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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech

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Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech Stuff classic episode.

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Speaker 1: This episode originally published March twenty ninth, twenty seventeen. It

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Speaker 1: is called tech Memes, and y'all, I honestly don't have

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Speaker 1: any memory of what's on this episode. It is very

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Speaker 1: likely something that at this point is so obvious and

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Speaker 1: cringe that I hesitated to run it as a classic episode.

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Speaker 1: But there's there's a part of me that is morbidly

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Speaker 1: curious about how bad it is. So I believe in

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Speaker 1: a warts and all approach to tech stuff. So here

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Speaker 1: is this classic episode called tech Meme. Dan writes in

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Speaker 1: with all your base are belonged to us. I would

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Speaker 1: love to hear your take on the history of this

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Speaker 1: ancient meme. And indeed, the Babylonians in their writings did

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Speaker 1: talk of the one who would bring noe. It's not

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Speaker 1: that ancient, I mean, I guess in the terms of technology,

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Speaker 1: it's kind of old.

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Speaker 2: I told Dan that this particular.

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Speaker 1: Story, while great, wouldn't quite merit a full episode by itself.

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Speaker 1: So we're gonna look at a few different memes that

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Speaker 1: tie in with technology in general and video games in particular.

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Speaker 1: I'll probably do more episodes about big tech memes and

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Speaker 1: where they came from in the future, but today we'll

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Speaker 1: just examine a few. So where do some of the

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Speaker 1: most famous video game memes come from? And how did

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Speaker 1: they spread around and what did they mean? Well, first

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Speaker 1: things first, let's define what a meme is. And the

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Speaker 1: nice thing is we don't really have to because Richard

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Speaker 1: Dawkins did it for us in a book called The

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Speaker 1: Selfish Gene Now. Dawkins proposed the idea of a meme,

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Speaker 1: a meme being something we would use to describe an

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Speaker 1: idea that spreads quickly throughout a population of people. That population,

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Speaker 1: by the way, does not have to be regional, you know,

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Speaker 1: you don't have to say the population of a town

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Speaker 1: or the population of a country. That population could be

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Speaker 1: any group of like minded individuals within a particular subculture,

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Speaker 1: and the Internet makes it possible for memes to spread

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Speaker 1: globally rapidly. It's important to point out that memes don't

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Speaker 1: have to be on the Internet at all. That's one

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Speaker 1: of the ways that we encounter memes, but that's just

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Speaker 1: one method of distribution. A meme is an idea. The

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Speaker 1: Internet is just the handy way of getting those ideas

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Speaker 1: spread throughout the globe. So while an image with a

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Speaker 1: funny joke on it is a meme, not all memes

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Speaker 1: are images with a funny joke on them. It's just

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Speaker 1: one single type of meme. It's kind of one of

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Speaker 1: those all dalmatians are dogs, but not all dogs are

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Speaker 1: Dalmatians kind of thing. Some memes spread primarily through a

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Speaker 1: specific culture, so gamers are a good example. We're going

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Speaker 1: to talk a lot about video games, and a lot

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Speaker 1: of these memes spread at least at first primarily through gamers,

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Speaker 1: some of which then ended up going into mainstream. So

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Speaker 1: that's where I'm going to start with this discussion, and

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Speaker 1: I'm going to answer Dan's question first. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to make him wait. The meme all your base are

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Speaker 1: belong to us as part of a group of memes

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Speaker 1: that all originate from the same source material, and that

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Speaker 1: source is a video game called Zero Wing, which came

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Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty nine. It's a side scrolling game

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Speaker 1: in which the player controls a spaceship called a Zig

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Speaker 1: blasting through various enemies. Now those enemies are robotic aliens

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Speaker 1: called kats Cats, and in the very beginning of the game,

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Speaker 1: it's revealed that this group of aliens had recently signed

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Speaker 1: a peace treaty with Earth, but are now betraying that treaty.

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Speaker 1: And if you understand Japanese and you play the original game,

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Speaker 1: all of this is very very clear. It's a little

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Speaker 1: less clear in other versions. You see, the game started

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Speaker 1: out as an arcade game in Japan, and it was

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Speaker 1: really really popular, so it was one of the ones

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Speaker 1: that was chosen to be ported over to home video

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Speaker 1: game systems in Japan. It was also ported to the

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Speaker 1: Sega Mega Drive in Europe. Here in the United States

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Speaker 1: we called the Mega Drive the Sega Genesis. It's the

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Speaker 1: same machine, but two different names. So the European version

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Speaker 1: of the Zero Wing game featured some poorly translated dialogue

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Speaker 1: in which the original Japanese was transformed into mangled English.

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Speaker 1: And what follows is a reading of the transcript of

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Speaker 1: the first part of this game in the Mega Drive version.

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Speaker 2: What happened somebody the bomb? What main screen turn on?

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Speaker 1: Is you?

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Speaker 2: How are you all your base to us? You are

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Speaker 2: on the way to destruction. What do you say you

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Speaker 2: have no chance to survive?

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Speaker 1: Hah ha, Captain, take off every zig.

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Speaker 2: You know what you're doing.

