Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with meme

simplesimplesimple

benzenedream — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:47:34 -0800

What is the initial verbal meme that triggers the Pontypool outbreak in the movie Pontypool?

Follow that Monster!

ThePinkSuperhero — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:43:51 -0800

I need help finding an internet cartoon I saw several years ago. The only thing I remember about is that it had a big monster who said "The world is a cruel place" in a scratchy, monster voice to two children. I think the video had something to do with discouraging consumerism in children.

Memetic or splenetic?

Elmore — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:18:26 -0800

What is the proper pronunciation of the word "meme"?

Where did the Honest Scrap Award originate?

rebekah — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:40:47 -0800

A group of East African bloggers I follow have recently begun circulating the Honest Scrap Award — a sort of informal bloggers' award-slash-meme — among themselves. I thought they had created it, but a quick Google search shows that it's been around since at least December of 2008. Does anyone know where or why it started?

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

pwnguin — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:18:48 -0800

What's the oldest recorded use of the Spam Solutions Form Response? I've seen a boing-boing post on February 2004, and an AC slashdot posting a day earlier. Was this the first sighting, or is this just an example of USENET culture imported into the web?

Also, any precursors of this joke form response, spam-related or not, are welcome.

Help me find this webcomic!

eralclare — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 14:09:42 -0800

You'd think a viral meme that successful would be easier to find...where is the link to it? I'm looking for an old webcomic--a one-off (as I remember it) story about a viral meme named Rei-Rei (or maybe Rae-Rae or Mei-Mei?) that takes over the world. She starts off completely virtual, a female construct designed as a blending of all races, the "best" features of each. She sang and dressed vaguely like Japanese pop stars (Sailor Moon-esque) and her message was some version of "one world, one people."

She goes from being a pop cultural phenomena to people (men and women) having cosmetic surgery to look like her.

Told from the viewpoint of an African-American male journalist who loses his girlfriend to the meme.

Where can I find this lovely, dystopian webcomic?

I can haz Xzibit?

ThePinkSuperhero — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:00:36 -0800

Where on the web can I see Yo Dawg images on a regular basis? It's a meme I simply can't get enough of ("Yo dawg, I heard you like X, so we put an X in your X so you can Y while you Y"). Surely there's a "I Can Haz Xhibit?" blog somewhere?

Where did the bacon meme start?

bjtitus — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:49:06 -0800

Where did the bacon internet meme come from? Everyone knows the phenomenon of bacon on the internet. It has become a cult classic in internet memes and continues to pop up across the internet. What are its roots? Where did the first hint of a bacon meme appear?

elect me for president!

meeshell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:50:30 -0800

Where is the main link to the website that generates the fake commercial for write in president? It is like this one: Good Morning,

There's an effort to elect an unknown random person as President... and it's someone we know! Watch this online video about the surprising new nominee:

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=379346&altf=Npouz&altl=Ljmcvso

Holy Fucking Shit This Question Is Fucking Lame

ekstasis23 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:01:55 -0800

Trying to hunt down a minor internet meme. Looking for examples of someone (fictitiously) trying to sell something online, using copious amounts of foul language. Ex: "Holy shit, you've got to buy these motherfucking oranges, they are goddamn flavorful as hell." I know I've seen a few examples of this recently, but my google-fu if fail.

Do you remember a picture of a naked melting person?

sergeant sandwich — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:29:55 -0800

I'm looking for back story on a somewhat disturbing photograph which was circulating around the internet around 10-15 years ago. Trouble is, I no longer have a copy of the file, and can't find it. The photo in question was an internet meme from back before they were called that. It could best be described as "face-down naked melting woman". I say melting because.. well, that's what it looked like. A big puddle of skin, with feet; sort of like what you'd get if people were made of wax and one was made to lie face down in the sun.

