NEDM

**NEDM**, acronym for **Not Even Doom Music**, is a YTMND fad started in April 2006 inspired in response to a YTMND site depicting animal cruelty. NEDM sites typically feature imagery of cats and/or chapstick, accompanied by the sound of the letters "N, E, D, M" (as spoken by a text-to-speech program), and music from Coburn's "We Interrupt This Programme (Jean Claude Ades remix)".

## Background

According to the NEDM Investigation YTMND, "HelterSkelter", a forum user at Ogrish.org, posted a link to a video in July 2005, which featured a man setting a live cat on fire. Although Ogrish.com is dedicated to unpleasant and disturbing multimedia, the video struck a nerve with other forum users, and they demanded action be taken against the people behind the video. After tracing the video to a Belgian ISP, Ogrish.com administrators alerted the authorities and PETA to the situation, and offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible. Eventually, the teenager who first uploaded the video was arrested and shortly afterward the man who actually burned the cat turned himself in.

The Happy Cat image featured in many NEDM YTMND's can be originally traced to Happy Cat, a Russian cat food company.

## Origin of the Fad

Following the arrests, authorities shut down all possible links to the video on the Internet. However, footage of the burning briefly resurfaced when a YTMND site was created by user Baron. The site featured images from the video and music from the computer game "Doom". The site was deleted within hours of creation, but not before many YTMND users had voted on it. However, the comments on the original cat-burning YTMND disappeared with its deletion. Outraged that anyone would give five stars to a site glorifying cat immolation, user Titanium-Gecko began to downvote all sites created by users who had five-starred the burning kitten YTMND.

The site was upvoted by a number of people. Among them was user Spotz. After noticing that all of his sites had been downvoted by Titanium-Gecko, he explained that he only upvoted the burning kitten YTMND for the "irony of using the Doom bunny music", not because he condoned or approved of the actual burning of the cat as seen in the image. Even though Spotz explained this on one of Titanium-Gecko's sites, on April 12, 2006 Titanium-Gecko left the now-legendary comment on Spotz's test site: **"Okay Spotz. Since you do not "condone" burning kitten your sites have been 3'D until further notice. Still... nothing justifies 5'ing burning kittens. Not even Doom music."**

Inspired by this altercation, YTMND user moheevi began posting "NEDM" as a comment on many ytmnds. Others would follow suit, few even knowing what he meant by it. Later he would create the original NEDM site using Jean Claude Ades's remix of *We Interrupt this Program*, followed by several others. At first, NEDM sites simply featured the cryptic letters "NEDM", with no explanation given as to what they meant, such as AwesomeBob's "NEDM is coming" Eventually, moheevi created a site using the happy cat image, which Stratos-the-Bratos saw and used for the third NEDM site. After seeing one of StarOnion's sites, Moheevi updated the original site to include this picture, with the infamous 'chapstick' quote.

Few people understood the joke behind the NEDM sites until Spotz explained it on the YTMND forums, and revealed the story of the now-deleted burning kitten YTMND, and Titanium-Gecko's one-man crusade against it. Since then, the NEDM fad still remains somewhat misunderstood. The creators of the fad state that it in no way supports animal cruelty. It simply means "Not Even Doom Music can get you a rating of five stars" (because the site is usually bad or random); NEDM can be applied to anything, not only animal cruelty. Because of this, the fad is one of the most varied on YTMND.

Later, Titanium-Gecko then released his own satirical version of the NEDM story, NEDM: Revelations.

The music used in the fad (Coburn's "We Interrupt This Program") was taken from a previous rave site by the user Nabeshin from 2005 called Dokuro Super Rave Remix. Nabeshin made a site called "NEDM Song Origin Revealed" that explained the origins in detail and took a shot at those that did not credit him for the original loop. However, it was explained that the original site did not use the loop, and it was stratos-the-bratos who took the loop from moheevi's site where moheevi had properly credited the song.

## Notable Characteristics

**Cats.**
Since the NEDM phrase was coined in reference to cruelty to cats, cats have become a symbol for the fad itself. Although Happy Cat and the shaggy cat from NEDM are usually used to represent NEDM, virtually any cat or cat imagery can be used. Some NEDM sites also incorporate an anti-animal cruelty moral into the concept. For example, NEDM: Revelations suggests that the nonsensical NEDM fad itself is divine retribution handed down by cat gods for humanity's sins against mortal cats.
**Chapstick.**
The original YTMND (NEDM) contains an image of a firefighter carrying a cat from a burned house, with the firefighter reassuring the cat it wasn't Doom music. He then asked if the cat wanted Chapstick. The Chapstick remark spread into a running gag within the fad.
**The letters N.E.D.M.**
These are usually displayed very prominently somewhere on the site; they will most likely be Photoshopped into the same format as the Doom logo. Oftentimes the NEDM logo appears to be featured for its own sake, which is one of the reasons the fad has been so misunderstood.
**We Interrupt This Program.**
The song most closely associated with the NEDM fad, thanks to Moheevi. The sample from the song is usually preceded by a recording of a text-to-speech program saying the letters "N. E. D. M".
**The Element of Surprise.**
While most NEDM sites are fairly obvious, the NEDM elements are sometimes used to surprise the viewer by suddently revealing the happy cat, in sync with the spoken "NEDM" followed by the music track.
**"Anything."**
Recently YTMNDs have been popping up in which somebody says "anything". Right after they say "any", they are suddenly interupted by Happycat's face and the "D. M." part of the "N. E. D. M." message. An example is this site.
## Criticism

Many complain that NEDM is frequently tacked on as a surprise ending to a completely unrelated site. This makes the fad somewhat meaningless, since it could be incorporated into any existing ytmnd for no intelligible reason. The fad sometimes attracts more downvoters than a typical site on the "Up and Coming" list.

## Links

https://nedm.ytmnd.com/ - Original site by **moheevi**

https://nedminvestigation.ytmnd.com/ - Another by **krytycal**

https://nedmbegins.ytmnd.com/ - Another by **titanium-gecko**

https://notevendoommusic666.ytmnd.com/ - Another by **nihn**

https://nedmguitar.ytmnd.com/ - Another by **awesomezilla**