China's latest Internet obsession began with an anonymous post on a computer gaming forum: "Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to come home and eat." [more inside]
posted by tapeguy on Sep 6, 2009 - 34 comments

Evolution's third replicator: Genes, memes, and now what?
posted by homunculus on Jul 31, 2009 - 68 comments

Linguists and Missionaries often find themselves in similar situations. The Jesus Film Project. [more inside]
posted by fcummins on Jul 24, 2009 - 17 comments

Top 60 Ghetto Black Names (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Jun 4, 2009 - 292 comments

Internet memes. Will they come and go, dying with their creators? Or will they continue to replicate, posing a danger to life as we know it?
posted by twoleftfeet on Oct 16, 2008 - 29 comments

Bacon Cat in the New York Times With the presidential race heating up and the financial bailout package passing Congress on Friday, the New York Times thought this was the perfect time for a hard hitting look at straight, single men who own cats. So of course they wanted input from author John Scalzi, who by virtue of the fact that he is married, is not single. He does own Bacon Cat though.
posted by COD on Oct 4, 2008 - 46 comments

I Can Has Rezearch Papar? via roflcon
posted by signal on Jan 14, 2008 - 63 comments

StupidFilter is a work in progress which aims to recognize online stupidity programmatically. Keep in mind we grade stupidity on a scale of 1 to 5. Someone might get a 1 or 2 for a comment that used no punctuation, whereas a comment consisting of nothing but text message abbreviations with a dash of LOLLLLL thrown in for good measure would probably rate a solid 4 or 5. There is a certain amount of subjectivity, and our software is aware of that; scoring will be normalized to eliminate excessively generous or harsh estimations of stupidity. Read some examples of "the tyranny of idiocy" in their collection of Random Stupidity .
posted by amyms on Oct 18, 2007 - 69 comments

lolsecretz --The meeting of two of the internet's most famous memes– the touching postsecret and the sublimely stupid LOLcats
posted by amberglow on Sep 19, 2007 - 67 comments

If you enjoyed Supermarket 2.0, you'll love brgr, aka Burger 2.0! Yes, it's your basic "if your hamburger were like a website/web celebrity/software product/tech company/buzzword" schtick, but some of them are funny. My faves [inside].
posted by wendell on Aug 26, 2007 - 14 comments

Potter Puppet Pals. More: Ron's computer , Oh noes, Bothering Snape, 4-potions class, The cute villian, The Gay Party, The Budget Wand of Doom. Even more. (all YT)
posted by fcummins on Aug 4, 2007 - 13 comments

The Daniel Dennett interview with Bill Moyers [GoogleVid now with free viewing]. Dennett's talks at TED. Dennett with Robert Wright [GVid]. And additional AV at Daniel Dennett Multimedia -- his presentation at the Center for Naturalism (on "Breaking the Spell") is excellent. [Previously 1, 2, 3, 4]
posted by McLir on Jul 25, 2007 - 21 comments

The Prisoners of YouTube is a pretty good longish article on all the reluctant internet video celebs, including Star Wars Kid, Afroninja, the Numa Numa Kid, and more. It's an interesting look at the downside of unwarranted attention and how a few people have turned these embarrassing moments in the sun to their advantage.
posted by mathowie on Feb 19, 2007 - 51 comments

At the beginning was the noosphere. The existence of a "sphere of ideas", beyond the "sphere of life" (biosphere) and the "sphere of matter" (geosphere) was apparently first postulated by the pioneering Russian-Ukrainian geochemist V.I. Vernadsky. Vernadsky thought not only that the biosphere had entirely reshaped the geosphere, but that the burgeoning noosphere of interconnected thought would ultimately change the biosphere just as much. French jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin took the concept and ran with it...(more inside)
posted by Skeptic on Nov 28, 2006 - 24 comments

The Interweb Medley!! What happens when you mix up some of the more well-known Internet memes around? Madness.
posted by divabat on Aug 11, 2006 - 25 comments

Dog Poo Girl : "A woman and her dog are riding the Seoul subways. The dog poops in the floor. The woman refuses to clean it up, despite being told to by other passengers. Someone takes a picture of her, posts it on the Internet..."
posted by starscream on Aug 11, 2005 - 104 comments

Christian Video Games set to make comeback? Tired of destroying the same old cliched monsters, day in day out? Want to engross yourself in a more morally sound, Religious video game experience? Well if the Christian gaming community has their way, we'll soon all be playing them (or at least a few % of gamers): "As believers in Christ, we pray that God will be glorified through our work and that each of us draw nearer to him as we develop and grow as a business," the Christian game company says
posted by 0bvious on May 24, 2005 - 57 comments

New Year's Tradition: Banishing Words (yes, I've done this before) L.S.S.U has been making lists since 1976, but after all the censorship battles of the last year, they probably should be using less threatening terminology than "banished". Still, most of the terminology in this Hall of Shame list certainly deserves to be discouraged, derided and degraded.

