Who started Doppelganger Week on Facebook?

That is the question. I'm asking because I want to know who to thank. Until the last week of January, visitor stats to my relatively new blog was over 500 but definitely far from a thousand. Within the next 2 weeks, it rapidly skyrocketed to over 3,000 hits! I attribute these hits to one particular entry--how to find your doppelganger. This is all thanks to the latest and most viral of Facebook memes: Doppelganger Week.

"Meme" is derived from the Greek mneme and mimëma, meaning "memory" and "something imitated," respectively. An Internet meme is an idea or practice that spreads like wildfire through the Web and thus becoming pop culture. This includes viral videos, e-mail hoaxes, and other Web-based media turning obscure personalities into instant Internet celebrities, or e-lebrities (see YouTube).

Like the "change your fb status into your bra color to raise breast cancer awareness" meme, Doppelganger Week seemed to start out as an internal arrangement between Facebook friends to use as profile picture a photo of a celebrity whom you've been told you resemble. Soon enough, Facebook began to crawl with Megan Foxes and Robert Pattinsons, driving more and more users into a wild search for celebrity look-alike generators or facial recognition applications, such as MyHeritage.com, FaceDouble, and Find My Doppelganger.

NowPublic says that Chloë Carter this meme, while NYDailyNews gives credit to Bob Patel as Doppelganger Week's creator. Although the definite source of the meme is yet to be known, one thing is certain: there are too many people who want to find their "twin," especially the famous variety--whether out of curiosity or narcissism.

Doppelganger Week has spawned critic Facebook groups, such as "But... Your Doppelganger is hot, and you are really, really ugly," which, I must admit, is a bit funny albeit a tad harsh (if not cruel). Personally, I have mixed feelings about doppelgangers. It's exciting to know that somewhere out there, there's someone I resemble, someone that I'm totally unrelated to. At the same time, it makes me think that I look too common. I guess, the reason why finding our celebrity look-alike is so important for many is that it is a personal affirmation, in a way. It somehow gives you a sense that there's something likable, if not special, about you.

Morph your friend into her fave celeb!

Yay! It's 5 days 'til Christmas! Any girl knows that there's no such thing as "too late for Christmas shopping" BUT if you're on a tight budget, don't fret. Here's a little suggestion: turn your friends into celebrities! You don't need to be a kingmaker to do that. You don't have to spend a single cent even. With MyHeritage.com's face recognition system, you can upload your friends' photos and morph them into their celebrity face match! Check out what I did for my sister:

MyHeritage: Celebrity Morph - Family research - Family pictures

I posted this on her Facebook as well. The best thing about the app is that it's quite simple to use. For this one, it didn't even take me longer than 3 minutes. Simply upload your friend's photo, and the facial recognition software will do the job for you. All that you'll be required to do is to put and adjust reference points. You can choose whether you'd like to create a collage (of your friend's celebrity twins) or a celebrity morph. You can then send your project slash present to your friend's e-mail, Facebook, myspace, and other online social network accounts. Or you can get the code and post it on your website. This will surely boost the surprise factor, and your friend will love you for revealing her celebrity twin. For best results, choose a photo with large, front-facing, straight faces. Photos where your friend is looking directly at the camera and not wearing sunglasses are guaranteed to have more accurate celebrity matches.

How to find your doppelganger

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend from high school who is now based in London sent me this message: "You look just like Myleene Klass. My husband agrees." My first reaction? Google Images. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

I hope that you will pardon me for such vanity, but you're likely to feel good about being described as a dead ringer for a celebrity, especially when it happens to be someone really hot. A dead ringer in these days means "exact duplicate." In the past,celebrity or no celebrity, "dead ringer" was supposedly a bad thing. The phrase has existed since 1882, and it referred to a race horse that is substituted for another of similar appearance to defraud bookies.

A doppelganger is a similar concept, although it's much more eerie than fraudulent. In German, doppelgänger means a double or a look-alike of a certain person. It also refers to the paranormal experience of seeing yourself--and I'm not talking mirrors, photographs, and videos. If you thought that THAT was scary, try digesting the concept that it meant bad luck--the death omen kind. In fact, in Norse mythology, a ghost referred to as a vardøger is an apparition of a living person that does this person's action in advance. Remember the urban legend about a friend of a friend who died, but seconds before his death, he was seen somewhere else? Among followers of paranormal and esoteric knowledge, they may refer to the concept as bilocation or "evil twin."

Enough about the scary part (although I'm fully aware that it's almost Halloween). If you haven't heard of the Doppelganger Theory, it's that belief that somewhere in the world, you have a twin. Although there's no scientific backing to that, it's part of pop culture now (Hint: Tomb Raider, Coraline, and even CSI).

And so, remembering Cosmo's Separated at Birth section, I took the time to pull together a couple of doppelgangers--from the famous to the obscure. Indonesian Ilham Anas and US President Barack Obama. American actress Tina Fey and US politician Sarah Palin. Tom Cruise and CSI's Nick Stokes (George Eads). Jake Gyllenhaal and CSI Miami's Ryan Wolfe (Jonathan Togo). Mel Gibson and Christian singer Carman. Myleene Klass and moi.

Barack Obama and Ilham Anas

Photo from http://www.ebaumsworld.com

Tina Fey and Sara Palin 

Photo above from http://tothewire.wordpress.com

Tom Cruise and George Eads

Jake Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Togo

 

 Mel Gibson and Carman

Myleene Klass and (shameless) me :P

If you want to find your own celebrity lookalike, there are plenty of applications on the web--and they're all free! If you have a Facebook account (who doesn't?!), you can use FaceDouble. With this fb app, you can find your celebrity lookalike or a doppelganger who's also another Facebook user. It also automatically imports this into a photo album, so you can use it as your profile pic. What's more, you can create one for your fb friends and surprise them with their own doppelgangers and celebrity lookalikes in a tagging spree that everyone on Facebook seems to love to do so much. Or you can go to MyHeritage.com. It's actually a geneology site, but it uses a face-recognition software which allows you to do more than just find your doppelganger. There's plenty of fun stuff you can do, like find long-lost relatives or morph yourself into Jessica Alba--and that's just for starters. Try it out and do come back to tell me which celebrity lookalike has graced my blog with his/her presence.

See Also:
Who Started Doppelganger Week on Facebook?
Morph Your Friend into Her Fave Celeb!