Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer for how Stuffed
Speaker 1: works dot Com. I was trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a topic that would be appropriate for April Fools since
Speaker 1: this episode were published shortly before April Fools Day. Luckily
Speaker 1: I didn't have to come up with it on my own. Today,
Speaker 1: our topic comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail.
Speaker 1: Dan writes in with all your base or belonged to us,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear your take on the history
Speaker 1: of this ancient meme. And indeed, the Babylonians in their
Speaker 1: writings did talk of the one who would bring note
Speaker 1: it's not that ancient, I mean, I guess in the
Speaker 1: terms of technology, it's kind of old. I told Dan
Speaker 1: that this particular story, while great, wouldn't quite merit a
Speaker 1: full episode by itself. So we're gonna look at a
Speaker 1: few different memes that tie in with technology in general
Speaker 1: and video games in particular. I'll probably do more episodes
Speaker 1: about big tech memes and where they came from in
Speaker 1: the future, but today we'll just examine a few. So
Speaker 1: where do some of the most famous video game memes
Speaker 1: come from, and how did they spread around and what
Speaker 1: do they mean? Well, first things first, let's define what
Speaker 1: a meme is. And the nice thing is we don't
Speaker 1: really have to because Richard Dawkins did it for us
Speaker 1: in a book called The Selfish Gene Now. Dawkins proposed
Speaker 1: the idea of a meme meme being something we would
Speaker 1: use to describe an idea that spreads quickly throughout a
Speaker 1: population of people. That population, by the way, does not
Speaker 1: have to be regional. You know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: say the population of a town or the population of
Speaker 1: a country. That population could be uh any group of
Speaker 1: like minded individuals within a particular subculture. And the Internet
Speaker 1: makes it possible for memes to spread globally rapidly. It's
Speaker 1: important to point out that memes don't have to be
Speaker 1: on the Internet at all. They that's one of the
Speaker 1: ways that we encounter memes, but that's just one method
Speaker 1: of distribution. A meme is an idea. The method Internet
Speaker 1: is just a handy way of getting those ideas spread
Speaker 1: throughout the globe. So while an image with a funny
Speaker 1: joke on it is a meme, not all memes are
Speaker 1: images with a funny joke on them. It's just one
Speaker 1: single type of meme. It's kind of one of those
Speaker 1: all Dalmatians are dogs, but not all dogs are Dalmatians
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Some memes spread primarily through a specific culture. Culture,
Speaker 1: so gamers are a good example. We're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: lot about video games, and a lot of these memes
Speaker 1: spread at least at first primarily through gamers, some of
Speaker 1: which then ended up going into mainstream. So that's where
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with this discussion, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to answer Dan's question first. I'm not gonna make him wait.
Speaker 1: The meme all your base are belonged to us as
Speaker 1: part of a group of memes that all originate from
Speaker 1: the same source material, and that source is a video
Speaker 1: game called Zero Wing, which came out in nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: It's a side scrolling game in which the player controls
Speaker 1: a spaceship called a Zig, blasting through various enemies. Now
Speaker 1: those enemies are robotic aliens called cats C. A T. S.
Speaker 1: And in the very beginning of the game, it's revealed
Speaker 1: that this group of aliens had recently signed a peace
Speaker 1: treaty with Earth, but are now betraying that treaty. And
Speaker 1: if you understand Japanese and you play the original game,
Speaker 1: all of this is very very clear. It's a little
Speaker 1: less clear in other version. You see, the game started
Speaker 1: out as an arcade game in Japan, and it was
Speaker 1: really really popular, so it was one of the ones
Speaker 1: that was chosen to be ported over to home video
Speaker 1: game systems in Japan. It was also ported to the
Speaker 1: Sega Mega Drive in Europe. Here in the United States
Speaker 1: we called the Mega Drive the Sega Genesis. It's the
Speaker 1: same machine, but two different names. So the European version
Speaker 1: of the Zero Wing game featured some poorly translated dialogue
Speaker 1: in which the original Japanese was transformed into mangled English.
Speaker 1: And what follows is a reading of the transcript of
Speaker 1: the first part of this game in the Mega Drive version.
Speaker 1: What happened? What turn on you? How are your allonged us?
