In the antiquarian days, it was simple to accumulate up with pop culture. There were alone three channels on TV, and everybody saw the aforementioned shows at the aforementioned time.
These days, of course, not so much. There are 500 channels on TV, and you can watch annihilation at any time. That doesn’t mean, however, that we no best accept a accepted pop-culture base. We do — it’s aloof confused online. Actualization me somebody beneath 20, and I’ll actualization you addition who can beam at “Friday,” sing the “Bed Intruder Song” or “plank” in an alien place.
But there are affluence of added bodies who aren’t accepting the references at cocktail parties and in the late-night comedians’ monologues. And a assertive allotment of those out-of-the-loopers ability ambition they had a single, abridged bluff area of the best important Internet memes (fad concepts).
Today’s your advantageous day. After consulting Apperceive Your Meme, my Twitter followers (I’m @pogue) and my own three under-20 offspring, I’ve put calm this capital account of Memes You Should Know.
Modern Videos
Much of online pop ability lives and dies on YouTube. Over and over again, the videos best acceptable to go viral are the ones that absorb addictive music, amusement and comedy — finer all three.
“Friday.” In March, a 13-year-old babe alleged Rebecca Black appear a YouTube music video. It became a sensation, with 167 amateur angle — not because it was good, but because it was screamingly bad. With 87 percent thumbs-downs, it’s the best awful video on YouTube. Sample ultra-banal lyrics: “Seven a.m., alive up in the morning … Gotta accept my bowl, gotta accept cereal…”
“Friday” anguish up actuality performed by Stephen Colbert and the casting of “Glee,” authoritative several pop-music archive and, best deliciously, alarming dozens of YouTube parodies. Some of those accept themselves become megahits. In the angled “Brock’s Dub,” for example, the aboriginal audio is replaced with a Christopher Walken clothing (warning: obscenities).
“Bed Intruder Song.” In July 2010, an Alabama account station, WAFF, appear an attempted rape. The advised victim’s brother, the aberrant and activated Antoine Dodson, batten anon to the camera: “He’s climbin’ in your windows, he’s snatchin’ your bodies up… so y’all charge to adumbrate your kids, adumbrate your wife and adumbrate your bedmate cuz they’re rapin’ e’rybody out here!”
Mr. Dodson’s achievement was Auto-Tuned into melody and set to abundantly addictive music by the Gregory Brothers (see below). The aftereffect was the most-watched noncommercial YouTube video of 2010, alarming over 2,500 bodies to almanac their own versions of the song, including a marching-band edition.
“Hitler Finds Out” (a k a “Downfall”). For some awe-inspiring reason, a arena from the 2004 German cine “Der Untergang” has become fodder for a huge arrangement of YouTube parodies. In the scene, Hitler has a breakdown, agreeable at his generals; Internet wiseacres adulation to add subtitles that accomplish it assume as admitting he’s reacting to some trivial, modern-day development.
There’s absolutely a YouTube “HitlerRantsParodies” channel. Here, amid hundreds of others, you’ll acquisition the spoofs area Hitler learns that Twitter is down, that Sarah Palin has accommodated the governorship and that he’s been banned from Xbox Live.
The new classics. Your apprenticeship is not complete unless you’ve additionally witnessed the camp goofiness of modern-day YouTube abstract like “Cows & beasts & cows,” “Double Dream Hands” and “Honey Badger” (watch both the aboriginal and the overdubbed parody). No account of these will be provided here, because there is no accessible explanation.
Classic Videos
New videos go viral every day, but your online pop-culture apprenticeship would not be complete after an acknowledgment for these abiding earlier videos:
Dramatic prairie dog. The funniest five-second video on YouTube. As three angry chords play, the prairie dog turns to face the camera as it zooms in. That’s it.
David After Dentist. A home video in which a 7-year-old boy (David DeVore Jr.), still beneath the furnishings of oral-surgery anesthetic, hilariously wigs out at his faculty of absent disorientation.
Numa Numa Dance. In 2004, a ample adolescent man alleged Gary Brolsma recorded himself sitting in advanced of his computer, cutting headphones and dancing/lip-syncing to a Romanian pop song alleged “Numa Numa”. There’s such absorption and allure in his achievement that you can’t breach your eyes away; his video, and copies of it, accept been beheld 700 amateur times.
Keyboard Cat. It’s aloof a asinine 1984 video of a cat cutting a shirt and arena the piano (its paws manipulated offscreen by its owner). But its cultural appulse has included 17 amateur views, cameos in video amateur and awards shows, and appearances on T-shirts. Above all, Keyboard Cat has become acclaimed as a “Play him off, keyboard cat!” blow tacked assimilate the end of over 4,000 added videos (people falling, George W. Bush pelted with shoes, and so on).Pranks
The trend of the Web as the antecedent of all amusement continues with trends like these:
Rickrolling. It’s an online bait-and-switch. You accelerate a Web articulation to someone, able commodity agitative or acute (“Is this you!?”) — but the articulation absolutely takes your victim to a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s 1987 music video, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” That’s it. That’s the joke. Ha! You’ve been Rickrolled! (See the Wikipedia commodity “Rickrolling” for an amazing account of high-profile rickrolls.)
Planking. Here’s one of the few Internet memes that has a real-world component. In it, bodies booty photos of themselves lying, face down, expressionless, accoutrements at their sides, in aberrant locations: on rooftops, cars, copse and so on — and column them on Facebook.
The convenance was originally meant to be a animadversion on the cliché of the accepted day-tripper photo — adverse front, affected smile, battleground in the accomplishments — but has now become, well, aloof a awe-inspiring fad.
Memes
Sometimes, Internet memes aren’t videos or acts, but aloof account that get anesthetized around. Some classics:
LOLcats.com. A Web armpit area bodies blanket captions on cat photos. Consistently the aforementioned font, consistently the aforementioned awe-inspiring broken-English catspeak syntax. And accursed funny.
Chuck Norris Facts. In this meme (immortalized by Web sites and alike books), bodies canyon about abstract references to the activity and backbone of Chuck Norris, the cine and TV activity actor.“Chuck Norris won American Idol application alone assurance language,” goes one. “Chuck Norris can cut through a hot knife with butter.” “Death already had a near-Chuck Norris experience.”YouTube Stars
YouTube is a aptitude analysis machine. Dozens of accomplished performers accept become full-time YouTube video makers; the best accepted of them aftermath account mini-masterpieces of banana applesauce and sarcasm.
They accommodate Ray William Johnson, the #1 most-subscribed-to YouTube personality, with over a amateur followers; Nigahiga, whose amusement is altogether ill-fitted to the average schoolers who admire him; and Mystery Guitar Man, a virtuoso on both every agreeable apparatus and his video-editing software.
Then there are the Gregory Brothers, the four Brooklyn musicians amenable for “The Bed Intruder Song” and added Auto-Tuned video megahits, including “Double Rainbow” and “Backin’ Up.”
The Gregory Brothers’ YouTube success has brought them an agent, an Academy Awards appearance, an iPhone app and a development accord for a new Comedy Central TV show.
Yes, that’s right: amid its abounding added accomplishments, the new-media meme apparatus is altogether able of bearing actual for the old media. Next affair you know, you’ll about-face on your TV set, atom some able artist or actor — and be beholden that you were culturally tuned-in abundant to admit them from their apprehensive ancestry online.
