This has to be the only enjoyable piece I've ever seen in TWS.

+20 for the appearance by Scumbag Steve too.

Grand_Moff_Joseph: This has to be the only enjoyable piece I've ever seen in TWS.

+20 for the appearance by Scumbag Steve too.

I know. I was shocked by the source too.

Wow, I didn't think I'd ever make it through 3 pages on the logistics of Internet memes, but I did.

I actually was unaware the Keyboard Cat has been dead for decades now. The More You Know^TM

Star Wars Kid blew it bigtime.

I'd love to have a beer wit Lootie

Cheron: I'd love to have a beer wit Lootie

You can't...he took them all already. :D

That guy sure liked talking about goatse.

FTFA: There are all the familiar bulletin-board flyers advertising the Chorallaries a cappella group, the Queer People of Color Brunch, and the Gender Fluidity Meeting.



/hotlink

An Object of Beauty, by the actor and comedian Steve Martin.

In it, Martin ruminates over how Warhol and his silkscreens of soup cans could come to be valued, both critically and monetarily, as though he were on par with the great masters. That couldn't happen, he writes, "if you were older and believed in the philosophy of art as rapture, and didn't expect the next great development in art to be a retreat from beauty and an exploration of ordinariness." However, if you had no stake in the past, or appreciation for the difficulty of paint versus the ease of silkscreen, "You saw the images unencumbered, as bright and funny, but most of all ironic. This new art started with the implied tag, 'This is ironic, so I'm just kidding,' but shortly the tag changed to, 'This is ironic, and I'm not kidding.'"

Huh. I'm sorry I missed it. Darn.

For all the navel-gazing this author did on the subject of memes, he appears to have missed a key point of it all in this little scenario:

"I Can Count to Potato" girl. . . Unable to get the pictures taken down, the incensed and distressed mother went to the British media to complain. The entire room at ROFLcon seems to collectively roll their eyes. Everyone knows not to do this. . . . Kim says he's put his head together with colleagues, and thinks it might be advisable to start a "Know Your Meme guidelines or a manual to Internet fame," since it's "safe to assume" that unlike with Boston/Scumbag, "parents don't know how, like, the Internet culture and trolls even work."

I feel like I need to go to the school nurse and get my ears checked. Could I have heard that right? To recap: A mother, whose daughter with Down syndrome is turned into a ubiquitous Internet joke, gets upset, tries to get the photo taken down, goes to the media when she can't, and it's her fault?

I feel like I'm alone in my moral outrage, until I hear a voice from the back of the room, which starts putting the wood to Kim: "I think it puts you in a weird position to say how the parent should react when you've got ads next to her Down syndrome kid. ... So who else should they go to, if they can't go to the media? Who are you to say they shouldn't be pissed off about it when you're making money from an ad there?" The voice belongs to Ben Lashes, Scumbag's meme manager. I don't share similar philosophies with Lashes on most things meme-related, but right about now, I want to hug him. . ."

I jump in and help Lashes go to work on Kim. (Me: "You're saying, 'Here is a guide of how to act properly if you are violated,' correct?" Kim, after awkward pause: "Right.")

The author needs to recognize that memes have two different lives. Nearly all of them are born and develop as non-commercial products, being passed around the internet without anybody making any particular money off of them. (Except in an extremely aggregated sense -- that people read Fark because others post memes in it, and Fark makes money because people read Fark.) It is only when a meme is so explosively popular and recognizable that it can be monetized, beginning its second life as a commercial meme.

The "you can't do anything about a meme" attitude that is discussed here is a reaction to the first phase of a meme's life. When a meme starts to spread non-commercially, there is almost nothing one can do to stop it. You can sue someone who is making commercial use of a meme that you have some sort of proprietary interest in, but for a variety of legal and practical reasons, you can't really sue someone (much less millions of people) who is making a non-commercial use of it.