Speaker 1: You are destruction? What do you say? You captain? You
Speaker 1: know what you're doing? Move zick for great justice. It's
Speaker 1: really moving, isn't it. It's a kind of gets you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like the Braveheart speech. Really is it's really
Speaker 1: what it comes down to. So interesting fact, the United
Speaker 1: States never got that version of the game, at least
Speaker 1: not officially. People might have ordered an import, but the
Speaker 1: official version with the terrible translation came from the European market,
Speaker 1: not the US market. And it's a bit surprising that
Speaker 1: this meme even took off at all because the game's
Speaker 1: release preceded the Worldwide Web. The earliest known examples of
Speaker 1: the memes appearing online date to n Now, that is
Speaker 1: pretty ancient for Internet memes, because most of them kind
Speaker 1: of surface and then maybe they're popular for a few
Speaker 1: months or a little over a year, and then they
Speaker 1: kind of fade away. But you also have to remember
Speaker 1: nearly a decade had passed since the game came out
Speaker 1: before it even showed up on the Internet in the
Speaker 1: first place, so it's pretty incredible now. Despite the long
Speaker 1: amount of time between the game's release and its celebration online,
Speaker 1: the meme did take off. Various forums, particularly on gaming sites,
Speaker 1: saw the phrase popping up in discussions and profiles. Some
Speaker 1: musicians and other creators began to incorporate phrases and references
Speaker 1: in their works, popularizing it even more. By two thousand one,
Speaker 1: Wired had covered the story, and soon it got the
Speaker 1: attention of other mainstream outlets like The Guardian, the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Chronicle, and USA Today. The phrases from this translation
Speaker 1: live on to this day. You will often hear people
Speaker 1: refer to or see references to all your base are
Speaker 1: belonged to us. And this really shows you the power
Speaker 1: of memes. The good ones catch on quickly and spread
Speaker 1: rapidly through various groups and stick around. They don't just
Speaker 1: get really popular and then disappear. Uh. It's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting kind of pop culture in a way. Some of
Speaker 1: them can break free of their origins have become mainstream
Speaker 1: pop culture and not just stay in those little enclaves
Speaker 1: that they began in. But some of those might be
Speaker 1: stuck in smaller niches. For example, do a barrel roll?
Speaker 1: That could be one of those Hey, Dylan, do you
Speaker 1: recognize do a barrel roll? Dylan does recognize? Do a
Speaker 1: barrel roll. This meme comes from a Nintendo sixty four
Speaker 1: game called Star Fox sixty four, which in itself was
Speaker 1: a popular sequel to an earlier Super Nintendo game simply
Speaker 1: called Star Fox. Now. In both games, you pilot a
Speaker 1: spaceship and you can dodge incoming enemy laser fire by
Speaker 1: doing a barrel roll. But in Star Fox sixty four
Speaker 1: the maneuver received special attention. And there's a point when
Speaker 1: you're heading toward the stationary turrets that are firing on you,
Speaker 1: and that's when a character I think he's a donkey
Speaker 1: pops up. His name is Peppy Hair, and he shouts
Speaker 1: do a barrel roll, just as Dylan did earlier. And
Speaker 1: thus a meme was born. By the Worldwide Web was
Speaker 1: becoming a household name. It would take a few more
Speaker 1: years for it to develop its cheeky side, and on
Speaker 1: January two thousand four, someone created a definition of do
Speaker 1: a barrel roll on the Urban Dictionary, that great repository
Speaker 1: of information both entertaining and incredibly base. And in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, a group of four chan pranksters began
Speaker 1: to call Tom Green during his talk show and they
Speaker 1: would just shout do a barrel roll over the phone. Now,
Speaker 1: to be fair, this was not a case of people
Speaker 1: being unsolicited mischief makers, because Tom Green's career was based
Speaker 1: off of hosting Collin shows in which most of the
Speaker 1: calls were some sort of prank. So it's not like
Speaker 1: Tom Green was new to this kind of experience. It
Speaker 1: was just a very specific implementation. The meme found its
Speaker 1: way on numerous images and animated gifts on the Internet.
Speaker 1: And yes, I pronounce it gifts. I know that the
Speaker 1: creator of the format says Jeff's but he's wrong. Gift
Speaker 1: is how it should be said. I'm planting my flag
Speaker 1: on this one. Not my flag anyway. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of this meme online, usually involving animations of
Speaker 1: people or animals flipping over accompanied by the text do
Speaker 1: a barrel roll and even if you Easter eggs, So
Speaker 1: here's one. If you want an Easter egg, go to Google,
Speaker 1: just Google dot com and do a search for do
Speaker 1: a barrel roll. Go ahead, give it a shot. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cute. All right. I got a several more memes
Speaker 1: I want to talk about, but before I do, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank sponsor. All Right, we're back,
Speaker 1: and the next meme I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: the zerg rush. Dylan, do you know this one? Dylan
Speaker 1: does not know this one. This refers to a tactic
Speaker 1: in the game StarCraft. So StarCraft is a real time
Speaker 1: strategy game with the science fiction theme, and you play
Speaker 1: one of three different factions in the game. You control
Speaker 1: various units and methods of production, and you participate in
Speaker 1: strategic battles in order to control essentially what is a board.
Speaker 1: So you build various facilities which allow you to create units,
Speaker 1: and you use those units to try and defeat the
Speaker 1: other player. So one of those three species are the Zurg,
Speaker 1: and that's of course in the original StarCraft game, and
Speaker 1: they are insect like critters. Their main advantage is that
Speaker 1: you can make an awful lot of them relatively quickly.
