I hate Internet memes. I’ve always hated them—even when they were just inside jokes, sly shared references that make friends laugh and non-friends anxious and alone.

Whether its Paris Hilton’s sly manner of disparaging minorities or ugly people in front of their faces in cutesy code languages or arrghing like a pirate or begging for a laugh by alluding to any once funny gag from any of the nine thousand episodes of The Simpsons, referencing something that was once funny is not actually being funny.

This doesn’t mean you can’t make people happy with memes.

Repeat the meme about how steroids should be allowed in sports because it makes the games more fun, and you’ll be rewarded with a chuckle worthy of Leno’s last Jaywalking segment.

But if you get serious and actually assert that you support random drug testing, people might be confused. You’ll have to quickly add, “Random drug testing is great. Just last week I tested Ecstasy, Meth and beaver tranquilizer for no reason at all.”

Internet memes are easy, and we like easy. It’s why the world, despite the intelligence and beauty of the life on this planet, is such a terrible place.

Fail is my least favorite Internet meme/inside joke. For dog years, it’s been the go-to retort for anyone who wants to diminish anything entirely.

Write a long pastoral about how a piece of dry withering bark reminds you of your leprous father, post it to the web and you’re as likely as anything to get the one word response “Fail.” Or worse “Epic Fail.”

I think it comes from a video game or a comic book or a cartoon or some other childish fun that adults cling to make the point that the adult world is a huge septic tank of mediocrity where everyone constantly flushes backwash back and forth into each other’s mouths. It’s fighting backwash by hocking loogies, and it just makes the world a more phony, lonely, sad place.

But there are moments in life when banality speaks with true and undeniable beauty. There are moments when being articulate gives you nothing but the ability to lacquer nonsense on top of nonsense. Sometimes it pays to be stupid, narrow and self-referential.

One of those moments took place last week when Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson were testifying in front of a Congressional committee to speak for the banks because the banks could not speak (for their tongues have been foreclosed).

These two financial geniuses were assuring the members that they were as upset about the 750 billion dollar bailout that they were pleading for as anyone. They were being heroic in their pursuit of the one thing we all love: financial prosperity.

If you tried to mock them to their faces, they would have nodded away and kept on with the banks’ case. They were unblinking, unmoved by the real world and its real foreclosures, real bankruptcies and all the people who will never be spoken for inside the halls of Congress.

Somehow amidst all the procedure and sanitized depravity this bailout hearing, some unknown person in the audience summoned all of the decency in the collective consciousness into the form of a simple handwritten sign.

On this sign, there was only one word, “Fail”

With this sign floating above Paulson and Bernake’s heads, captioning reality, turning disaster into a inside joke, then and only then did I thank the Internet for all of its stupid memes.

So, in conclusion: An epic, massive fail to you Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Bush.

And a new Internet meme for you all to spread: Gas was $1.46 a gallon the day the oil industry’s fortunate son George W. Bush took office. And we think he’s stupid.

Photo by Getty | Chip Somodevill.

Drawing by Myha Do.

Browse Timeline

• « The Conservatives’ Undying Belief in Their Right to Rule
• » A Reassuring Monologue from the Creepy Guy On the Bus Delivered to a Girl Who Never Takes Her Ear Buds Off

Comments ( 6 )

Add a Comment