dissociatedpress.com » internet memes

Will You Shut Up About The Oscars Already?

admin — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:04:05 +0000

Our sentiments about the Academy Awards can be summed up pretty quickly. They’re stupid. If you don’t get why they’re stupid, Jerry Seinfeld sums it up well in this clip (video also below). But you know what made them even more stupid this year? The fact that for the first (and hopefully last) time in history, the post-awards commentary collided with the already-played-out animated-GIF-as-meme. Nothing says You’re Doing it Wrong like the mainstream media trying to be hip by mining mercurial internet humor. And the incessant re-posting of the same decidedly not funny GIF’s on thousands of news and entertainment websites was a fitting eulogy for the animated GIF meme. So. We declared social media dead last week; this week we’re declaring the whole “internet meme” meme dead. Especially the animated GIF. The only effective humor to be found in most internet memes is driven by their obscurity and inside-jokiness. They almost universally are given birth deep in the bowels of Reddit, Something Awful, or 4Chan, enjoy a brief “humor event horizon”, and by the time they reach sites like QuickMeme.com, they’re even more unfunny than when someone tries to verbally explain a really funny single-panel comic that was based on a sight gag. So we apologize for recently capitalizing on the linkbait strategy of posting “funny YouTube clips and animated GIF’s” in our weekly Missing Links. Next week we’ll have a roundup of actually interesting links. Enjoy our farewell to the animated GIF and YouTubidity, after the Seinfeld clip below.

The Only Oscar GIF We’re Sharing This Week

Just kidding, it’s a funny cat GIF.
And to show how meta we are, it’s not even that.

Russian Lane Change

We missed this in our linkbaiting Russian Dash Cam collection last week.

The Last Animated GIF We Will Ever Post

This is you, if you came here expecting to see funny Oscar GIF’s

Okay, Second to Last

This thing makes the Hasselhoffian Recursion look downright amateurish.

Captcha’d Forever

admin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 03:31:03 +0000

I’ve often joked that the web is an excellent reflection of humanity and the human psyche. This is reflected in the fact that most internet traffic is generated by sex, trying to meet someone who likes you, or getting the free stuff you think you deserve. In the broader view – as often happens in the real world – the evolution of the web went something like this: some smart clever people create something cool, less smart people come along and join in, everybody has fun for a while, and then their stupider, greedier, eviler friends show up and eff it all up. This pattern is probably why a lot of humanity’s energy seems to be devoted to protecting itself. Like building thousands of nuclear bombs to make sure no-one uses them, or destroying your freedom to protect it. On the web, this behavior is why we have so many tools for proving you’re human, i.e., the many variations of the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart). You know, those squiggly words you can’t read with your blurred vision and splitting headache the morning after a hard night of partying, when you’re trying to check your finances online to see if you burned your bank account in the last few hours of the night, the ones you don’t remember after buying the entire strip bar a round to prove to your favorite lap dancer that you’re loaded. It’s amusing that with Captchas we’re just protecting all the “good” web applications (useful web services) we write from “bad” web applications (spambots) we write. Typical human acts of futility. In any case, in spite of their assumed usefulness, Captchas have been cracked in a number of ways. Or have they? Jeff Atwood of CodingHorror.com points out some interesting fallacies in this article, and claims he has a 99% bot-blocking rate with what he calls a “naive captcha”, which is simply a well-designed captcha image that never changes! If you don’t think conventional Captchas are good enough, there a some alternative methods like this math-based Captcha, which will not only keep out spambots, but probably everyone but Stephen Hawking or Richard Feynman as well. Other versions include solving a tic-tac-toe puzzle, or this one, based on pictures of cats and dogs, or this one, which requires you to solve hieroglyphics. And then of course, companies like Google or Microsoft will try to figure out ways to make or save money with them. Microsoft’s idea is to make you look at ads; Google uses Captchas to make you read the words their scanning technology can’t. Yup. Your obstacle to the content you want is Google’s free labor force. Probably the best use of Captchas I’ve run across though is using them for making comics. This Something Awful forum may have started it, but there are amusing collections here and here. Some images may be NSFW. My quick stab at it is below.

Of course, I had to hit “refresh” like thirty times on the captcha page….

This Link May Be Subject To Copyright

admin — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:09:48 +0000

As we mentioned last week, there’s something funny about the way some people develop a sense of ownership when sharing a link, to the extent that “decent” people will add a “via” credit when re-sharing the link. This is especially funny given that the web is, when all is said and done, NOTHING BUT A SERIES OF LINKS. It’s also amusing that this kind of “link valor” still exists at a time when all you find at the top of most Google search results are Scraper Sites. Obviously, some people not only don’t care who’s link they’re sharing, they don’t particularly care who’s content they’re sharing. Which is why I’m going to have to point out that this brief article and the links within it are subject to copyright. So please do not share them. You may review our detailed terms of service and linking policy here. Actually, that’s Ticketmaster UK’s legal page, but we like the way they phrased things. So just replace “Ticketmaster” with “Dissociated Press” wherever it’s appropriate. And especially mind the bit that says “”You also agree not to deep-link to the site for any purpose, unless specifically authorised by Ticketmaster Dissociated Press to do so.” And if you think we’re crazy for instituting these policies, check out this collection of sites that ban you from linking to them. If a policy’s good enough for Jimmy Choo, it’s good enough for us. So on with de linking…

Let’s start with a little

Is This The Viral For A New Finnish Horror Film?

