“假笑男孩”开通微博了 火遍全球并刷爆表情包的它究竟是谁？
今天中午，“假笑男孩”Gavin开通了自己的微博，并且发布了一条自我介绍视频，视频里的Gavin还是一如既往的“假笑”风格，十分可爱，瞬间吸引数十万粉丝关注，而评论区也沦陷成表情包专区...
https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=g1344v1yjy7&width=500&height=375&auto=0
据了解，今年8岁的Gavin Thomas来自美国明尼苏达州。之所以在表情包界火起来，都是因为他有个网红舅舅Nick Mastodon。他舅舅是个视频博主，2014年分享了一个Gavin头顶着壁虎的视频，从那以后，这位带着一丝迷茫和尴尬的小男孩便火得一发不可收拾。
下面我们一起来看看相关报道吧。
Who Is Gavin? And Why Has He Taken Over Twitter?
Wednesday afternoon, Olympic gold medalist and gymnastics phenom Simone Biles tweeted this:
[1]meme: 本义是指“文化基因，模仿因子〔指向群体中其他成员传递的行为方式或思想观念〕”，现在还被用来指“表情包”。
Memes such as tunes and catch-phrases travel through a culture almost like a virus.
乐曲、流行语等文化基因在一种文化中传播起来几乎就像病毒一样。
Ah, yes, Gavin. The guy we all know and love. Gavin!
Still confused? Biles's teammate Laurie Hernandez replied with a reaction meme featuring Gavin.
There he is! Gavin.
At a time when the eyes of the world are upon Biles and Hernandez performing miraculous athletic feats, the eyes of Biles and Hernandez are on some kid named Gavin.
Well, “some kid” is underselling[2] it: Gavin is the 5-year-old nephew of Vine star Nick Mastodon, a 30-year-old from Minnesota who was one of Vine’s earliest stars thanks to his videos combining Disney movies with Top 40 hits. In November of 2013, he made the viral “Suck a Dick” vine (22 million loops and counting) with his friend DustinHatzenbuhler.
[2]undersell: to make other people think that someone or something is less good, effective, skilful etc than they really are 让人轻视；过低评价
I think he undersold himself at the interview.
我认为他在面试时过于自谦了。
“Not the most family-friendly thing we’ve ever made,” Mastodon admitted when I spoke to him on the phone, “but most people seem to enjoy it. And throughout that time in 2013, I started putting my nephew Gavin, who was 2 at the time — he would appear in my videos. And people thought he was cute, but they didn’t really take notice of him a whole lot.”
In the spring of 2014, Mastodon posted an innocuous[3] video of Gavin with a crested[有饰章的] gecko[壁虎] on his forehead. He wasn’t expecting much of a response, but it blew up.
[3]innocuous: Something that is innocuous is not at all harmful or offensive. 无害的; 无意冒犯的
Both mushrooms look innocuous but are in fact deadly.
两个蘑菇看起来都无害，但实际上却能致命。
“People started to comment about his reaction and how great it was,” he recalls. “And I was like, Let’s find other ways to capture him in funny situations and see if he can make that face some more. He just made a whole lot of different faces; it’s just something he seems to be good at without even trying.”
Gavin kept appearing on Nick’s Vine account over the next two years, and then, all of a sudden, Gavin started blowing up. “It wasn’t up until, like, this past June that he really blew up, and I think it was because more and more big meme accounts were posting pictures of him.” Meme accounts like @chanelpuke and @tinatbh and the like, which trade and copy memes from each other like playing cards. (Know Your Meme credits the account @wedecideit with blowing up Gavin’s spot.) Once they had drawn attention to Gavin, he waseverywhere.
With dozens of Vines to choose from, it was easy to find a Gavin reaction face for any situation. I went from not knowing who Gavin was to seeing 20 different pictures of him in the span of a few days. On Instagram, his mom, Katie, has roughly ten times more followers than she did two months ago.
In addition to the Team USA shout-out, Gavin has drawn the attention of stars like Katy Perry and Skai Jackson. Shawn Mendes invited Gavin to his show when he was in town.
The attention of celebrities in tweets like Biles’s are a good indication of just how megaviral[4] Gavin is. “Those types of things are just fun,” Mastodon says, “because they were just talking about him and just addressing him, referring to him on a first-name basis. And I think that that’s really powerful, to show how popular he is or how recognizable his name is.”
[4]viral是由病毒virus引申而来的，因为病毒传播得很快，所以这个词除了表示“病毒（性）的；病毒引起的”，还可以表示“〔在网络上或用手机〕广为传播的”。
mega-前缀表示“大，极其，非常”，所以“megaviral”的意思大家应该都知道了吧？
“I think the word phenomenon is a good word[美言；好话；恭维话] for it,” he said. “There was definitely a buildup to it, but the fact that all of a sudden so many people are using his pictures and his videos, and there’s Twitter feeds or streams of our old Vines and some of the newer stuff, and just the rate at which this stuff is getting shared is pretty incredible.”
“The only thing I worry about, really, is that he would ever resent any of us for making these videos and posting these pictures,” Mastodon admitted. Some of the money Mastodon makes from doing sponsored Vines goes toward Gavin’s college fund. “I think that it will definitely come down to how we explain what’s happening or how it happens. I’m hoping that he thinks it’s cool. I’m hoping that it’s not something that he gets teased about. I think his parents feel the same way.”
For the foreseeable future, though, Gavin will continue to grace our screens with his presence. All hail #KingGavin.
来源：selectall