Meme Madness

I love internet memes - you know, those mostly one-panel images you see on websites that are basically a photograph but with a caption superimposed, most often in the "Impact" font, the font-of-choice for memes.  Quirky and off-the-wall, they can take an innocuous photo of something innocent and send it flying down some dark hallway of the human psyche.  You can take a 30-year-old photograph and with the right caption, make it as fresh and relevant as if it were shot yesterday.  The same meme photo can be used and re-used countless times, making it infinitely recyclable, and each one can be as funny and new as the original.

Making internet memes is a snap, it's coming up with the photo and accompanying concept that's hard.  Sometimes you'll see a photo and the right caption will just jump out at you.  Other times you'll think of a caption but then spend a huge amount of time finding a photo that will work with it.  But that's the challenge and the fun.  When you get the perfect picture together with a great caption, well, it rarely gets better than that.

The internet's life-blood is snark, and memes are no different.  Just to level-set: "snark" is a combination of sarcasm and wryness.  A very dry sense of humor is a necessity, along with total irreverence and a complete disrespect for authority figures.  It also helps to have a basically foul temper and cynical outlook, and a big dollop of innate bitchiness will come in quite handy.  Obviously, snark and I were made for each other.  Add the visual delights of photography, and you have a bottomless pit of fun.

But hey, memes can also be useful, and helpful when it comes to spreading an important message.  Below is one of the first memes I created for Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue, for the annual message we put out around Easter. It was seen by over 1,700 people and shared over 500 times.  Click for larger image:

Rabbits and memes are a match made in heaven, and much fun can be had when those two get together.

They can also be sweet and aww-inducing, like this one of Kenai blissfully relaxing in the arms of his foster (now adoptive) mom:

But the most fun can be had through smart-assery, of course, with politics and politicians being prime, irresistible targets.  Here's one I did for the repulsive mountain of flab known as NJ Governor Chris Christie:

Religion is also a huge target just begging to be disrespected, and I am more than glad to step up to the plate and fire away.  Here's one I did for the Agnostic page on Facebook:

And another one:

Memes are loads of fun to think up and create, I feel like I'm just barely getting started with them.  I plan on doing many, many more memes in the future and launch them into cyberspace, spreading cheerful (or mean-spirited, as the case may be) snark far and wide.  This is a medium tailor-made for me, combining bad attitude with good visuals, and I could not be happier or more thrilled.

There are plenty of memes which I love and which inspire me; this is one of my current favorites:

This takes a bit of explaining, because a lot of people have absolutely no idea what is going on.  A huge amount of meme info and history can be found on this great website, www.knowyourmeme.com, the internet meme database.  The caption by the seal in the corner is a mangled version of "Oh my God - Penguins!" and its origin is with this meme which first appeared in March 2012:

This is a photo of a rather scary-looking young girl holding up some copies of her favorite children's literature, a mystery series on the order of the old "Hardy Boys" books called "Goosebumps."  To translate what she's saying: "Goosebumps - my favorite books."  Knowyourmeme.com explains it as "the phonetically written captions are meant to sound like a speech impediment caused by the use of an orthodontic retainer."  Soon the initial keyword "Ermahgerd" ("Oh My God") was created, and in six short months this meme exploded on the internet and spawned many, many tasteless variations, leading to the "Perngwens" one above.  Yeah, it 's a little harsh to make fun of speech impediments (I should know) but this is just too good to pass up.

So, that's today's crash course in internet memes.  As I said I absolutely love these things, and feel I have found one of my true callings.  My most cherished dream is to come up with a meme which will go global and be enshrined on Knowyourmeme.com.  Other than winning several hundred million dollars in a lottery, that is something that I really, really want.  Oh, I also want world peace, but I really like memes, too.

Famous Tweets Throughout History

I remember reading a little while ago that some experts think Twitter has "peaked;" that is, the number of new people joining for the first time has leveled off. We're not sure exactly what this means, but maybe the once-darling of the brave new world of "social networking" is not as popular as it once was. Facebook, on the other hand, is going gangbusters in its drive to take over the entire planet. They just passed 500 million members, which is like the entire population of the United States, Japan and a couple of other countries combined. Someone said recently that if their growth continues at its present rate, everyone who is on the Internet will also be on Facebook by 2012.

That is pretty astonishing when you think about it. What makes Facebook so much more appealing than Twitter? Facebook's content is of course much richer than Twitter, with pictures and millions of other applications available. Twitter is just text, but with the immediacy of instantaneous posting, although Facebook is not that far behind. Facebook is not limited to 140 characters per entry, so a much richer, detailed experience is allowed. Although that is not always a good thing.

I admit to not being a fan of Twitter. I tried it once and found it a horrendous, ridiculous waste of time. My life is just not that interesting that I feel the need to post endlessly about the minutiae with which I deal. What is it that I need to tell my friends on such a critical basis? "The sky is blue today!" - check, got that. "Rabbit took a dump in her cage, missed the litterbox by three inches." - That's lovely, I'm sure people need to hear that. "It's a 112 degrees today." - wow, some things are best left ignored. To be fair, Facebook can also get cluttered by random, meaningless observations, and sometimes people reveal an amazing amount of information about their private lives that would definitely be better left private.

But the other day I let my imagination run free (I know, historically not the best thing to do, but bear with me here) and tried to think what some of the prominent figures of history would have Tweeted had there been the internet and Twitter around. Here, then, are some of history's famous events, served up in concise, 140-or-fewer-character info-nuggets:

@abelincoln: "I just want to stay home and soak my feet, but the missus wants to see some dumb play at the Ford. Whatevs."

@georgewashington: "They want to name that city on the Potomac after me. are they kidding me? that sh*thole is a swamp. after all I've done for them, f**king ingrates!"

@galileo: "New telescope's great! watched the mayor's wife get ready for a bath Yowza! moon is full of holes, looks like crap, nothing interesting there."

@kinghenryVIII: "Just got rid of #5, or was it #6? Don't know, can't keep track any more. If this marriage thing doesn't work again, I'm going gay."

@leonardodavinci: "Jeez, can't wait to finish this painting. I hate doing portraits and this Mona Lisa chick is creeping me out with her weird smile."

@cleopatra: "OMG! Marc Antony is a hottie. Julie Caesar called me Queen of Denial, WTF? Out of eye shadow again, LOL!"

@michaelangelo: "Jesus Christmas my back is killing me. last time I do a chapel ceiling. will paint a couple more naked people and call it a day!"

@darthvader: "Kids can be a bummer, tried to talk to Luke yesterday and he pulled a saber on me, wtf? This helmet gives me a headache."

@chriscolumbus: "Been sailing west for weeks now. better see some chinese guys in silk suits soon or else my ass is grass back in Genoa."

@kinglouieXVI: "What's a guy gotta do to have some fun around here? Itching powder in the queen's knickers again?"

@GOD: "I am so done with these damned people, same stupid stuff over and over again. Should have stopped with animals and left well enough alone!"