Ryan Gosling

About

Ryan Gosling is a Canadian film actor who is known online for being the subject of several image macro series. These often involve photos of Gosling with a caption that starts “Hey girl.”

Online History

In December 2008, Gosling became the subject of single-topic Tumblr Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling, run by Douglas Reinhardt.^[5] The first two posts were uncaptioned photos of the actor before the first “Hey girl” post^[4] on December 19th, 2008. The original Tumblr blog was first featured on Jezebel^[6] in January 2009.

December 2010 Interview

The Ryan Gosling Tumblr meme did not take off until December 2010 when Gosling was asked to read several captions from image macros in an MTV^[7] interview. That month, both the interview and links to the site were featured on NY Magazine’s Vulture^[8], Perez Hilton^[9], Nerve^[10], Buzzfeed^[11], and the Washington Post.^[12] In July 2011^[13], MTV After Hours did a second interview with Gosling in which he read more instances of the image macro out loud.

The first derivative blog, Feminist Ryan Gosling^[14], were created in October 2011. It was highlighted on the Huffington Post^[15], Feministing^[16] and TIME NewsFeed.^[17] Over the next two months, a considerable number of spin-off single topic Tumblrs were created, covering a wide variety of academic and topical subjects including typography, film studies, medieval history, Shakespearean literature, biostatistics, feminism, international development and political science among others.

The lists of these were compiled by Buzzfeed^[22], the HIP Genius blog^[23], the Social Times^[24], Read Write Web^[25] in December 2011. The Daily Dot started the single topic Tumblr Gosblr^[26] to compile links to Ryan Gosling themed blogs.

Notable Examples

Feminist Ryan Gosling[14]	Typographer Ryan Gosling[19]	Ryan Gosling, Disneyland, Cats[20]
Silicon Valley Ryan Gosling[32]	Shakespearean Ryan Gosling[33]	Hey girl. I like the library too.[31]

Ryan Gosling Easter Egg Hunt

On April 8th, New York-based copywriter Jenna Livingston launched the Twitter feed @GoslingEaster^[38], which revealed clues to the location of 200 plastic Easter eggs filled with notes and photos allegedly written by Gosling and planted throughout Manhattan. Later, it was revealed that Gosling had no involvement with the Easter Egg hunt.

Personal Life

Ryan Gosling was born on November 12th, 1980 in Ontario.^[2] He began his television career in 1993 as a cast member on the Mickey Mouse Club^[3] before moving on to independent films, followed by major motion pictures. In 2004, Gosling garnered mainstream attention after appearing in the romantic film The Notebook.^[34] He plays piano and guitar in the indie rock band Dead Man’s Bones^[35] and supports charities including PETA^[36] and Invisible Children.^[37]

Search Interest

Search for Ryan Gosling coupled with the phrase “hey girl” had two small bumps in March and June of 2009. Search volume picked up in December 2010 and again in July 2011, coinciding with the two MTV interviews where Gosling read instances of the image macro aloud for MTV.

External References