What are memes?

jelly time? It is peanut butter jelly time? Where you wet? Where you where you? Where you wet? Now there you go, there you go. Yes, he's stuck in your head for the rest of the day. I actually wrote down the whole origin of that. Today. We thought we would look at Internet memes. What are they? How do they get started? Uh?

And uh kind of give you guys the lowdown on it, because this is one of those things where it's a word that's out there that you know, you see it attached to stuff and then you're thinking, yeah, but ultimately, what what is a meme? And it's actually one of those words it's very kind of challenging to define, so to to really get a grip on on the whole meaning of meme. You have to let's just leave the Internet behind for a minute here, because it's not limited

to the Internet. Now, the term itself comes from a book written back in nineteen seventy s all the way back then that was like so twenty century, yeah, as ninety six, a year after a certain shark was terrorizing the movie theaters and a year before a certain hero from tattooing would blow up the Death Star. It was written by Richard Dawkins, and the book was called The

Selfish Gene. Now, in this book he proposed a concept of a meme, which is a unit of cultural transmission or a unit of imitation, and then the study of such a thing would be called memetics. So meme is the accepted pronunciation, although some people call it mem and I would figure you would assume that from memetics. I haven't heard anybody call it memetics. No, but e, m E, m e. You think it's either meme or mimi at any rate, it's not Beaker from the Muppets. It's although

he isn't many different memes. Yes, So, so anyway, if you're talking about a unit of cultural transmission, this could really be practically anything within a culture. For example, handshakes that could be a cultural meme because it's going to be unique to a specific culture. And then not only do you have memes propagate and spread throughout the culture, but they can mutate over time and change over time as people begin to alter them in little ways, whether

that's consciously or not. And for example, with the handshake, you could get the things like the high five. Yes you know, so that would be a good example where the high five is really just kind of a adaptation of mutation of the handshake. Well, this, this whole idea of a unit of cultural transmission kind of made its way onto the Internet pretty early on. And uh, I remember the first time I ever encountered the word meme.

It was actually on the web. Um, I had not read Dawkins book, so I was not familiar with the

the the his definition of what a meme was. For the longest time, I thought meme was just a specific term for those really annoying quizzes that people would send around and be like, you know, the twenty questions about you, and it's it was just a you know, a series of questions that you would answer that would give people who read the list a little more of an idea of who you were and what makes you tick, things like you know what your favorite color is and what

kind of foods you like, and um, have you ever kissed a girl in the back of a car? Um? That kind of stuff. I mean, tons and tons of list and then some people might, you know, usually at the end of it, and say something like, send this to several more people and then have them send it back to you so you can learn all about everybody around you and share minute details of your life. Defining a meme, you're doing it wrong. Well, that's the thing here is that for the longest time, that's what I

thought a meme was. It was only that, But that that's just one kind of a meme because again it's a that list was spread viral e across multiple networks of friends, and then people might read that list and think, well, that's kind of interesting. But I think I can think of a few questions I want to have answered that aren't on this list. I'm going to add them, and then so the list kind of changes, and then other

people are like, that's kind of lame. I'm gonna make a whole different list of goofy questions just as a joke. And then so again, the meme continues to to evolve and mutate over time. Yes, so basically it's it's an idea that gets spread. Yes, that's and actually might The first encounter I had with it was suh an article in Wired magazine some time back, and it was just

when they did define it. And when you have the opportunity to look around on the Internet and in popular culture, you know, it's easy to the idea of a meme is readily apparent. Once you understand the definition. You okay, yeah, I totally get that. And it's it's funny because it's become pretty pretty well universally adopted. I think at this point people go, I wish I've seen Facebook posts let's say things like I wish this annoying meme would quit.

