat wanted Chapstick. The Chapstick remark spread into a running gag within the fad.
- The letters N.E.D.M.
- These are usually displayed very prominently somewhere on the site, oftentimes the NEDM logo appears to be featured for its own sake, which is one of the reasons the fad has been so misunderstood.
- We Interrupt This Programme.
- The song most closely associated with the NEDM fad, thanks to Moheevi. The sample from the song is usually preceded by a recording of a text-to-speech program saying the letters "N. E. D. M".
- The Element of Surprise.
- While most NEDM sites are fairly obvious, the NEDM elements are sometimes used to surprise the viewer by suddently revealing the happy cat, in sync with the spoken "NEDM" followed by the music track. For example, Template:Ytmnd starts out as a reference to a different fad, then reveals its NEDM characteristics a few seconds later, as an additional twist.
- "Anything."
- Recently YTMNDs have been popping up in which somebody says "anything". Right after they say "any", they are suddenly interupted by Happycat's face and the "D. M." part of the "N. E. D. M." message. An example is Template:Ytmnd, which also has a double element of surprise to it.
Criticism
Many complain that NEDM is frequently tacked on as a surprise ending to a completely unrelated site. This makes the fad somewhat meaningless, since it could be incorporated into any existing ytmnd for no intelligible reason. The fad sometimes attracts more downvoters than a typical site on the "Up and Coming" list.
Where GF Comes In
The first Disciples of NEDM, members Torpov and -Ghost-, later supported by members Red Menace, SeinfeldRules and others, spread the word of this glorious being to Gaming Forums. This mainly took the form of the thread Ask-A-NEDM, where loyal followers beseeched the great NEDM for bits of His Wisdom. The belief continues to this day, as more and more followers continue to be converted. The Followers of NEDM tend to appear at unexpected moments in order to destabilize other groups and factions within GF, though they are not at war with any particular faction at the moment. Everyone is equal beneath the blessed NEDM. Praise Be!
