Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech Stuff classic episode.
Speaker 1: This episode originally published March twenty ninth, twenty seventeen. It
Speaker 1: is called tech Memes, and y'all, I honestly don't have
Speaker 1: any memory of what's on this episode. It is very
Speaker 1: likely something that at this point is so obvious and
Speaker 1: cringe that I hesitated to run it as a classic episode.
Speaker 1: But there's there's a part of me that is morbidly
Speaker 1: curious about how bad it is. So I believe in
Speaker 1: a warts and all approach to tech stuff. So here
Speaker 1: is this classic episode called tech Meme. Dan writes in
Speaker 1: with all your base are belonged to us. I would
Speaker 1: love to hear your take on the history of this
Speaker 1: ancient meme. And indeed, the Babylonians in their writings did
Speaker 1: talk of the one who would bring noe. It's not
Speaker 1: that ancient, I mean, I guess in the terms of technology,
Speaker 1: it's kind of old.
Speaker 2: I told Dan that this particular.
Speaker 1: Story, while great, wouldn't quite merit a full episode by itself.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna look at a few different memes that
Speaker 1: tie in with technology in general and video games in particular.
Speaker 1: I'll probably do more episodes about big tech memes and
Speaker 1: where they came from in the future, but today we'll
Speaker 1: just examine a few. So where do some of the
Speaker 1: most famous video game memes come from? And how did
Speaker 1: they spread around and what did they mean? Well, first
Speaker 1: things first, let's define what a meme is. And the
Speaker 1: nice thing is we don't really have to because Richard
Speaker 1: Dawkins did it for us in a book called The
Speaker 1: Selfish Gene Now. Dawkins proposed the idea of a meme,
Speaker 1: a meme being something we would use to describe an
Speaker 1: idea that spreads quickly throughout a population of people. That population,
Speaker 1: by the way, does not have to be regional, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to say the population of a town
Speaker 1: or the population of a country. That population could be
Speaker 1: any group of like minded individuals within a particular subculture,
Speaker 1: and the Internet makes it possible for memes to spread
Speaker 1: globally rapidly. It's important to point out that memes don't
Speaker 1: have to be on the Internet at all. That's one
Speaker 1: of the ways that we encounter memes, but that's just
Speaker 1: one method of distribution. A meme is an idea. The
Speaker 1: Internet is just the handy way of getting those ideas
Speaker 1: spread throughout the globe. So while an image with a
Speaker 1: funny joke on it is a meme, not all memes
Speaker 1: are images with a funny joke on them. It's just
Speaker 1: one single type of meme. It's kind of one of
Speaker 1: those all dalmatians are dogs, but not all dogs are
Speaker 1: Dalmatians kind of thing. Some memes spread primarily through a
Speaker 1: specific culture, so gamers are a good example. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk a lot about video games, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these memes spread at least at first primarily through gamers,
Speaker 1: some of which then ended up going into mainstream. So
Speaker 1: that's where I'm going to start with this discussion, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to answer Dan's question first. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make him wait. The meme all your base are
Speaker 1: belong to us as part of a group of memes
Speaker 1: that all originate from the same source material, and that
Speaker 1: source is a video game called Zero Wing, which came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen eighty nine. It's a side scrolling game
Speaker 1: in which the player controls a spaceship called a Zig
Speaker 1: blasting through various enemies. Now those enemies are robotic aliens
Speaker 1: called kats Cats, and in the very beginning of the game,
Speaker 1: it's revealed that this group of aliens had recently signed
Speaker 1: a peace treaty with Earth, but are now betraying that treaty.
Speaker 1: And 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 versions. 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 2: What happened somebody the bomb? What main screen turn on?
Speaker 1: Is you?
Speaker 2: How are you all your base to us? You are
Speaker 2: on the way to destruction. What do you say you
Speaker 2: have no chance to survive?
Speaker 1: Hah ha, Captain, take off every zig.
Speaker 2: You know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: Move zig for great justice. It's really moving, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of gets you. Yeah, it's it's like
Speaker 1: the Brave Heart speech. Really it's it's really what it
Speaker 1: comes down to. So interesting fact, the United States never
Speaker 1: got that version of the game, at least not officially.
Speaker 1: People might have ordered an import, but the official version
Speaker 1: with the terrible translation came from the European market, not
Speaker 1: the US market.
