"His Name is Hopkin Green Frog"

I am fascinated by what happens in others' worlds, even if those "others" are strangers. I love finding old grocery lists in the shopping cart that I choose @ the supermarket; I like finding middle schoolers' misplaced notes on the dirt-caked hallways of school; and I like finding past readers' notes in books that I check out from the library. I love book collections like David Rothbart's Found and Frank Warren's PostSecret.

In short, the Hopkin Green Frog story goes like this: Someone in Seattle posted a "lost frog" flier," even featuring an address! This occurred in Sept, 2003. In the end, it turned out that the lost frog was a stuffed toy and that its owner was an autistic teen.

I can see how Hopkin Green Frog spread across the Internet so easily. First off, the flier looks so innocent with its' hand-drawn frog and incorrect grammar/punctuation. It reels you in because you think of a little kid losing a pet, stuffed animal, ...anything. You don't know if the lost frog is a stuffed animal or actual frog...both scenarios seem absurd: posting fliers for a stuff animal vs. having a frog as a pet...

When I Googled hopkin green frog (no quotation marks), I got about 34,000 hits. When I then Googled lost frog (again, no quotation marks), I got over 1,500,000 hits. There's links to Mike Whybark's blog entry, "Hopkins Explained."

I guess the reason why this whole "thing" caught on was because it did fit into Dawkins' 3 characteristics for a successful meme. Without getting too crazily detailed:

"Fidelity, fecundity, and longevity": The lost frog flier was easy to copy (either xeroxing or saving the digital image and forwarding it to people)-- the information on the flier was simple to read, so the ideas would easily stay within the reader's/viewer's mind. Also, the wording was especially memorable, making for easy copying/spreading: "Him name is Hopkin Green Frog." It is particularly catchy --almost could sound like the name of some obscure band trying to be hip or ironic or something.

Additionally, the "lost frog" meme caught on even more when people started blogging about it. Individuals created domains like lostfrog.org and through the postings on a site called Metafilter, a user researched and concluded that Hopkin Green frog was a toy offered in a Mcdonald's Happy Meal. The whole Happy Meal connection makes the story even more hilarious--- this kid was posting fliers for some dumb Happy Meal toy? Furthermore, the Hopkin Green frog flier/concept lends itself to longevity. There are so many plays on the wording of the flier. It's easy to poke fun at too: "Hopkin Green Frog: Him pretty existential cool..." & "Hopkin Green Frog is the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth, the Luminiferous Ether, the Buddha on the Road..." (both from http://www.metafilter.com/43185/him-name-is-hopkin-green-frog-
this blog entry is from June of 2005; another member of the Metafilter community pokes fun @ this blog post, saying how the hopkin Green frog "thing" has been posted about 2x already---he must be a "cool hunter" and get mad when people regurgitate ideas that have already been on various websites/online communities before).

Another Metafilter member says he wouldn't be surprised if there were some lost frog flier tshirts surfacing out there. It wouldn't surprise me either!

I had never heard of Hopkin Green frog or this lost frog flier before. John hadn't either. Are we "uncool"?