The melting person (who for some reason, we thought was a woman, but it was hard to tell) was completely naked, face down in the middle of what I recall to be a city street, possibly cobblestone. It was daylight, and the photo was taken from behind at what looked like about a distance of 40-50 feet. We called her Melta.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've been searching the internets high and low for a copy of the picture, with every possible combination of search terms I can think of, and I've crawled up and down sites like rotten.com and ogrish until I couldn't take it anymore. Not for the lulz, but because for nearly half my life now, I've been absolutely mystified by the origin of this photo. I need some sort of explanation.

Our best guess was that it was a photograph of a suicide jumper who had been overweight and the impact was so violent that the flesh liquefied and spread out like a puddle.

But I don't think flesh does that in reality, and there was absolutely no split skin, no blood or gore or anything at all, no cops standing around, no rubberneckers gawking, in fact nobody else in the picture at all. No other visual clues that would be indicative of a suicide scene. And why would they be completely naked? It just.. it didn't look like a suicide to me, and this explanation never quite held water for me.

The only other conceivable explanation for this picture is that a person who had recently lost a great deal of weight, and therefore had very loose skin, was running down the street buck naked and tripped and fell on their face. But then this is weird enough as it is.

Anyway, I'm hoping someone at least remembers this picture. Better yet would be a link to it somewhere. But what I'm really looking for here is to learn Melta's story. If you can help me scratch this fifteen-year itch, I will be forever grateful.

Original slipped mask?

skwt — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 23:43:47 -0800

Where does the "mask fell off" expression/meme from this comment come from, if anywhere? Google gives 13 300 for "mask fell" and 11 300 for "mask slipped", and if you look at the context in the first page of hits from both of those links they're all using it in the same sense.

Specifically, "the latex mask fell off and we get to stare directly into the machine's dead eyes" reminds me of Terminator or something? Is this an intentional reference or is this just a very common image of a robot/android? It sort of feels like half a Terminator reference but equally half not.

It sort of seems like it's almost too common to have an identifiable origin, but it's just specific enough that it might have a really satisfing "a-ha" one.

Thanks

What to do with a meme-ish domain name?

wendell — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:17:47 -0800

Hi, I'm Wendell, and I'm a Domain Name addict. And I just registered DRINKSYOURMILKSHAKE.COM with the intent of setting up something like isyournewbicycle.com but I'm open to other ideas. Feel free to aim your long straw at me...

Ultimate spoiler: you are God. Sound familiar?

Curry — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 05:55:02 -0800

Anyone recall seeing a Web page that said something like "Ultimate Spoiler: You are God"? I have a vague yet nagging recollection of a page, either one-off gag or part of a spoiler aggregate site, that professed the ultimate spoiler for life, i.e. you are god. My extended and thorough searching hasn't produced any leads. Sound familiar to anybody?

When did boys start pretending the floor is made of lava?

23skidoo — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:56:45 -0800

I am 34 and grew up in Texas. I just heard a coworker ten years my junior say "Well, boys liked to pretend that the floor is made of lava." I totally knew what he was talking about. How old is this meme? How widespread is it? Google gives me lots of stuff about a band named that, and an album named that. I don't need to know about either of those things.

Explain the unexplainable.

roofus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 04:16:44 -0800

Does anyone know the back story to this supposedly "unexplainable" image?

Where can I see "The Swirl" gross out video?

wackybrit — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:33:25 -0800

Where can I find the video all these people are watching? It's supposedly called "The Swirl." "The Swirl" is supposedly a gross video similar to the extreme "2 girls 1 cup" video that's been going around lately, and there are a whole bunch of "reaction" videos on YouTube including this one. I've Googled for many variations of "swirl" and gross video but am still unable to find the original video.

A blog was set up at Blogspot (swirlreactions.blogspot.com) with reactions to the video but that site no longer exists and I can't find it in Google cache or Archive.org to see if it had a link to the original. Any ideas on finding this video to watch?

P.S. Don't bother Googling for the other video I mentioned if you're at work or want to eat sometime in the next year.