Speaker 2: And it's a bit.
Speaker 1: Surprising that this meme even took off at all because
Speaker 1: the game's release preceded the World Wide Web. The earliest
Speaker 1: known examples of the memes appearing online date to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. Now, that is pretty ancient for internet memes,
Speaker 1: because most of them kind of surface and then maybe
Speaker 1: they're popular for a few months or a little over
Speaker 1: a year, and then they kind of fade away. But
Speaker 1: you also have to remember nearly a decade had passed
Speaker 1: since the game came out before it even showed up
Speaker 1: on the Internet in the first place, so it's pretty
Speaker 1: incredible now. Despite the long amount of time between the
Speaker 1: game's release and its celebration online, the meme did take off.
Speaker 1: Various forums, particularly on gaming sites, saw the phrase popping
Speaker 1: up in discussions and profiles.
Speaker 2: Some musicians and.
Speaker 1: Other creators began to incorporate phrases and references in their works,
Speaker 1: popularizing it even more.
Speaker 2: By two thousand and one, Wired.
Speaker 1: Had covered the story, and soon it got the attention
Speaker 1: of other mainstream outlets like The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle,
Speaker 1: and USA. Today, the phrases from this translation live on
Speaker 1: to this day. You will often hear people refer to
Speaker 1: or see references to all your base are belong to us.
Speaker 1: And this really shows you the power of memes. The
Speaker 1: good ones catch on quickly and spread rapidly through various
Speaker 1: groups and stick around. They don't just get really popular
Speaker 1: and then disappear. It's an interesting kind of pop culture
Speaker 1: in a way. Some of them can break three of
Speaker 1: their origins and become mainstream pop culture and not just
Speaker 1: stay in those little enclaves that they began in. But
Speaker 1: some of those might be stuck in smaller niches. For example,
Speaker 1: do a barrel role that could be one of those, Hey, Dylan,
Speaker 1: do you recognize do a barrel role? N Dylan does
Speaker 1: recognize do a barrel role. This meme comes from a
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven Nintendo sixty four game called star Fox
Speaker 1: sixty four, which in itself was a popular sequel to
Speaker 1: an earlier Super Nintendo game simply called Starfox. Now, in
Speaker 1: both games, you pilot a spaceship and you can dodge
Speaker 1: incoming enemy laser fire by doing a barrel roll. But
Speaker 1: in star Fox sixty four the maneuver received special attention.
Speaker 1: There's a point when you're heading toward these stationary turrets
Speaker 1: that are firing on you, and that's when a character
Speaker 1: I think he's a donkey pops up. His name is
Speaker 1: Peppy Hare, and he shouts to a barrel roll, just
Speaker 1: as Dylan did earlier, and thus a meme was born.
Speaker 1: By nineteen ninety seven, the World Wide Web was becoming
Speaker 1: a household name. It would take a few more years
Speaker 1: for it to develop its cheeky side, and on January thirtieth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and 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 2: Would just shout do a barrel roll over the phone.
Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, this was not a case of
Speaker 1: people being unsolicited mischief makers, because Tom Green's career was
Speaker 1: based off of hosting call in shows in which most
Speaker 1: of the calls were some sort of prank. So it's
Speaker 1: not like Tom Green was new to this kind of experience.
Speaker 1: It was just a very specific implementation. The meme found
Speaker 1: its 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 giffs, 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 role. 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.
Speaker 2: Search for do a barrel role. Go ahead, give it
Speaker 2: a shot.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cute.
Speaker 2: All Right, I got a several more memes I want
Speaker 2: to talk.
Speaker 1: About, but before I do, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're back, and the
Speaker 1: next meme I want to talk about is the Zerg rush. Dylan,
Speaker 1: do you know this one? Dylan does not know this one.
Speaker 1: This refers to a tactic in the game StarCraft. So
Speaker 1: StarCraft is a real time strategy game with the science
Speaker 1: fiction theme, and you play one of three different factions
Speaker 1: in the game. You control various units and methods of production,
Speaker 1: and you participate in strategic battle in order to control
Speaker 1: essentially what is a board.
Speaker 2: So you build.
Speaker 1: Various facilities which allow you to create units, and you
Speaker 1: use those units to try and defeat the other player.
