Likable Cut Melon

I Like Your Melon G

Inktober 2020 Day 10

The “I Like Ya Cut G” meme is one more bit of evidence that I will never really understand or truly appreciate the internet that our kids inhabit. 

Like many such memes, I first heard the phrase, delivered by one son to the other, as he whacked him hard on the back of the head. 

Knowyourmeme.com reports that the first video dates back to 2018 and featured a man delivering the soon to become catchphrase to a bald child before slapping him on the back of the head. 

This spawned a thousand iterations, often with some sort of sound, like a shriek, or strangely, the Taco Bell noise (let’s just skip that) following the slap. 

Have read the etiology of this meme, I still basically fail to understand its appeal. Yes, hitting people on the head is always funny to some, but still...why all of the iterations of this one. Surely there are other excuses for swatting people and objects?

I did find something appealing about the dolphin version of the meme. (Though of course, it is not a dolphin, it’s a Beluga whale.)

Wikipedia informs me that a Beluga whale “possesses a distinctive protuberance at the front of its head which houses an echolocation organ called the melon which in this species is large and deformable”

In other videos, Belugas seem receptive to having their melons “deformed” by a friendly human hand, so this does seem to be contrary to the basic antagonistic nature of the “I like ya cut G” meme. But maybe I like my memes less antagonist.

And maybe I just wanted to draw a Beluga. 

 

That’s Not Michael Either

Inktober 2020 Day 8

Our kids have always enjoyed a nice creepy image or a scary story. 

In their younger years, the resulting exposure to scary stuff might have made it difficult to, say, go to the kitchen to get a glass of water when the lights were out. One never knows what horrors might lurk in one’s own domicile. 

I have tried explaining that we are too far boring for Abominations to take an interest in. And hiding in dark corners waiting for a teenager to leave his room to go to the bathroom...that’s really dull stuff. Monsters have more interesting places to be.

But the very brief video clip known as “That’s Not Michael” definitely puts an amusing spin on the casual dismissal of horrors lurking in domestic spaces. The carrier of the video phone is walking around a cluttered basement looking for Michael. He looks down a dark hallway to see a very ominous, tall, naked figure squatting at the end, which turns to look over its shoulder at him with green glowing eyes. The narrator/ cameraman, comments dispassionately, “that’s not Michael” and moves on.

The figure at the end of the hall is mostly in shadow and mostly suggested, other than its glowing eyes.

It only took a couple of  google searches to come up with the author of the video, Zulubo Productions, and the “how to make a cursed video” / making of “that’s not Michael” video, which shows the very literal animated figure that he posed and placed at the end of the hall.

My son says that kind of spoiled his enjoyment of the video.  That plus a bad drawing, and my work for tonight is done.

It’s Fun Until Someone Loses An Eye- then it lives forever on YouTube?

Inktober 2020 Day 7

Ah, the endless joy of watching short video clips of other people getting hurt. And it’s even better when there is a compilation of multiple clips.  And then add some snappy music.

The “Wii Sports Resort” meme checks all these boxes and additionally provides perverse nostalgia for our formerly Wii Sports Resort playing kids.  The video is a series of unrelated clips, each representing one of the sports options off the main menu: basketball, bowling, boating, etc., and of course, archery.

Each clip features accidental or intentional injury- one ping pong player throws the paddle across the table at the other. One guy in a basketball one-on-one just plain decks the other guy, a man drives a boat full speed into a post.

It is both mildly funny and seriously disturbing, as the clips range from harmless stumbles to possible fatalities. 

But the clip  in which a bow tie wearing kid, who has obviously set up his phone on the floor to record himself shooting his cool nerf bow and arrow, only to have the arrow immediately bounce back to hit him in the eye, is memorable. 

I am really hoping that the clip would not have made its way to YouTube if, in fact, an eye had been lost (or damaged)

Everybody Gangsta ‘Til Rodents Who Are Probably Not Beavers Start Pushing One Another

Inktober 2020 Day 6

This one is known as “everyone gangsta ‘til the beavers pull up” and is, of course, popular with many people, including our kids.