You know, somebody stop. But I know a million people who I get. Could I could get to stop this meme? Okay? Maybe not? But but even so, even so, I bet if you ask most of the people who encounter that word to define it, they would have difficulty doing so. Yeah, because they know what it is, but they can't say what it is, right, It's kind of like art. I

know what it is when I see it. Yes, all right, So we're going to talk about some Internet memes, kind of give you a background on where they came from, and um, before we really get into that, I thought I would mention one other thing that I think is really interest thing about memes, which is that the most successful memes, in my view, are the ones that develop naturally that someone unleash is an idea that may or may not be funny immediately or relevant or whatever, and

then over time it gets more and more uh well more people notice it time and then maybe tweak it and change it a little bit, and then, uh but it all happens naturally. No one's forcing it. Now. The ones where people do try to force it, and they do call them force memes, they being you know, various people on the Internet, um, mostly four Chan. But anyway, the the birthplace of many a meme, as we will, if not the birthplace, at least the place where they

start to really start to take off. Um. Yeah, So a forced meme would be one where someone creates something specifically with the intention of it going out there and exploding on the Internet and getting changed around and and uh and and altered and tweaked and to propagate like that. And often it's either an attempt to get notoriety or to maybe even do some sort of marketing. Um, those don't work as well because I think a lot of

people pick up on that pretty quickly. If it if there's not a genuine you know, just a wow, this thing is pretty funny, or this thing is just crazy. I can't believe someone did this. Uh, if it's if, if there's a forced mean thing behind it, it just it doesn't feel genuine, and people abandon it. No, go ahead,

I apologize, Um, I was going to say that. Ue. And unfortunately, for some who don't intend their actions to become memes, some of these things take off viral e uh and uncontrollably, and it is affected many people's lives. But I figure we're going to talk about a couple

of those people in a few minutes. Yeah. So in some cases we're talking about people who created something without any intention of it turning into an ex loas of internet hit and then having to endure some pretty heavy duty teasing, I guess is the best way of putting it. So we started off by talking at the very beginning of this podcast. So we made a reference to peanut butter Jelly Time, yes, which reference is a very specific meme.

If you're not familiar with it, that means you weren't on the internet back in uh probably two thousand two or so. Um, it's a flash animation flash animation of a banana, of course, yes, because who's better prepared to

sing about peanut butter jelly time than banana? Um. Yeah, it's a it's the Dancing Banana animated emoticon, which is just this little banana that just kind of bounces back and forth a little bit and has a big grin and yeah, and it's set to a song called Peanut Butter and Jelly Time by the Buckwheat Boys and uh and so it just the song is pretty repetitive and pretty repetitive. It's not as repetitive as a badger Badger badger, right, but or Potter Potter Potter, the the Harry Potter parody

of Badger, Badger Badger? Have you seen that? Showing that to you after the podcast? You know what a bunch of people are going to write in after they look these memes up, and you know, we're gonna get lots of omgs on her, Yeah, especially the people who are like I had never heard of that, and now I can never unhear it. So, yeah, this little flash animation

just showed this banana yelling out it's peanut butter jelly time. Actually, the banana wasn't saying anything, just playing in the background. Banana's just looking like a maniac. And then you hear it's peanut butter jelly Time by the Buckweed Boys. And that was created the the and the flash animation was created by um a couple of guys who were posting too off Topic dot com and uh and and then that kind of got picked up later on new grounds

dot com and then that's another good place to find memes. Yeah, and from those those boards that it's spread out, and then it actually spread out so far that it affected other parts of popular culture. It even appeared on an episode of Family Guy where Brian dresses up as the banana in an attempt to cheer up a very despondent Peter, and it does not work, and then Brian just keeps on going anyway, because you know, once you're in peanut butter jelly time, you don't get out. That's pretty much it.

