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Made in us
Powerful Ushbati





United States

nfe wrote:
 Togusa wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

See? This isn't creative, it isn't funny. It just feels like you've randomly dumped it on the conversation like, 'Look guys, I saw something funny somewhere else, you should laugh now!' - When laughing at random things is so utterly off topic for the post. Not to mention the use of something like that in a thread where the majority of the posters have specifically said they find it annoying is pretty poor form.



To add to that, what is the purpose of that meme? It's some little kid saying "The future is now old man." It's meaningless to me. I've no clue what the context is, what the show is or who the actor is. I understand you might be trying to make a point here, but I just don't get it. I see stuff like this, roll my eyes and move along. It cuts off any chance of two people having a real dialogue.


How is this any different to any idiom or metaphor or reference, other than the thing you need context for is an image and not a phrase?


The difference to me is that an idiom or metaphor is used to further a point of discussion. If two people know what it means, they can use it as a bridge to continue their conversation. Basically, they serve as bridges between people to explain ideals quickly and without error.

Memes are often throwaway comments, that derail conversation. Rarely do they ever add to a discussion, and more commonly they tend to shut down the sharing of ideals. They're lazy, and people often resort to them when they cannot produce an original argument or opinion for debate. They're also often used as a way of interjecting ones self into a conversation, sometimes in order to start trouble or to seem edgy or smart.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Ouze wrote:
I am very fond of the Dewey meme and i think it is particularly well used here, to be honest.


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/30 17:48:50


 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut



Glasgow

 Togusa wrote:
nfe wrote:
 Togusa wrote:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:

See? This isn't creative, it isn't funny. It just feels like you've randomly dumped it on the conversation like, 'Look guys, I saw something funny somewhere else, you should laugh now!' - When laughing at random things is so utterly off topic for the post. Not to mention the use of something like that in a thread where the majority of the posters have specifically said they find it annoying is pretty poor form.



To add to that, what is the purpose of that meme? It's some little kid saying "The future is now old man." It's meaningless to me. I've no clue what the context is, what the show is or who the actor is. I understand you might be trying to make a point here, but I just don't get it. I see stuff like this, roll my eyes and move along. It cuts off any chance of two people having a real dialogue.


How is this any different to any idiom or metaphor or reference, other than the thing you need context for is an image and not a phrase?


The difference to me is that an idiom or metaphor is used to further a point of discussion. If two people know what it means, they can use it as a bridge to continue their conversation. Basically, they serve as bridges between people to explain ideals quickly and without error.

Memes are often throwaway comments, that derail conversation. Rarely do they ever add to a discussion, and more commonly they tend to shut down the sharing of ideals. They're lazy, and people often resort to them when they cannot produce an original argument or opinion for debate. They're also often used as a way of interjecting ones self into a conversation, sometimes in order to start trouble or to seem edgy or smart.


Then I'd suggest your problem is with how people communicate online, not with the media they use to communicate, because that's all extremely common in text on the internet, not just with memes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Ouze wrote:
I am very fond of the Dewey meme and i think it is particularly well used here, to be honest.


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


I'm not sure if you're wilfully misunderstanding it to make your point. It says 'you don't like it because you're old and out of touch'. I don't know who it is or what it's from.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/30 17:51:53


 
   
Made in us
Winged Kroot Vulture






I found the older i get, I still don't care enough to let things like this get to me.

Being 41, by far not the oldest here, I have seen a fair amount of change in society. This is just something that has happened, like potholes.

I'm back! 
   
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Pleasant Valley, Iowa

 Togusa wrote:
 Ouze wrote:
I am very fond of the Dewey meme and i think it is particularly well used here, to be honest.


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Yes, that's exactly why it was the appropriate meme for the moment.

There is a site you can go to to learn more if you are interested, unless this is just essentially rant about today's kids with their iphones and avocado toast, in which case; vent away, my friend.


This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/30 18:08:47


 lord_blackfang wrote:
Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.

 Flinty wrote:
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United States

 Ouze wrote:
 Togusa wrote:
 Ouze wrote:
I am very fond of the Dewey meme and i think it is particularly well used here, to be honest.


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Yes, that's exactly why it was the appropriate meme for the moment.




Meaningless to me. So I'll continue to ignore it then.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 ProtoClone wrote:
I found the older i get, I still don't care enough to let things like this get to me.

Being 41, by far not the oldest here, I have seen a fair amount of change in society. This is just something that has happened, like potholes.


I'm only 30, but it bothers the ever living heck out of me.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/30 18:07:52


 
   
Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces







It is an old meme for old people!