Aivan Toinen Päivä Rannalla Suomessa

Nope. Just another day on the beach in Finland.

Is This The Trailer For The YouTube Version of “The Social Network”?

Yes, but there’s no movie to go with it. But movies do tend to come in pairs, don’t they.

Safety First

Although we were surprised a while back at the darkness of this Edward Gorey-esque children’s safety campaign in the UK, they apparently haven’t cornered the market on creepy. The image below is from an American safety pamphlet produced in the sixties.

Oh. And don’t forget. Tricycles are dangerous too:

And if the tricycles don’t get you, the hot dogs will. Bet you didn’t know hot dogs were the number one choking hazard . A safety fact which offers an interesting segue into…

The Ten Weirdest Japanese Condoms

And the six most humiliated Japanese Men promoting them:

Internet Meme Test

So you think you know your Internet Memes? Test your knowledge with this series of images in which the familiar element has been Photoshopped out. The one pictured here is super easy, but if you can’t figure it out, just click on the image.

Poetry Corner

Usually a kind man on the ground,
and then head in the clouds and my dreams,
anything can happen by magic.

One of my favorite pastimes is creating poetry by pasting text into Google Translate and then translating it back and forth until I’m happy with the results. The poem above, for instance, came from the following sentence: “Although I am usually a down to earth kind of guy, sometimes my head is in the clouds and i dream of far away places where magical things can happen”. Well, now you can save all that cutting and pasting with Funnytranslator.com, which translates your text from English to 54 different languages and back again.

By the way, if you’ve read this far, we’re still looking for a name for this weekly link dump. Make a suggestion here or by commenting.

You Biatch! You Stoleded My Link!*

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:48:19 +0000

I get depressed sometimes when I realize that my life is just a bunch of web links strung together with occasional real-life discussion, but mostly just connected by written commentary and link sharing on Facebook. It gets REALLY depressing when I find myself having an emotional response to someone sharing a link on their Facebook “wall” without crediting me, as if somehow it was MY link. Or if they get more comments in spite of posting it when it’s already a week old. “Stupid link sharing friend! I shared that link LAST WEEK!” This is one of the unfortunate side effects of maintaining a site like Dissociated Press. As I said to a friend once: “The Internet. I have seen it“. Out of the literally dozens of sources I comb regularly to bring you interesting stuff, I OMIT infinitely more than I share, because, well, they’re JUST LINKS. So I’ve finally decided to put this wasted pile of weekly links to use, with a regular “link dump” section. I just need a name for this new section on the site. “Linkdump” somehow doesn’t sound like something that would generate enthusiastic user engagement. So if you have an idea for a name, feel free to share. But enough delaying. On with delinking!

First of all, the two links that I’m most surprised haven’t been shared more:

InstantOilSpill.com and WhatTheF***IsMySocialMediaStrategy.com

Last week’s internet superstar was clearly Basil Marceaux, the Tennessee gubernatorial candidate who put the “goober” back in gubernatorial. We immediately did a roundup of Basil and other unusual candidates across the country, but guess what? Basil’s back, and he’s badder than ever. And he’s really got his message together this time. Check out his thoughts on gun control. He’s firm in his belief that we can’t NOT let nutcases have guns. Cuz the government has Patriot Missiles, and we have slingshots. And rocks. And stuff.

If you find Basil’s slant on politics interesting, you should really visit the site of one of his mentors, PLENIPOTENTIARY-JUDGE: David-Wynn:Miller. If you have trouble understanding what he says, he provides some guidance on Sentence Structure.

Personally, I find this box more interesting:

Another fun thing to link to are Flash-based doodads that require mind-numbing math and programming skills to be pretty and make noise but otherwise have no intrinsic value for the human race. Like the Andre Michelle Laboratory, which has a lot of cool things like pulsate and tone matrix. And one of the most bizarrely authentic synthesized acoustic guitar sounds you’ll ever hear. I say “bizarrely authentic” because it sounds sort of like acoustic guitar for the uncanny valley.

Sorry. Are you yawning? Perhaps it’s not my fault.

Perhaps you need to see some ants on a scanner. Five years of ants on a scanner, to be exact:

That is probably the greatest thing since the long-defunct Cat-Scan.com. Remember? When that guy ran that site where people put their cats on scanners? We’ve come a long way since then. Now we have…

The Internet Animal Orchestra. With autotune, of course.