But yeah, that that's uh. And and we should also add that we're getting a lot of this information from a wonderful web resource. Oh yeah, this is UM by the people who brought you the the uh Internet news tech news podcast Rocket Boom. Yeah. So it's, you know,

an authoritative source. They have no your meme dot com, yes, write that down, No your meme dot com yes, So if you ever come across a meme, you can go to know your meme dot com and do a search for it, and there's a good chance they're going to have an entry on there. Uh. And sometimes they do a full episode where they break down the origin of a meme and it's it's really definitive and thorough work. The one for peanut butter jelly time was excellent. Yeah,

I have to say that, yes exactly. It was a very attractive young lady, one of the prisoners, addressed as a banana um delivering the very serious peanut butter jelly time yes derivation. Um. Yeah, so we do recommend that it's it's a great source. But we thought we talked a little bit about some of the other memes that that uh we've encountered and some of our favorites, and why don't you go ahead and hingant Uh, well, you know, I actually found a list of on earl Esque, which

is uh one of the aol dot com sites. On they posted their one hundred most iconic Internet videos and wanted to see which ones that I had heard of. Uh. Number eleven was one that went around a while ago. Uh you know Newman Numa yes Numa, Numa Yesuma. I actually this one was it was a not really a forced meme, but it was intentionally posted by the author. It was Gary Brolsma, who was singing along with a song, or actually appears to be singing along with the song.

You actually hear the real version as the drug of Steve Tindah didn't didn't, That's what it was. And uh, he is, you know, basically having a good time hanging out at his computer and thinking it's it's it's an

infectiously good time. I mean, he looks like a total spaz doing this this dance and lip singing, but he did it on purpose, and he did this with the intention of showing it to some friends, and then his friends showed it to some other people and then the exploded from there did it new Grounds, which is where he put it on there, and uh, you know he's

getting millions of views. And this is you know, pre as they as they pointed out on on the website there at at LASK, this was before YouTube, so it was getting millions of hits, even before YouTube made it really simple for people to thrust a meme out into

the public eye on a quick basis. Now, later on he tried to recreate that success with a couple of other videos that didn't have the same sort of viral effect as his first one, probably because again it was kind of coming across as a forced meme at that point. You know, it's the first time it all. It all kind of exploded naturally just as people got interested in it.

But no one wants to be spoon fed or force fed something, so you want to I'm gonna go out of the gate with my favorite one of all times, Ninja's versus Pirates, and it's Pirates all the way. It is Pirates all the way. There's always a bunch of Ninja fans because if they do, they reveal what they are. The ninjas can't write in we might get some blank

slips of paper written an invisible ink. But no, yeah, Ninja's, if you are a real Ninja, you're not gonna write in um except for asking Ninja that guy he said, you can't shut him up, so um. Actually I love that show too. But Ninja's versus pirates. So this this is a weird meme in that it's kind of hard

to say where this one came from. As early as nine, there was an Atari arcade game called Skull and Crossbones where you got to play as pirates, and you normally would fight against other pirates, but you also fought Ninja's. But in two thousand three you had Robert Hamburger parodying Ninja's in a series of UH posts on Real Ultimate Power UM where he would give he would give synopsis of movies that movie ideas he had for Ninja's and the UH and several of them, Ninja's would fight pirates

and the Ninja is always one. Actually Ninja, I should say, because that's the plural. Now I'm gonna have to do this s connected dy shuffle. You don't get that unless you listen to stuff. You should know enough of a plug for them. But I would I would point out to that. It's gone so far as I've seen a we video game called Ninja's Versus Pirates Dodgeball, yes, and

maybe backwards Pirates. I don't know. Actually there there's a game in which Ninja's and pirates fight each other in dodge I have a friend who on his birthday had a Ninja versus Pirate Dodgeball tournament. I was unable to attend. I did get to see the bruises later. But yeah, so that's that's one of those means that the origin is kind of, you know, foggy. We're not really sure

where how they took off, but it really has taken off. Um, It's probably not as popular now as it used to be, but you can still find plenty of sites dedicated to the whole Ninja pirate animosity. I once created a similar rivalry between conquistadors and YETI, but that hasn't really taken off. And I have seen people try to insert zombies into the equation to make it sort of a three way battle, but you know, nobody has done it so much so

