Tech and Lit Meets TimeOut New York

Own This City
Time Out New York / Issue 703 : Mar 19–25, 2009

Memefactory
Are you BFF with the Angry German Kid? Crazy for Lolcats? A total cam whore? Show off your Interweb smarts at 3rd Ward’s new-media circus.

By Sharon Steel

The Internet needs skilled professionals, and we don’t just mean bloggers. Mike Rugnetta, Patrick Davison and Stephen Bruckert (whatweknowsofar.com) are connoisseurs of viral phenomena, and they’ve created the Memefactory event to showcase the Web’s most esoteric riches. Billing it as a cross between a theatrical lecture, a vaudeville performance and Double Dare, the three new-media nerds will guide the audience through a fast-paced tutorial of the Web’s best and weirdest artifacts—from the 4chan message board to YouTube must-sees. “We really love the emerging social aspect of Internet media,” says Rugnetta. For Memefactory, that means audience participation is encouraged. Test your cyber IQ below by identifying each of the following memes; if you find yourself drooling, study the crash course.

1 User-submitted, photographic evidence of pure, occasionally painful irony. The act of being Owned or Pwnd.

2 I can hascheezburger?

3 A dramatic reading of a real breakup letter from a real person

4 A prank played on an innocent Web surfer, in which the victim stumbles upon a link that someone claims will lead to an interesting, sexy or eye-popping revelation. Instead, it turns out to be ’80s pop star Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

5 A contortion of the chops; an ill-fated and extremely unattractive turning down of the corners of the lips to show scorn or disdain.

6 This is your child. This is your child after a legal dose of anesthetic drugs: “Is this real life? Why is this happening to me? Is this going to be forever?”

7 A diminutive Chilean performance artist who captured hearts worldwide with his imitations of women, including Hillary Clinton and British train wreck Amy Winehouse.

8 This is what happens when you combine a hyperactive teenage girl and a YouTube account.

9 The implication that one should lighten up; a reversal of one’s somber, grim or humorless expression or situation, Dark Knight–style.

10 correct A literal and pictorial subversion of the expression Taste the rainbow.
Tally your score: Award yourself one point for each question correctly answered.1 Fail Blog (failblog.org)2 Lolcats (icanhascheezburger.com) 3 You Make Me Touch Your Hands for Stupid Reasons (youmakemetouchyourhandsforstupidreasons.ytmnd.com) 4 Rickrolling!5 Sturgeon Face (sturgeonface.com) 6 David After Dentist 7 La Pequeña 8 Boxxy (youtube.com/user/boxxybabee) 9 Y So Serious? 10 Skittlefisting (skittlefisting.tumblr.com)
If you scored between...
8 and 10: You are Mr. Chocolate Rain. Mr. Numa Numa. Mr. Liam Kyle Sullivan in the hot-pink panties and a Garth wig. Congrats on being a meme-mining superstar. (Let’s just hope “2 Girls 1 Cup” wasn’t your doing.)
4 and 7: You can distinguish a teary Chris Crocker from a dancing baby GIF, but you only know “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” ’cause your cubemate IM’d it to you. Keep goofing off at work and you’ll eventually become a meme master.
1 and 3: You do know what year it is, right? And that most Americans are no longer using dot-matrix printers? (Oh, wait...were you in a coma?) P.S. Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.

POINT AND CLICK! “Memefactory a/k/a ROFL Mill a/k/a LOLfest a/k/a Lulzapalooza”: 3rd Ward, 195 Morgan Ave at Stagg St, Bushwick, Brooklyn (718-715-4961, 3rdward.com). Tue 24 at 7pm, free. R.S.V.P. recommended (events@3rdward.com).


Own This City
Time Out New York / Issue 703 : Mar 19–25, 2009

Meme 101
“Internet media is almost like literature,” says Bruckert. “Unless it’s your full-time job, you can’t possibly read everything.” The What We Know So Far dudes don’t want your tour of the hypertubes to feel like one big inside joke. So brush up on your Internets! Here are five terms they suggest you commit to memory prior to the Factory event. O RLY? YA RLY!

MEME“A meme is an idea, practice or image that travels between and across members of a culture. Coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, it’s most easily described as a unit of culture. The focus of Memefactory is Internet memes: trends or pieces of media which are propagated by Internet culture.”

LOLZ vs. LULZ“Laugh out loud is used in response to something funny, or as a prefix meaning ‘characterized by humor and Internet speak,’ e.g., Lolcats. Lulz, while similar to lolz, is specifically used in the context of laughs sought or received. Lulz are not always humorous. Frequently an action perpetrated ‘for the lulz’ is insidious in nature.”

+1“A way to indicate approval of a post, user or posted item. +1 might be followed by a request for ‘moar.’?”

SNOWCLONE“A commonly known and repeated sentence framework. A traditional example might be Have X, will travel or X is the new Y. The Internet has bred a fair number of its own snowclones, including I’m in yr X, Y-ing yr Z and All your X are belong to us.”
TL;DR“Too Long; Didn’t Read. Most often used in the comments section of a blog or forum as a response to a long post. The Internet is full of lazy people who are not interested in life stories, only quick lulz.”

For more info on meme trends, What We Know So Far suggests rocketboom.com, encyclopediadramatica.com and somethingawful.com.