The “Everybody Gangsta Until...” meme started back in 2015 with ...”until the cockroach flies” and has proliferated into a thousand iterations from “until your mom catches you rioting” to “til the pelican pull up at the store” 

The supposed beavers here were my first exposure to this meme. How on earth had I missed it for the last five years? 

They are standing on their hind legs and awkwardly and ineffectually shoving one another. (It’s not unlike Spider-Man fighting Jesus) There seem to be two sizes of the creatures, and the smaller ones keep trying to get in the middle of things. This is, for some reason, funny.

But I just have to point out: they are clearly not beavers. Maybe something like a groundhog? Which I learned this evening, is the same animal as a woodchuck and is sometimes know as a “whistle pig” or a “land beaver” (“Whistlepig Day?”)

I have learned so much today.

Though these pushy critters don’t really look like groundhogs....But definitely not beavers. The tails are wrong. 

Sorry. 

Everybody Gangsta Til the Pedantic Old Lady Shows Up to the Meme Party.

Super Villain Seagull

 

Inktober 2020 day 5:

Sometimes all you really need is a video clip of a seagull laughing like a supervillain. 

Many have documented on YouTube the disturbingly evocative cries of gulls. But one in particular posted by  YouTuber Dimaniztlt back in 2012 features the gull throwing its head back with the malevolent flair of a Joker.

Know Your Meme reports that by 2017 the clip had over 181,000 views. It has proliferated and moved far beyond that since- and morphed into the “Seagull Inhaling” meme with a glowing red eye.

But I thought the upside down eye here was persuasive enough. 

I’ve Been A Fool

 

Inktober 2020 Day 4:

Our older son loves a video posted by @yeehawwsadcat of a teary-eyed cat, singing a Japanese ballad through the courtesy of creepy face morphing. 

The human lips....truly nightmare fuel.

Our younger son explains that is an example of a “cursed image.” One might briefly think this terminology originated with my own clever child...well, one might think that if one is close to my advanced age perhaps. But I have learned to think twice. I googled, and discovered on Wikipedia: “ a cursed image refers to images that are perceived as mysterious or disturbing due to their content, poor quality, or a combinations of the two. Since 2016, such images have become popular online.”

This one brings together two memes, that are each their own deep rabbit holes (or entire warrens): “Crying Cat” and “Baka Mitai”

According to Know Your Meme, the earliest know usage of the Crying Cat image was in 2014, which oddly, was a photoshopped version of Serious Cat.

It proliferated on a German image board in 2015, known there as “Schmuserkadser,” before moving to 4chan in 2016. 

Baka Mitai (I’ve Been a Fool) is a karaoke song that appears in the Yakusa series of games for the PlayStation. Baka Mitai, also known as “Dame Da Ne” for the first line of the lyrics, is a widespread meme of its own, sung by various game characters and real people. In 2020, Deepfake technology allowed many more people and characters ranging from Super Mario to Obama to sing the song without their participation in the real world.  The face morph template was apparently provided by Youtuber shaggySuave. 

No question, the queasy distortion generated by the low quality morphing is part of the charm.... if charm is the word we need here.

Spider-Man vs. Jesus

(A post from October 2nd)

Inktober 2020, Day 2

This one is not hard to find on YouTube, though the title does vary a bit: “Spider-man Fights Jesus to Bring Mr Starks Back” or “....to Bring Stan Lee Back To Life,” etc. Linkin Park’s 2002 hit, “In the End” plays for the entire clip. The combatants appear to be at some sort of party, though the video quality is extremely low, which is, I suppose, part of its charm. It did present more of a drawing challenge than I might have hoped.

There’s no hitting going on, Spider-Man and Jesus are mostly grabbing and stumbling around in a hapless manner. They do appear to be evenly matched. Spider-Man sports a baseball cap and track pants, both of which are in danger of removal throughout.

Our son agrees with the comment posted on one of the videos that “this is lowkey brilliant.” Another comment suggests that this video sums up the entire internet.

I’m not sure, 

But in the end 

It doesn’t even matter.