that the Ninja versus Pirate Yeah, now next zombies. Okay, um, let's go with a quite persistent meme LOLd cats. Ah, yes, now this is another one. We can thank sites like four chan. Four yes, this is uh we we'd love to tell you exactly who it was that came up with this idea, but I, as far as I know,

it was posted anonymously to four chan, and uh, nobody knows. Well, somebody knows exactly who it was that decided to put a picture of a cat, take a picture of a cat and put some silly caption over it in a sort of pigeon English, and uh what yes, yes, so it's evolved now to the point where you can have whole conversations in it, and and low cats may have actually evolved from an earlier uh captioned animal photo, the oh really owl. Oh yes, I love the old really owl.

So the this is the this is a snow owl that looks surprised because it's it's beak is open and its eyes are wide open, so it looks like it's oh really. That's it's spelled oh r l y, which is sort of a text you know, text messaging shorthand, and it's kind of a way of of trolling a site, like someone says something whether or not it's surprising or not. Actually,

more often it's when it's not surprising. Someone says something that's really obvious, and then in response, someone posts the photo of the owl that says oh really on it. The proper response to that, by the way, is yeah really, which is a barn owl that looks really angry, and then the uh. The third response would be no way, which is ah, I think it's a hawk with its mouth white or being wide open um no way spelled in O w A I uh. And that that started.

The earliest usage of that came from the something Awful forums. Again, this isn't a breeding ground for things such as this and usually quite funny, right and then uh, but four chan picked it up and ran with it. And then that's probably where the loll cats thing kind of because you know that that's sort of served as the foundation for things like all cats and the the bucket walrus the loris which actually was not a walrus. It wasn't It was a seal. Yeah two years ago, sad. Yeah. Man,

Now he's in bucket heaven. He's got all the buckets he could want. Now. This is where memes get to be big business. Because an entrepreneur named Ben Huh actually purchased a website called I Can has Cheeseburger dot com and has made a business off of uh some people. Some people are angry at him for you know, somebody else who started the site and he purchased the site along with some other ones. There's a there's one about about dogs and failed dogs. No, it's not failed dogs, uh.

It I has a hot dog dot com and there are pictures of dogs with similar captions, dogs doing funny things and you know, even funnier now that you've put a caption over it. Uh. And they these sites allow you to uh to submit your own photos. You can even use the generator to take a an existing photo and put a different caption on there and submitted, which is really where we're coming through the whole meme thing

in the first place. Like if if all this was was just a photo of a particular cat, like the hanging their baby cat, and that's all it was, was just a hang in their baby cat, and no one ever altered it, or it didn't really spread beyond that,

it wouldn't be a meme. But because it's taken on a life of its own, where now you see a picture of a cat with some funny text and you think, oh, it's a little cat, you know, And then you could actually take that same photo and put different text on it, and then you've you've just you know, made that meme go a little bit further. Um, and then you know it's spawned sub memes like a ceiling cat and basement cat, the you know got in the devil as Cats, a white cat in a a black cat, and uh, all

sorts of other little sub memes from there. The ety Bitty Kitty Committee. Well, speaking of cats, Yes, in six a special video was taken. Do you know where I'm going with this? Yeah? I think its a video of a cat named fat So. Owner Charlie Schmitz creates a video where he manipulates his cat, fat So, wearing a little onesie playing a keyboard. And that video was, like I said back in okay, So let's skip forward to

two seven. Some friends uploaded or he actually I guess uploaded it to YouTube, just a video of his cat. The scoofy video of a cat playing a keyboard. Um. Enter Brad O'Farrell, yes, who then asks permission to use this video to play to play off another video of a guy strapped to a I think it was an office chair falling down an escalator. Yes, yeah, it looks