Perhaps someone has pointed you toward that amazing web site devoted to MRI scans of food. I just want to point out this was done back in 2007, with a Big Mac. And the Big Mac MRI has a soundtrack. And is on YouTube. Can someone please tell that “Inside insides” guy about streaming video? There’s something a little Geocities about 20 megabytes of GIF’s on the same page. Anyway, here’s your Big Mac:

And if you find fruit so interesting, here are 16 cool things you can do with watermelons

The fact is, what people love most is stupid YouTube videos, so here’s last week’s roundup of…..

Airplane Prank – Pilot pretends to faint

New Method of Mass Transit Discovered in the Philippines

Washing Machine Self Destructs

Flushing 32 glowsticks down the toilet.

*The headline is a reference to the long-forgotten You Bitch! You Stole My HTML, c. 1999

Happy Hollowmeme!

admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:18:38 +0000

The other day, a friend asked me: “What are you gonna be for Halloween?” to which I replied: “Happy I survived another Michigan October!“. Let’s face it, the real purpose of Halloween is to remind you that there are 55 shopping days ’til Christmas, and that it’s time to pull out your Turgooduccochiqua recipe. My only Halloween plan this year is to call all my weight-conscious friends November 2nd and ask them if they want me to take all the mini chocolate bars off their hands, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have some costume ideas! A few of our ideas from last year are still pertinent; I have yet to see the amazingly simple-to-execute Surreal Homer Simpson getup at a party. But for this year, why not go as an Internet Meme? The folks over at Rocketboom have assembled a list for you, complete with product links to all the things you’ll need. To dress up as the Flying Spaghetti Monster for instance, all you need is rope, googly eyes, and two brown balloons for the meatballs. Oh, and while we’re on the topic of food, don’t forget to dress up your dachsund. I’ll take mine with mustard. What are you planning to be for Halloween?

Sure, you can go as an iPhone or an iPod…

Just realize you’ll be up against these dorks:

And don’t forget to anthropomorphize your pets!

Is Glenn Beck A Homosexual Nazi Blood Elf?

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:17:58 +0000

One of the joys of not having cable is that I rarely have to get to know the personas of people like Glenn Beck. Stories about how there was an advertising boycott against him were an amusing side note in my peripheral media vision; I’m always happy when some ranting hack on cable news or talk radio takes a beating, especially in the case of one who makes comments that President Obama is a “racist” and has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” My interest in the story took a new turn the other day though; having received frivolous cease-and-decist letters letters on more than one occasion myself, I was especially amused first when Isaac Eiland-Hall created the site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, but even more so when Beck took the issue to the WIPO, and then again more so when Eiland-Hall’s lawyer Marc J. Randazza responded. The lawyer’s response (143KB PDF) is the best part of this all; it’s not only hilarious, but a perfect instructional tool if you know someone who isn’t familiar with Internet Memes. In the response brief, the lawyer points out that “Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant“, referencing the moron in a hurry defense (which I was surprised to find has nothing to do with the Chewbacca Defense), and then going on to reference in seriousness all sorts of memes like “Every time you masturbate… God kills a kitten”, “Mr. Spock Ate My Balls” and the Downfall parodies in which Hitler screams “YOU HOMOSEXUAL BLOOD ELF!” The more detailed Annex accompanying the brief (9MB PDF) provides an excellent backround on Internet memes. After briefly being off line, the site is back, continuing to ask the two burning questions about Beck: “Why won’t he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?” and Has Glenn Beck Denied Raping And Murdering A Young Girl In 1990? This whole phenomena will leave an interesting trail, already Citizen Media Law Project references the case referring to Beck as “talk show host and self-described rodeo clown”. Indeed.

Single Serving Sites

admin — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:14:11 +0000

We’ve touched on Internet memes before, but here’s a fairly new one: Single Serving Sites. I first ran across the phenomena with isbarackobamamuslin during the election , but thanks to the Internet’s power to demonstrate that someone’s always already thought of something and come up with a buzzword for it, we have is this your paper on single serving sites.com, which expands on the phenomena probably first observed by Jason Kottke. Some SSS’s are pleasantly pointless, like defiantdog.com (which features — you guessed it — a defiant dog), or sometimesredsometimesblue.com (sometimes it’s red, and well…sometimes it isn’t). Some are only occasionally useful, like instantrimshot.com, but some you might use every day, like doineedanumbrella.com. For your convenience, I’ve assembled a Single Serving Page here. Let me know if I missed any…

The Meme Generation, Revisited

admin — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:19:26 +0000

One of my first posts on Dissociated Press was a quick roundup of Internet Memes. The folks at Dipity.com have done a better job of this, and put it on a browseable, user-modifyable timeline as well. Still sadly missing from both collections: 1.) The man who was Borat long before Borat, Mahir, and 2.) The seminal Lee Jeans viral marketing campaign, RubberBurner.com (mirror of original site).