What is a meme, you may first ask? Well Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, came up with the idea in the late 1970's and stated something like: a meme is to a society what a gene is to a human. Both are an element or unit that can be replicated or passed from one individual to another. During the Internet age memes can be easily shared, replicated or otherwise passed on to another. Recent examples can be found on Gawker. Memes can include piano playing cats, a honey badger, the Call Me Maybe phenomenon and so on. The political campaign in the U.S. helped fuel memes using some of the most unusual statements like, "binders of women" and "you didn't build that." A few memes have staying power but most have a relatively short life span. Gosling's meme related to knitting has been around for some time; so when I again saw another post about him recently, it was time to figure out the origin.
Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Ontario who's breakout role, Duke, came in the 2004 love story, The Notebook. And if you saw this love story, you may or may not have been blown away by Gosling. For much of the movie he wore a full beard and in the end grew up to be James Garner, which in my humble opinion, is not necessarily great on either count. Most women will remember this movie's poster, however.
Moving on to his meme, in 2007 Gosling made another movie called, Lars and the Real Girl, not a great movie, but hey it is where the meme idea relating to knitting began. One of the scenes from that movie had Gosling spend a day shooting with a group of women who knit. Word got out and the meme called Hey Girl began. There are now hundreds of these Hey Girl themed sensitive memes written on photos of the actor. This category of meme has popped up from time to time for years and I didn't totally understanding why knitting was associated with Gosling. Just recently in the February-March 2013 issue of the Australian GQ Gosling said: "I did this scene in ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life. If I had to design my perfect day, that would be it. And you get something out of it at the end. You get a nice present. For someone who wants an oddly shaped, off-putting scarf."
This helps explain why people are adding to or creating a meme about his sensitivity to knitters and knitting. Is this interest in knitting real, tongue in cheek or is Gosling merely going along with the joke? Who knows. At least I'm no longer in the dark about how this meme associated with Gosling began. Since 2007 there have been a ton of them about him, his love for all thing crafting and as I said earlier an entire series called Hey Girl. Here's a few samples for your enjoyment:
If you haven't seen enough check out this Pinterest page; it has hundreds more. So there it is another quirky knitting factoid, or not. Gosling certainly has the meme to suggest it is possible he knits or at a minimum likes knitters. Hey Ryan, Call Me Maybe, and let me know for sure, okay? I am a sensitive knitter, just like you.
Ryan Gosling is a Canadian actor born in Ontario who's breakout role, Duke, came in the 2004 love story, The Notebook. And if you saw this love story, you may or may not have been blown away by Gosling. For much of the movie he wore a full beard and in the end grew up to be James Garner, which in my humble opinion, is not necessarily great on either count. Most women will remember this movie's poster, however.
Moving on to his meme, in 2007 Gosling made another movie called, Lars and the Real Girl, not a great movie, but hey it is where the meme idea relating to knitting began. One of the scenes from that movie had Gosling spend a day shooting with a group of women who knit. Word got out and the meme called Hey Girl began. There are now hundreds of these Hey Girl themed sensitive memes written on photos of the actor. This category of meme has popped up from time to time for years and I didn't totally understanding why knitting was associated with Gosling. Just recently in the February-March 2013 issue of the Australian GQ Gosling said: "I did this scene in ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life. If I had to design my perfect day, that would be it. And you get something out of it at the end. You get a nice present. For someone who wants an oddly shaped, off-putting scarf."
This helps explain why people are adding to or creating a meme about his sensitivity to knitters and knitting. Is this interest in knitting real, tongue in cheek or is Gosling merely going along with the joke? Who knows. At least I'm no longer in the dark about how this meme associated with Gosling began. Since 2007 there have been a ton of them about him, his love for all thing crafting and as I said earlier an entire series called Hey Girl. Here's a few samples for your enjoyment:
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