1. Epic Beard Man began to become popular and famous in February of 2010 after an online video was released showing a white Oakland resident named Thomas Bruso beating up on a black man. I think there are a couple of reasons why this meme became so popular. The video that the meme is based on depicts a senior delivering a brutal physical assault on a younger man, something that appears to evoke enjoyment and laughter among many people with various backgrounds. Bruso's old age as well as the fact that he didn't initiate the fight made people want to root for him as he "delivered judgement." Also, the shirt that Bruso was wearing during the incident read "I AM A MOTHERFUCKER", which is humorous to a wide audience. Add the fact that the meme involves racism, and we see how it exploded within 24 hours of the video release.
2.Iyanna Washington, a college student from Oakland, uploaded a YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQJFv9SMSMQ) on February 16, 2010, that showed a 67-year-old white man (Thomas Bruso) getting into a verbal argument and physical confrontation with a 50-year-old black man (only identified as Michael) on an AC Transit bus. Thomas Bruso is also known as Tom Slick and Vietnam Tom, and has a reputation in Oakland for being hostile. He is where the meme's name "Epic Beard Man" comes from, which is actually a nickname that Anonymous gave him prior to this event. On this particular bus ride, Michael was angry because he believed that Bruso was being racist after asking him to spit-shine his shoes. The verbal exchanges they had escalated, until Michael attempted to hit EPM in the chest. This provoked Bruso to repeatedly punch his aggressor in the face for about nine times, and the confrontation ended with EPM exiting the bus and Michael heading to the back of the bus. Throughout the video, other people on the bus can also be seen trying to stop the fight or merely observing the confrontation.
3. The YouTube video had more than 1 million views in the first day of release. 4chan's random forum had hundreds of image macros created on Epic Beard Man, and various websites/social media profiles were made in honor of Bruso and what he did. Many video responses were also made about the incident, including the original uploader of the video, and many people noticed a definite change in her formality in later video responses compared to how she is egging Michael on to "beat his white ass" in the video. From Google Insight Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0&q=epic%20beard%20man%2Cac%20transit%2Camber%20lamps%2Cthomas%20bruso&geo=&gprop=&cmpt=q), we see that on February 17, searches for "epic beard man", "ac transit", "amber lamps", and "thomas bruso" spiked, greatest to least in this order. Searches for "epic beard man" were a massive number based on the fact that it is a normalized 100 on Google's scale.
4. The meme "Amber Lamps" arose from this event. When Michael is sitting in the back of the bus after getting violently punched in the face multiple times, he says "bring an ambulance", which viewers have mistaken for "bring M&M's" and "bring Amber Lamps" because of his broken nose and dialect. As a joke, people started giving the name "Amber Lamps" to the young woman sitting in the background and watching the brawl ensue. The reason that they did this was that they found it funny and intriguing how she was casually watching the confrontation and didn't seem to be affected by what was happening. The search for her true identity went on for about two months before she was linked to a girl named Allison Budzinski because of her Facebook wall post around the time of the incident. Although it is neither confirmed nor denied that Budzinski is indeed "Amber Lamps", they are still linked to one another.
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