Hell-mo? Hell yes!
By Pioneer Publication | posted 22/04/24
Ever wondering how Hell-mo, or Elmo, a red-haired cartoon character from the famous Sesame Street “barged in” in the opening ceremonies of the Binturungan Festival recently?
Last Sunday, April 21, during a doxology number, an image of a terrified Elmo being scorched in a sea of fire appeared on an LED wall. The said gaffe drew attention from the crowds. The blunder may allude to the ongoing heatwave experienced in Puerto Princesa and Palawan, which made the heat index increase to at least 44 degrees Celsius.
The origin of “Hell-mo”
But how did this meme template staple begin? According to the pop culture website Know Your Meme, this meme character, with an original name Elmo Rise, “is an exploitable image of a crudely-designed Elmo from the children’s television series Sesame Street that originally appeared as a cake decoration before it was photoshopped onto a black background surrounded by fire.” This further turned into different formats like GIF and still-image variants of the Elmo character surrounded by flames and were often used as reactions in memes.
The said blog further added that the “earliest known example of the Elmo Rise image was posted on November 1st, 2012 by CakeWrecks.com user Jen. The writer describes the image as, “if it’s wearing the stricken expression of someone who will give you all the candy you want if you please just don’t hurt him…then you’re probably looking in a mirror. So go have some fun-size Snickers and put your feet up, my friend, because you’ve earned it.”
How did Elmo appear on the screen?
The unintentional mishap was humorized later on, otherwise. John Ellie Moncatar, a member of the University Student Government (USG), and was working with the technical committee at that time, recounted the situation in a chat interview.
“I was working with MediaHub po kasi as the technical officer from USG during the program and [I] supposed to play the Doxology po kasi and the Display Projection settings were set to “Extend” as instructed by the MediaHub volunteers I was working with. ‘Pag naka Extend na settings, the PC serves as second screen so ‘di nila kita yung primary display. I played the doxology video pero naka-minimize pa sa VLC [Media Player]. But when I tried maximizing, nag-transfer siya ulit sa primary screen so yung wallpaper ko yung nag-flash sa screen.”
Hindi namin agad napansin so medyo nagtagal na nakaflash sa LED Wall yung wallpaper ko until a MediaHub volunteer told their team leader who then told us na yun na nga nangyari. “
After the blunder, he changed the wallpaper afterward.
“Pinalitan ko na rin wallpaper ko for the rest of the evening to be safe haha.”
The issue was humorously “poked fun” by his friends on social media. “Matagal ko na rin kasi siyang wallpaper so my friends and students know na rin na it was me…we just poked fun na lang sa soc-med with the friends I made sa MediaHub that night and my friends as well.”
Despite the faux pas being unintentional on its own, it never failed to garner laughter and giggles from the spectators — it even reached the online beat.
Indeed, this comical, lighthearted incident caused the heat of the day to be hellishly intensified!