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Speaker 1: Move zig for great justice. It's really moving, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: It's a kind of gets you. Yeah, it's it's like

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Speaker 1: the Brave Heart speech. Really it's it's really what it

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Speaker 1: comes down to. So interesting fact, the United States never

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Speaker 1: got that version of the game, at least not officially.

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Speaker 1: People might have ordered an import, but the official version

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Speaker 1: with the terrible translation came from the European market, not

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Speaker 1: the US market.

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Speaker 2: And it's a bit.

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Speaker 1: Surprising that this meme even took off at all because

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Speaker 1: the game's release preceded the World Wide Web. The earliest

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Speaker 1: known examples of the memes appearing online date to nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety eight. Now, that is pretty ancient for internet memes,

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Speaker 1: because most of them kind of surface and then maybe

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Speaker 1: they're popular for a few months or a little over

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Speaker 1: a year, and then they kind of fade away. But

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Speaker 1: you also have to remember nearly a decade had passed

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Speaker 1: since the game came out before it even showed up

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Speaker 1: on the Internet in the first place, so it's pretty

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Speaker 1: incredible now. Despite the long amount of time between the

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Speaker 1: game's release and its celebration online, the meme did take off.

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Speaker 1: Various forums, particularly on gaming sites, saw the phrase popping

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Speaker 1: up in discussions and profiles.

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Speaker 2: Some musicians and.

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Speaker 1: Other creators began to incorporate phrases and references in their works,

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Speaker 1: popularizing it even more.

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Speaker 2: By two thousand and one, Wired.

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Speaker 1: Had covered the story, and soon it got the attention

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Speaker 1: of other mainstream outlets like The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle,

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Speaker 1: and USA. Today, the phrases from this translation live on

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Speaker 1: to this day. You will often hear people refer to

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Speaker 1: or see references to all your base are belong to us.

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Speaker 1: And this really shows you the power of memes. The

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Speaker 1: good ones catch on quickly and spread rapidly through various

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Speaker 1: groups and stick around. They don't just get really popular

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Speaker 1: and then disappear. It's an interesting kind of pop culture

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Speaker 1: in a way. Some of them can break three of

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Speaker 1: their origins and become mainstream pop culture and not just

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Speaker 1: stay in those little enclaves that they began in. But

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Speaker 1: some of those might be stuck in smaller niches. For example,

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Speaker 1: do a barrel role that could be one of those, Hey, Dylan,

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Speaker 1: do you recognize do a barrel role? N Dylan does

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Speaker 1: recognize do a barrel role. This meme comes from a

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Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven Nintendo sixty four game called star Fox

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Speaker 1: sixty four, which in itself was a popular sequel to

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Speaker 1: an earlier Super Nintendo game simply called Starfox. Now, in

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Speaker 1: both games, you pilot a spaceship and you can dodge

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Speaker 1: incoming enemy laser fire by doing a barrel roll. But

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Speaker 1: in star Fox sixty four the maneuver received special attention.

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Speaker 1: There's a point when you're heading toward these stationary turrets

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Speaker 1: that are firing on you, and that's when a character

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Speaker 1: I think he's a donkey pops up. His name is

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Speaker 1: Peppy Hare, and he shouts to a barrel roll, just

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Speaker 1: as Dylan did earlier, and thus a meme was born.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety seven, the World Wide Web was becoming

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Speaker 1: a household name. It would take a few more years

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Speaker 1: for it to develop its cheeky side, and on January thirtieth,

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Speaker 1: two thousand and four, someone created a definition of do

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Speaker 1: a barrel roll on the Urban Dictionary, that great repository

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Speaker 1: of information both entertaining and incredibly base, and in two

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Speaker 1: thousand and six, a group of four Chan pranksters began

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Speaker 1: to call Tom Green during his talk show and they.

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Speaker 2: Would just shout do a barrel roll over the phone.

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Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, this was not a case of

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Speaker 1: people being unsolicited mischief makers, because Tom Green's career was

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Speaker 1: based off of hosting call in shows in which most

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Speaker 1: of the calls were some sort of prank. So it's

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Speaker 1: not like Tom Green was new to this kind of experience.

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Speaker 1: It was just a very specific implementation. The meme found

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Speaker 1: its way on numerous images and animated gifts on the Internet.

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Speaker 1: And yes, I pronounce it gifts. I know that the

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Speaker 1: creator of the format says giffs, but he's wrong. Gift

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Speaker 1: is how it should be said. I'm planting my flag

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Speaker 1: on this one. Not my flag anyway. There are plenty

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Speaker 1: of examples of this meme online, usually involving animations of

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Speaker 1: people or animals flipping over accompanied by the text do

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Speaker 1: a barrel role. And even if you Easter eggs, So

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Speaker 1: here's one. If you want an Easter egg, go to Google,

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Speaker 1: just google dot com and do a.

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Speaker 2: Search for do a barrel role. Go ahead, give it

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Speaker 2: a shot.

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Speaker 1: It's pretty cute.

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Speaker 2: All Right, I got a several more memes I want

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Speaker 2: to talk.

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Speaker 1: About, but before I do, let's take a quick break

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Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're back, and the

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Speaker 1: next meme I want to talk about is the Zerg rush. Dylan,

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Speaker 1: do you know this one? Dylan does not know this one.

