Hipster Mermaid / Hipster Ariel
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About
Hipster Ariel (a.k.a Hipster Mermaid) is an Advice Animal image macro series featuring a screenshot of Ariel from Disney's 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid and a superimposed caption poking fun at hipsterisms, in similar vein to Hipster Kitty.
Origin
The original image comes from the 1989 Disney animated film The Little Mermaid[10], which was based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Blogger Braden Graeber[1] is credited as the creator of Hipster Mermaid on the F Yeah Hipster Ariel Tumblr[2], where the earliest known instance was posted on February 2nd, 2011.
Hi, my name's Braden. A little over a week ago. I photoshopped raybans on ariel and posted it as my facebook profile picture (I have red hair and wear raybans) and onto my tumblr. I posted a few more versions with all-caps Helvetica captions. The rest is meme history…
Graeber also operates related social media accounts like Twitter[3] and Facebook[4] pages for "Hipster Mermaid" macros.
Spread
From Tumblr, the image macro series quickly spread elsewhere in February 2011, getting picked up by social media aggregators like Reddit[5], BuzzFeed[6] and MemeBase[7] as well as image generator sites like MemeGenerator[8] and Quickmeme[9]. The series was also highlighted by a number of news sites and daily blogs such as Time Magazine[11] and New York Magazine[12] and Urlesque[13].
Although the captions shared some overlap with previous Hipster Kitty image macros, Ariel's iconic image struck a chord with the Internet's childhood nostalgia. Its popularity soon surpassed that of the former series and went on to inspire a number of other hipster Disney characters spin-offs.
Notable Instances
Cosplayers
Template
Search Interest
External References
[1] Tumblr (via Wayback Machine) – Braden Graeber
[2] Tumblr – F Yeah Hipster Ariel first post on 2/2/2011
[3] Twitter – @HipsterMermaid Twitter account created on 2/8/2011
[4] Facebook – Little Hipster Mermaid
[5] Reddit – AdviceAnimals Subreddit Post on 2/6/2011
[6] BuzzFeed – The Best of Hipster Little Mermaid on 2/8/2011
[7] MemeBase (via Wayback Machine) – Go Cry Emo Kid: Hipster Ariel
[8] MemeGenerator – Hipster Mermaid
[9] QuickMeme – Hipster Mermaid
[10] Wikipedia – The Little Mermaid
[11] Time Newsfeed – Hipster Ariel Meme Was on Tumblr Before You Were
[12] New York Magazine – See The Little Mermaid Reinvented As a Snarky Hipster
[13] Urlesque – I Liked Hipster Ariel Before She Was Mainstream