Potato Girl's mother's anger was probably more directed at the first phase of that meme's life -- that her daughter's photo was being used (disrespectfully) by millions of people, becoming "a ubiquitous Internet joke" -- rather than by the fact that a much smaller number of people were able to monetize it -- the "you've got ads next to her Down syndrome kid" part. And Kim's response, which is essentially "live with it," is about the only reasonable reaction to someone aggrieved by a non-commercial meme. Complaining to the media might have earned her some sympathy in a relatively small slice of the internet, such that a small fraction of compassionate people might decide not to pass around the meme anymore, but for the vast bulk of the internet, it's like complaining to the ocean that your friend drowned in it.

But the mother would be within her rights to, at the very least, go after people who make some clear and direct commercial use of the meme. (Like Kim's business, as the author correctly points out.) But that's a fine distinction and one that is likely to fail to satisfy the mother, who really wants to halt both commercial and non-commercial use of the meme.

I wish the author would have understood and addressed that issue, but it was quite clear from the get-go that all he wanted to do was write a snooty "these things are stupid and so are the people involved in them" piece.

Speaking of internet slang, I wonder if he's heard of TL;DR.

a linguist from Louisiana State University whose master's thesis is titled: "I Can Has Thesis? A Linguistic Analysis of LOLspeak."

I love this person for actually getting a committee to sign off on this.

I was here the day Tron Man happened. Good times.

Dude O Matic 5000: I was here the day Tron Man happened. Good times.

Mustard Man could kick his ass!!!!

Two questions:

1) why are pages 1 and 2 of this article like a paragraph each, and then page 3 is all the rest of the paragraphs?

2) would it killed them to have included or linked to images of each of the referenced memes?

That explains why there are bumper stickers everywhere that say "Keyboard cat for president 2012"
along side Nyan cat stickers everywhere.

I'm here right now. talking to you from MIT,
*enter creepy music*

How can you possibly have an article that long about something that is only interesting because of the visual aspect and only have one tiny picture?

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

You know what's better than a Fark shout out on page 3? The entire farking article on one page: Link

/Bad subtard

Dude O Matic 5000: I was here the day Tron Man happened. Good times.

I looked up tron guys phone number that very night (i worked night shift in a data center) and crank called him. Just asked him if he was tron guy, he said yup, I said cool, have a good night.

I Like Bread: Speaking of internet slang, I wonder if he's heard of TL;DR.

This

Three pages, one meme pic, and I'd swear that's Tom Magliozzi from Car Talk taking a pic.

Paid by the word, I guess.

phedex: Dude O Matic 5000: I was here the day Tron Man happened. Good times.

I looked up tron guys phone number that very night (i worked night shift in a data center) and crank called him. Just asked him if he was tron guy, he said yup, I said cool, have a good night.

That's not a crank call. How about, "Is your lightcycle running? You'd better go catch it!"

/that is all

Uchiha_Cycliste: [i451.photobucket.com image 640x507]

brohoof

poot_rootbeer: Two questions:

1) why are pages 1 and 2 of this article like a paragraph each, and then page 3 is all the rest of the paragraphs?

2) would it killed them to have included or linked to images of each of the referenced memes?

The Weekly Standard is Serious Business. "Journalists", you know. This sort of stuff is beneath them and they want to make sure you know it.

/dnrfta

I feel like a proud father who has seen his boy grow up. Afterall, my first green light was a Tron Guy thread in 2004.

I like this guy

As its very name suggests, ROFLcon is not a conference that takes itself too seriously. Which it is to be congratulated for. Not that it would hear you if you offered congratulations. Because the attendees here are the worker bees, Internet-famous celebrities, and leading intellectual lights of the universe known as Web 2.0, which is forever, reverentially, and loudly in the business of congratulating itself.

If I sound like I'm implying that a New Dumbness has dawned, an era in which disposable Internet culture is subsuming all other culture as we know it at light speed-I'm implying no such thing. Rather, I'm stating it outright.

but man, that story was way too long

That's some quality pagination.

All of the 2012 ROFLcon III panels (over 22 hours worth) can be watched here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list =PL8295924BFD56094A&feature=plcp

I was a speaker at ROFLcon II. It was surprisingly fun. I was amazed that they thought to include people from the heyday of Usenet.