Speaker 1: So one of those three species are the Zerg, and
Speaker 1: that's of course in the original StarCraft game, and they
Speaker 1: are insect like critters. Their main advantage is that you
Speaker 1: can make an awful lot of them relatively quickly. So
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: It's such an effective.
Speaker 1: Tactic that it became pretty common in StarCraft games for
Speaker 1: players to establish some rules of decorum that it was
Speaker 1: considered kind of common courtesy to say when someone would
Speaker 1: be allowed to launch a zerg rush. Typically you'd say
Speaker 1: that zerg players would have to withhold attacking in that
Speaker 1: way for a certain number of minutes, like you might
Speaker 1: say no zerg rush for eight minutes, meaning eight minutes
Speaker 1: of the game have to pass before you can do
Speaker 1: a zerg rush, and that gives the other players an
Speaker 1: opportunity to shore up their defenses or otherwise work on
Speaker 1: a strategy to survive an incoming attack.
Speaker 2: Otherwise, it was largely.
Speaker 1: Seen as unfair that you were taking advantage of a
Speaker 1: very simple mechanism within the game, and you were defeating
Speaker 1: people not through superior strategy, but just by the fact
Speaker 1: that the game favors these underpowered but numerous units. As
Speaker 1: for the meme, this story goes that there was a
Speaker 1: multiplayer match in which a Korean group was controlling the
Speaker 1: Zurg forces and an English speaking group were the opponents,
Speaker 1: and early in the match, a group of Zerg units
Speaker 1: began to attack, at which point one of the English
Speaker 1: speaking participants typed OMG zerg rush, and the Korean player
Speaker 1: typed kiki k k E k e k e, which
Speaker 1: is akin to lol in English. You might sometimes encounter
Speaker 1: kiki ki along with zurg rush references in this mean,
Speaker 1: and those references tend to be on images or enemy
Speaker 1: gifts or something being swarmed by something else. So I've
Speaker 1: seen one where there's a plane that looks like it's
Speaker 1: being surrounded by a big flock of birds and it
Speaker 1: was labeled zerg rush. Or you might see one type
Speaker 1: of person completely surrounded by other people and that might
Speaker 1: be zurg rush. Like I would imagine a picture of
Speaker 1: Dragon Con, for example, with a whole bunch of people
Speaker 1: in costume and one person who's clearly not in costume
Speaker 1: just stuck in the middle of it. That would be
Speaker 1: something that you might see zerg rush attached to oh
Speaker 1: in a 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 zerg rush.
Speaker 1: Let me know how you do if you try that out. Now,
Speaker 1: not all video game memes are about criticizing a game
Speaker 1: mechanic or making fun of a specific game, or even
Speaker 1: celebrating a specific game. Some are just a celebration of
Speaker 1: good game design and writing, and I think that's the
Speaker 1: case with the Cake is a Lie. That meme comes
Speaker 1: from the game Portal, which published in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: In Portal, the player takes on the role of a
Speaker 1: young woman who is being held captive in a scientific
Speaker 1: research facility, and her captor is a passive, aggressive, snarky
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence named GLaDOS, and GLaDOS is constantly goading the
Speaker 1: character further down the pathway to keep trying to get
Speaker 1: through increasingly difficult puzzles. GLaDOS is constantly there, criticizing you
Speaker 1: and then giving you lackluster, insincere praise. Whenever you successfully
Speaker 1: navigate one of these tough puzzles, you get a lot
Speaker 1: of snark from GLaDOS, including one of the greatest post
Speaker 1: credit Songs of All Time written by Jonathan Colton in
Speaker 1: the voice of GLaDOS. When you explore the game world,
Speaker 1: you can encounter stuff like messages scralled on walls, and
Speaker 1: the messages are from an old lab worker named Doug Ratman,
Speaker 1: and one of the famous messages is the phrase the
Speaker 1: cake is a lie, written repeatedly. The reason for this
Speaker 1: is GLaDOS constantly tells you that if you are to
Speaker 1: complete all the tasks, you will.
Speaker 2: Get cake, and that the cake will be amazing.
Speaker 1: Occasionally, 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.
Speaker 2: Cake is a lie.
Speaker 1: And for a while people use the cake is a
Speaker 1: lie as just a general reference to Portal. But gradually
Speaker 1: this phrase took on a more general meaning, and it
Speaker 1: came to mean the thing you are looking for doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: or even you are trying to achieve something that isn't possible.
