Has Anyone Said This Sh*t? (Yes.)
Not since Rebecca Black have I seen a meme go from hilarious to amusing to downright-shoot-me-annoying as quickly as the seemingly neverending “Shit [People] Say” videos. Jumpstarted seemingly centuries ago with a little celebrity juice thanks to the involvement of Juliette Lewis, the meme was birthed with this video titled “Shit Girls Say.” By now you’ve seen this and all the countless copycats. If you’ve been pulling a Rip Van Winkle who just woke up and have no idea what we’re talking about, what I’m referring to are series of viral videos which are basically a supercut of stereotypical expressions and phrase associated with different groups (not without some controversy). People quickly tired of them and vocally expressed their annoyance on Facebook or Twitter, but were quick to retweet and share any new variation that happened to fit their particular niche or interests: for example, as soon as the “Shit New Yorkers Say” video hit the web, it seemed as though every single one of my New Yorker friends posted it on Facebook (often right after having stated their irritation of these videos only the day before). For you Van Winkle’s here’s a sampling of others:
Read More »This week’s top 5 trending viral videos
The talk and focus this week is (rightfully so) on all films that made their rounds at the Sundance Film Festival. But the Internet meme machine never sleeps (its theme song: Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop), festival or no festival, so without further ado here are the top five videos starting to trend, and as the kids say “get its swoll on” this week.
5. If you’re a violinist and you are interrupted by an audience member’s cell phone loudly ringing during your solo performance, this is how you respond in a classy manner and in other words pwn this rude cell phone owner.
Read More »Snitches of Downtown Abbey
I feel like King Solomon on Sunday nights lately where I have to make the difficult decision as to whether I want to watch some NFL football or the latest pop culture rage (at least in some pastoral corners of the blogosphere). It just so happens to air on PBS, something you don’t hear too often. You know it’s a sensation when the New York Times does a trend piece on it, which they did with a recent article about viewing parties being held for this show. This phenomenon is a British import called Downtown Abbey.
Read More »This week’s top 5 trending viral videos
Sorry kids, the Shit People Say videos still aren’t going away (just this Wednesday a “Shit New Yorkers Say” appeared on the Tubes and of course was instantly shared by every New Yorker across the Twitbook), but here are five other videos trending this week that I think, nay guarantee that you will find equal to if not more entertaining.
5. One of my favorite YouTube channels belongs to someone who goes by the literal name of “LiteralMSPaint.” As the name suggests they apply their MS Paint skills to create music videos to inane pop dance songs and interprets the song lyrics literally. The MS Paint skills might be lacking but the comedy level is expert. Their latest takes on the inescapable LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” and I just lost it and began LMFAO at the 1:00 mark.
Read More »Top 5 that have nothing to do with s#!* people say
Oh-em-gee, the Shit Girls Say copycat videos aren’t going away. If you’re sick of them, here are five brand-spankin’ new videos burning up the Internet and set to go “viral” this week thanks to our collective boredom and tendency to procrastinate (not me though).
5. Quadron’s cover of Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” you know, only one of the greatest songs of our generation, is super and the reactions of my friends who I forwarded this to have been “wowwww” on one end and “why am I tearing up” on the other of the spectrum. I love the stripped down sound of their version. Also, a killer voice of Coco O. on vocals doesn’t hurt it either.
Read More »Newt Gingrich at sites of great tragedy
The Atlantic highlighted this odd, to say the least, photo found on Newt Gingrich’s website of the suited up presidential hopeful and his wife Callista posing in front of the gates of Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp. This might seem like a cheap shot at a presidential candidate, but regardless of the individual, there’s a weird tone-deaf vibe and lack of awareness to this photo that gives me the same discomfort I feel whenever I see tourists posing with bright smiles in front of somber sites or memorials of great loss.
Many Internet memes belong to the subgenre of image macros that includes superimposing a certain Photoshopped picture (most recent example: Pepper Spraying Cop) With the above, unfortunate photo Newt Gingrich might enter a pantheon that is even more indelible than being POTUS: A new meme.
Read More »End of the year list…list
Photo by Kent Shiraishi taken at Biei, Hokkaido, Japan.