Speaker 1: So the individual units, particularly the starting ones, aren't very strong,
Speaker 1: but sheer numbers can make up for it. Because your
Speaker 1: production time is so short, you can produce a lot
Speaker 1: more units as Zerg than people playing the other factions
Speaker 1: in the game. So one go to strategy is just
Speaker 1: to ramp up unit production as quickly as possible and
Speaker 1: just overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers, just hordes of soldiers,
Speaker 1: and that is the Zerg rush. It's a rush both
Speaker 1: because you are overcome by huge numbers and that it
Speaker 1: happens pretty quickly. It's such an effective tactic that it
Speaker 1: became pretty common in StarCraft games for players to establish
Speaker 1: some rules of decorum. That it was considered kind of
Speaker 1: common courtesy to say when someone would be allowed to
Speaker 1: launch a Zerg rush. Typically you'd say that Zerg players
Speaker 1: would have to withhold attacking in that way for a
Speaker 1: certain number of minutes, like you might say no Zurg
Speaker 1: rush for a minutes, meaning eight minutes of the game
Speaker 1: have to pass before you can do a Zurg rush,
Speaker 1: and that gives the other players an opportunity to shore
Speaker 1: up their defenses or otherwise work on a strategy to
Speaker 1: survive an incoming attack. Otherwise, it was largely seen as
Speaker 1: unfair that you were taking advantage of a very simple
Speaker 1: mechanism within the game, and you were defeating people not
Speaker 1: through superior strategy, but just by the fact that the
Speaker 1: game favors these underpowered but but numerous units. As for
Speaker 1: the meme, the story goes that there was a multiplayer
Speaker 1: match in which a Korean group was controlling the Zurg
Speaker 1: forces and an English speaking group were the opponents, and
Speaker 1: early in the match, a group of Zurg units began
Speaker 1: to attack, at which point one of the English speaking
Speaker 1: participants typed omg Zerg rush and the Korean player typed
Speaker 1: kei ki ki k e k e k e, which
Speaker 1: is akin to l O l in English. You I
Speaker 1: sometimes encounter kiki ki along with zurg rush references in
Speaker 1: this meme, and those references tend to be on images
Speaker 1: or enemy gifts or something being swarmed by something else.
Speaker 1: So I've seen one where there's a plane that looks
Speaker 1: like it's being surrounded by a big flock of birds
Speaker 1: and it was labeled zerg rush. Or you might see
Speaker 1: one type of person completely surrounded by other people and
Speaker 1: that might be zerg rush. Like I would imagine a
Speaker 1: picture a dragon con, for example, with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people in costume and one person who's clearly not
Speaker 1: in costume just stuck in the middle of it. That
Speaker 1: would be something that you might see zerg rush attached to.
Speaker 1: Oh and Google, by the way, has an Easter Egg
Speaker 1: for this meme too, So you can just go to
Speaker 1: Google search and type in zerg rush. That's a z
Speaker 1: e r g rush. Let me know how you do
Speaker 1: if you try that out. Now, not all video game
Speaker 1: memes are about criticizing a game mechanic or making fun
Speaker 1: of a specific game, or even celebrating a specific games
Speaker 1: similar just a celebration of good game design and writing,
Speaker 1: And I think that's the case with the cake is
Speaker 1: a lie. That meme comes from the game Portal, which
Speaker 1: published in two thou seven. Now. In Portal, the player
Speaker 1: takes on the role of a young woman who is
Speaker 1: being held captive in a scientific research facility, and her
Speaker 1: captor is a passive, aggressive, snarky artificial intelligence named GLaDOS,
Speaker 1: and GLaDOS is constantly goading the character further down the
Speaker 1: pathway to keep trying to get through increasingly difficult puzzles.
Speaker 1: GLaDOS is constantly there, criticizing you and then giving you lackluster,
Speaker 1: insincere praise whenever you successfully navigate one of these tough puzzles. Uh,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of snark from GLaDOS, including one
Speaker 1: of the greatest post credit songs of all time, written
Speaker 1: by Jonathan Colton in the voice of GLaDOS. One explore
Speaker 1: the game world, you can encounter stuff like messages scrawled
Speaker 1: on walls, and the messages are from an old lab
Speaker 1: worker named Doug Ratman, and one of the famous messages
Speaker 1: is the phrase the cake is a lie written repeatedly.
Speaker 1: The reason for this is Gladows constantly tells you that
Speaker 1: if you are to complete all the tasks, you will
Speaker 1: get cake, and that the cake will be amazing. Occasionally,
Speaker 1: GLaDOS will even give you the recipe for a cake.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of cake, at least references to it
Speaker 1: in Portal. But Doug Ratman, the character that has left
Speaker 1: his evidence behind, says that the cake is a lie.