Sweet Dreams Bears

 

(A post from October 1st)

Inktober 2020, Day #1:

Inktober presents an opportunity for bad drawing on a deadline once again...and not even on a napkin!

I’ve tried to keep up with the one ink drawing a night mandate of inktober for the last 4 years, much to the distaste of everyone in my immediate environment, and any remaining followers here. I’ve managed to limp through most of the month in years past, but I have to admit, given the competing demands on my time right now, the prospects are pretty grim this year.

But sadly, I haven’t given up yet.

Sometimes I just need to make some crappy drawings with the excuse of an artificial deadline. 

In previous years I have exploited my kids and made drawings about my weird health and sleep fixations. I hatched several plans over the last few weeks, but finally decided today that it should be more in the original spirit of the napkins- though, yes, this is a watercolor.

So I am drawing from the memes and videos that our sons are always trying to get me to watch.

This one is an older video, still on YouTube at close to 3 million views...though the 10 hour version has a mere 1.8 million views. The bears flop around endless to the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.” It’s oddly compelling even to those resistant to the charms of idiotic videos.

I haven’t done it justice at all. 

SCPs for COVID-19

SCPs May Not Comply with Social Distancing:

(Because fear of imaginary things is so much more fun than fear of real things)

As contagion spreads throughout the world, and we hunker down in our apartment, pathetically bickering with one another and eyeing our diminishing stock of toilet paper, it is amusing to think about fictional threats.

I had been unsuccessfully trying to understand my sons’ interest in SCPs for quite a while before the current pandemic.

As usual in these sorts of posts: either your eyes have just rolled up in your head because how slow can this old napkin lady be?  or, you don’t have the vaguest idea what an SCP is and are pretty sure you don’t want or need to know. 

But to soldier on, despite your reasonable reservations: 

As far as I can tell, the SCP thing is a more recent instance of the online “Creepypasta” phenomenon: scary stories based in a basic organizing concept, collaboratively posted online by many people.

For the sake of expediency, I will quote from the knowyourmeme page: “SCP is a creative writing wiki centered around documenting descriptions and containment procedures of fictional objects and entities that are considered scientific anomalies and often pose a threat to society or the personnel containing it. Every entity has its own entry is labeled with a number, with "SCP" as a prefix”

SCP-049 resembles a medieval plague doctor, though the clothing and mask are somehow part of the entity’s physical body. Sadly, we can’t grow our own masks to prevent COVID-2.

SCP-096, or “Shy Guy” on the right, is often pictured with a huge gaping, muti-toothed maw. So he needs an extra large 3M mask.  I won’t attempt to detail his characteristics here, but it seems he is compelled to kill anyone who catches a glimpse of his face (even, perplexingly, represented in a photograph.... but drawings are ok- so we are safe!) 

Perhaps Shy Guy is enjoying all the social distancing.

Wilfred Warrior

Still the Internet’s Reigning Apex Predator

We don’t live with a cat. After many years of cohabitation with felines, I may have a special place in my heart that is lined with hairballs and clawed funiture, but my sons don’t. 

But they still appreciate online cats. Because...  apparently everyone does. Our older son has shown me innumerable cat memes and vines, including recently one of his favorites from 2018 featuring internet famous cat Wilfred and actor Michael Rappaport.

I think it was the author of “The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World,” Abigail Tucker who explained that cats combine three persuasive qualities: Their giant forward facing eyes remind us of cute babies. But the same facial structure also suggests their predatory name. And cats are not facially emotive like dogs, so they present us with a blank surface on which to project our emotions....and memes.

And who better combines the triumvirate of cuteness, menace and blankness than internet famous cat, Wilfred? The Chinchilla Persian’s social media presence is what you might expect from a feline with 1.2 million followers: pictures and videos of Winfred, lapping water, sitting various places, riding in the car, being taken shopping...

....all the while, projecting an existentially destabilizing, double Eye of Sauron-like, baleful, yet blank, judging gaze over all of humanity. 

