The internet during the late 2000s and the early 2010s was a wild place to be. If it is an object, it would be a box of chocolates - you'll never know what you'll get. Everyone is excited to explore this new piece of technology that lets them post any kind of content from comics, blogs, video logs, and wacky YouTube videos like Leeroy Jenkins, Nyan Cat, and Harlem Shake videos.
During these times, another character was doing the rounds due to how annoying it is.
This was the time when Annoying Orange started becoming one of YouTube's memorable and generation-defining characters.
Annoying Orange - A Brief History Of Annoyance
According to Know Your Meme's entry for our annoying citrus-filled fruit, Annoying Orange is an American comedy web series created by Dane Boedingheimer for Gagfilms, a company he founded, in 2009. The titular character, an anthropomorphic orange, was always featured to be annoying its fruit-and vegetable-based friends.
According to the Annoying Orange Fandom, it isn't known why Orange was so annoying. It's either because any other orange is like that, likes puns and jokes, or that he doesn't pay attention to how people are being annoyed.
In fact, Orange is very mild for his species, meaning that other oranges could be more annoying than Orange is.
The reason for his annoying behavior could be due to him going insane during his time in a kitchen of a foreign exchange student. In this kitchen, the fruits were inanimate despite Orange's attempts to talk to them. Orange finally lost his mind when he saw the fruits being knifed. He even wore a straightjacket when he went back to the normal kitchen.
Boedingheimer got the idea from the many talking food videos that he creates with Adobe After Effects, which he uploads on a website named JibJab.
At first, Boedingheimer created the YouTube profile daneboe on October 9, 2009, uploading his first Annoying Orange video with it the title, "Orange Annoying an Apple."
The video gained 100 million views between 2009 and 2012. Thanks to this amount of exposure, Boedingheimer created the realannoyingorange YouTube Channel in 2010, following four heavily-demanded Annoying Orange follow-up videos.
Since then, Annoying Orange took the internet by storm. It even got a TV series on Cartoon Network called "The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange," which ran from 2012 to 2014, according to Cartoon Network Fandom.
Public Reception to Annoying Orange
However, despite its success, the show received mixed to negative responses from critics due to a decline in quality and criticism of the show's characters, humor, storyline, and usage of celebrity guest stars.
However, in retrospect, Alexander of Speeli said in its article that Annoying Orange was a popular character due to how people identify with the anthropomorphic fruit.
The character was also popular with the kids (and even some adults) growing up during the character's heyday. Orange was also popular because its constant and consistent episode release allows for a safe release of aggression.
Finally, and most importantly, Orange became popular because it is funny, despite its rude humor.
Where Is Orange Now?
Although Google Trends shows that Annoying Orange's relevance steadily declined since July 2012, the character is still alive and well. Boedingheimer created an Annoying Orange Gaming channel on March 24, 2014, where characters from the web series play video games and commentating about them.
The character is still popular with children in 2016 when a boy named Jason made a wish to the Make-A-Wish Foundation to meet the staff behind The Annoying Orange web series and have a lot of fun times with them. He was featured on The Annoying Orange's 466th episode, which is the 66th episode of the series' eighth season, per a separate page of The Annoying Orange Fandom.
Jason fought a long battle with a rare form of childhood cancer, osteosarcoma, but succumbed to it when he was eight years old., according to the Brentwood Home Page.
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