Laina Morris aka Overly Attached Girlfriend
Hi again! Welcome back
to a session of semiotics (normally) attached to the world of Internet. Our
target for today is Laina Morris, mostly known among the Internet users as
"Overly Attached Girlfriend".
Laina has never told her
real second name, so we don't know whether it stands for Walker nor for Morris
but her image is already created.
The most interesting
fact is that, her image. She is shown both as a meme /mi:m/ and as a youtuber.
In fact, the day this post has been updated, she has 1.215M subscribers since
2012.
On June 6th, 2012, YouTuber wzr0713 uploaded a webcam video titled “JB Fanvideo” in which she performs a parody rendition of Justin Bieber’s latest single “Boyfriend” with personalized lyrics. According to Gawker’s article, the video was submitted in response to Bieber’s announcement of an online sing-off contest in promoting his celebrity perfume “Girlfriend.”
- knowyourmeme
The same day her image was launched, images like these
were found all across the Internet:
Like PewDiePie, we can find that Laina's first contact
is the gaze, as a meme and also as a youtuber. She always stares at the camera
but does it in two ways, either as a vlogger that tells the story or as OAG
(Overly Attached Girlfriend), opening her eyes to look like the creepy
fictitious partner of the viewer's narratee. She always attracts the spectators
catching their eyes.
Her pose is always close. Only few times she can be
exposed in a full body framework, nor looking outside of it (if she does, it
occurs in sketches, when she is looking at the other person). The action is
relaxed and the movement is little, so that the viewer can feel empathy.
Despite of this, OAG opens fully her eyelids and gets closer but only when
performing the stalking and clingy couple she performs.
Even acting as OAG, the viewer can infer her personality
and have a trustful look even the possible bias short-humour viewers can have.
The colours help. Her palette is green and blue and some rosy for her skin and
the environment (the house of her hall, her room walls...), and they are well pasted, so an agreeable
atmosphere is created.
These facts of relaxation and harmony help the viewer to
skip over the irony of being an insane controller and see it as a fact for fun.
Furthermore, she speaks like a common girl: no
restricted slang, no bizarre expressions, not unexpected high tones. Her vocabulary and form of speak is
characterized to have a cadence of Standard English, in contrast to other
youtubers like Markiplier, who has a marked accent coming from the state he was
born and the one he was raised. Laina comes from Texas, but she does not speak
in such stereotypical way.
The most used expression by Laina is "to be
like", which is an informal way to perform reported speech, usually from
other person, to make depictions of actions and comparisons.
Just to add, she donates the money she is given to the charity, so we can find an affection by their fans that is very justifiable.
Thank you for reading!
Sources:
- Know Your Meme (from cheezburguer.com), last seen 2014/12/07
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/overly-attached-girlfriendBibliography:
- Kress, G. and T. van Leeuwen: "Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design"; Routledge, London (2003)