Michael Rapport’s YouTube video where he profanely and hysterically exclaims over a video of Wilfred, well, just sitting blankly in a backyard, comedically underlines the potential threat of that unblinking saucer eyed stare. 

According to Rappaport, YouTube took the video down because of “cat shaming.”

Or because it is not wise to make fun of your predator. 

Ok Boomer Baby Heads

“Ok Boomer”

I have to admit that in my basic boomerishness, I did not initially understand the intense appeal of this phrase for my kids. 

They enjoyed using it on one another. And of course it can be gleefully applied to any older person (parent) who might be trying to tell you something useful or offering any implied criticism. 

It is a verbal eye roll...an offhand dismissal of age and authority.

Of course our kids have been dismissive since toddlerhood. Arguably, even since infancy. 

I am not sure how we managed to produce such bizarrely empowered  small people. 

(Though I do have my theories about the difficulties of parenting without fear or the threat of physical pain in the toolkit....and then there’s the genetics of it. My husband and I used to often joke about where on the chromosome was the default no setting?) 

When both kids were quite young, strangers and educators often remarked on each one’s abilities to say no to adults. 

One son told his nursery school teacher that he could not do what she asked because he was too “dehydrated.” On another occasion, he could not comply because he was “too depressed.” She was quite effectively derailed by these statements. 

And they have always been particularly good at saying no to their parents. I am not sure what the evolutionary advantage of constantly verbally antagonizing one’s parents might be while one is still totally dependent upon them even for basic toileting and nourishment, but there is it.

In one memorable incident, as my husband was haranguing our younger son, age three or less, for some terrible toddler crime, our son replied casually, “Oh, take a shower, old man.” “Ok boomer” is an improvement I guess.

(These are the kids’ infant heads on their teenager bodies, if that needs to be said. We don’t own the shirts, but there seem to be widely available online)

VSCO Guys

Since an article in the New York Times last week quoted a 12 year old girl saying that “VSCO is basically over,” I thought maybe I’d better hurry up and post this one. 

So you are either saying to yourself, “what is VSCO?” Or,  ugh, why is the napkin woman so late to this party? 

In case my mom missed the Times article, I will  briefly summarize that the term VSCO derived from a photo editing app, and is mostly favored by “VSCO girls” as a ostensibly easy-going, “beachy” aesthetic defined by several very specific consumer items: oversized t-shirts, shoes that are ugly/comfortable but specifically branded: checkerboard Vans, Crocks with charms or Birkenstock’s, pukka shell necklaces, Pura Vida bracelets, scrunchies, Fjallraven Kanken backpacks, and hydroflask drink bottles with metal straws. 

And mixed in with the brand consciousness is vague environmentalism expressed as a “save the turtles” slogan...mostly achieved by using metal straws. 

There’s some odd imported slang involved also, but I might refrain from mentioning that here to prevent my sons from writhing on the floor in torment. It seems that parental use of trendy slang is right up there in pain intensity with being doused in gasoline and set on fire.

At any rate, the VSCO trend seems to be to mostly just teenage girls being teenaged girls with the added commercial reach and reinforcement of social media. 

When I was twelve, horrifyingly enough, it was all about disco and Sasoon Jeans. Who among us remembers Sasoon Jeans? Anyone?

Moving on: 

It seemed to me that Deadpool and John Wick would appreciate a laid back surf aesthetic. Wade’s already halfway there with the Croc’s...though he does need some shoe charms.

But what do the sea turtles think about all this?

Aliens Naruto Run Out of Area 51 on Monday

(They were just waiting for all the Area 51 raiders to go home)

This one is a little late, (or is it?) as the main event to ”Storm Area 51” was of course scheduled for Friday September 20th. 

“What event?” My ever-tolerant mom is asking as she reads this....(though there was a good bit of coverage in the New York Times.... So, perhaps I can’t use Grandma as a foil here.) 

At any rate, there was a fair amount of attention paid by our kids to the supposed raid on Area 51 last Friday. The huge online phenomenon manifested a good bit smaller in the real world. And sadly, we were not among the 400 or so people who actually went to the site...or the environs. 

