Rot wins the internet

October 11, 2009 8:04 PM

The internet has declared Rot, a 36 year old British Man, to be the winner of a long and torturous decade long search for the ultimate meme. [NSFW]

By posting a Youtube video blending otaku-ism, a cellar, skin, hip dance moves, disco music, mimicry, a balding head, lip-synching, sexual tension, suggested drug abuse, commercial-ism, nipple-play, a bare ass, some kungfu-like moves, some masturbation moves, game reviews, expressions of lust, contempt, love, and fanaticism, Rot has won one billion internet points. The body of work that started in the 60s known as the internet has now been completed. We can all start building solar panels and wind turbines now.

posted by sleslie (65 comments total)

sage
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:12 PM on October 11, 2009 [17 favorites]

The road before a meme is long and serpentine. This meme is currently in the germination stage, where people are first being exposed to it. It needs to go viral on a popular website, like Digg or 4Chan. Metafilter can serve the role. Once it hits the big socially networked sites, it will continue to spread until most of the 18-35 demographic understand what it is. At that point, the meme can either fade to obscurity as people no longer consider it interesting/funny, or it can go supernova and either become so awful or so embarrassing when it gets abused or displayed publicly in the real world. At that point, it's no longer just a funny little secret between you and some tens of millions of friends online, but then your parents know about it. It's hopelessly lame.

If you want to end the internet, you'll need to bring every meme to either mediocrity, awfulness, or public exposure, and prevent the creation of new memes. Good luck with that.
posted by mccarty.tim at 8:19 PM on October 11, 2009 [5 favorites]

Forced Meme
posted by Eideteker at 8:20 PM on October 11, 2009 [11 favorites]

Since when has "The Internet" ever spoken with a unfied voice? On any subject?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:20 PM on October 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

First order of business is to replace the soundtrack with "Goodbye Horses" from Silence of the Lambs
posted by Pastabagel at 8:20 PM on October 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

No I thought the Japanese guy playing the bass to his favourite anime soundtrack whilst dressed as a girl was the winner of the internet.
posted by awfurby at 8:21 PM on October 11, 2009 [5 favorites]

blending otaku-ism, a cellar, skin , hip dance moves , disco music , mimicry , a balding head, lip-synching, sexual tension, suggested drug abuse , commercial-ism, nipple-play, a bare ass, some kungfu-like moves , some masturbation moves , game reviews , expressions of lust , contempt, love, and fanaticism

"That's quite an act. What do you call it?"

"The Aristocrats!"
posted by fleetmouse at 8:25 PM on October 11, 2009 [32 favorites]

I am inexplicably charmed at his abandon.

Nevertheless, I wonder if Tim Berners-Lee ever sees something like this and just wishes he had stuck to FTP.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:29 PM on October 11, 2009 [9 favorites]

I don't get how this is funny; I'd dance too if I had such a collection.
posted by TwelveTwo at 8:29 PM on October 11, 2009

Satan's greatest trick was to make the concept of memes itself a meme.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to invest heavily in Depends™ brand adult undergarments. And not watch any of these videos.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:30 PM on October 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is not how memes are made.

This is.
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 8:40 PM on October 11, 2009 [26 favorites]

Dancing game reviewer is dancing.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 8:50 PM on October 11, 2009

Yeah, while I have seen it linked from several different meme-makers, 68,000 views? Weak.

Leads me to believe people aren't viewing the Youtube for more than 5 seconds, which I think doesn't register a view. (I've "seen" it four times now, for about 5 seconds each. Get the picture soon enough.)
posted by graventy at 8:54 PM on October 11, 2009

Doesn't a meme have to spread beyond the location of its conception in order to qualify? If it stays where it was born, it's just an injoke.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:55 PM on October 11, 2009

I thought Rot was 13.
posted by o0o0o at 8:57 PM on October 11, 2009 [17 favorites]

Holy cr*p. That was brilliant. What an inspiring freak. And I say that as a fellow freak.
posted by Skygazer at 8:58 PM on October 11, 2009

Since when has "The Internet" ever spoken with a unfied voice? On any subject?
I think you're right – 9,720,000 wins the internet. They can't all be wins can they. Rot is currently 3rd though.
posted by tellurian at 8:58 PM on October 11, 2009

It was very very easy not to click the link.
posted by Forrest Greene at 9:08 PM on October 11, 2009

Pet Shop Boys doing Where The Streets Have No Name/I Can't Take My Eyes Off You FTW
posted by furtive at 9:11 PM on October 11, 2009

Thank god those picture weren't taken with DS cases.
posted by sourwookie at 9:28 PM on October 11, 2009

This new meme is not at all a forced meme
posted by sien at 9:29 PM on October 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

This... sucks on ice. I'm sorry I don't have anything to contribute but my disdain.
posted by hellojed at 9:41 PM on October 11, 2009