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Speaker 1: This refers to a tactic in the game StarCraft. So

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Speaker 1: StarCraft is a real time strategy game with the science

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Speaker 1: fiction theme, and you play one of three different factions

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Speaker 1: in the game. You control various units and methods of production,

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Speaker 1: and you participate in strategic battle in order to control

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Speaker 1: essentially what is a board.

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Speaker 2: So you build.

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Speaker 1: Various facilities which allow you to create units, and you

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Speaker 1: use those units to try and defeat the other player.

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Speaker 1: So one of those three species are the Zerg, and

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Speaker 1: that's of course in the original StarCraft game, and they

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Speaker 1: are insect like critters. Their main advantage is that you

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Speaker 1: can make an awful lot of them relatively quickly. So

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Speaker 1: the individual units, particularly the starting ones, aren't very strong,

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Speaker 1: but sheer numbers can make up for it. Because your

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Speaker 1: production time is so short, you can produce a lot

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Speaker 1: more units as Zerg than people playing the other factions

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Speaker 1: in the game. So one go to strategy is just

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Speaker 1: to ramp up unit production as quickly as possible and

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Speaker 1: just overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers, just hordes of soldiers,

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Speaker 1: and that is the zerg rush. It's a rush both

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Speaker 1: because you are overcome by huge numbers and that it

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Speaker 1: happens pretty quickly.

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Speaker 2: It's such an effective.

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Speaker 1: Tactic that it became pretty common in StarCraft games for

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Speaker 1: players to establish some rules of decorum that it was

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Speaker 1: considered kind of common courtesy to say when someone would

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Speaker 1: be allowed to launch a zerg rush. Typically you'd say

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Speaker 1: that zerg players would have to withhold attacking in that

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Speaker 1: way for a certain number of minutes, like you might

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Speaker 1: say no zerg rush for eight minutes, meaning eight minutes

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Speaker 1: of the game have to pass before you can do

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Speaker 1: a zerg rush, and that gives the other players an

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Speaker 1: opportunity to shore up their defenses or otherwise work on

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Speaker 1: a strategy to survive an incoming attack.

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Speaker 2: Otherwise, it was largely.

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Speaker 1: Seen as unfair that you were taking advantage of a

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Speaker 1: very simple mechanism within the game, and you were defeating

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Speaker 1: people not through superior strategy, but just by the fact

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Speaker 1: that the game favors these underpowered but numerous units. As

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Speaker 1: for the meme, this story goes that there was a

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Speaker 1: multiplayer match in which a Korean group was controlling the

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Speaker 1: Zurg forces and an English speaking group were the opponents,

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Speaker 1: and early in the match, a group of Zerg units

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Speaker 1: began to attack, at which point one of the English

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Speaker 1: speaking participants typed OMG zerg rush, and the Korean player

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Speaker 1: typed kiki k k E k e k e, which

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Speaker 1: is akin to lol in English. You might sometimes encounter

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Speaker 1: kiki ki along with zurg rush references in this mean,

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Speaker 1: and those references tend to be on images or enemy

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Speaker 1: gifts or something being swarmed by something else. So I've

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Speaker 1: seen one where there's a plane that looks like it's

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Speaker 1: being surrounded by a big flock of birds and it

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Speaker 1: was labeled zerg rush. Or you might see one type

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Speaker 1: of person completely surrounded by other people and that might

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Speaker 1: be zurg rush. Like I would imagine a picture of

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Speaker 1: Dragon Con, for example, with a whole bunch of people

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Speaker 1: in costume and one person who's clearly not in costume

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Speaker 1: just stuck in the middle of it. That would be

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Speaker 1: something that you might see zerg rush attached to oh

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Speaker 1: in a Google by the way, has an Easter Egg

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Speaker 1: for this meme too, so you can just go to

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Speaker 1: Google Search and type in zerg rush. That's a zerg rush.

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Speaker 1: Let me know how you do if you try that out. Now,

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Speaker 1: not all video game memes are about criticizing a game

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Speaker 1: mechanic or making fun of a specific game, or even

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Speaker 1: celebrating a specific game. Some are just a celebration of

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Speaker 1: good game design and writing, and I think that's the

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Speaker 1: case with the Cake is a Lie. That meme comes

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Speaker 1: from the game Portal, which published in two thousand and seven.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: In Portal, the player takes on the role of a

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Speaker 1: young woman who is being held captive in a scientific

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Speaker 1: research facility, and her captor is a passive, aggressive, snarky

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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence named GLaDOS, and GLaDOS is constantly goading the

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Speaker 1: character further down the pathway to keep trying to get

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Speaker 1: through increasingly difficult puzzles. GLaDOS is constantly there, criticizing you

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Speaker 1: and then giving you lackluster, insincere praise. Whenever you successfully

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Speaker 1: navigate one of these tough puzzles, you get a lot

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Speaker 1: of snark from GLaDOS, including one of the greatest post

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Speaker 1: credit Songs of All Time written by Jonathan Colton in

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Speaker 1: the voice of GLaDOS. When you explore the game world,

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Speaker 1: you can encounter stuff like messages scralled on walls, and

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Speaker 1: the messages are from an old lab worker named Doug Ratman,

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Speaker 1: and one of the famous messages is the phrase the

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Speaker 1: cake is a lie, written repeatedly. The reason for this

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Speaker 1: is GLaDOS constantly tells you that if you are to

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Speaker 1: complete all the tasks, you will.