But we were among the millions who were impressed by the guy who managed to get his Naruto run in the background behind a reporter from “Action 13 News”...and became a worldwide meme.

Naruto running: perhaps no more implausible or uncomfortable in the real world than the extraterrestrials in Nevada.

My son tells me that he can recognize all of the aliens on this napkin, so at least there’s that.

Aftermath of Area 51 Raid

What One Does to Relax After the Area 51 Raid:

I rely on my sons to keep me up to date on upcoming important cultural events like the “plan” to storm Area 51.... to liberate the aliens the government is hiding therein. 

I don’t think we will be attending, back to school and all, and so hear all the flights and hotels are already booked solid....but it was entertaining to think about what aliens we might be interested in bringing home:

Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, an Ewok, and the later day Ewok- a Porg, Gizmo from Gremlins, and one of the childlike but deadly aliens from Galaxy Quest....and a red panda, just because my son would really like to have one as a pet.

And what would you do once you brought all those cool aliens (and panda) home? 

Watch youtube on your iPad on the couch while wearing your skeleton onesie, of course. 

Our son was quite concerned that the Daily Napkins followers would not be familiar with Galaxy Quest or Gremlins, released in 1999, and 1984 respectively (ouch)

But he had seen both long ago, so I am going to assume some of the rest of our audience might have also.

Kaiju Baby Shark Challenge

God-zil-la, doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo

Ok, so I did have to ask my kids to explain the “Baby Shark Challenge” phenomena to me. I had somehow missed out on the international, egregious ear-worm that is the Baby Shark song.

You are now either shocked by my amazing ignorance, or don’t know what the hell I am talking about (hi Grandma!).

I suspect most who are still reading (besides my aforementioned, endlessly indulgent mother) can’t stand to slog through my explanation of the Baby Shark juggernaut. 

But the bare facts according to Wikipedia:

(Everyone else just skip past the bullet points if you haven’t already stopped reading)

* The point of origin was maybe a campfire song with no particular author, but the song usually had colorful verses including dismemberment by shark, attempted CPR, death and the meeting of Jesus.

* Pink Fong released a child friendly version on @YouTube kids on November 25, 2015 and, “as of May 2019 this version has garnered over 2.8 billion views on YouTube, while all videos related to Pinkfong's song approach 5 billion views, making it the most-viewed educational video phenomenon of all time” (“educational”?)

* "Baby Shark" broke into the Billboard Top 100 at #32 during the week of January 7, 2019

* “Due to its popularity, this version of the song has spurred an online dance craze (sometimes referred to as Baby Shark Challenge) cited as ‘the next big thing after the domination of Gangnam Style’”

When debating which characters to draw making the Baby Shark Challenge dance moves, it seemed inevitable to me that it had to be giant monsters.  The most popular giant monsters of the moment are of course those in the recent Godzilla: King of the Monsters movie.

My son, Kaiju fan that he is, told me this drawing was ok... but that if I revealed the Baby Shark theme, we would immediately lose a lot of followers.

But I am afraid, that almost 10,000 departed Instagram followers later, (yes, we were once at 29,000 plus on that platform) it’s too late for me to start strategizing about social media popularity now.

Easter Egg and Boy Chicks

For Easter:

Eggs, Boy-Chicks, Memes,

...& Chick Culling

(You might want to stop reading right now)

As previously mentioned, we’ve been working on a series on internet memes, their importance to our sons, & of course, my basic ignorance. 

Easter seemed like the day to tackle the “World Record Egg,” aka the most liked post ever on Instagram (over 53 million now), & most liked post on any social platform (according to Wikipedia).

And I would have missed it all at the time (January 2019 and onward)  if it weren’t for my sons diligently keeping me up to date.

Apparently the egg’s popularity was not born of pop cultural happenstance, but was initially engineered by select individuals as a challenge to the popularity of Ms Jenner’s picture featuring her daughter. (A mere 18 million likes!)

There were various thoughts and opinions about the egg phenomenon. Was it a triumph of community over celebrity?...populism over consumerism?

