One of the Internet’s most iconic pups has passed away. Tillman, who became an online sensation after a video of him riding a skateboard went viral on YouTube, died from a heart muscle disease on October 27th. He was 10.
The announcement of Tillman’s death came from his owner, Ron Davis, who shared the news with the Ventura County Star.
Tillman rose to prominence in 2007, when a video called “Skateboarding Dog” arrived on YouTube. With his jowls flapping in the wind and his short legs kicking him into action, he was impossible not to like. The video’s popularity–it has received more than 21 million views to date–supports this hypothesis.
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Later ventures for Tillman included an iPhone commercial and a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. He also left an unusual legacy within our industry; thanks to his popularity, the phrase “dogs on skateboards” entered the online video lexicon as a blanket term to describe all the cute and funny user-generated videos that live alongside premium, polished content on YouTube. Some writers and speakers eventually evolved the phrase to “cats on skateboards,” even though there are not very many skateboarding cats on YouTube, and certainly none as famous as Tillman.
Therefore, in order to honor Tillman, I can think of a appropriate tribute: From now on, marketers, writers, and executives are not allowed to use the phrase “cats on skateboards” to describe the breadth of amateur videos on YouTube. If they must resort to such a broad generalization, the least they can do is pay Tillman his due respects.