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Speaker 2: Get cake, and that the cake will be amazing.

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Speaker 1: Occasionally, GLaDOS will even give you the recipe for a cake.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of cake, at least references to it

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Speaker 1: in Portal, but Doug Ratman, the character that has left

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Speaker 1: his evidence behind, says that the.

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Speaker 2: Cake is a lie.

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Speaker 1: And for a while people use the cake is a

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Speaker 1: lie as just a general reference to Portal. But gradually

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Speaker 1: this phrase took on a more general meaning, and it

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Speaker 1: came to mean the thing you are looking for doesn't exist,

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Speaker 1: or even you are trying to achieve something that isn't possible.

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Speaker 1: An urban dictionary translates it rather eloquently. I think into

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Speaker 1: your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator. So you

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Speaker 1: could use this idiom to describe a common thread and

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Speaker 1: a lot of stories. For example, in the classic The

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Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz, the Wizard promises rewards to Dorothy and

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Speaker 1: her friends if they can get rid of the wicked

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Speaker 1: Witch of the West. Only it turns out the Wizard

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Speaker 1: is a flim flam man with no real powers of

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Speaker 1: his own apart from being a fast talker. The cake

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Speaker 1: is a lie. He doesn't have the ability to give

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Speaker 1: the characters what they want. In fact, when they were

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Speaker 1: turned victorious, he bestows gifts on them simply by telling

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Speaker 1: each character that they already possess the thing that they want,

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Speaker 1: which is a good thing since the Wizard had no

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Speaker 1: way to deliver upon his promises. Now, some memes aren't

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Speaker 1: about specific games at all, but rather gaming cliches in general,

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Speaker 1: and one of the big ones is called video game logic.

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Speaker 1: Now this refers to things that happen in video games

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Speaker 1: that defy common sense. For example, a popular meme in

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Speaker 1: this category has a picture of Master Chief, who is

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Speaker 1: the protagonist of the Halo franchise of games, and the

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Speaker 1: memes says can flip an extremely heavy tank can't control

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Speaker 1: gun recoil. So this refers to the fact that if

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Speaker 1: you come up to a tank that's on its side

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Speaker 1: and you press the right button, Master Chief will move

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Speaker 1: the tank so that you can get into it. And

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Speaker 1: yet every time you fire your gun, it flies up

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Speaker 1: in the air, and you think, well, if he's strong

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Speaker 1: enough to move a tank over canny control the movement

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Speaker 1: of a handgun, it does seem to defy logic. And

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Speaker 1: this is pretty common, and that's not the only example.

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Speaker 2: I mean. Sometimes it's something like.

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Speaker 1: Invisible walls that you are free to roam anywhere until

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Speaker 1: you encounter an invisible wall, which in the video game

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Speaker 1: world makes sense, but when you think of it outside

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Speaker 1: of that context, you start to question, why is this

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Speaker 1: a design in this game? Or maybe there is a

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Speaker 1: game rule that says if you even step foot in

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Speaker 1: the edge of water, your character will drown. That's another

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Speaker 1: instance of video game logic, like especially a character that

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Speaker 1: seems to be resilient to almost any kind of damage,

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Speaker 1: like you can be shot fourteen times in the chest

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Speaker 1: and keep going, but if you touch water, you immediately drown.

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Speaker 1: Your toe is apparently where you breathe, and you're a goner.

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Speaker 1: Lots of different variations of this exist online and Mainly

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Speaker 1: it's just to point out how video games can be

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Speaker 1: inconsistent with their logic, that things that the game allows

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Speaker 1: in some cases mean that things it doesn't allow in

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Speaker 1: other cases don't really make sense, And it really kind

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Speaker 1: of helps bring attention to shortcomings in games. Sometimes those

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Speaker 1: shortcomings are necessary just to make the game work properly.

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Speaker 1: Another example of a shortcoming in a game is repetitive dialogue,

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Speaker 1: particularly in non player characters that you might encounter in

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Speaker 1: something like a role playing game. Now, it's not really

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Speaker 1: feasible to create a game in which every one you

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Speaker 1: encounter has a distinct personality and a non repetitive dialogue option,

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Speaker 1: particularly for games that have hundreds of characters in them.

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Speaker 1: So the more characters you have, the harder it is

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Speaker 1: to give each one an individual personality and history and

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Speaker 1: conversational options.

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Speaker 2: So that means sometimes you.

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Speaker 1: Hear the same phrase is repeated, and sometimes that gets

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Speaker 1: a bit comedic, And that is the case with our

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Speaker 1: next meme, I Took an arrow in the knee. That

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Speaker 1: one comes from Skyrim, which is from Bethesda, and that

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Speaker 1: game came out in twenty eleven. It's a big, sprawling

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Speaker 1: fantasy game across an enormous map, and that map has

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Speaker 1: several towns and villages and outposts in it, and most

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Speaker 1: of those places have guards living there, and there are

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Speaker 1: male and female guards, and they often have different voices.

