HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA

Origin

The original title is "Fabulous Secret Powers." It cuts footage from the 1980s cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe against a campy electronic rendition of 4 Non Blondes' 1992 hit "What's Up?", timed so that He-Man appears to be singing it.

It was made by two animators at Slackcircus Studios, who took their cue from Eric Fensler's G.I. Joe PSA parodies. The original file was posted to the Something Awful forums on May 8th, 2005 under that title. Know Your Meme catalogues the video as "He-Man Sings / HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA."

The name it goes by now came later. On November 7th, 2010, a two-minute cut with the intro, dialogue and outro stripped out was uploaded to YouTube as "HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA," and that became the version everyone knows. That the title is simply a phonetic transcription of the chorus — and therefore nearly unsearchable — is itself part of the meme's character.

Spread

The video moved from forum to forum and has since passed 150 million views on YouTube, standing as one of the early internet's defining viral clips.

Its mode of spread is distinctive. It was used as a bait link: you click expecting something else entirely and get He-Man singing instead. This is the same use as the Rickroll, and it was circulating this way before the Rickroll was.

It also keeps getting revived. A cappella covers and similar reinterpretations resurface periodically, and Travis Knight, director of the new live-action Masters of the Universe, has said the film "definitely references" the meme.

How it is used

• As a bait link disguised as something else entirely
• As a response to shocking or absurd news, dropped in place of a reply
• As the standard example when discussing 2000s internet culture
• As a password of sorts: writing out the chorus transcription, legible only to those who know the source

Sources

• Know Your Meme, "He-Man Sings / HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA" — the May 8th, 2005 Something Awful post, the Slackcircus authorship and the Fensler influence, the November 7th, 2010 truncated YouTube upload and renaming, the cumulative view count, and its use as a bait link
• Nerdist, "A Capella Version of Classic HE-MAN Viral Meme Is Priceless" — evidence that the meme is still being reinterpreted