Of course, Creative Deity Matt Groening does his own annual list of Forbidden Words, and some webhead has developed a cool webtool: The Forbidden Words Flagger.
posted by wendell on Dec 31, 2004 - 31 comments

Megametajapanfilter --feel the fury of 2ch, Japan's largest message board. Not only have bus hijackings (CNN) and group suicides been announced there, but 2ch helped spawn a world of memes and spin-off sites. The likes of pancake bunny (Oolong) and roflcopter have been breeding freely in the English-language mirror-world 2ch would help create. There is the (frequently disgusting and sexual) spin-off image board 4chan (English), which is a legend in its own right, plus many other *chans you'd rather not see. (See also the Japanese Futaba Channel.) Obviously Something Awful goons had their fingers in the 4chan pie.
posted by Kleptophoria! on Dec 2, 2004 - 19 comments

My Hed Iz Pastede On Yay. This Thread Iz Pastede On Yay! My S2 Iz Pastede On Yay! My red iz pastede on yay! My gold medal iz pastede on yay! My Bond iz pastede on yay! Your face iz pastede on yay? Your religion iz pastede on yay. Six months on, the meme is only just getting started. (Support provided by the Google Meme Observatory.)
posted by Mo Nickels on Oct 22, 2004 - 19 comments

William Safire on "the izzle": "And now, in the pages of The New York Times, there it is — a word modified with the ubiquitous izzle. Some clever Times copy editor, for a June article about Chrysler's new 300C sedan, created the headline, "Fo' Shizzle, That Big Bad Chrysler Really Does Sizzle". So now that the gray lady herself has been izzled from the inside, is it time for everyone to wish one last fond farewizzle and shed the shizzle? (MTV interview mentioned in the article is here.)
posted by taz on Sep 21, 2004 - 33 comments

Doing a Lynndie
posted by bob sarabia on Aug 21, 2004 - 19 comments

So You Think You're Fundamentally Badass, Do You? Well...*hearty guffaw*... take the test and think again, dude! ( That is, ass if I knew what badass or kickass or even ass itself meant...)
posted by MiguelCardoso on May 21, 2004 - 27 comments

Return of badger badger badger mushroom mushroom: a live action take on the historic badger meme.
[12 megs mpg, via our pals at monkeyfilter]
posted by moonbird on Apr 24, 2004 - 30 comments

Harvard's Institute of Politics has created a short test to measure where your political beliefs fit with college students across the country. You better sit down for this one: I am a Traditonal Liberal !   From Secular Centrist Matthew Yglesias. Take the test and see where you fall on the brightly colored chart.
posted by y2karl on Apr 16, 2004 - 66 comments

The memespread project. How does a meme spread? What part does MetaFilter play in the process? [via waxy.org]
posted by cbrody on Apr 8, 2004 - 13 comments

The New Republic . . . is one of multiple sources featuring variations on Bush-hating in recent weeks. What's up with the sudden currency of the phrase?
posted by palancik on Sep 26, 2003 - 24 comments

Metafilter: Fair & Balanced[tm] - reclaim free speech tomorrow! This Friday, August 15, is Fair And Balanced day on the Internet... according to Neal Pollack, Atrios and others. Development to this thread
posted by dash_slot- on Aug 14, 2003 - 30 comments

A Blast From The Past: Ass Chaps Man A piece of classic American Webiana, still hilarious after all these years. Does anyone know of other classic Web pieces that somehow missed the MeFi front page, probably because they were so well known at the time? [ With thanks to quonsar. Safe for work, I'd say, but a close call.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jun 9, 2003 - 23 comments

Step one: record an embarrassing video of yourself (WMV link). Step two: Let the video fall into the hands of the internet masses, and become the hero you've dreamed of(also WMV).
posted by malphigian on May 2, 2003 - 41 comments

All your Iraq are belong to us 50% will lie. 50% will call names.
posted by Postroad on Apr 22, 2003 - 29 comments

The Anglosphere: This has been floating vaguely in the memesphere for a year or so, and is ready to pop. Seems we Anglophones are not nations separated by a common language anymore, but "a distinct civilization in [our] own right."

Western in origin but no longer entirely Western in composition and nature, this civilization is marked by a particularly strong civil society, which is the source of its long record of successful constitutional government and economic prosperity. ... [its] continuous leadership of the Scientific-Technological Revolution from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century stems from these characteristics and is thus likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

It is not, however, a return of " the racialist Anglo-Saxonism dating from the era around 1900" ... he says. The author was profiled in Industry Standard in August 2001. His company provides "sovereignty services" — i.e., moving wealth offshore.
posted by hairyeyeball on Apr 12, 2003 - 9 comments

Maybe the West wins the Meme Wars... ...because memes propagate best in highly visual and/or aural mediums. These text based memes may not be as powerful as they used to be because they are harder to incorporate than the newer, more aggressive memes.
posted by mrmanley on Aug 5, 2002 - 26 comments

Journalists response to the web wide debate sparked after their interview with Jamie Kellner CEO of Turner Broadcasting. Where he likened not viewing the adverts to theft. It's a story I was very interested in and it seems it caused a fair amount of debate. Other than the 'Osama is evil' explosion what's your favorite meme with legs ?
posted by mrben on May 30, 2002 - 8 comments

What the....? Where's the punchline? I don't get it. Why, that's just plain disgusting! I can't *even* believe my eyes. Channeling the spirit of B1FF in the early morning. o<
posted by Settle on Apr 20, 2002 - 49 comments

Spend Buy Nothing Day on the can.
posted by swift on Nov 20, 2001 - 4 comments

Fighting back Des this have a familiar ring to it? Seems I have heard this music score before...
posted by Postroad on Oct 2, 2001 - 7 comments

All your desperate to be the next wacky webcraze links are belong to MetaFilter.
posted by Kino on Jun 21, 2001 - 15 comments

I was reading this article about the new breed of modern airships when I stumbled over the line "Not your grandfather's airship". That started me off thinking about the "Not your father's X" meme that's been part of the journalistic background noise for a while now. It seems to me to evoking something oedipal, a male child's revulsion of his father and his father's way of doing things. It's usually juxtaposed against technology or at least things that aren't all that old to begin with. Does anyone know who used it first? A quick search of Google reveals it in everything from "Cuba: not your father's stagnant nation" to "XML: Not your father's HTML". Anyone got any favorites?
posted by lagado on Jan 4, 2001 - 19 comments

It's no longer funny.
posted by faisal on May 1, 2000 - 10 comments