every generation loves it's brainrot - eviltoast
  • booly@sh.itjust.works
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    4 days ago

    The author probably isn’t personally familiar with pre-2010 internet jokes so he skipped from 5-year intervals, all the way back 30 years to Monty Python.

    In the 2005-2010 era I was seeing a lot of quotes from Arrested Development, Anchorman, Talladega Nights. But the one that really made the jump from TV to internet text comments was the South Park underpants gnome meme, where step 1 was whatever people were doing (in the episode, stealing underpants), step 2 was ???, and step 3 was Profit!. Meanwhile, some pure internet nonsense around then was stuff like O RLY?, Cheezburger and other lolcat stuff.

    In 2000-2005 or so, there were plenty of Simpsons quotes to go around. Internet memes looked like demotivational posters (a take on the motivational posters common in corporate office settings back then). This was the heyday of surreal flash animation, as the Internet didn’t really have the infrastructure to have high-bandwidth videos go viral. Stuff like Strongbad, Group X, All Your Base, etc. Text references to bash.org quotes (I put on my robe and wizard hat, hunter2) came from around this era, from what I remember.

    Pre-2000, I’m less familiar with. Real Ultimate Power was the first website that made me laugh out loud. But there was less for user posting on the internet: fewer web-based forums before phpbb and vbulletin came along. You needed your own geocities or angelfire page if you wanted to post something that persisted on the web. Usenet and IRC were around, but I don’t know the culture.

    • slayback@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Pre 2000…. Dancing baby Hamster dance Hot grits First post and a petrified Star Wars actress

      A lot of “memes” were inside jokes local to your BBS, news group, or IRC channel.

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      Napoleon dynamite quotes were definitely mixed in with the anchor man quotes where I’m from.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    The only part of this that really bothers me is that nerds are still incessantly quoting Monty Python at each other.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    As an old fart, I like saying some of the brainrot to Gen Alphas that I know so that it makes them cringe hard. Sometimes in context, sometimes out of context depending on my mood.

    • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Semi related, but my mum likes to pretend she doesn’t know what ‘Netflix and chill’ means. She keeps saying it to people. One time I said mum please google that phrase. She said she’s well aware of the meaning and just likes to see people’s reactions.

      • ArtieShaw@fedia.io
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        5 days ago

        Oh no. I feel that. Back when ipods were a thing, I liked to call it my husband’s “tiny radio.” Particularly on planes, with lots of captive listeners.

        But I was mainly torturing him.

        It’s OK - he does similar shit to me. 30 years and counting…

    • radicalautonomy@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      My favorite piece of text from a few years ago that I was disgusted to be able to parse was “Shrimp cereal Topanga husband is a Me Too milkshake duck.”

        • radicalautonomy@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Danielle Fishel, the actress who played the character Topanga Lawrence on the show Boy Meets World, is married to a comedian named Jensen Karp, who tweeted that he found shrimp tails in his box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

          After his tweet went viral, writer Melissa Stetten alleged that he was an abuser and stated that other women had reached out to share their own allegations against Karp with her.

          Karp being a “milkshake duck” refers to a June 2016 tweet from Aussie cartoonist Ben Ward which read

          The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist

          It gave a name to the phenomenon of seemingly harmless individuals’ sordid pasts being called out after a brief brush with fame.

          On March 24, 2021, Twitter user @BudrykZack tweeted “Shrimp Cereal Topanga Husband is a MeToo milkshake duck”. The accompanying image is taken from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Darmok and is of the character named Darmok who is a member of the Tamarian species which speaks only in metaphors.

          “MeToo” refers to the worldwide Me Too movement, that began in 2017, through which survivors of sexual assault and victims of sexual harrassment - mostly women - have come forward to admit to announce their victim hood in order to bring to light how common such assaults are and to demand an end to rape culture.

    • laranis@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      Well, I’m proud of you, Internet stranger.

      It is sad how many “is just the latest” I read before I figured out what was going on.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    People who “make” a lot of memes are the internet equivalent of that really obnoxious kid in middle school in the 90s who couldn’t go a full five minutes without quoting the Simpsons/South Park/SpongeBob.

    On a side note, what’s the show(s) that obnoxious middle schoolers quote nowadays? Can’t imagine it’s still those 3

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    5 days ago

    “He’s resting. Probably pining for the fjords.”

    “He’s not pining, E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! E’s expired and gone to meet his maker! He’s a stiff! Bereft of life, e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed him to the perch, he’d be pushing up daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! E’s off the twig! E’s kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!”

    • tempest@lemmy.ca
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      4 days ago

      What’s amusing to me is I get the first one then don’t pick it back up until Harambee. I wonder if I’m suffering from mid term meme memory loss.