really painful. And then at the end of it it cuts to the keyboard Cat playing the keyboard where the key the cat is playing off the guy falling down the escalator. The idea being that it's like from Vaudeville Day's when your act starts to totally tank and the giant hook comes from off stage and hooks you and then pulls you off stage. Same idea keyboard Cat is to to essentially say that was a complete failure. You are done now, and uh so keyboard Cat. Yeah, it's

become That was a big meme probably lot. I would say last year was really when when it kind of peaked and then started to go away. There's another great YouTube video that was also a huge meme for a while until it died on Thanksgiving. Okay, do you know what I'm going with this? I don't know that intro. You must have given me up, you must have let me down. Now you're running around and hurting me. Yeah, I'm talking about Rick rolling, buddy, Yeah, I forgot about that.

How could you forget about Rick Rolling? I had tried very hard to put it out of my mind. I didn't even write it down on purpose. You're a greater man than I. Gungadine. Um So Rick Rolling, Yeah, the Rick Astley never Gonna Give You Up video. This was sort of a do it yourself meme because a lot of people went to a great effort to disguise the deo of Rick Astley's song as something else so that

they could open it. And suddenly Rick Astley was singing, Yeah, you might get like five seconds of whatever it is you thought it was supposed to be. And then suddenly Rick Astley breaks in and he's singing to you, and uh, you know the was it the Cartoon Network float at Thanksgiving? Yes, that was the the culmination I think of the phenomenon. Yeah, we're at the during the Thanksgiving Day parade. And by this time the Rick Rolling meme had already kind of

played out. People were pretty much over that meme. And that's the other thing. These memes do have a lifespan. Some of them will last for years and some of them will, you know, peak for a couple of months and then just disappear. This was one that had some staying power, but it kind of started to die out.

And then on Thanksgiving Day, during the Thanksgiving parade, Uh, cartoon Network float comes up, and in the middle of the Cartoon Network floats presentation it suddenly you hear Rick Astley's music start and he popped out and sang to the crowd, which is a kind of an indication he's a good sport up the whole thing a parent, he apparently loves it. He says that, you know, if people are finding getting enjoyment Alvis music, however, that might be

more power to them. I'm like, that's a great attitude. That is. Any others who want to chat about Uh, yeah, I was thinking about mentioning Steve Spangler. Steve Spangler, yes, who in nine in two thousand two appeared on a TV segment. Uh he's a you know, physics teacher, so you know, he appears on KUSA TV and demonstrates that if you drop some breath mints, specifically mentos and a bottle of soda, there's an eruption, right, and it's you know,

a cheap and easy experiment to replicate. So all of a sudden, around two thousand five, everyone started doing that and there were not only people doing this in their own backyard and posting it to YouTube. There were people orchestrating large events in which there were chain reactions of choreos, choreographed reactions of fountains of soda spattering everyone in anyone.

It was even featured on the popular television series MythBusters MythBusters Zone by Discovery Communications and uh yeah, parent company of Housefforce dot com. And yeah, that's a good one. That's another example of people really running with a specific meme. Here's a good one. Um, there's a there's a a little phrase that as near and dear to my heart because it it is actually found on a T shirt I gave to my wife for Valentine's Day this year.

Comes from a little video game called Zero Wing. All your base are belonged to us. This is also kind of the the origin for lull speak in a way, it's the idea of this. Uh. This poorly translated text from UH, in this case a video game from Japan,

so often derogatively referred to as English. Uh. This game had lots of different passages in it that were torturous to read, including all your base or belong to us and someone set us up the bomb that all your base are belonging to us exploded on the internet and uh and has been around ever since. And and indeed was on a Think Geek T shirt, which is what I purchased for my wife as a Valentine's Day gift, which was roses a red violence are blue. All my

baser belonged to you. Um, we wanted to talk about some of the people who weren't necessarily intending on becoming Internet superstars. I have one for you that will let you keep yours. Um. This name may or may not be familiar to you at first glance. Andrew Meyer Andrew Meyer. September seven at the University of Florida, he confronted Senator John Kerry on an event uh to ask him about the Skull and Bones, which is his uh secretive organization