Speaker 1: And for a while people use the cake as is
Speaker 1: a lie as just a general reference to portal. But
Speaker 1: gradually this phrase took on a more general meaning, and
Speaker 1: it came to mean the thing you are looking for
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, or even you are trying to achieve something
Speaker 1: that isn't possible. Urban Dictionary translates it rather eloquently. I
Speaker 1: think into your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator.
Speaker 1: So you can use this idiom to describe a common
Speaker 1: thread and a lot of stories. For example, in the
Speaker 1: classic The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard promises rewards to
Speaker 1: Dorothy and her friends if they can get rid of
Speaker 1: the wicked Witch of the West. Only it turns out
Speaker 1: the Wizard is a flim flam man with no real
Speaker 1: powers of his own. Apart from being a fast talker.
Speaker 1: The cake is a lie. He doesn't have the ability
Speaker 1: to give the characters what they want. In fact, when
Speaker 1: they returned victorious. He bestows gifts on them simply by
Speaker 1: telling each character that they already possessed the thing that
Speaker 1: they want, which is a good thing, since the Wizard
Speaker 1: had no way to deliver upon his promises. Now, some
Speaker 1: memes aren't about specific games at all, but rather gaming
Speaker 1: cliches in general, and why the big ones is called
Speaker 1: video game logic. Now, this refers to things that happen
Speaker 1: in video games that defy common sense. For example, a
Speaker 1: popular meme in this category has a picture of Master Chief,
Speaker 1: who is the protagonist of the Halo franchise of games,
Speaker 1: and the meme says, can flip an extremely heavy tank,
Speaker 1: can't control gun recoil. So this refers to the fact
Speaker 1: that if you come up to a tank that's on
Speaker 1: its side and you press the right button, master Chief
Speaker 1: will move the tank so that you can get into it.
Speaker 1: And yet every time you fire your gun, it flies
Speaker 1: up in the air, and you think, well, if you're
Speaker 1: strong enough to move a tank over, can you control
Speaker 1: the movement of a handgun. It does seem to defy logic,
Speaker 1: and this is pretty common, and it's not. That's not
Speaker 1: the only example. I mean, sometimes it's something like invisible
Speaker 1: walls that you are free to roam anywhere until you
Speaker 1: encounter an invisible wall, which in the video game world
Speaker 1: makes sense, but when you think of it outside of
Speaker 1: that context, you start to question, why is this a
Speaker 1: design in this game? Or maybe there is a game
Speaker 1: rule that says if you even step foot in the
Speaker 1: edge of water, your character will drown. That's another instance
Speaker 1: of video game logic, like especially a character that seems
Speaker 1: to be resilient to almost any kind of damage, like
Speaker 1: you can be shot fourteen times in the chest and
Speaker 1: keep going, but if you touch water, you you immediately drown.
Speaker 1: Your toe is apparently where you breathe, and you're a goner. Uh.
Speaker 1: Lots of different variations of this exist online, and mainly
Speaker 1: it's just to point out how video games can be
Speaker 1: inconsistent with their logic, that things that the game allows
Speaker 1: in some cases mean that things that doesn't allow in
Speaker 1: other cases don't really make sense. And uh, it really
Speaker 1: kind of helps bring attention to shortcomings in games. Sometimes
Speaker 1: those shortcomings are necessary just to make the game work properly.
Speaker 1: Another example of a short coming in a game is
Speaker 1: repetitive dialogue, particularly in non player characters that you might
Speaker 1: encounter in something like a role playing game. Now, it's
Speaker 1: not really feasible to create a game in which everyone
Speaker 1: you encounter has a distinct personality and a non repetitive
Speaker 1: dialogue option, particularly for games that have hundreds of characters
Speaker 1: in them. So the more characters you have, the harder
Speaker 1: it is to give each one an individual personality and
Speaker 1: history and conversational options. So that means sometimes you hear
Speaker 1: the same phrases repeated, and sometimes that gets a bit comedic,
Speaker 1: and that is the case with our next meme, I
Speaker 1: took an arrow in the knee. That one comes from Skyrim,
Speaker 1: which is from Bethesda, and that game came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. It's a big, sprawling fantasy game across
Speaker 1: an enormous map, and that map has several towns and
Speaker 1: villages and outposts in it, and most of those places
Speaker 1: have guards living there, and there are male and female guards,
Speaker 1: and they often have different voices. They've got several different
Speaker 1: voice actors to record the same lines of dialogue, and
Speaker 1: that's the problem. They all pull from the same pool
Speaker 1: of scripted lines. So while the guards you see may
Speaker 1: look different and sound different from each other, they all
Speaker 1: have very similar stories to share like. It turns out
Speaker 1: they all have the exact same background, which includes a
Speaker 1: mysterious incident in which they were shot in the knee
Speaker 1: by somebody. So the actual line of dialogue is I
Speaker 1: used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took
Speaker 1: an arrow in the knee. Now it doesn't pop up
Speaker 1: every time you meet a guard, but it does happen occasionally,
Speaker 1: and that line is so distinct that's noticeable every single
Speaker 1: time you hear it. So there are tons of memes
Speaker 1: based off this game experience that are video montages of
Speaker 1: guards talking about getting shot in the knee, which gets
Speaker 1: funnier the longer it goes because you realize that Skyram
Speaker 1: is almost entirely bought related by guards with a limp uh.