Can you freaking believe 2011 is, for all intents and purposes, over? That means it is time for all of those end-of-year lists. So many lists, so little time left to read them; so I’ve compiled my own list of lists that will hopefully amuse, and at the very least distract, you.
- For fans of MAKE and DIY culture, here are the top 10 “most important” people on Etsy, the popular online shop and community for independent handmade crafters.
For an exercise in guilty schadenfreude in 2011 here is a supercut of the best fails this year on YouTube. If you laugh at any of them you are a horrible, horrible person. I am a horrible, horrible person.
The rituals of Christmas morning on YouTube
Well, another Christmas has come and gone: The excitement, traditions, and rituals of Christmas morning which were private and unique to each family has now become a source of public entertainment thanks to YouTube, Facebook, online communities, and the countless other vehicles for information sharing and connecting on the Interwebs. We all remember popping up on Christmas morning as a kid (at an ungodly hour in retrospect) with a rapturous and feverish glee, forcing our parents to wake up, and then euphorically opening the presents which had contained all of our hopes and dreams at the time. The difference nowadays is that this crackhead-like (if I may use that phrase here) exhilaration and joy of children on Christmas morning is now a source for millions of views on YouTube. Unless you’re a modern day Rip Van Winkle, you’ve all seen this priceless reaction video of this kid opening his Christmas present to discover a Nintendo 64 or as he screamed “a Nintendo Sixty-Foooooour. OH MY GAWD.” Yeah, that video has over 15 million views on YouTube. Bookending the Nintendo 64 kid is this classic video where a new Nintendo Wii on Christmas morning is too much to handle for the lucky boy or in this instance, utter hilarity for the adults.
Like these two videos I mentioned, each Christmas brings the rest of us a few more videos that enters our collective consciousness.
Read More »The key to viral success: Lose your expensive electronics
how to lose $2400 in 24 seconds from Kurtis Hough on Vimeo.
The spread and adoption of online social networks over the past few years have been accompanied by a rise of instances of vigilant members of those communities virally coming together to help one of their own, in this case recovering stolen goods (typically some form of personal consumer electronics that originates from Cupertino). Earlier this year Josh Kaufman’s Apple MacBook stolen from his Oakland apartment. With the help of a laptop tracking software that he had installed, Josh was able to remotely access his stolen computer and its built-in camera to snap photos of the thief himself. With this information in hand, he opened a Tumblr called This Guy Has My MacBook where he chronicled his attempts to recover his laptop. It received minimal attention until Josh tweeted it at which point it organically blew up where the story and his Tumblr virally spread like wildfire. The ensuing press eventually forced the city police into action and Josh was able to reunite with his MacBook.
Similarly, Massachusetts college student Mark Bao used another tracking app on his stolen MacBook Air which he used to grab and tweet this video of the thief recording himself pop and lock dancing (LOL!).
Read More »Haikus everywhere, 5-7-5 all around, you just read one here
Over the past year or so I’ve observed haikus, that “less is more” form of Japanese poetry, making a quiet stealthy encroachment and presence upon online pop culture through a variety of means. Some of these I’ve mentioned around these SUNfiltered parts, which makes me wonder whether we’re witnessing an emergence of haikus and a comeback for the genre of poems in general back into something possibly more mainstream or at the least “meme-stream.” I had written earlier about a reader of the New York Times online edition who has gained some small measure of fame for his comments left in limerick form. The best recent example of the merging of pop culture with poetry occurred when Salman Rushdie tweeted his thoughts on the Kim Kardashian divorce in limerick form. In fact, the latest issue of New York Magazine’s Intelligencer focused on the poets or at least on the tough economic realities of that noble profession (Walt Whitman had a second job as a government clerk). If you’re not convinced of my thesis on the pop emergence of poems, but specifically haikus, I turn your attention to the following exhibits.
Read More »Gif.TV
I’ve previously shared the rise of .gif animated images, which have crawled out of “the seedier corners of the Internet, in profiles of message board users and the like” and “have started to emerge as a medium of some artistic merit in their own right.” A sub-genre of .gifs have been given the fancy pants title of “cinemagraphs.” As an example, check out these 30 cinemagraphs from Kubrick films.
