Getting in touch with someone through the Internet is easy these days with the help of Facebook and social networking, but it was a coincidence that brought three students with the same idea together to create a pop culture phenomenon.
University students Melissa Hollis and Julia Neff were watching the Oregon vs. Tennessee game with a couple of friends on Sept. 11, when Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How to Dougie” started playing.
Hyped about the score, the two friends began singing along to the song, but instead of saying “dougie,” they replaced the word with “ducky.”
Neff said her friends liked the new title and they all agreed they should make “Teach Me How To Ducky” shirts. The morning after the game, Neff and Hollis designed the shirt on a website. Once they got organized and figured out the logistics, Hollis created a Facebook group and posted the link of the designed shirts for her friends to be able to view.
“The whole thing blew up,” Hollis said. “I invited all my friends and then they invited their friends, and their friends added other friends and it became a massive group where tons of students were asking for shirts.”
Little did they know that University senior Spencer Groshong had already created a “Teach Me How to Duckie” video and posted it on YouTube without even knowing about the shirts.
Groshong said his idea for his YouTube video was based on a project for his collaborative video class. The task was to produce a video and attempt to make it go viral. He had been to the Oct. 2 football game against Stanford and saw how Puddles was dancing to “Teach Me How To Dougie.”
“I tried to think of something that is popular,” Groshong said. “Our mascot, Puddles, was the first thing that popped in my mind; he had been presented all over the place, on commercials, not to mention he was nominated for Capital One mascot of the year.”
He decided to change the lyric to “Teach Me How To Duckie,” then found highlight clips and pasted them all together to create the video.
“I had no idea the video was going to be such a hit,” he said. “In the first two days that I had posted the video, there were 25,000 views.”
As the Facebook group gained more members, Groshong found the group and realized Hollis and Neff had come up with the same phrase but spelled it differently.
“It was a huge coincidence,” Groshong said. “I found it interesting that someone had come up with the same idea. It didn’t frustrate me at all.”
Hollis and Neff were also amazed that someone else had come up with the same phrase and they let Groshong add the video to the Facebook group. Neff said they were not upset and are open to everyone expressing their creativity.
Groshong, who works for the apparel company Enliten, offered to help Hollis and Neff distribute the T-shirts because he figured they were new to the process of selling shirts. Hollis and Neff both agreed that it was all just a coincidence and are thankful that Enliten offered to help them with the process.
Alec Nelson, part of the Enliten company, said that it has all been a collaborative work and that they are all excited about the “Teach Me How To Ducky” apparel. Neff said the process has been fun, and she cannot wait to see students wearing the shirts she and Hollis designed on campus and at football games.
The shirts are available for purchase at enliten.me.
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