Speaker 1: There are variations on images in which the first part
Speaker 1: of the phrase gets replaced by something else. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I saw one with a My Little Pony character on
Speaker 1: it that says I used to wonder what friendship could be,
Speaker 1: then I took an arrow in the knee. But my
Speaker 1: favorite was one that I couldn't immediately identify. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what video game it was from, but it showed
Speaker 1: like a a typical fantasy villain, something that you might
Speaker 1: see in like Diablo or or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: But it was a headless character. So it was this big,
Speaker 1: monstrous suit of armor but with no head, and the
Speaker 1: caption said I used to have a face. Then I
Speaker 1: took an arrow to the knee, which makes perfect sense. Really,
Speaker 1: I love that one. I once actually pitched a short
Speaker 1: comedy commercial about a guard recruitment service that would supply
Speaker 1: villages and towns with guards, and their method would be
Speaker 1: to seek out adventurers and then shoot them in the knee,
Speaker 1: and then the only suitable job they would have at
Speaker 1: that point is guard and voila instant security force for
Speaker 1: your town. But I never did make that video. Maybe
Speaker 1: one day I will. I've got some other memes to
Speaker 1: talk about, including the creepiest one on this list, but
Speaker 1: before I get to that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now some memes go beyond being silly,
Speaker 1: and now it's time to talk about slender Man. And
Speaker 1: actually to talk about slender Man, we have to talk
Speaker 1: about spooky spaghetti. No, I'm sorry, I mean I'm at
Speaker 1: creepy pasta. And here's where the old man and Me surfaces.
Speaker 1: Because I gotta be honest with you guys. I had
Speaker 1: to look all this stuff up because I'm old. I
Speaker 1: know what slender Man is, but the creepy pasta stuff
Speaker 1: that's after my time on the Internet. So I had
Speaker 1: to actually learn about this stuff, which was really interesting actually,
Speaker 1: So for those who do not know, there's this nomenon
Speaker 1: on the Internet called creepy pasta. Now that term actually
Speaker 1: is a twist on an older Internet slang word called
Speaker 1: copy pasta, which first started popping up on the forum
Speaker 1: four chan in the mid two thousand's. It's a word
Speaker 1: used to designate an example of viral copy and pasted text.
Speaker 1: So this is when you will encounter like a paragraph
Speaker 1: of text that has clearly been copied from somewhere else
Speaker 1: and pasted into this forum, and it just starts to
Speaker 1: spread from that point forward. You see it all over
Speaker 1: the Internet, particularly in forums and Facebook. You'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of copy pasta. On Facebook. I see it all
Speaker 1: the time where people have uh copy and pasted a
Speaker 1: a message they clearly didn't write it themselves, and it
Speaker 1: has gone viral from that point. Now, creepy pasta is
Speaker 1: a more specific type of this copy and paste viral information.
Speaker 1: It's a term that describes stories that have a horror
Speaker 1: element to them, frequently that is supernatural in nature, although
Speaker 1: not necessarily, but a lot of them are kind of
Speaker 1: paranormal creepy stuff. This, by the way, it's not a
Speaker 1: new thing. I mean, we've had folklore for as long
Speaker 1: as people have been able to tell stories. Before the Internet,
Speaker 1: we would use technology to share these kinds of information
Speaker 1: using faxes. It was actually called facx lore. People would
Speaker 1: share jokes and stories, cartoons, and other printed material by
Speaker 1: faxing it to each other. So there's something innate about
Speaker 1: humans that drives us to create and share these stories
Speaker 1: and ideas, whether it's through the Internet or a facts
Speaker 1: or just sitting around a fire chatting away. Anyway, let's
Speaker 1: get back to Slenderman now. Slenderman didn't just start off
Speaker 1: as like creepy pasta per se. Originally, it was actually
Speaker 1: part of a series of pranks pulled by members of
Speaker 1: the Something Awful forums. Something Awful is a comedy website,
Speaker 1: and in one of the forums, members had decided to
Speaker 1: manufacture photos depicting seemingly supernatural phenomena using Photoshop and other
Speaker 1: editing software. So the idea was let's take pictures, let's
Speaker 1: manipulate the photos so that we can give them a weird,
Speaker 1: otherworldly element to them. And then here comes the prank part.