Though I don’t think he really had an opinion about any of the above topics, our younger son was definitely an enthusiastic 

egg fan at the time.

Who does not like an egg, after all? Particularly in an iconic, @shutterstock style image?

But let us think further about eggs today on Easter. 

They are pretty ubiquitous. Yes, there’s debate about their nutritional benefits. I had, however, come to the tenuous conclusion that feeding my sons “Pastured, Organic-fed” eggs was better than say Fruit Loops or bagels. Those damn expensive eggs were laid by happy hens, who frolicked on grass, eating delicious bugs, after all....

But like all things diet-, parenting-, environmental-, internet-related: 

Beware.

Even the production of virtuous eggs does not require more than a small handful of male chicks. 

Google “chick culling,” I dare you. Or don’t, & leave with the tidbit that live “maceration” is the destination for male chicks in the U.S.

I am the caretaker of two young male creatures ....for whom I prepare scrambled eggs...

Guiltily.

Happy Easter!

I Identify as a Flying Attack Unicorn

Continuing the meme series, for National Unicorn Day:

While my feelings about my sons’ developing gender politics are ambivalent, (“Mom, is the wage gap a REAL thing?”) I do understand that they are growing up in an entirely different landscape than the one I experienced long ago when I was a young cishet person.

If you are asking yourself if the previous sentence has a typo in it, then you might be late to the gender nomenclature party. My son has high school friends who use “they” or “hir” as their pronoun. The school addresses teacher reports in the 2nd person (“You wrote a good essay”) to avoid inadvertently using an inappropriate pronoun.

We’ve come a long way on the topic of gender and self determination...Well, not universally of course... But the conversation is certainly out there for everyone to see and participate in, complain about, or make fun of through memes. 

One such gender-discomfort meme is  “I Identify as an Attack Helicopter.”  According to knowyourmeme.com, this one parodies “absurd gender and sexual identification posts often found on forums and blogging sites, most notably Tumblr.”

While I have some serious misgivings about the appeal of backlash memes, (particularly to my sons)....it is a confusing time for many, and we do have stuff to process....Humor could help...maybe.

At any rate, while I can’t really support the Attack Helicopter Meme, I find the spin-off than my son favored: “I identify as a flying attack unicorn” to be more charming. 

Because. Unicorns. Why not?

In this drawing, unfortunately, I did not do said unicorn justice. I was thinking that maybe it should be helicopter/robot-like, but, giving my poor skill at rendering mechanical objects, this was not a wise choice

that moment when ur doge

such doge

much homework

very stress

must scroll

Like most internet memes, I was completely unaware of the Doge meme iceberg, while being slightly annoyed by the tiny bit that my sons kept mentioning.  

A couple of years back, every time we passed a smallish, beige-ish dog, we would have to avidly discuss whether that was a ‘doge’ or not. It was finally made clear to me that a doge was a Shiba Inu...maybe.  But why was this so so compelling and important?

Again, like all things internet meme, I have read the exhaustive history, but am still sort of befuddled on the real why beyond the obvious “dogs are funny” and “it is amusing to imagine that they speak pidgin English.”

To attempt a brief summary of some bullet points from @knowyourmeme:

🐕The use of the term ‘doge’ for dog dates back to a 2005 puppet show video

🐕Pictures of a particular Shiba Inu were posted on a personal blog by @kabosumama (her present handle on instagram) back in 2010. 

🐕The meme spread in various forms and various dogs on Tumblr, Reddit and 4chan from 2010 onwards

🐕In 2013, YouTube inserted a feature that shifted text to brightly colored comic sans font when the search term ‘doge meme’ was used. Many of the doge images feature short words and pidgin phrases superimposed like ‘wow,’ ‘so hip,’ ‘very internet meme,’ ‘such wisdom.’

🐕Reports of the original doge’s death in 2017 were a hoax, but were very popular, and no doubt increased the meme’s popularity.

🐕Also in 2017, Dogecoin was introduced as a satirical cryptocurrency. At its height, one Dogecoin was worth $400.80. At last report, they are worth $0.00322634 each. 

