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Ryan Gosling: Heartthrob, good guy Canadian, role model for positive masculinity. Whether he’s going around breaking up petty fights, being impersonated by local accountants, or just wishing the internet would leave him alone, it’s pretty obvious why a guy like him would seemingly always be in the pop culture conversation.
But can we talk about his near-infinite number of fan blogs?
The blog “Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling” was first created in October 2008, and by December, had coined the term that would go on to inspire legions of imitators: “Hey Girl.”
It was quickly picked up by Jezebel the following month, lending visibility outside of the utter depths of the internet, and doubled down on the slogan. “Hey Girl” steadily grew as a phenomenon over the next couple of years.
By the end of 2011, Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling was chock full of “Hey Girl” memes, mostly commenting on how cute he is. In that time it had become popular enough to get written about by Vulture, BuzzFeed, The Daily Dot, and basically everywhere memes are written about.
In an MTV interview, Ryan Gosling himself was asked to read aloud some of the best memes, which he did, albeit sheepishly. This wasn’t the only time Ryan Gosling was embarrassed by the memes. A few years later, an interviewer from Rotten Tomatoes brought a Ryan Gosling dish towel to the shoot, causing him even further self-consciousness.
But where it really became a big thing was with the rise of imitator blogs. In October of 2011, niching down into feminist commentary, the Tumblr “Feminist Ryan Gosling” was set up. As the title would suggest, it featured more dreamy images of Ryan Gosling saying wholesome feminist things, which also were often, but not always, opened with the line “Hey Girl.”
Feminist Ryan Gosling was seen by a lot of people, and because of its popularity, Hey Girl may hold the record for the most spin-off memes ever.
Following Feminist Ryan Gosling, droves of other niche Tumblr blogs, also known as Gosblrs, popped up. Each Gosblr covered one of an enormous range of fandoms, including typography, Shakespeare, Silicon Valley, public history, political science, national public radio, puppies, gosblrs as their own topic, Search Engine Optimization, bird school, vinyl, the environment, computer programming, and many, many, more.
This crescendo of Gosblrs thus caused search interest in Hey Girl Ryan Gosling to peak, unsurprisingly that January and early February, in the leadup to Valentine’s Day of 2012.
Before long, Etsy was flooded with Hey Girl and general Ryan Gosling merch, a Google Chrome extension was created that turned entire web pages into digital Ryan Gosling shrines, and when Ryan Gosling’s baby was born, we got both the arguably most wholesome meme ever—“Hey Daughter,” and a new Twitter account—@Gosling’sBaby.
In 2016, promoting their new film The Nice Guys, Warner Brothers itself got in on the joke, releasing a comedy sketch in which Ryan Gosling feigns hysteria and distress over his meme fame.
We all need an object of obsession from time to time, and hey girl, making fun compilations out of a guy known for being this G-rated is not hurting anybody. So if you need to pick one, fuck yeah Ryan Gosling.
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