Speaker 1: Let's share those photos on paranormal forums, like forums that
Speaker 1: are about paranormal activity or are uh, you know, got
Speaker 1: an interest in paranormal subject matter, and pass them off
Speaker 1: as real. So the challenge was create these these altered
Speaker 1: photos and then share them on various paranormal sites and
Speaker 1: try to convince people that these are in fact actual
Speaker 1: examples of photographed paranormal activity. Now. One of the members
Speaker 1: of that forum was Eric Knudsen, who contributed under the
Speaker 1: handle Victor Surge. That was the name he used. He
Speaker 1: edited some photos of people uh and typically school children,
Speaker 1: but not just school children, some teenagers as well, and
Speaker 1: inserted the figure of an unusually tall man in what
Speaker 1: appeared to be a suit. The man didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have a face, and perhaps had some tendrils or something
Speaker 1: coming off of them. It was hard to make out
Speaker 1: because the details were pretty fuzzy but also very unsettling.
Speaker 1: Victor posted these images on a forum for people interested
Speaker 1: in the paranormal, along with a short account of what
Speaker 1: the pictures supposedly showed, and according to Victor's story, it
Speaker 1: was people being evacuated from a library that had caught
Speaker 1: fire and the unusual ghostly creature may have had something
Speaker 1: to do with it, and many of the children were
Speaker 1: never found again, and that was the the birth of
Speaker 1: slender Man. Now, this particular character was probably inspired by
Speaker 1: other depictions of ghouls and bogimen. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different historical variations on this idea of the faceless,
Speaker 1: unusually tall creature that looks vaguely like a man, very
Speaker 1: menacing in nature. There are also examples of this even
Speaker 1: in computer games. Uh So, it's not like it was
Speaker 1: a totally new idea, but this was a particularly interesting
Speaker 1: incorporation of this idea and a really compelling photoshop job.
Speaker 1: It really struck a nerve others. Something awful members began
Speaker 1: to incorporate slender Man into their own stories, and they
Speaker 1: began to add to the mythology sometimes referred to as
Speaker 1: the slender Verse. Slenderman had entered the world of creepy pasta.
Speaker 1: They popped up on lots of different sites including four Chane,
Speaker 1: fan Gloria, Unfiction, TV tropes, Deviant Art, and many other
Speaker 1: websites and forums, So it became one of those things
Speaker 1: where people began to shape and evolve and tweet this
Speaker 1: idea and make it grow from there. That's kind of
Speaker 1: this this defining feature of folklore and memes in general.
Speaker 1: And also, uh, you could argue that that it's a
Speaker 1: continuation of the same sort of ideas you would even
Speaker 1: see back in the pulp horror novel days. HP Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: for example, created a bunch of fictional books, including the
Speaker 1: Necronomicon in the Mythology of Stories, and he encouraged his
Speaker 1: author friends to incorporate elements of his Cathulu universe, including
Speaker 1: mainly those fictional books, in their own work, and he
Speaker 1: would do the same. So in this case, you had
Speaker 1: a bunch of different authors incorporating each other's creations and
Speaker 1: giving those creations more weight. They seem to be more
Speaker 1: real because more people were writing about it. How could
Speaker 1: it be one person's imagined thing when it's popping up
Speaker 1: in other people's stories. Very similar with Slenderman, except we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Internet in general, not a small group
Speaker 1: of authors. And over time you began to see other
Speaker 1: incarnations and implementations of slender Man that included a video
Speaker 1: game in which you play as a person being pursued
Speaker 1: by the Slenderman while you uncover clues in a secluded
Speaker 1: forest in your fenced end, so you can't easily escape,
Speaker 1: and you have to find notes, but each note you
Speaker 1: find gives the Slenderman more of an idea where you are,
Speaker 1: and he starts to close in on you. Several filmmakers
Speaker 1: have created online videos inspired by the character. There are
Speaker 1: series like Everyman, Hybrid Tribe twelve, and Marble Hornets that
Speaker 1: all took inspiration from and added to the mythology of
Speaker 1: slender Man in interesting ways. And there are really too
Speaker 1: many incarnations and incorporations of Slenderman for me to go into.
Speaker 1: Here you can find him or variations of him, and
Speaker 1: things like Minecraft and short films. But obviously I can't
Speaker 1: leave this topic without also mentioning the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: stabbing incidents. And I say incidents because there was one
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin and one in Ohio that year. Both of
Speaker 1: them are terrible stories. So in Wisconsin, to twelve year
Speaker 1: old girls were arrested on attempted murder charges after attacking
Speaker 1: and stabbing a mutual friend nineteen times Allegedly, the friend
Speaker 1: has since recovered from her wounds, but the two girls
Speaker 1: remain in the court system being tried for this crime,
Speaker 1: and one of the two attackers, during a confession, said
Speaker 1: that slender Man was the motivation behind the attack. She
Speaker 1: claimed that she believed that slender Man would harm her
Speaker 1: family if she did not carry out this attack. There's
Speaker 1: been some move on the family's lawyer in this case
Speaker 1: to strike that confession due to h a claim that
Speaker 1: the miranda rights of the of the the accused were
Speaker 1: not properly a ministered. So that's still something that's unfolding
Speaker 1: in the court system as I record this. The second
Speaker 1: incident happened in Ohio, and that was a little different.