Speaker 1: An urban dictionary translates it rather eloquently. I think into
Speaker 1: your promised reward is merely a fictitious motivator. So you
Speaker 1: could use this idiom to describe a common thread and
Speaker 1: a lot of stories. For example, in the classic The
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz, the Wizard promises rewards to Dorothy and
Speaker 1: her friends if they can get rid of the wicked
Speaker 1: Witch of the West. Only it turns out the Wizard
Speaker 1: is a flim flam man with no real powers of
Speaker 1: his own apart from being a fast talker. The cake
Speaker 1: is a lie. He doesn't have the ability to give
Speaker 1: the characters what they want. In fact, when they were
Speaker 1: turned victorious, he bestows gifts on them simply by telling
Speaker 1: each character that they already possess the thing that they want,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing since the Wizard had no
Speaker 1: way to deliver upon his promises. Now, some memes aren't
Speaker 1: about specific games at all, but rather gaming cliches in general,
Speaker 1: and one of the big ones is called video game logic.
Speaker 1: Now this refers to things that happen in video games
Speaker 1: that defy common sense. For example, a popular meme in
Speaker 1: this category has a picture of Master Chief, who is
Speaker 1: the protagonist of the Halo franchise of games, and the
Speaker 1: memes says can flip an extremely heavy tank can't control
Speaker 1: gun recoil. So this refers to the fact that if
Speaker 1: you come up to a tank that's on its side
Speaker 1: and you press the right button, Master Chief will move
Speaker 1: the tank so that you can get into it. And
Speaker 1: yet every time you fire your gun, it flies up
Speaker 1: in the air, and you think, well, if he's strong
Speaker 1: enough to move a tank over canny control the movement
Speaker 1: of a handgun, it does seem to defy logic. And
Speaker 1: this is pretty common, and that's not the only example.
Speaker 2: I mean. Sometimes it's something like.
Speaker 1: Invisible walls that you are free to roam anywhere until
Speaker 1: you encounter an invisible wall, which in the video game
Speaker 1: world makes sense, but when you think of it outside
Speaker 1: of that context, you start to question, why is this
Speaker 1: a design in this game? Or maybe there is a
Speaker 1: game rule that says if you even step foot in
Speaker 1: the edge of water, your character will drown. That's another
Speaker 1: instance of video game logic, like especially a character that
Speaker 1: seems to be resilient to almost any kind of damage,
Speaker 1: like you can be shot fourteen times in the chest
Speaker 1: and keep going, but if you touch water, you immediately drown.
Speaker 1: Your toe is apparently where you breathe, and you're a goner.
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 it doesn't allow in
Speaker 1: other cases don't really make sense, And it really kind
Speaker 1: of helps bring attention to shortcomings in games. Sometimes those
Speaker 1: shortcomings are necessary just to make the game work properly.
Speaker 1: Another example of a shortcoming in a game is repetitive dialogue,
Speaker 1: particularly in non player characters that you might encounter in
Speaker 1: something like a role playing game. Now, it's not really
Speaker 1: feasible to create a game in which every one you
Speaker 1: encounter has a distinct personality and a non repetitive dialogue option,
Speaker 1: particularly for games that have hundreds of characters in them.
Speaker 1: So the more characters you have, the harder it is
Speaker 1: to give each one an individual personality and history and
Speaker 1: conversational options.
Speaker 2: So that means sometimes you.
Speaker 1: Hear the same phrase is repeated, and sometimes that gets
Speaker 1: a bit comedic, And that is the case with our
Speaker 1: next meme, I Took an arrow in the knee. That
Speaker 1: one comes from Skyrim, which is from Bethesda, and that
Speaker 1: game came out in twenty eleven. It's a big, sprawling
Speaker 1: fantasy game across an enormous map, and that map has
Speaker 1: several towns and villages and outposts in it, and most
Speaker 1: of those places have guards living there, and there are
Speaker 1: male and female guards, and they often have different voices.
Speaker 1: They got several different voice actors to record the same
Speaker 1: lines of dialogue, and that's the problem. They all pull
Speaker 1: from the same pool of scripted lines. So while the
Speaker 1: guards you see may look different and sound different from
Speaker 1: each other, they all have very similar stories to share.
