Wednesday, February 27, 2013

"Gingers Do Have Souls" Meme

Paul Bosco



The YouTube video “Gingers do have souls” was first released on January 14th 2010.  Michael Copper, the subject, discusses being redheaded and how it is the cause of bullying at his school.  Most of it is directed at him, and he’s “sick and tired of it.”  The main topic that these bullies choose to say is that gingers don’t have souls.  The saying that gingers don’t have souls comes from the crass TV series, South Park.  There is an episode, which aired back in November of 2005 that makes fun of the redheaded folk and claims they have no souls.  Within the first month the video had 3.1 million views and over 600 comments.  Today, 3 years later, the video has 32, 686, 323 views and over 650, 000 comments on YouTube.  The reason that this video is so funny is due to a couple things.  Firstly, he persists that he does indeed have a soul because he’s Christian is weird.  Copper obviously did not understand that it was intended to be a joke and so his obstinate denial is funny.  It is unfortunate that he felt as if he was actually being bullied.  I personally think it’s funny because it’s funny when people “lose it” on camera.
There have been many remixes of the video made to poke fun at him.  One video was made by his “parents,” apologizing for their son’s rant, but in fact it is just another spoof.  There have been a variety of songs made with his lines and spoofs created, but the most famous is the response of South Park.  They made a spoof that had the character Eric Cartman, who is the most outspoken against gingers, dressed as a ginger making the same speech as Michael Copper.  Below are the links to watch the original video, the one by his “parents” and the South Park edition.





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