Speaker 1: A mother was attacked by her daughter and the daughter
Speaker 1: stabbed her mother several times and it mostly resulted with
Speaker 1: superficial cuts. But the mother said she believed her daughter
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the slender Man story and that that
Speaker 1: was the motivation behind the attack. Now, I'm not a psychologist.
Speaker 1: I have no training or expertise in psychology. However, I've
Speaker 1: seen similar cases involving other types of pop culture, and
Speaker 1: that includes rock music, role playing games, video games. Laws
Speaker 1: that kind of scene. I've seen people blame other things
Speaker 1: for the behavior of folks. I don't necessarily believe that
Speaker 1: it was the thing that inspired the person to go
Speaker 1: out and do terrible things. I think in most cases
Speaker 1: there's some indication that there were underlying factors that were
Speaker 1: the real problem. Maybe the video game or pop culture
Speaker 1: reference or whatever gave some direction, but the motivation factor
Speaker 1: was already present. I don't think that a fictional creation
Speaker 1: has that much power over actual people. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: want to end on such a grim note, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about one last goofy tech meme, and
Speaker 1: in this case, I'm going to talk about a brave,
Speaker 1: some might say foolhardy character named Leroy Jenkins. This meme
Speaker 1: concerns the granddaddy of m m O r pgs, that
Speaker 1: would be the World of Warcraft. The story begins with
Speaker 1: a video, which was potentially staged, of a group of
Speaker 1: guild members from Pals for Life leading an excursion into
Speaker 1: an area of the game called the Rookery. So, if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with World of Warcraft, there's a fantasy
Speaker 1: based m m O rpg, meaning you're playing a role
Speaker 1: with a bunch of other people all online a massive
Speaker 1: multiplayer online role playing game, uh and you can do
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff on your own, but the game
Speaker 1: encourages you to form friendships with other gamers and to
Speaker 1: form groups with them, guilds with them, and do things
Speaker 1: as a guild. And one of the things you might
Speaker 1: do is go into particularly difficult areas that you would
Speaker 1: have very little chance of surviving on your own. One
Speaker 1: of those in at this time during World of Warcraft's
Speaker 1: history was the Rookery. They had a lot of potential
Speaker 1: monsters to fight, including dragon spawn, which are pretty nasty.
Speaker 1: It takes a clever strategy to defeat the hordes of enemies,
Speaker 1: particularly talking to people about their use of healing abilities,
Speaker 1: you know, the support characters, while the damage characters go
Speaker 1: in and try and clear out as many of the
Speaker 1: bad guys as possible. And that's where the video gets
Speaker 1: its humor. So as this group is standing outside the
Speaker 1: room discussing over microphones, so you can hear everybody talking
Speaker 1: what the best tactics are and also acknowledging the likelihood
Speaker 1: that they're all going to be massacred because their survival
Speaker 1: percentage chances somewhere in the thirties as I recall, one
Speaker 1: character steps forward and says, all right, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Ley Roar giant cans and he just charges inside immediately
Speaker 1: as party follows him, and they are very quickly eviscerated
Speaker 1: by the dragon spawn, and they very quickly also admonished
Speaker 1: Leroy for his impetuous decision and LeRoy's response as well.
Speaker 1: At least I got chicken, and truer words were never spoken. Now.
Speaker 1: The guild uploaded the video of this incident to a
Speaker 1: fan site called Warcraft Movies, and later they uploaded it
Speaker 1: twice to YouTube, and the second time it really found
Speaker 1: huge success. Gamers and non gamers alike found it very amusing.
Speaker 1: Ben Schultz, who was the player trolling Lee Roy Jenkins,
Speaker 1: found himself the center of attention. Blizzard, the company that
Speaker 1: makes World of Warcraft, actually invited Schultz to come and
Speaker 1: be a keynote speaker at their gaming convention, blizz Con.