Speaker 1: Like it turns out, they all have the exact same background,
Speaker 1: which includes a mysterious incident in which they were shot
Speaker 1: in the knee by somebody. So the actual line of
Speaker 1: dialogue is I used to be an adventurer like you.
Speaker 1: Then I took an arrow in the knee. Now, it
Speaker 1: doesn't pop up every time you meet a guard, but
Speaker 1: it does happen occasionally, and that line is so distinct
Speaker 1: that it's noticeable every single time you hear it.
Speaker 2: So there are tons of memes.
Speaker 1: Based off this game experience. There 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 Skyrim
Speaker 1: is almost entirely populated by guards with a limp. There
Speaker 1: are variations on images in which the first part of
Speaker 1: 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 typical fantasy villain, something that you might see
Speaker 1: in like Diablo or something along those lines. But it
Speaker 1: was a headless character. So it was this big monstrous
Speaker 1: suit of armor but with no head, and the caption
Speaker 1: said I used to have a face. Then I took
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: And actually to talk about slender Man, we.
Speaker 1: Have to talk about spooky spaghetti. No, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 1: at creepy pasta. And here's where the old man in
Speaker 1: me surfaces, because I gotta be honest with you, guys.
Speaker 1: I had to look all this stuff up because I'm old.
Speaker 1: I know what slender Man is, but the creepy pasta
Speaker 1: stuff that's after my time on the internet. So I
Speaker 1: had to actually learn about this stuff, which was really interesting.
Speaker 2: Actually, So for those.
Speaker 1: Who do not know, there's this phenomenon on the Internet
Speaker 1: called creepy pasta. Now that term actually is a twist
Speaker 1: on an older Internet slang word called copy pasta, which
Speaker 1: first started popping up on the forum four chan in
Speaker 1: the mid two thousands. It's a word used to designate
Speaker 1: an example of viral copy and pasted text. So this
Speaker 1: is when you will encounter, like a paragraph of text
Speaker 1: that has clearly been copied from somewhere else and pasted
Speaker 1: into this forum and it just starts to spread from
Speaker 1: that point forward. You see it all over the internet,
Speaker 1: particularly in forums and Facebook. You'll see a lot of
Speaker 1: copy pasta on Facebook. I see it all the time
Speaker 1: where people have copy and pasted a message they clearly
Speaker 1: didn't write it themselves, and it has gone viral from
Speaker 1: that point. Now, creepy pasta is a more specific type
Speaker 1: of this copy and paste viral information.
Speaker 2: It's a term that describes stories.
Speaker 1: That have a horror element to them, frequently that is
Speaker 1: supernatural in nature, although not necessarily, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them are kind of paranormal creepy stuff.
Speaker 2: This, by the way, is not a new thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've had folklore for as long as people
Speaker 1: have been able to tell stories. Before the Internet, we
Speaker 1: would use technology to share these kinds of information using faxes.
Speaker 1: It was actually called fax lore. People would share jokes
Speaker 1: and stories, cartoons, and other printed material by faxing it
Speaker 1: to each other. So there's something innate about humans that
Speaker 1: drives us to create and share these stories and ideas,
Speaker 1: whether it's through the Internet or a fax, or just
Speaker 1: sitting around a fire chatting away.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to slender Man now, slender Man didn't
Speaker 1: just start off as like creepy pasta per se. Originally,
Speaker 1: it was actually part of a series of pranks pulled
Speaker 1: by members of the Something Awful forums. Something Awful is
Speaker 1: a comedy website, and in one of the forums, members
Speaker 1: had decided to manufacture photos depicting seemingly supernatural phenomena using
Speaker 1: Photoshop and other editing software. So the idea was, let's
Speaker 1: take pictures, let's manipulate the photos so that we can
Speaker 1: give them a weird, otherworldly element to them, and then
Speaker 1: here comes the prank part. Let's share those photos on
Speaker 1: paranormal forums, like forums that are about paranormal activity or
Speaker 1: are you got an interest in paranormal subject matter, and.
Speaker 2: Pass them off as real.
Speaker 1: So the challenge was create these altered photos and then
Speaker 1: share them on various paranormal sites and try to convince
Speaker 1: people that these are in fact actual examples of photographed
Speaker 1: paranormal activity. Now, one of the members of that forum
Speaker 1: was Eric Knudsen, who contributed under the handle Victor Surge.
