Failure has become en vogue these days. But people don't call it failure. They call it FAIL! and like most things on the geek-run internet it usually envolves cats or inside jokes about video games. There is a popular network of blogs headlined by failblog. I don't like this blog for two reasons. One, they post "internet memes," and two they are misinforming the public on what failure is.
Internet memes are somewhere between knock-knock jokes and saying "that's what she said" on the grand humor scale, several notches below puns or greeting cards labeled "humorous." Internet memes take the same picture and phrase and keep repeating it ad nauseum. Usually the joke is that the picture takes the phrase out of context or vise-versa. Cue the laugh track. To me, internet memes are the comedic equivalent of looking at your aunt's vacation photos, except then it's the same photo over and over and over. Internet meme's took Dawkin's brilliant concept of viral ideas and turned them into the herpes virus, embarrassing and irritating. I would say that memes were only for tweens if I didn't see so many recirculated on facebook by adults.
FAIL! has now entered the lexicon. It is something people say when they mean to say: Damnit! Like "ironically" and "literally," fail is almost always used improperly. Take this example: "I tried to go to KFC but their (sic) closed FAIL!"This is not a failure, but an inconvenience. The only failure in this is the poor choice of restaurants, grammar and improper us of fail. When most people actually mean to indicate failure they say something much more dramatic like FML, which stands for "fuck my life." This is the true feeling one gets when they encounter failure, that whole wasted life feeling. That feeling you should be getting while viewing internet memes.
Internet memes are somewhere between knock-knock jokes and saying "that's what she said" on the grand humor scale, several notches below puns or greeting cards labeled "humorous." Internet memes take the same picture and phrase and keep repeating it ad nauseum. Usually the joke is that the picture takes the phrase out of context or vise-versa. Cue the laugh track. To me, internet memes are the comedic equivalent of looking at your aunt's vacation photos, except then it's the same photo over and over and over. Internet meme's took Dawkin's brilliant concept of viral ideas and turned them into the herpes virus, embarrassing and irritating. I would say that memes were only for tweens if I didn't see so many recirculated on facebook by adults.
FAIL! has now entered the lexicon. It is something people say when they mean to say: Damnit! Like "ironically" and "literally," fail is almost always used improperly. Take this example: "I tried to go to KFC but their (sic) closed FAIL!"This is not a failure, but an inconvenience. The only failure in this is the poor choice of restaurants, grammar and improper us of fail. When most people actually mean to indicate failure they say something much more dramatic like FML, which stands for "fuck my life." This is the true feeling one gets when they encounter failure, that whole wasted life feeling. That feeling you should be getting while viewing internet memes.
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