> sage

Goes in the email field, but we're not one of the chans. Instead on mefi we pronounce sage as "flagged".
posted by tarheelcoxn at 9:41 PM on October 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

fail
posted by b1tr0t at 9:48 PM on October 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

So the Ultimate Meme is here... is this the time when the Internet implodes on itself?
Should we gather our loved ones? Hold hands? Sing? Buy eyebleach?
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:49 PM on October 11, 2009

Um, that's an attic, not a cellar.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:57 PM on October 11, 2009

This guy is cool, but it's not a very good meme. Maybe he's just too cool.
posted by Flashman at 10:39 PM on October 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

Satan's greatest trick was to make the concept of memes itself a meme.
So wait. Dawkins is Satan?
posted by Burhanistan at 11:03 PM on October 11, 2009

Actually, I speak for the internet, and this sucks.
posted by mrnutty at 11:23 PM on October 11, 2009

I read in an U2 album review that Mogadishu or Manhattan were the inspiration for Where The Streets Have No Name.

Mogadishu: because they literally have no name.
Manhattan: because they are mostly numbers, not "names."

/unsure of why there was no definitive answer at time of printing
//I read this maybe 1-2 years before my first internet account
///interesting, non?
////Arnie Schwarzenegger prank calls: greatest ever meme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPMW7le4Ymo
posted by uncanny hengeman at 12:01 AM on October 12, 2009

The Youtube comments on the suggested drug abuse link are a goldmine of funny [emphasis mine].

**Were the people who made this high? That "dealer" is like 10. Plus he sucks at it. He is just giving it away. Sell that shit!

**Ahhh the memories!!!

**"Hey, man. Wanna smoke these lollipop sticks with me?"

**How the Hell did I miss this class in kidnergarden?

**lol get a pizza

**Yea! Take psychedelics instead, then you'll be able to create your own show with giant talking animals! Or, you can take both...

**"Your a TURKEY"
THAT GUY GOT HIS ASS TORCHED

**ya that guys a turkey..
a turkey hotboxing the oven with those j's lol

**I think maybe they made this commercial to make the stoners watching TMNT to feel bad about themselves.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 12:12 AM on October 12, 2009

Good, but not as good as TechnoViking or the partly-inspired-by-Technoviking HTFU.
posted by rodgerd at 12:21 AM on October 12, 2009

This is awesome, he's causing shenanigans on the internet... and yet I'm not ashamed for him!
posted by emperor.seamus at 12:24 AM on October 12, 2009

Goes in the email field, but we're not one of the chans. Instead on mefi we pronounce sage as "flagged".

newfag
tits or gtfo
posted by dhartung at 12:27 AM on October 12, 2009

Good thing he is already married, otherwise he'd never see another real live vagina ever again.

Well, for free anyway.
posted by chillmost at 12:52 AM on October 12, 2009

I think you're right – 9,720,000 wins the internet. They can't all be wins can they. Rot is currently 3rd though.

Uh... 2nd place now seems to be held by this thread, with your link to those results as the quoted snippet. Google eats self. Internet dies.
posted by him at 1:16 AM on October 12, 2009

**lol get a pizza

I just tried this star star lol code and didn't get a pizza. What version of metafilter do you have?
posted by srboisvert at 2:26 AM on October 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

what
posted by zardoz at 2:55 AM on October 12, 2009

:3
posted by channel-1- at 5:37 AM on October 12, 2009

Hi! It's your mom. I don't get it.
posted by nax at 5:44 AM on October 12, 2009

torturous ... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also, any meme that does not mention this Danish company is not the true meme.
posted by scruss at 6:18 AM on October 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Okay, I clicked on "The Ultimate Meme" link and saw a paunchy guy with glasses in his boxer shorts and no shirt dancing badly and randomly picking out DVD boxes(?) and showing them to the camera.

Is there something hidden in this that I'm missing? Is this like that video of people passing a ball around and a guy in a bear suit walks through and you don't notice because you're busy counting how many passes the people make? Because otherwise, it just seems like a good example of why everyone doesn't get to be on television.
posted by xingcat at 6:32 AM on October 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Why am I imagining this video being played at his funeral, with everyone there laughing in their grief at how immensely shameless he was?
posted by bwg at 6:40 AM on October 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

Being a teenager in the 1990s (pretty much pre-internet) and reading zines like bOING bOING and Mondo 2000 (and a little later Adbusters), this abuse of the term "meme" really is annoying. I suppose strictly speaking the definition is the same, but the connotations back then were different. It was a subversive, situationalist, culturejamming, aesthetic act, to create and propogate your own memes. How far we've fallen from the classics (ok, so they haven't dated that well, but still) like Schwa and Bob to inane viral videos of nerds embarrassing themselves. The explicit purpose then (and implicit purpose now) was to act as an in-joke to filter yourself into the in-crowd, the people that "get it" - only old school memes united people with the intention of promoting counterculture and alternative thought, whereas all so-called memes do nowadays is bring together wannabe school bullies in a cackling and mean-spirited ritual humilation of their fellow fatbeards.
posted by iivix at 6:52 AM on October 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

1990s (pretty much pre-internet)

!