Speaker 2: That was the name he used.
Speaker 1: He edited some photos of people 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 him. 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 show, 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 birth of slender Man. Now,
Speaker 1: this particular character was probably inspired by other depictions of
Speaker 1: ghouls and bogeymen. There are a lot of different historical
Speaker 1: variations on this idea of the faceless, unusually tall creature
Speaker 1: that looks vaguely like a man, very menacing in nature.
Speaker 1: There are also examples of this even in computer games,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it was a totally new idea,
Speaker 1: but this was a particularly interesting incorporation of this idea
Speaker 1: and a really compelling photoshop job. It really struck a
Speaker 1: nerve others. Something awful members began to incorporate slender Man
Speaker 1: into their own stories, and they began to add to
Speaker 1: the mythology sometimes referred to as the slender Verse. Slender
Speaker 1: Man had entered the world.
Speaker 2: Of creepy pasta.
Speaker 1: He popped up on lots of different sites, including four Chan, Fangloria, Unfiction,
Speaker 1: TV tropes, deviant Art, and many other websites and forums.
Speaker 1: So it became one of those things where people began
Speaker 1: to shape and evolve and tweak this idea and make
Speaker 1: it grow from there. That's kind of this defining feature
Speaker 1: of folklore and memes in general.
Speaker 2: And also you could argue that.
Speaker 1: It's a continuation of the same sort of ideas you
Speaker 1: would even see back in the pulp horror novel days.
Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft, for example, created a bunch of fictional books,
Speaker 1: including the Necronomicon in the mythology of the stories, and
Speaker 1: he encouraged his author friends to incorporate elements of his
Speaker 1: cathul universe, including mainly those fictional books, in their own work,
Speaker 1: and he would do the same. So in this case
Speaker 1: you had a bunch of different authors incorporating each other's
Speaker 1: creations and giving those creations more weight. They seem to
Speaker 1: be more real because more people were writing about it.
Speaker 1: How could it be one person's imagined thing when it's
Speaker 1: popping up in other people's stories. Very similar with slender Man,
Speaker 1: except we're talking about the Internet in general, not a
Speaker 1: small group of authors. And over time you began to
Speaker 1: see other incarnations and implementations of slender Man that included
Speaker 1: a video game in which you play as a person
Speaker 1: being pursued by the slender Man while you uncover clues
Speaker 1: in a secluded forest in your fenced end, so you
Speaker 1: can't easily escape, and you have to find notes, but
Speaker 1: each note you find gives the slender Man more of
Speaker 1: an idea where you are, and he starts to close
Speaker 1: in on you. Several filmmakers have created online videos inspired
Speaker 1: by the character. There are series like every Man, Hybrid,
Speaker 1: Tribe twelve, and Marble Hornets that all took inspiration from
Speaker 1: and added to the mythology of slender Man in interesting ways.
Speaker 1: And there are really too many incarnations and incorporations of
Speaker 1: slender Man for me to go into here. You can
Speaker 1: find him or variations of him in things like Minecraft
Speaker 1: and short films. But obviously I can't leave this topic
Speaker 1: without also mentioning the twenty fourteen stabbing incidents, and I
Speaker 1: say incidents because there was one in Wisconsin and one
Speaker 1: in Ohio that year. Both of them are terrible stories.
Speaker 1: So in Wisconsin, two twelve year old girls were arrested
Speaker 1: on attempted murder charges after attacking and stabbing a mutual
Speaker 1: friend nineteen times. Allegedly, the friend has since recovered from
Speaker 1: her wounds, but the two girls remain in the court
Speaker 1: system being tried for this crime, and one of the
Speaker 1: two attackers, during a confession, said that slender Man was
Speaker 1: the motivation behind the attack. She claimed that she believed
Speaker 1: that slender Man would harm her family if she did
Speaker 1: not carry out this attack. There's been some move on
Speaker 1: the family's lawyer in this case to strike that confession
Speaker 1: due to a claim that the miranda rights of the
Speaker 1: accused were not properly administered. So that's still something that's
Speaker 1: unfolding in the court system as I record this. The
Speaker 1: second 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, las
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 2: Was already present.
Speaker 1: I don't think that a fictional creation has that much
Speaker 1: power over actual people. Now, I don't want to end
Speaker 1: on such a grim note, so I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about one last goofy tech meme, and in this case,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a brave, some might say
Speaker 1: foolhardy character.
