Thursday, May 03, 2007

The 'Net will Deconstruct Itself.

Catch up on your Internet Memes and related phenomenon while I'm gone. The series of tubes has begun to eat it's own tail with lolgeeks.

We'll talk about it when I get back from class ... Puh-lace Holder.

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So, things have gotten a little out of hand. First there was the "I M in ur x Killing ur y " thing.

This was similar to the "All your Base are Belong to Us" thing, except instead of "Engrish" this was "Leet Speak" and "All your Base..." didn't get re-appropriated like the "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing.

Let me back up, for those who have not been following this sort of thing, or who just have no idea what it is when they do see it.

The "All your Base..." thing really has nothing to do with it, (and anyway that's so 2001...) but if you still don't know what that's about (and many don't) Click Here, and Wikipedia will answer all your questions. The "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing just, initially, seemed to spread in the same fashion.

Bear with me, this goes someplace, but some background may be needed.

The original phrase is "I am in your base killin' your doodz." Encyclopedia Dramatica seems to have summed up the origin best:

Two players (one unnamed, the other known as 1337h4x (leetspeak for "Fucking Nerd") are in a game of Starcraft, with 1337h4x playing as the Zerg race, and the other as either the Terran or Protoss races. 1337h4x Zerg-rushed his opponent, and on finding that he was getting raped, his opponent asked:

[n00b] "dude, where are you?"

[1337h4x] "im in ur base, killing ur d00ds"





Leetspeak for "Fucking Nerd." heh. Indeed.

Any-fucking-way, around the same time as this inane bullshit started making it's way across the 'Net, the Cute Fucking Animal Picture thing started to swell into a Phenomenon. There is, of course, CuteOverload.com, with their daily deluge of cute baby animal pictures, and The Daily Kitten, with (you guessed it) new pictures of drowndably cute baby cats every damn day, and about a hundred clones.

Now, to be fair, part of the draw of these things, at least in the case of Cute Overload, is the self awareness. Meg, the woman who runs that site, knows just how saccharine sweet and ridiculous the whole thing is, and the somewhat self effacing humor with which she comments on everything makes the whole process enjoyable, rather than sickening.

This gave rise to the Captioned cute animal fad, (or maybe vice versa, but really, who can tell?) which attempts much the same thing with mixed results. I Can Has Cheezburger and LolCats are probably the most obvious examples.









Apparently most felines can speak, but they're kind of retarded. Walruses, it would seem, are obsessed with Buckets. (Yeah, I don't know either.) This is where the "...Killin' ur Doodz" thing really took off. Suddenly, all kinds of cute critters (among other things,) were in something of yours, engaging in some activity, upon something you held sacred.





This is a Triple Meme, A Hat Trick. The Mind Reels.





So, okay, captioned pictures of parakeets standing in pasta, an odd place for Pop Culture to migrate, but, whatever. What's the big deal?

It has now started to come full circle.

A (relatively) new site is up: LolGeeks. LolGeeks is like LolCats, but they are using pictures of 'Net personalities and Alpha Geek Icons ... with the Cute Cat Captions. Apparently the Geek Elite also talk like retarded six year olds; I found this less surprising than the cats, really.


Yep

Cory Doctorow

Linus Torvalds

Geeks making fun of geeks making fun of themselves while making fun of themselves. It continues on like fucking Pi.

Someone said Pop will Eat Itself, I say the Net is Perpetrating its Own Deconstruction.


Indeed

Everything ever via Boing Boing. (Bless Those Folks. Seriously, I get a lot of stuff and info from them. Follow the links for the various Photo Credits. I'll post them in future, but right now it's 4AM. Laterz.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not that cats are retarded, they just can't spell....

Anonymous said...

Gawd, I r neveh reading ur bl0g agin