This thread is really reminding me of that millennials thread we had a while ago. I think it is funny.

 Togusa wrote:

I'm only 30, but it bothers the ever living heck out of me.

"only" 30

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/30 18:18:15


Error 404: Interesting signature not found

 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka






When I hit 30 I just tended to not give a gak any more and every year since I’ve just become less and less bothered by things, especially things beyond my control. If I don’t understand a meme, eh, feth it, there’s a lot in this world I don’t understand. Just concern yourself with what affects you and sod the rest.

"The Omnissiah is my Moderati" 
   
Made in se
Longtime Dakkanaut




cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps each generation gets less and less funny and humorously talented?

Once upon a time you had ancient great philosophers dissing one another with wonderfully nuanced comments.

After a while there was Monty Python with their insane but well thought out style of comedy.

Then you had comedians who told the utterly ludicrous stories of their life like Ross Noble and Billy Connoly.

Now you have distorted pictures with emojis plastered on them or blaring earrape versions of music.

Just imagine what insane depths we will descend to. This is the Dark Age of Techno- I mean Humour.


Absolutely not. The "great philosophers" of times past don't know jack gak by comparison to modern ones and would be very poorly equipped to deal with the contemporary world. And that isn't their fault, it's just that so many things have happened since then and our rate of information turnover is vastly greater. It's also very funny to me that your time scale jumps from people who lived thousands of years before most global religions were invented, to the 1970's. That's quite the gradual decline there.


Besides, if each generation is worse at humour than the last, how the hell would you be able to tell what the actual good comedy was? You'd be living among the unfunniest last few generations by definition, so what good would your judgment be?
   
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Terrifying Doombull




I'm a little puzzled by some of the comments here (about memes being too common, particularly).

If I'm not on a gaming related website... I don't see any. Period. They don't come up in real life, in the workplace or people I meet. Maybe y'all are spending too much time plugged in?

@cody.d - definitely isn't a generational slide. If you on want proof of that, go read Martin Luther and see him rant (at length) about the pope being made from farts and excrement.

A great many 'great philosophers' were howling bigots, crazy people or depraved maniacs outside their remembered writings.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2019/01/30 19:18:47


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
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USA

Voss wrote:
I'm a little puzzled by some of the comments here (about memes being too common, particularly).

If I'm not on a gaming related website... I don't see any. Period. They don't come up in real life, in the workplace or people I meet. Maybe y'all are spending too much time plugged in?


I find that memes tend to be a community thing in general. I rarely see hyper-context dependent memes outside of a place where everyone kind of assumes everyone else understands it. There's like a bajillion Fate memes, but other than "People die when they are killed" I don't think I've ever seen them referenced outside of fan sites or the FGO reddit. I have seen lots of 40k memes around the internet, but some of those seem to have broken through the mold and gained some broader cultural recognition.

Some places like Imgur are almost nothing but memes, but other than that yeah. I tend not to find memes randomly inserted in places they don't belong. Most people seem to have enough common sense to know when they're somewhere it will mean anything to anyone else.

   
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MeMe culture is everything we made it to be. We all signed up in droves to create 500 variants of the some Heresy meme, upvoted and celebrated every use of the Commisar with the coffee cup meme, and reduced it all to a formula. Then someone else used the formula and we got upset. Those were our Fake Internet Points!

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Glasgow

 Stormatious wrote:
cody.d. wrote:
Perhaps each generation gets less and less funny and humorously talented?

Once upon a time you had ancient great philosophers dissing one another with wonderfully nuanced comments.

After a while there was Monty Python with their insane but well thought out style of comedy.

Then you had comedians who told the utterly ludicrous stories of their life like Ross Noble and Billy Connoly.

Now you have distorted pictures with emojis plastered on them or blaring earrape versions of music.

Just imagine what insane depths we will descend to. This is the Dark Age of Techno- I mean Humor.


Its a fact in my opinion that each generation is getting less and less talented in almost all artistic/creative subjects movies/music/art/comedy.


The comedic giants contemporary with 'the great philosophers' were people like Aristophanes. People that wrote plays full of dick and fart jokes, pun names, and humour via funny accents.

You'd be hard pushed to argue that the scuptors of Old Kingdom Egypt were objectively better than the realism adopted by the Greeks they inspired, let alone those of the Renaissance. Or that the people who painted the walls of Pompeii trumped Michelangelo.

The one-set-theater-put-on-film efforts of early cinema were objectively better than Hitchcock?