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Speaker 1: They got several different voice actors to record the same

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Speaker 1: lines of dialogue, and that's the problem. They all pull

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Speaker 1: from the same pool of scripted lines. So while the

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Speaker 1: guards you see may look different and sound different from

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Speaker 1: each other, they all have very similar stories to share.

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Speaker 1: Like it turns out, they all have the exact same background,

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Speaker 1: which includes a mysterious incident in which they were shot

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Speaker 1: in the knee by somebody. So the actual line of

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Speaker 1: dialogue is I used to be an adventurer like you.

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Speaker 1: Then I took an arrow in the knee. Now, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't pop up every time you meet a guard, but

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Speaker 1: it does happen occasionally, and that line is so distinct

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Speaker 1: that it's noticeable every single time you hear it.

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Speaker 2: So there are tons of memes.

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Speaker 1: Based off this game experience. There are video montages of

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Speaker 1: guards talking about getting shot in the knee, which gets

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Speaker 1: funnier the longer it goes, because you realize that Skyrim

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Speaker 1: is almost entirely populated by guards with a limp. There

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Speaker 1: are variations on images in which the first part of

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Speaker 1: the phrase gets replaced by something else. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: I saw one with a My Little Pony character on

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Speaker 1: it that says I used to wonder what friendship could be.

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Speaker 1: Then I took an arrow in the knee. But my

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Speaker 1: favorite was one that I couldn't immediately identify. I didn't

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Speaker 1: know what video game it was from, but it showed

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Speaker 1: like a typical fantasy villain, something that you might see

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Speaker 1: in like Diablo or something along those lines. But it

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Speaker 1: was a headless character. So it was this big monstrous

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Speaker 1: suit of armor but with no head, and the caption

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Speaker 1: said I used to have a face. Then I took

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Speaker 1: an arrow to the knee, which makes perfect sense. Really,

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Speaker 1: I love that one. I once actually pitched a short

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Speaker 1: comedy commercial about a guard recruitment service that would supply

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Speaker 1: villages and towns with guards, and their method would be

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Speaker 1: to seek out adventurers and then shoot them in the knee,

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Speaker 1: and then the only suitable job they would have at

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Speaker 1: that point is guard and voila instant security force for

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Speaker 1: your town. But I never did make that video. Maybe

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Speaker 1: one day I will. I've got some other memes to

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Speaker 1: talk about, including the creepiest one on this list. But

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Speaker 1: before I get to that, let's take another quick break

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Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now some memes go beyond being silly,

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Speaker 1: and now it's time to talk about slender Man.

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Speaker 2: And actually to talk about slender Man, we.

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Speaker 1: Have to talk about spooky spaghetti. No, I'm sorry, I'm

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00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:06,200
Speaker 1: at creepy pasta. And here's where the old man in

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Speaker 1: me surfaces, because I gotta be honest with you, guys.

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Speaker 1: I had to look all this stuff up because I'm old.

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Speaker 1: I know what slender Man is, but the creepy pasta

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Speaker 1: stuff that's after my time on the internet. So I

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Speaker 1: had to actually learn about this stuff, which was really interesting.

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Speaker 2: Actually, So for those.

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Speaker 1: Who do not know, there's this phenomenon on the Internet

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Speaker 1: called creepy pasta. Now that term actually is a twist

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Speaker 1: on an older Internet slang word called copy pasta, which

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Speaker 1: first started popping up on the forum four chan in

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Speaker 1: the mid two thousands. It's a word used to designate

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Speaker 1: an example of viral copy and pasted text. So this

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Speaker 1: is when you will encounter, like a paragraph of text

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Speaker 1: that has clearly been copied from somewhere else and pasted

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Speaker 1: into this forum and it just starts to spread from

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Speaker 1: that point forward. You see it all over the internet,

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Speaker 1: particularly in forums and Facebook. You'll see a lot of

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Speaker 1: copy pasta on Facebook. I see it all the time

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Speaker 1: where people have copy and pasted a message they clearly

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Speaker 1: didn't write it themselves, and it has gone viral from

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Speaker 1: that point. Now, creepy pasta is a more specific type

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Speaker 1: of this copy and paste viral information.

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Speaker 2: It's a term that describes stories.

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Speaker 1: That have a horror element to them, frequently that is

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Speaker 1: supernatural in nature, although not necessarily, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: them are kind of paranormal creepy stuff.

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Speaker 2: This, by the way, is not a new thing.

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Speaker 1: I mean, we've had folklore for as long as people

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Speaker 1: have been able to tell stories. Before the Internet, we

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Speaker 1: would use technology to share these kinds of information using faxes.

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Speaker 1: It was actually called fax lore. People would share jokes

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Speaker 1: and stories, cartoons, and other printed material by faxing it

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Speaker 1: to each other. So there's something innate about humans that

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Speaker 1: drives us to create and share these stories and ideas,

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Speaker 1: whether it's through the Internet or a fax, or just

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Speaker 1: sitting around a fire chatting away.

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Speaker 2: Anyway.

