The colorbar was created by LiveJournal user "shared_boxers" (also known as Alan Gerow) in February 2004 to support the controversial same-sex marriage movement that was being widely discussed at the time. In a post timestamped 01:45 am February 12th, he posted a simple HTML table rendering of the rainbow flag under the heading "Show Your Support", and requested that others duplicate it in their own weblogs. (However, he initially used seven colors rather than the six below.) LiveJournal (often abbreviated LJ) is a virtual community where Internet users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. ... 2004 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- → // February 29, 2004 Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigns as president of Haiti and flees the country for the Central African Republic. ... Same-sex marriage is marriage between individuals who are of the same legal or biological sex. ... Timestamp can refer to a time code or to a digital signature whose signer vouches for the existence of the signed document or content at the time given as part of the digital signature. ... February 12 is the 43rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... A piece of HTML code with syntax highlighting In computing, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages with hypertext and other information to be displayed in a web browser. ... In computing, an HTML element indicates structure in an HTML document. ... A rainbow flag is a multi-colored flag consisting of stripes in the colors of the rainbow. ... A weblog (now more commonly known as a blog) is a web-based publication consisting primarily of periodic articles (normally, but not always, in reverse chronological order). ...

The simple image spread throughout LiveJournal extremely quickly, and within days, thousands of replies were posted to the first journal entry. While the original Internet meme met with great success. Some users made variations with different colors: black and blue, for example, to represent solidarity with victims of bullies. Before long, pictures were being inserted into the colorbar. The original political intent lessened, and the bars shifted to become a style of fan art. The message "Marriage is love" saw a wide number of (often humorous) variants emerge, though they usually continued to include the fragment "is love" in some way. This text is commonly made into a link that points back to the colorbar's creator. An Internet phenomenon (sometimes called an Internet meme) occurs when something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet; however, the popularity of the phenomenon usually wanes as rapidly as it was acquired: the Internets lack of... A bully is an individual who tends to torment others, either through verbal harassment and/or physical assaults, or through more subtle methods of coercion. ... For images in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Images. ... Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. ... Fan art or fanart is a type of artwork that is based on a person or item that the artist did not create. ...

Colorbars are now common across LiveJournal and other similar websites, and new ones continue to be created frequently. There are even a number of discussion communities devoted to the creation and distribution of such images. One website hosts an "isLove Generator" that will semi-randomly create simple HTML colorbars for users. The front page of the English Wikipedia Website. ...

Dispute

Many people believe the way colorbars are used an expression of love for nearly any subject degrades and mocks the original intent -- showing support for same-sex marriage.

Examples

American Pie is summer love

The Daily Show is the most important love ...ever.

Image File history File links American Pie is summer love colorbar by LiveJournal user miss_jaffacake (http://www. ... Image File history File links Colorbar for The Daily Show, created by LiveJournal user oldvideocountry (http://www. ...

ljuser:scrumbles is love

Image File history File links Scrumbles_is_love_colorbar. ...

External links

• shared_boxers: Show Your Support – The original post
• Don't tell me bullying doesn't hurt. – Black and blue colorbar example
• isLove Generator