I'm picking extreme examples, but it's a very silly assertion, albeit a very common one - I'd suggest one usually made by people that simply don't have the enthusiasm to seek out art that they like.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/30 19:39:48


 
   
Made in us
Ultramarine Chaplain with Hate to Spare






Memes seem to be just a part of internet culture, and that's totally fine.

Internet culture is just part of "culture" these days, so some spillover is unavoidable and natural. Also fine.

If memes are derailing a conversation, then those individuals didn't really want to have the conversation anyways. Which is also fine.

The only real problem I can see is when judgement form either side happens. "Stupid kids and their memes." or "Adults are sooooo uncool with their lack of meme knowledge." Which is basically a pattern that has existed forever, as far as I can tell.

As long as parties can bridge a "culture gap" when it's time to do it, we're good.

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 Togusa wrote:
It does seem as though the memes themselves have gotten less creative, and more abstract. I'm all for a good laugh, or a good image macro with cleaver wording on it.

But it just seems like everything is driven by memes on the internet these days. Nothing goads me harder than when I'm trying to have a discussion about something, and the only responses I get are meme pictures, instead of reasoned arguments.


They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but whenever someone posts an "image macro", those words are usually just "I'm an idiot!" 333 times. If there was a way to filter out Facebook posts that are images unaccompanied by text, it would be a better place. Or even worse, GIFs; Most of them add no useful information by being animated - they're just annoying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 chromedog wrote:
It must be an older person thing.

I've had no patience with meme culture since it became a thing, though. Not just recently.


If they annoy you, think how irritating they must be for Richard Dawkins - not just the barrage of unfunny jokes, but the knowledge that a load of internet knuckle-scrapers have hijacked the meaning of his word.

To be honest, I tend to assume that someone posting a meme image (or an in-joke) isn't interested in a discussion, so I just ignore them and scroll past. not worth getting angry over.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/01/31 11:26:42


 
   
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Bodt

Is there a paradox here? I'm 30, and remember the show malcolm in the middle, so I understood that reference, despite me technically being the old man, whereas the younger guys clearly don't know the show and thus don't get the reference.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There are some pretty funny warhammer memes on Instagram. I think that's the point. People make them for the groups that they are part of. Sometimes they spread and other cultures use the same but with phrases relevant to them. For example, the 'is this the' anime guy with the butterfly, I've seen it used with everything from politics (both sides of the spec) to warhammer

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/31 15:15:07


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United States

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Is there a paradox here? I'm 30, and remember the show malcolm in the middle, so I understood that reference, despite me technically being the old man, whereas the younger guys clearly don't know the show and thus don't get the reference.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There are some pretty funny warhammer memes on Instagram. I think that's the point. People make them for the groups that they are part of. Sometimes they spread and other cultures use the same but with phrases relevant to them. For example, the 'is this the' anime guy with the butterfly, I've seen it used with everything from politics (both sides of the spec) to warhammer


I didn't watch much television when I was growing up. When I did, it was mostly PBS.
   
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UK

a lot of them are rubbish, some are annoying, the occasional gem is funny or at least to the point

i'm getting old

at least they're not people complaining about sisters players complaining about being ignored (i'm so glad that's on a downswing now the sisters are getting plastic toys)

 
   
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United States

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
a lot of them are rubbish, some are annoying, the occasional gem is funny or at least to the point

i'm getting old

at least they're not people complaining about sisters players complaining about being ignored (i'm so glad that's on a downswing now the sisters are getting plastic toys)


Agreed! I'm happy for them too!

I'm not some fuddy-duddy. Some memes can be fun, and are good for a chuckle or two. But most seem to just be vapid.
   
Made in nz
Longtime Dakkanaut





Near Jupiter.

Listen, the problem is this is nothing new,, its called sharing some thing funny/interesting/what ever which has been around for a few thousand years since humans came in to existence. The internet and mass sharing of thoughts has led to dumbing down of people, and instead of saying , "oh i have herd that before, that is funny because ( insert reason ) and how or why etc. They instead say, "oh that's a meme", or "that's a old meme" or some thing related to the word meme and thus destroying the natural way of communicating in the form of sharing some thing intersting or funny etc.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/31 16:57:47


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That's because when you create a new technology which lets everyone easily do something which previously required some skill, training and equipment, everyone starts to do it, and most of it inevitably is rubbish.