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Speaker 1: Let's get back to slender Man now, slender Man didn't

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Speaker 1: just start off as like creepy pasta per se. Originally,

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Speaker 1: it was actually part of a series of pranks pulled

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Speaker 1: by members of the Something Awful forums. Something Awful is

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Speaker 1: a comedy website, and in one of the forums, members

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Speaker 1: had decided to manufacture photos depicting seemingly supernatural phenomena using

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Speaker 1: Photoshop and other editing software. So the idea was, let's

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Speaker 1: take pictures, let's manipulate the photos so that we can

436
00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 1: give them a weird, otherworldly element to them, and then

437
00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 1: here comes the prank part. Let's share those photos on

438
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: paranormal forums, like forums that are about paranormal activity or

439
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 1: are you got an interest in paranormal subject matter, and.

440
00:25:57,080 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 2: Pass them off as real.

441
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:03,440
Speaker 1: So the challenge was create these altered photos and then

442
00:26:03,520 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: share them on various paranormal sites and try to convince

443
00:26:06,840 --> 00:26:12,200
Speaker 1: people that these are in fact actual examples of photographed

444
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:18,040
Speaker 1: paranormal activity. Now, one of the members of that forum

445
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 1: was Eric Knudsen, who contributed under the handle Victor Surge.

446
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:25,040
Speaker 2: That was the name he used.

447
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:31,040
Speaker 1: He edited some photos of people and typically school children,

448
00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: but not just school children, some teenagers as well, and

449
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: inserted the figure of an unusually tall man in what

450
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:40,040
Speaker 1: appeared to be a suit. The man didn't seem to

451
00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:43,639
Speaker 1: have a face and perhaps had some tendrils or something

452
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:45,320
Speaker 1: coming off of him. It was hard to make out

453
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:49,560
Speaker 1: because the details were pretty fuzzy but also very unsettling.

454
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:55,639
Speaker 1: Victor posted these images on a forum for people interested

455
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 1: in the paranormal, along with a short account of what

456
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: the pictures supposedly show, and according to Victor's story, it

457
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:05,400
Speaker 1: was people being evacuated from a library that had caught

458
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: fire and the unusual ghostly creature may have had something

459
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: to do with it, and many of the children were

460
00:27:12,280 --> 00:27:18,400
Speaker 1: never found again, and that was the birth of slender Man. Now,

461
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:23,760
Speaker 1: this particular character was probably inspired by other depictions of

462
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,919
Speaker 1: ghouls and bogeymen. There are a lot of different historical

463
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:34,160
Speaker 1: variations on this idea of the faceless, unusually tall creature

464
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:38,879
Speaker 1: that looks vaguely like a man, very menacing in nature.

465
00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:43,480
Speaker 1: There are also examples of this even in computer games,

466
00:27:44,480 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 1: so it's not like it was a totally new idea,

467
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: but this was a particularly interesting incorporation of this idea

468
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: and a really compelling photoshop job. It really struck a

469
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: nerve others. Something awful members began to incorporate slender Man

470
00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: into their own stories, and they began to add to

471
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:07,480
Speaker 1: the mythology sometimes referred to as the slender Verse. Slender

472
00:28:07,520 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 1: Man had entered the world.

473
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 2: Of creepy pasta.

474
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:14,879
Speaker 1: He popped up on lots of different sites, including four Chan, Fangloria, Unfiction,

475
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:18,640
Speaker 1: TV tropes, deviant Art, and many other websites and forums.

476
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:21,399
Speaker 1: So it became one of those things where people began

477
00:28:21,520 --> 00:28:28,160
Speaker 1: to shape and evolve and tweak this idea and make

478
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,840
Speaker 1: it grow from there. That's kind of this defining feature

479
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:33,960
Speaker 1: of folklore and memes in general.

480
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 2: And also you could argue that.

481
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,040
Speaker 1: It's a continuation of the same sort of ideas you

482
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 1: would even see back in the pulp horror novel days.

483
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:50,760
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, for example, created a bunch of fictional books,

484
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: including the Necronomicon in the mythology of the stories, and

485
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: he encouraged his author friends to incorporate elements of his

486
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:05,360
Speaker 1: cathul universe, including mainly those fictional books, in their own work,

487
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 1: and he would do the same. So in this case

488
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: you had a bunch of different authors incorporating each other's

489
00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:16,200
Speaker 1: creations and giving those creations more weight. They seem to

490
00:29:16,240 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: be more real because more people were writing about it.

491
00:29:18,840 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: How could it be one person's imagined thing when it's

492
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 1: popping up in other people's stories. Very similar with slender Man,

493
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: except we're talking about the Internet in general, not a

494
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,880
Speaker 1: small group of authors. And over time you began to

495
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 1: see other incarnations and implementations of slender Man that included

496
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: a video game in which you play as a person

497
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: being pursued by the slender Man while you uncover clues

498
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,840
Speaker 1: in a secluded forest in your fenced end, so you

499
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:47,320
Speaker 1: can't easily escape, and you have to find notes, but

500
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: each note you find gives the slender Man more of

501
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: an idea where you are, and he starts to close

502
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: in on you. Several filmmakers have created online videos inspired

503
00:29:57,000 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: by the character. There are series like every Man, Hybrid,

504
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: Tribe twelve, and Marble Hornets that all took inspiration from

505
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: and added to the mythology of slender Man in interesting ways.

