Aeonite and I were in serious conversations once about writing a book on memes. I think it's fascinating, but in many ways, what's more fascinating than the meme creations is how they promulgate themselves through the internets.
For example, take our friend the Miss Teen USA South Carolina (or whatever permutation of her name is proper). This dumb slag (her name is Lauren Upton, not that anybody will ever remember that) said some stupid things on television on August 24th, which is five days ago.
That was Friday night. On Saturday, Postgame Heroes posts the YouTube link. It blows up from there, appearing on Fark and Deadspin and other sites over the weekend. On Sunday night I start getting the "have you seen this???" emails. The radio morning show guys ran with it Monday afternoon, and then the sports talk radio guys (who are kind of slow) got to it Tuesday morning, and then Tuesday night I started getting the links on Facebook and Myspace (have you seen this???)
And now the older people I know are emailing the link to me today. It's now Wednesday, five days after the event. Have I seen this???? Yes, only about a million times now. But the way these things weave themselves around is fascinating to me. If there was something so purely made of fail like Miss Teen USA South Carolina and I didn't know about it for a week, I'd probably kill myself.
it's pretty fascinating, isn't it?
By the way, your grandparents will send this to you in an email in about a year, but will include instructions to email to your ten friends, otherwise you'll have bad luck.