?
posted by kmennie at 7:07 AM on October 12, 2009

I think what iivix was saying is that his 1990s were pre-Internet, not necessarily yours or mine.
posted by scalefree at 7:13 AM on October 12, 2009

> I think what iivix was saying is that his 1990s were pre-Internet, not necessarily yours or mine.

Yup, exactly. But also, pre-internet in the sense that although the internet existed, you were still more likely to be reading about the joys of the net in a print magazine like Wired etc, than vice versa. So I'm pretty much referring here to 1991 - 1997, which was something of a golden age for print zines, after which the web became the preferred medium for this kind of thing, since the overheads are significantly less and the audience is unbelievably wider.
posted by iivix at 7:19 AM on October 12, 2009

You can't intentionally create a meme. It doesn't work that way. Especially with a video as lame as this one.
posted by EarBucket at 7:20 AM on October 12, 2009

As for the video, I didn't think much of it. But it did lead me to these adorable videos of a cat & fennec fox, so not a total loss.
posted by scalefree at 7:21 AM on October 12, 2009

I don't understand this but I think it sucks. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that were I to understand it, and which I will not undertake to do, I would still think it at best trite at worst fucking stupid.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:48 AM on October 12, 2009

Being a teenager in the 1990s (pretty much pre-internet) and reading zines like bOING bOING and Mondo 2000 (and a little later Adbusters), this abuse of the term "meme" really is annoying.

FAIL
posted by KokuRyu at 8:13 AM on October 12, 2009

Nah, the internet was won some time ago. Three cheers for Jeffrey Rowland, always Overcompensating.

By defining it, one encompasses it.

Also, I just don't think I want to see that video...
posted by LD Feral at 8:22 AM on October 12, 2009

From now on I'm sticking to streets with names.
posted by Legomancer at 8:24 AM on October 12, 2009

> FAIL

This horrid use of the word "fail" annoys me too. What a wonderful way to shut down discussion.
posted by iivix at 8:26 AM on October 12, 2009

Since when has "The Internet" ever spoken with a unfied voice? On any subject?

Furries?
posted by Thorzdad at 8:30 AM on October 12, 2009

iivix: Being a teenager in the 1990s (pretty much pre-internet) and reading zines like bOING bOING and Mondo 2000 (and a little later Adbusters), this abuse of the term "meme" really is annoying.

Are you kidding? I'm pleased at the way that one of the stupidest theories to ever cross the gap from the biology to humanities is now synonymous with dancing geeks, pugs in hats, and cats taking a shower.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 8:35 AM on October 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

Being a teenager in the 1990s (pretty much pre-internet) and reading zines like bOING bOING and Mondo 2000 (and a little later Adbusters), this abuse of the term "meme" really is annoying. I suppose strictly speaking the definition is the same, but the connotations back then were different. It was a subversive, situationalist, culturejamming, aesthetic act, to create and propogate your own memes.

I was also a zine-reading teenager in the 1990s, but it seems I didn't get issued the standard rose-tinted glasses. Did they only come with certain editions of the Book of the SubGenius?
posted by Greg Nog at 8:37 AM on October 12, 2009

Is this one of those things you need to have a computer to understand?
posted by Gilbert at 8:47 AM on October 12, 2009

Shenanigans. That's not a meme.

THIS is a meme.
posted by Aquaman at 8:47 AM on October 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

"This is not how memes are made. This is."

I like fake flowcharts as much as anyone, possibly more than most people, but when the "Digg? YES" arrow points away from failure, it's factually incorrect no matter the subject.
posted by majick at 8:59 AM on October 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

has anyone used the word stupid yet?? no??? someone should...
posted by HuronBob at 9:03 AM on October 12, 2009

> I was also a zine-reading teenager in the 1990s, but it seems I didn't get issued the standard rose-tinted glasses.

Yeah, I know I'm being overly nostalgic today, and like I said, a lot of it hasn't dated well, but just contrast the most popular medium for the meme aesthetic in 1990s (let's say the print version of bOING bOING for example) with where it's most popular now (i.e 4chan). The worst you can say of the former is that it was pretentious proto-hipster fluff, whereas the latter is an ugly mix of infantile humour, homophobia, racism, gore and child porn.
posted by iivix at 9:12 AM on October 12, 2009

has anyone used the word stupid yet??

From Bklyn at 7:48 AM
posted by mrgrimm at 9:49 AM on October 12, 2009

if anyone ever truly owns the internet, then we will all lose.
posted by the aloha at 12:25 PM on October 12, 2009

My meme has a first name, it's "B-E-L-O-N-G-T-O-U-S"
My meme has a second name it's "L-E-R-O-Y-J-E-N-K-I-N-S"
posted by ...possums at 11:08 PM on October 12, 2009