NEDM

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For info about another incident relating to this, see Zippocat.

NEDM is an Internet meme. Originating on the YTMND website, it is an acronym that stands for "Not Even Doom Music". The phrase originates from a YTMND site that parodied the Doom Episode 3 "bunny" end screen. NEDM sites typically feature imagery of cats and/or chapstick, accompanied by the sound of the letters "N, E, D, M" (as spoken by a text-to-speech program), and music from Coburn's "We Interrupt This Programme (Jean Claude Ades remix)". Since the NEDM phrase was coined in reference to cruelty to cats, cats have become a symbol for the fad itself. Although Happy Cat and the shaggy cat from NEDM are usually used to represent NEDM, virtually any cat or cat imagery can be used. Some NEDM sites also incorporate an anti-animal cruelty moral into the concept. For example, NEDM: Revelations suggests that the nonsensical NEDM fad itself is divine retribution handed down by cat gods for humanity's sins against mortal cats.

The original YTMND (NEDM) contains an image of a firefighter carrying a cat from a burned house, with the firefighter reassuring the cat it wasn't Doom music. He then asked if the cat wanted Chapstick. The Chapstick remark spread into a running gag within the fad. The NEDM text is usually displayed very prominently somewhere on the site; they will most likely be Photoshopped into the same format as the Doom logo. Oftentimes the NEDM logo appears to be featured for its own sake, which is one of the reasons the fad has been so misunderstood.

Origin

On July 22, 2005, a video had been posted on the Ogrish site depicting a small gray kitten getting burned alive with gasoline. Although Ogrish.com is dedicated to unpleasant and disturbing multimedia, the video struck a nerve with other forum users, and they demanded action be taken against the people behind the video. After tracing the video to a Belgian ISP, Ogrish.com administrators alerted the authorities and PETA to the situation, and offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. Eventually, the teenager who first uploaded the video was arrested and shortly afterward the man who actually burned the cat turned himself in.

Following the arrests, authorities shut down all possible links to the video on the Internet. However, footage of the burning briefly resurfaced when a YTMND site was created by user Baron. The site featured images from the video and music from the computer game "Doom". The site was deleted within hours of creation, but not before many YTMND users had voted on it. However, the comments on the original cat-burning YTMND disappeared with its deletion. Outraged that anyone would give 5 stars to a site glorifying cat immolation, user Titanium-Gecko began to downvote all sites created by users who had five-starred the burning kitten YTMND.

Links

Note: These links do not contain graphic content.

• YTMND Wiki
• Original NEDM YTMND