Purple Barney and Gloomy Bear
p2pnet.net OT news:- I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to post about Barney the Revolting Purple Dinosaur again. But ……
“Every now and then I check my StatCounter to get a rough idea of what’s going where and for the past few weeks, I’ve been noticing one item, an image posted a couple of years ago, is being constantly and consistently grabbed, mostly, but not entirely, by Google,” I said on April 6.
“It’s the Barney pic on the right, and it’s a spoof on Japan’s Mori Chack Gloomy bears.”
One of the reasons I check is because I’m always curious to see how items which seem to me to be important stack up against trivial stuff.
At 1016 today, the top story was #12435, Jared Moya’s File sharing safety guide. Close behind – really close behind – was story 6639, immediately under that was story #11901, and in the 15th spot, #12135.
The latter three items are all related to Bloody Barney and as of 10:35 am Pacific, they’ve had 4,567 views (6639, October 18, 2005); 2,826 views (11901, April 6, 2007); and, 1,532 views (12135, May 4, 2007).
The first post (6639) points to an earlier item, with a mere15,302 views so far, which said, “Japan’s communications and Net services industry is planning to provide police information on people who post messages suggesting they may be close to committing suicide.”
“I was in Japan over the summer, spending time with a friend of mine,” said a p2pnet Reader’s Write in a post on Japanese suicide pacts. “I was shocked to see that a lot of Japanese school girls carry around ‘Gloomy Bear’!” – the comment post continued. “Its a little ‘Japanified’ bear that has really long claws and kills people, and children seem to love him for it. Japanese girls consider this VERY cute… and when I asked them why, they had no answer… just repeated ‘very cute’.”
When you go to the Gloomy Bear advertising site and click the pic, it punches the kid violently and repeatedly in the face, and it comes complete with sound effects and blood splatters.
Says the caption:
“GLOOMY” is Pity’s pet bear. His height is about 7 ft.
He is well trained … except he has a hard time remembering not to attack humans.
The Wikipedia says.
“Gloomy, an abandoned little bear, is rescued by Pitty (the little boy),” says the Wikipedia. “At first, he is cute and cuddly, but becomes more wild as he grows up. Since bears do not become attached to people like dogs by nature, Gloomy attacks Pitty even though he is the owner. So Gloomy has blood on him from biting and/or scratching Pitty. The Gloomy with blood is called Chax Colony Edition.”
The post adds:
The Gloomy Bear is also available in different colors with slightly different designs. He also created other characters in a similar style, as for example Podolly, a sheep in a wolf skin, reversing the common phrase of a wolf in a sheep skin and Kumakikai, a robo-gloomy with rockets for feet and a soft silver vinyl body. Often, his graphics also carry a political message, as for example the drawing of the Statue of Liberty, except the figure is holding a molotov cocktail and a sign with the question “Free?”.
There used to be Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia posts of Mori Chack’s Statue of Liberty, ChaxLadyLibertyMolotovCocktailPostcard.jpg, but they’ve both apparently been deleted.
Also See:
earlier item – Japanese Net-linked suicides, August 25, 2005
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 8th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Hi Jon:
Perhaps someday someone will do a learned study =)
Until that happens “Early Earth Was Purple, Study Suggests,” http://www.livescience.com/environment/070410_purple_earth.html and here also is an example of another primitive Barney in action http://www.simpsonstrivia.com.ar/simpsons-photos/wallpapers/barney-gumble.gif
Keep up the good work.
April 30th, 2008 at 9:30 am
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