You know who else ___? Origin?

luser — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:21:29 -0800

What's the origin of the meme "You know who else [does something]" with the standard answer (or implied answer) being Hitler but often replaced by something else? The farthest back I go with it is Freaks and Geeks, Joe Flaherty's character used to say it and I think the daughter did a few times as well.

Kill me before the curiousity does?

myrrh — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:07:13 -0800

The significance of a blank white 1" button? I'm told not to ask. It's not a Grant Morrison reference, is it?

The other day I was walking through the supermarket and spotted a girl wearing a blank 1" button... yknow, like the kind punk bands have been selling since the dawn of time. Only. Blank. White. I smiled and said "is that a blank wh--" and she smiled and said "Sorry, if you don't know, I can't talk to you about it."

So I imagine anyone on here will be equally unable to tell me, right?

Anyone care to very carefully steer me in the right direction before my curiousity causes me to lose any more sleep over this? I respect this sort of game, whatever it is, so I'm reluctant to ask, but it really is driving me nuts. Thanks.

Help me find character-driven 'crazes'!

fishfucker — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:23:47 -0800

In order to assist with a business plan, I'm looking for examples (within the last 5 years) of character-driven memes or products that "came out of nowhere" and rapidly built wealth for their creators (and/or licensors). A couple that have already been mentioned are the 'Crazy Frog' phenomenon (which sold a poopload of ringtones), and to some degree 'Harry Potter' (which, well, most of us know what happened with). Although I'm only concerned with, say, post-2000 events, classic examples would include the 'Cabbage Patch Kids' or the 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'. I am also tangentially interested in examples involving gaming in some fashion, like the story of Desktop Tower Defense.

These examples should help demonstrate that it is possible to build wealth from character development.

I'm sure that there are numerous counter-examples (due to most of these situations being cases of great execution or perfect timing or both), but, while interesting, these are decidedly less useful for my purposes. Additionally, I'm not particularly interested in examples that do not include a character at the root of their success: 'the iPod' would not be an answer I am interested in.

Thanks for your time!

Where the heck does it come from, oh my!

Happy Dave — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:44:52 -0800

Where does the sentence structure 'Something, something and something, oh my!' come from? I'm seeing this everywhere and it's been bugging me. All over the web, I keep seeing variants on 'X, X and X, oh my!' Some examples right here on Ask Me. What's the origin of this phrase? I've been googling in much the same way I did when I figured out what 'All your X are belong to us' and 'I'm in ur X verbing ur Y' memes, but I got nada.

I | <3 ?

lostburner — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:52:44 -0800

What is the origin of the "I | ___" phrasing? I've seen this cropping up with increasing frequency on the web. It seems to be the same usage as "I (heart) ___", but with a bar instead (shift-backslash on a US keyboard). It doesn't make sense to me. "I bar New York"? "I caret New York"? "I or New York"? This question may not make a lot of sense if you haven't seen it, and I can't exactly search for examples, but maybe you folks have seen it around.

Lost Puppy

MtDewd — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 13:00:32 -0800

This photo just showed up in a coworker's email. A little searching shows this cartoon. You can also buy the costume. Which came first & how can you tell?

Are memes just the extended phenotype?

whatgorilla — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:46:11 -0800

How are memes anything other than an extension/expression of the extended phenotype? And I mean "phenotype" in the generalized-Richard Dawkins-sense. It seems the meme meme is taken so seriously by so many, but I can't figure out how they are anything other than an interesting thought experiment/model.

Could someone please step off the meme-wagon and explain it to me--are memes anything other than an extension/expression of the extended phenotype?

I'm confused about this, so I hope I'm not sounding like an idiot--please forgive me if I do. Be gentle.

anyone know the origin of this phrase?

exlotuseater — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 21:04:00 -0800

Where does the phrase "I fuc*ing concur." come from? Where does the phrase "I fucking concur." come from?

Is it from a book? Or is it an internet meme? What?