Speaker 2: Named Leroy Jenkins.
Speaker 1: This meme concerns the granddaddy of MMORPGs, that would be
Speaker 1: the world of Warcraft. The story begins with a video
Speaker 1: which was potentially staged of a group of guild members
Speaker 1: from Pals for Life, leading an excursion into an area
Speaker 1: of the game called the Rookery. So, if you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with World of Warcraft, it is a fantasy based MMORPG,
Speaker 1: meaning you're playing a role with a bunch of other people,
Speaker 1: all online, a massive multiplayer online role playing game, and
Speaker 1: you can do a lot of stuff on your own,
Speaker 1: but the game encourages you to form friendships with other
Speaker 1: gamers and to form groups with them, guilds with them,
Speaker 1: and do things as a guild. And one of the
Speaker 1: things you might do is go into particularly difficult areas
Speaker 1: that you would have very little chances of surviving on
Speaker 1: your own. One of those at this time World of
Speaker 1: Warcraft's history was the Rookery. They had a lot of
Speaker 1: potential monsters to fight, including Dragon's 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 chance is somewhere in the thirties.
Speaker 2: As I recall, one.
Speaker 1: Character steps forward and says, all right, let's do this,
Speaker 1: le row giant cads, and he just charges inside. Immediately
Speaker 1: his party follows them, and they are very quickly eviscerated
Speaker 1: by the dragon's spawn, and they very quickly also admonish
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.
Speaker 2: 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 controlling Leroy Jenkins, found
Speaker 1: himself the center of attention. Blizzard, the company that makes
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft, actually invited Schultz to come and be
Speaker 1: a keynote speaker at their gaming convention blizz Con.
Speaker 2: Schultz has repeatedly.
Speaker 1: Been asked if the video was actually a real capture
Speaker 1: of honest to Goodness gameplay or if it was just
Speaker 1: a staged video for comedic purposes, and he says he
Speaker 1: likes to leave that up to the individual viewer. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it's staged, but honestly, I don't really care
Speaker 1: because it's just entertaining. It's pretty funny, perfectly captures the
Speaker 1: frustration that gamers can feel when someone on their team
Speaker 1: behaves recklessly. I'm sure the gamers among you have been
Speaker 1: in a situation where you're in a team based game
Speaker 1: and you all have a pretty good plan for how
Speaker 1: things should turn out, and one person just goes completely
Speaker 1: off the rails and ruins.
Speaker 2: It for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's a very frustrating experience. It's funny to watch, but
Speaker 1: 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 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.
Speaker 1: But the meme of Leroy Jenkins spread like crazy, not
Speaker 1: just in the World of Warcraft circles. It also spread
Speaker 1: on too, lots of gifts and stuff, and you would
Speaker 1: see Leroy Jenkins being applied to any situation where someone
Speaker 1: seemed to arch 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 NPCs within World of Warcraft, which is pretty phenomenal
Speaker 1: when you think about it. I mean, you gain a
Speaker 1: level of immortality by creating this headstrong character rushes into
Speaker 1: danger without thinking of the consequences. I think that's pretty amusing.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other memes I can mention.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is Luigi's death Stare from Mario
Speaker 1: Kart eight. There's some of the funniest videos produced from
Speaker 1: the Luigi's Death Stare, but that one is so dependent
Speaker 1: upon the visual of Luigi's sneering down at you as
Speaker 1: he passes by that doesn't really work that well for
Speaker 1: an audio podcast, and the memes out there keep on growing.
Speaker 1: Some will endure, many will fade away. A few might
Speaker 1: come back after disappearing for a while, because ideas are
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: And that was a classic episode about tech memes. You know,
Speaker 3: there was a time when the word meme was not
Speaker 3: generally well known, and then gradually meme just became such
Speaker 3: a common phrase that it feels like everyone's always known
Speaker 3: what memes are. But y'all, I'm old enough to remember
Speaker 3: when memes were, you know, first starting to enter the
Speaker 3: general lexicon, and it was not always the case that
Speaker 3: everybody knew what meme meant. I don't know if that's
Speaker 3: a defense for what you just heard, but it is
Speaker 3: the truth. All Right. That's it for this classic episode.
Speaker 2: I hope you are all.
Speaker 3: Well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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