506
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: And there are really too many incarnations and incorporations of

507
00:30:13,320 --> 00:30:16,320
Speaker 1: slender Man for me to go into here. You can

508
00:30:16,360 --> 00:30:20,160
Speaker 1: find him or variations of him in things like Minecraft

509
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: and short films. But obviously I can't leave this topic

510
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: without also mentioning the twenty fourteen stabbing incidents, and I

511
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:32,400
Speaker 1: say incidents because there was one in Wisconsin and one

512
00:30:32,440 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: in Ohio that year. Both of them are terrible stories.

513
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:39,800
Speaker 1: So in Wisconsin, two twelve year old girls were arrested

514
00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 1: on attempted murder charges after attacking and stabbing a mutual

515
00:30:44,560 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: friend nineteen times. Allegedly, the friend has since recovered from

516
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: her wounds, but the two girls remain in the court

517
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: system being tried for this crime, and one of the

518
00:30:57,760 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 1: two attackers, during a confession, said that slender Man was

519
00:31:03,280 --> 00:31:06,600
Speaker 1: the motivation behind the attack. She claimed that she believed

520
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: that slender Man would harm her family if she did

521
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: not carry out this attack. There's been some move on

522
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: the family's lawyer in this case to strike that confession

523
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 1: due to a claim that the miranda rights of the

524
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:29,840
Speaker 1: accused were not properly administered. So that's still something that's

525
00:31:30,120 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 1: unfolding in the court system as I record this. The

526
00:31:35,280 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: second incident happened in Ohio, and that was a little different.

527
00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:41,160
Speaker 1: A mother was attacked by her daughter and the daughter

528
00:31:41,200 --> 00:31:44,920
Speaker 1: stabbed her mother several times and it mostly resulted with

529
00:31:44,960 --> 00:31:48,480
Speaker 1: superficial cuts. But the mother said she believed her daughter

530
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:51,800
Speaker 1: was obsessed with the slender Man story and that that

531
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:56,480
Speaker 1: was the motivation behind the attack. Now I'm not a psychologist.

532
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 1: I have no training or expertise in psychology. However, I've

533
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: seen similar cases involving other types of pop culture, and

534
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:09,320
Speaker 1: that includes rock music, role playing games, video games, las

535
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: that kind of scene. I've seen people blame other things

536
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:18,360
Speaker 1: for the behavior of folks. I don't necessarily believe that

537
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: it was the thing that inspired the person to go

538
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: out and do terrible things. I think in most cases

539
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: there's some indication that there were underlying factors that were

540
00:32:30,920 --> 00:32:35,280
Speaker 1: the real problem. Maybe the video game or pop culture

541
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: reference or whatever gave some direction, but the motivation factor.

542
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,240
Speaker 2: Was already present.

543
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: I don't think that a fictional creation has that much

544
00:32:46,040 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: power over actual people. Now, I don't want to end

545
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: on such a grim note, so I'm going to talk

546
00:32:53,440 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: about one last goofy tech meme, and in this case,

547
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,560
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a brave, some might say

548
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: foolhardy character.

549
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:04,160
Speaker 2: Named Leroy Jenkins.

550
00:33:05,240 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: This meme concerns the granddaddy of MMORPGs, that would be

551
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,800
Speaker 1: the world of Warcraft. The story begins with a video

552
00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:16,800
Speaker 1: which was potentially staged of a group of guild members

553
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:20,959
Speaker 1: from Pals for Life, leading an excursion into an area

554
00:33:21,040 --> 00:33:23,880
Speaker 1: of the game called the Rookery. So, if you're not

555
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: familiar with World of Warcraft, it is a fantasy based MMORPG,

556
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:31,520
Speaker 1: meaning you're playing a role with a bunch of other people,

557
00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:36,280
Speaker 1: all online, a massive multiplayer online role playing game, and

558
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: you can do a lot of stuff on your own,

559
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: but the game encourages you to form friendships with other

560
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: gamers and to form groups with them, guilds with them,

561
00:33:47,880 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: and do things as a guild. And one of the

562
00:33:50,600 --> 00:33:54,160
Speaker 1: things you might do is go into particularly difficult areas

563
00:33:54,160 --> 00:33:56,560
Speaker 1: that you would have very little chances of surviving on

564
00:33:56,600 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: your own. One of those at this time World of

565
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 1: Warcraft's history was the Rookery. They had a lot of

566
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 1: potential monsters to fight, including Dragon's spawn, which are pretty nasty.

567
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: It takes a clever strategy to defeat the hordes of enemies,

568
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: particularly talking to people about their use of healing abilities,

569
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 1: you know, the support characters, while the damage characters go

570
00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:20,680
Speaker 1: in and try and clear out as many of the

571
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,439
Speaker 1: bad guys as possible. And that's where the video gets

572
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:26,680
Speaker 1: its humor. So as this group is standing outside the

573
00:34:26,760 --> 00:34:30,320
Speaker 1: room discussing over microphones, so you can hear everybody talking

574
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: what the best tactics are, and also acknowledging the likelihood

575
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 1: that they're all going to be massacred because their survival

576
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,120
Speaker 1: percentage chance is somewhere in the thirties.

