GINGERS DO HAVE SOULS (2)

By: Marte Thorkildsen

“Gingers do have souls” is an Internet meme that has its origin from a South Park episode called “Ginger kids” from November 9^th 2005. Eric Carman, one of the characters in South Park, has a presentation in class where he talks about red- headed children. He says a lot of mean stuff, like for example that red- headed children makes people sick in the stomach. He shows some pictures of “ginger kids” and says that they have a disease, called “Gingervitis” which causes freckles, orange hair and light skin, and he says that this disease occurs because ginger kids have no souls.

The link to the South Park video is:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103645/gingervitus

Five years later (January 14^th, 2010), as a reaction of this south park episode, an 18 – year – old boy, name CooperCab uploaded a video called “Gingers do have souls” and posted it on Youtube. CooperCab talks about how he has been bullied at school because of his red hair color. He is upset and very angry, and shares his emotions and frustrations. He uses quotes like “ I` m Ginger, and proud of it”.  He wants to put an end of ginger- discrimination. 

I will post the video here, in case you have not seen it: 

When “Gingers do have souls” was published on YouTube it was many people that watched it.  The video had so much as 3,1 million viewers in the first month. In the period, January 2010 to April 2010 the popularity of the video increased, and was spread all over the Internet in one time. On YouTube we can see that 26 838 967 million people have watched it. People started to make a lot of similar videos where they are acting like CooperCab. It has also been made a lot of remixes, and many hundreds of response videos.  There has also been posted pictures on Internet where people make fun of Coopercab. South Park has even made a parody of CooperCab that they published on their web site. On Facebook it has been created a group called “ National Kick a Ginger Day, are you going to do it”. This group has had over 20000 members at one point. This group does not exist on Facebook anymore. But other groups like anti Kick- a- Ginger- Day, has been created and do exist today. 

I think this video has become so popular because of its origin. South Park is a Tv - show many people watch, and when an episode about “Ginger Kids” was made, most people who watched it knew that it is typical South Park to use a sarcastic method to make things funny. I am pretty sure that the producer of this TV- show did not mean to make anybody upset or to bully some children.  I don’t think anybody expected a reaction as CooperCab had to that episode. The people were surprised over the reaction he had and at the same time it became funny. CooperCab also have some intense movements in the video, and some times you are not quite sure if he is an actor or if everything is real. It is an unusual behavior to look at for the viewers, and we get surprised over things he says and how he acts which makes many people think it is funny.