GIF.TV brilliantly jumps on this digital bandwagon. It’s your one-stop-shop to view .gifs within the familiar medium of a TV set. Flip the switches to find new, randomized .gifs, which are occasionally breathtaking in its artistry, but, more often than not, are simply hilarious in their repetition.
Read More »What President Obama’s signature looks like
Robert “the Doodler” Alicea at DeviantArt noticed something about President Obama’s signature and brought it to life with the above sketch. His signature is an adorable pup T-Rex playing with a ball of yarn. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. [Via]
Read More »The “trick shot” video trend
In 2011 so far there’s been a trend of “trick shot” videos recorded by various college and professional athletes from all sports and uploaded to YouTube where The Internet collectively goes “ooh,” “ahh,” and “holy sh*t!” at their leet skills. My favorite so far is the one above by Brodie Smith that demonstrates he can [...]
Read More »Artsy animated GIF images
GIF images have historically resided in the seedier corners of the Internet, in profiles of message board users and the like, but these looping animated images have started to emerge as a medium of some artistic merit in their own right. New York City photographer Jamie Beck and designer Kevin Burg have gained some viral [...]
Read More »Can you do nothing for 2 minutes?
Do Nothing for 2 Minutes is a website challenges you to do nothing-at least nothing on your computer-for two (excruciating) minutes. The site creator Alex Tew explains: I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i [...]
Read More »Chuck Norris street art
Hilarious street art that continues the Chuck Norris meme. [Via]
Read More »Cats who look like Ron Swanson
Cats Who Look Like Ron Swanson is a meme that combines two of the Internets favorite things: cats and Ron Swanson. And if you still haven’t watched Parks and Recreation, I suggest you do so immediately unless you enjoy living a life devoid of laughter. Also, here’s one of the show’s breakout stars Aziz Ansari [...]
Read More »Young Me Now Me
There’s a popular website Young Me Now Me devoted to a meme where people submit photos of their now grown-up selves in the same pose as a photo from their youth. It’s generally a touching juxtaposition, but one Redditor took this meme to a disturbing place. He explains how it came about: Mom: Merry Christmas! [...]
Read More »Blah blah blah movies
In the spirit of Mad Men’s Don Draper “What?” video or LOST’s “6 seasons of Sawyer saying ‘son of a bitch’” comes this compilation of clips from various movies with people and characters saying “blah blah blah.”
Read More »All of Billy Joel’s greatest hits played at once
Apropos of nothing other than the fact that I predict this will be the start of a trend with other greatest hit albums, you can now check off listening to all of Billy Joel’s greatest hit songs played simultaneously. I am not responsible for any bleeding of the ear that may occur. When I was [...]
Read More »Kim Jong Il looking at things
Kim Jong Il Looking At Things is a single serve Tumblr site devoted to The Dear Leader…looking at things. As my high school friend Jason commented, “It’s kinda beautiful in a way. Too bad he’s a tyrant. And he lives on Mars.” I really do wish China would step in and put him and his [...]
Read More »Most Popular Words of 2010
The Global Language Monitor, a service that tracks and analyzes language trends released their list of the most popular words used in 2010. Unsurprisingly one of my favorite memes of 2010 made the cut: Vuvuzela. In case you just woke up from a coma, that was the horn that buzzed in South Africa throughout this [...]
Read More »Maru the cat’s latest box adventures
Maru, the Japanese star of the video LOLcat genre (previously) is back: This time the owner runs an experiment to see just how small of a box is too small for Maru. Just to give you a sense of how popular this cat is, the video was posted on November 11 and it already has [...]
Read More »Caturdays at NYPL
The New York Public Library’s Tumblr posted the first of a weekend segment that jumps on the Caturday meme (a day devoted to LOLcats) by using material from their photo archives, such as the picture above. The file copy affixed to the back of the photo is amusing: Susie, the famous smiling kitten, expresses annoyance [...]
Read More »How many different ways can Don Draper say “What?”
For those of you going through withdrawal now that Mad Men’s latest season has come to a close, here’s semi-related YouTube video someone put together of Don Draper uttering the word “what” in the first four seasons. Don Draper uses the word “what” as Van Gogh used color or Beethoven used sound. Here’s the man [...]
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