Speaker 1: Schultz has repeatedly been asked if the video was actually
Speaker 1: a real capture of honest to goodness gameplay or if
Speaker 1: it was just a staged video for comedic purposes, and
Speaker 1: he says he likes to leave that up to the
Speaker 1: individual viewer. I'm pretty sure it's staged, but honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't really care because it's just entertaining. It's pretty funny
Speaker 1: and perfectly captures the frustration that gamers can feel when
Speaker 1: someone on their team behaves recklessly. I'm sure the gamers
Speaker 1: among you have been in a situation where you're in
Speaker 1: a team based game and you all have a pretty
Speaker 1: good plan for how things should turn out and one
Speaker 1: person just goes completely off the rails and ruins it
Speaker 1: for everybody. It's a very frustrating experience. It's funny to watch,
Speaker 1: but it's not that funny to be in at the time. Also,
Speaker 1: I really like this one because I have a friend
Speaker 1: named Ariel. She's been on the show a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and her band Tenpenny Travelers wrote a song about Leroy
Speaker 1: Jenkins and it makes me laugh a lot. I wish
Speaker 1: I could share that with you, but they don't have
Speaker 1: a recorded version, Otherwise I would include it with this episode. Uh.
Speaker 1: But the the meme of le Roy Jenkins spread like crazy,
Speaker 1: not just in the world of warcraft circles. It also
Speaker 1: spread onto lots of gifts and stuff, and you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see Leroy Jenkins being applied to any situation where someone
Speaker 1: seemed to charge headlong into a scenario without fully considering
Speaker 1: the consequences of their actions. It became kind of shorthand
Speaker 1: for that, and Schultz would end up seeing his character
Speaker 1: incorporated into official Blizzard products, like a card in Hearthstone
Speaker 1: or in PC's within World of Warcraft, which is pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal when you think about it. I mean, you gain
Speaker 1: a level of immortality by creating this headstrong character rushes
Speaker 1: into danger without thinking of the consequences. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty amusing. There are a lot of other memes I
Speaker 1: can mention. One of my favorites is Luigi's death Stare
Speaker 1: from Mario Kart eight. There's some of the funniest videos
Speaker 1: produced from the Luigi's Death Stare, but that one is
Speaker 1: so dependent upon the visual of Luigi sneering down at
Speaker 1: you as he passes by. That doesn't really work that
Speaker 1: well for an audio podcast. And the memes out there
Speaker 1: keep on growing, some will endure, many will fade away,
Speaker 1: a few might come back after disappearing for a while
Speaker 1: because ideas are like that. And that wraps up this
Speaker 1: episode of tech stuff. But before I go, I have
Speaker 1: some exciting announcements to make first long time listeners know
Speaker 1: that tech Stuff used to publish twice a week. Good
Speaker 1: news everyone, We're doing that thing again. Starting next week,
Speaker 1: this tech Stuff will publish two episodes. I think we're
Speaker 1: publishing on Wednesdays and Fridays. Dylan is shrug, so why
Speaker 1: don't quote me on it, But it's it's likely to
Speaker 1: be Wednesdays and Fridays. That's what it was before. So
Speaker 1: keep an eye out because we should have two episodes
Speaker 1: go live next week, not just one. And that's not all.
Speaker 1: As an experiment, I will begin to live stream tech
Speaker 1: Stuff recordings. That means you can actually watch me record
Speaker 1: episodes live. It also means that if you tune in,
Speaker 1: you will hear episodes that will not publish for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks because I'm always recording in advance. The
Speaker 1: episodes A record won't publish for a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: because I always want to have stuff in the buffer,
Speaker 1: so that way I won't skip a week of publication
Speaker 1: if I happen to go on vacation or if I
Speaker 1: get sick or something. So if you want to watch
Speaker 1: me record episodes, including the bits where I mess up
Speaker 1: and have to go back to fix something you can. Plus,
Speaker 1: there will be live chat incorporated in this experience. I
Speaker 1: will participate in the live chat, particularly before the show
Speaker 1: begins and also during ad breaks. When I'm doing the show,
Speaker 1: I'm probably looking at my notes, so I probably won't
Speaker 1: be responding to chat very frequently unless I mess up
Speaker 1: and I want to take a little break. Now, if
Speaker 1: you have questions or comments about the show I'm recording,
Speaker 1: you can leave them in the chat at that moment,
Speaker 1: and I can respond to them pretty quickly. I might
Speaker 1: even go back and re record something. So for example,
Speaker 1: if I give an explanation but you don't really think
Speaker 1: it was very clear, I might need to go back
Speaker 1: and redo it, which means the people who watch me
Speaker 1: live will be contributing directly to making the show a
Speaker 1: better show, which is kind of awesome. Now, the whole
Speaker 1: thing is going live on Twitch, dot tv, Slash Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W right now. The plan is for me
Speaker 1: to go live on Wednesdays at four pm Eastern and
Speaker 1: Friday's at three pm Eastern. Now, if you don't live
Speaker 1: in the Eastern time zone, do me a favor and
Speaker 1: just use Google to find out what three or four
Speaker 1: BM Eastern is in your neck of the woods. Don't
Speaker 1: ask me, I'm not Google. I'll try to remember to
Speaker 1: tweet out when I'm going live though. That should help.
Speaker 1: And if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes,
Speaker 1: feel free to shoot me a message and let me know.
Speaker 1: My email address is tech stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both of those is
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.