and you and uh. Actually they wanted to escort him out. Security tried to get him to eve and in the process he inadvertently created the meme better known to the world as don't taste me bro right twice as are a calls And then actually I just thought of something. I'll still let you keep yours. Um the hold Kanye, Yeah, I'll let you finish right. Yeah, that was definitely Now, granted that one was intentional. Come on, Kanye is always

about getting grabbing the attention. But it became a mean But I was recent I was thinking specifically of Star Wars Kid. Yes, Andy, Andy Bio of h waxy dot org discovered this video. It was and he's not the name of the kid, by the way, And he's the name of the guy who discovered it, and he discovered it back in um two thousand three. Uh, the name of the kid was who in two thousand two filmed himself with a golf ball retriever and was going through a series of semi uh kind of martial arts sort

of moves and making noises at the time. Now was a hefty young lad and was very enthusiastic. He was clearly having a great time and just enjoying in a way very similar to the new Manuma guy, you know, clearly enjoying himself. But he had not intended for this

video to ever be seen by anyone else necessarily. Unfortunately, he left it in the studio where other people could find it, and the other people thought it was hysterical and uploaded it to the internet, and then it got lots and lots of views, and Gislan as a as a result, was the subject of much um teasing and derision and ultimately left school and reportedly finished school in

the psychiatric ward. So I mean that also shows you that sometimes four chan will do whatever that whatever four chan wants to do in order to create hilarity for four Chan, and it doesn't matter if someone gets hurt in the process doing it for the lulls. In other words, yeah, other people took the video and basically superimposed the lightsaber of effect onto the golf ball grabber and and you know, the out of the sound effects and did all this. And there are lots of remixes, which is also a

very common theme and memes. You'll find lots of different remixes. Um. I got one other quick little example, which is okay Go. So okay Go has a couple of different music videos, including a Million Ways to Be Cruel and Here It Goes Again, both of which are pretty low budget music videos where the group kind of did simple one take shots of them performing a dance routine, and their fans have created their own versions of these dance routines and

uploaded them to YouTube. So much so that it's become a meme itself, and not that the band intended it to be a meme. They just would be a fun, low budget way to create music videos. Um, we're gonna have to wrap this up. Unfortunately, we could do a whole series of episodes on memes, but we're running out of time, and so I guess we're gonna do you

have one more you want to end with? Well, one that was sort of introduced to me was one that sort of had his genesis in the release of a movie by someone completely unrelated to the meme on March fourth to two thousand five. Vin Diesel Um was in the pacifier at this release of that movie. Uh and uh someone and the someone something awful for him. See there's that side against another good place to find memes.

Um Ian Spector apparently decided to point out how cool and tough Vin Diesel was, so they had they made up a bunch of facts about how tough he was, and you know, the memes started to lose steam. So they said, okay, well, who should we create a fact generator for to talk about how tough he is? Well, the favorite was Chuck Norris. Yeah, there was also Mr T for a while, really was Mr T in there because I had more, far more familiar with the Chuck Norris.

I've run across Mr T and Vin Diesel, But Chuck Norris is the one that uh is is definitely the one that took off. And and I could read these uh and and chuckle for hours, like Chuck Norris's tears could cure cancer, but he has never cried. Yes, And Chuck Norris doesn't do push ups. He pushes the earth down. Chuck Norris, you know if he shaved his goateee, there

would be a fist, right. Yeah. There are a lot of jokes that are ripped directly from a Saturday Night Live series of skits called Bill Brewski, but a lot of them also are original. That's a good one. But but yes, that that's totally and and they're far more tons and tons of these, And we could yes, you the man now, bog, We could go on for ages about these, but Jerry's giving us the stinky, so we need to wrap this up. Um. So, if you guys have a favorite meme you want to talk about, send

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