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 Togusa wrote:


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Your profile says you're 32. I refuse to believe someone based in the USA and only 2 years younger than myself is culturally unaware of Malcolm in the Middle.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/31 18:19:41



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USA

 Grimtuff wrote:
 Togusa wrote:


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Your profile says you're 32. I refuse to believe someone based in the USA and only 2 years younger than myself is culturally unaware of Malcolm in the Middle.


I'm aware of it but that doesn't mean I ever watched it

   
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 LordofHats wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 Togusa wrote:


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Your profile says you're 32. I refuse to believe someone based in the USA and only 2 years younger than myself is culturally unaware of Malcolm in the Middle.


I'm aware of it but that doesn't mean I ever watched it


Which I never said. There are plenty of shows I'm culturally aware of despite having never watched.


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The Shire(s)

 Grimtuff wrote:
 LordofHats wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
 Togusa wrote:


I still don't know what it is, or what it means. So it functional accomplishes nothing for me in this discussion.


Your profile says you're 32. I refuse to believe someone based in the USA and only 2 years younger than myself is culturally unaware of Malcolm in the Middle.


I'm aware of it but that doesn't mean I ever watched it


Which I never said. There are plenty of shows I'm culturally aware of despite having never watched.

I live in the UK. There are certain soaps which are culturally endemic that vast swathes of the population watch (like Coronation Street and Eastenders). I am aware of them, but have barely watched an episode total, and that through it being on in the background in various places. I would not recognise a single actor or actress from either*, yet they are some of the most watched programs in the country, and have been for decades.

Just being culturally aware of something doesn't mean you can recognise it from a gif Of course, you don't need to recognise it to understand the meaning of most gifs- I've never watched Malcolm in the Middle (although I've heard about it), had no idea that was the basis for the gif, but still got the intent.

*Scratch that- I am pretty sure the dude from Red Dwarf is in one of them, not sure which though. So that's one

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/31 21:46:34


 ChargerIIC wrote:
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Pleasant Valley, Iowa

I am substantially more culturally away of Cardi B that I would prefer despite never listening to one of her songs.

The perils of working with the younglings I guess.

*shakes fist in the sky, yells at clouds*

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/01/31 23:09:10


 lord_blackfang wrote:
Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.

 Flinty wrote:
The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
 
   
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Basically, memes are the new printing press, the new telephone, the new email - a new way of communicating ideas (sure, I doubt they'll have the same impact as any of the above - although they well could).

Some people overuse and badly use memes, leading to rather clunky and forced expression, but a good meme, when understood by the audience (much like any word, or leitmotif) expresses something that it recognisable and understood.

The Imperial March can probably be equated to a meme - it means evil, it means the Empire, it means Vader... only if you're aware of how it fits into Star Wars. The Rains of Castamere, likewise memed, but only makes sense if you know the context of the song. There's nothing inherently wrong with a meaning being tied to something, and that something being used to communicate - after all, isn't that how language works? It's just oversaturation and poor expression that tend to give memes a bad image.


They/them

 
   
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 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
Basically, memes are the new printing press, the new telephone, the new email - a new way of communicating ideas (sure, I doubt they'll have the same impact as any of the above - although they well could).

Some people overuse and badly use memes, leading to rather clunky and forced expression, but a good meme, when understood by the audience (much like any word, or leitmotif) expresses something that it recognisable and understood.

The Imperial March can probably be equated to a meme - it means evil, it means the Empire, it means Vader... only if you're aware of how it fits into Star Wars. The Rains of Castamere, likewise memed, but only makes sense if you know the context of the song. There's nothing inherently wrong with a meaning being tied to something, and that something being used to communicate - after all, isn't that how language works? It's just oversaturation and poor expression that tend to give memes a bad image.

I think those last two examples are interesting though, because whilst you need to watch/read the media to get the full meaning, they are well crafted enough to give much of the sense of what they are trying to convey anyway. They are very good musical pieces even for the "uninitiated"

The best memes are like this too- they convey much of their meaning without needing viewers to know the context of the image, although it obviously enhances it.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
If algae farm paste with a little bit of your grandfather in it isn't Grimdark I don't know what is.
 
   
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- Memes, September 30th, 1991. (Thanks to a friend for pointing this out)
   
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 Compel wrote:
Darmok on the ocean, Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra, Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

Temba, his arms wide.

Shaka, when the walls fell.

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel.



- Memes, September 30th, 1991. (Thanks to a friend for pointing this out)


Huh... You know I never thought of that, and I'm not a guy who ever claimed Star Trek didn't manage to be forward looking in unexpected ways XD

   
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 Togusa wrote:
The younglings ...

Are you memeing me?

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