577
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:41,080
Speaker 2: As I recall, one.

578
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 1: Character steps forward and says, all right, let's do this,

579
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:50,640
Speaker 1: le row giant cads, and he just charges inside. Immediately

580
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: his party follows them, and they are very quickly eviscerated

581
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:59,920
Speaker 1: by the dragon's spawn, and they very quickly also admonish

582
00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,840
Speaker 1: Leroy for his impetuous decision and LeRoy's response as well.

583
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: At least I got chicken, and truer words were never spoken.

584
00:35:08,520 --> 00:35:08,680
Speaker 2: Now.

585
00:35:08,719 --> 00:35:11,640
Speaker 1: The guild uploaded the video of this incident to a

586
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:15,680
Speaker 1: fan site called Warcraft Movies, and later they uploaded it

587
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 1: twice to YouTube, and the second time it really found

588
00:35:18,560 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: huge success. Gamers and non gamers alike found it very amusing.

589
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:27,439
Speaker 1: Ben Schultz, who was the player controlling Leroy Jenkins, found

590
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: himself the center of attention. Blizzard, the company that makes

591
00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, actually invited Schultz to come and be

592
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: a keynote speaker at their gaming convention blizz Con.

593
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,480
Speaker 2: Schultz has repeatedly.

594
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 1: Been asked if the video was actually a real capture

595
00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,759
Speaker 1: of honest to Goodness gameplay or if it was just

596
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 1: a staged video for comedic purposes, and he says he

597
00:35:50,560 --> 00:35:53,359
Speaker 1: likes to leave that up to the individual viewer. I'm

598
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,760
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's staged, but honestly, I don't really care

599
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 1: because it's just entertaining. It's pretty funny, perfectly captures the

600
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: frustration that gamers can feel when someone on their team

601
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: behaves recklessly. I'm sure the gamers among you have been

602
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:10,840
Speaker 1: in a situation where you're in a team based game

603
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 1: and you all have a pretty good plan for how

604
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: things should turn out, and one person just goes completely

605
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:19,399
Speaker 1: off the rails and ruins.

606
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:19,840
Speaker 2: It for everybody.

607
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:22,920
Speaker 1: It's a very frustrating experience. It's funny to watch, but

608
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:26,400
Speaker 1: it's not that funny to be in at the time. Also,

609
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: I really like this one because I have a friend

610
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:31,040
Speaker 1: named Ariel. She's been on the show a couple times,

611
00:36:31,360 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 1: and her band Tenpenny Travelers wrote a song about Leroy

612
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,000
Speaker 1: Jenkins and it makes me laugh a lot. I wish

613
00:36:37,080 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 1: I could share that with you, but they don't have

614
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 1: a recorded version, otherwise I would include it with this episode.

615
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: But the meme of Leroy Jenkins spread like crazy, not

616
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:53,960
Speaker 1: just in the World of Warcraft circles. It also spread

617
00:36:53,960 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: on too, lots of gifts and stuff, and you would

618
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:59,479
Speaker 1: see Leroy Jenkins being applied to any situation where someone

619
00:36:59,480 --> 00:37:03,840
Speaker 1: seemed to arch headlong into a scenario without fully considering

620
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 1: the consequences of their actions. It became kind of shorthand

621
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: for that, and Schultz would end up seeing his character

622
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:16,920
Speaker 1: incorporated into official Blizzard products like a card in Hearthstone

623
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,680
Speaker 1: or NPCs within World of Warcraft, which is pretty phenomenal

624
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:22,880
Speaker 1: when you think about it. I mean, you gain a

625
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: level of immortality by creating this headstrong character rushes into

626
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 1: danger without thinking of the consequences. I think that's pretty amusing.

627
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other memes I can mention.

628
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,280
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is Luigi's death Stare from Mario

629
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 1: Kart eight. There's some of the funniest videos produced from

630
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 1: the Luigi's Death Stare, but that one is so dependent

631
00:37:46,280 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 1: upon the visual of Luigi's sneering down at you as

632
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,799
Speaker 1: he passes by that doesn't really work that well for

633
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:55,440
Speaker 1: an audio podcast, and the memes out there keep on growing.

634
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:58,520
Speaker 1: Some will endure, many will fade away. A few might

635
00:37:58,600 --> 00:38:01,359
Speaker 1: come back after disappearing for a while, because ideas are

636
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 1: like that.

637
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:06,319
Speaker 3: And that was a classic episode about tech memes. You know,

638
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 3: there was a time when the word meme was not

639
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:15,239
Speaker 3: generally well known, and then gradually meme just became such

640
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 3: a common phrase that it feels like everyone's always known

641
00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:22,200
Speaker 3: what memes are. But y'all, I'm old enough to remember

642
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,560
Speaker 3: when memes were, you know, first starting to enter the

643
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 3: general lexicon, and it was not always the case that

644
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 3: everybody knew what meme meant. I don't know if that's

645
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 3: a defense for what you just heard, but it is

646
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,759
Speaker 3: the truth. All Right. That's it for this classic episode.

647
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 2: I hope you are all.

648
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 3: Well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.

649
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

650
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:58,400
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

651
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. You