🐕Enough?

For our part, we have a bit of a history with dogs’ heads on children. (Take that face recognition software.)

And the classic side-eye doge expression seemed appropriate for “That Moment When Your Mom Sees You Scrolling When You Should Be Doing Homework.’

All Star

Some 

Body Once Told Me

The World Was Going Roll Me

(I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed.)

I had a reasonably good opinion of my own intelligence once. There was some outside corroboration- I did quite well in school. My academic success was very much a triumph of drudgery rather than of innate intelligence. But if one drudges long and hard enough, one can mostly outrun the fear of being outed as a secret dummy.

Maybe until you have kids. Or at least until you have my kids.

The fact that I had a 4.0 GPA in college is now at best a surprising and amusing anecdote.  The ability to perform well in school has been a pretty useless skill in my adult life.

You might think that I could at least help my kids excel at school: help them proofread their papers, share tips on how to study for tests, suggest how to budget their time, etc.?

No. No. No. 

Absolutely not. 

I might even have an inverse effect when it comes to fostering academic prowess in my own offspring. 

You no doubt are wondering what this has to do with the napkin. Maybe not much. But to continue:

Like all things meme related, I was slightly confused when I noticed a year or two ago that my that my older son was repeatedly singing the opening lines to Smash Mouth’s 1999 song “All Star.” I was perplexed at the time, as I was pretty sure the song dated from before his birth. I don’t think I even recalled its use in the opening credits of the first Shrek movie- also released before his birth. 

As usual, I though this repeated singing of the song snippet was a sort of special torture he had cooked up for the adults in the house.

...but no, I discovered later, it was everywhere online.

This “All Star” / Shrek meme is a decade long, deep dark rabbit hole...which is actually a rabbit warren of significant proportions. I can’t even begin to explain it here.

(Go to https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-star?full=1 if you desire an overview)

But one particular iteration is the “Somebody Once Told Me” photo meme. In the first movie, Shrek throws open the door and bursts out of his outhouse, just as this line plays. 

The related memes feature two images with the text split between “Some/body once told me”  The second image is often something  surprising, upsetting and/or funny that is suddenly revealed from behind a door. Many of them are just variations on how funny it is when things go wrong for other people: falling down, blowing up, spilling something, generally getting clobbered in a demeaning way. 

(For more on this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/somebody-once-told-m

In summary, the people rolling me have definitely burst out of my own personal outhouse. But I can only say, “get your game on, go play”

Cringe.

Attack of the Shaggy Meme

Stoner vs Kaiju and Saiyan

As I may have mentioned more than once in past posts, the Cerberus at the gates to my personal hell probably has three Scooby Doo heads. While I disliked the entire show during my own childhood, I was particularly unfond of the talking dog and his scraggly chinned, BFF-in-binge eating, Shaggy.

And during the last 15 or so years of parenting, I have felt like there is always a new Scooby Doo movie or TV show sneaking up on me while my back is turned. I wouldn’t say that our kids are major Scooby and Shaggy fans, but their appreciation for the pair has tested my patience on many occasions.

But until recently, I had no idea how Shaggy had been proliferating out of control in the world of online memes. In these memes, the joke is that he is amazingly powerful.

The genesis of online memes can often be random or mysterious, but All Powerful Shaggy has a couple precursors that are easy to spot.

I’ll assume we all know that Shaggy is usually a wimpy, fearful whiner, frequently manipulated into acting as ghoul-bait by promises of food...often dog food. 

But in “Scooby Doo!: Legend of the Phantosaur,” the 16th direct to video movie in the franchise (you read that right: 16th and it was only 2011) Shaggy is hypnotized to become a motorcycle-riding, bar-brawl-winning badass whenever he hears the word “bad.” 

In the earlier 2004 live action “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed,” there was a memorable scene where Shaggy and Scooby consumed a fridge full of transformative potions, culminating in a ridiculously “buff” super muscly version of Shaggy. (This came immediately after the Shaggy with breasts and a crop top. But the less said about that, the better.)

Perhaps the availability of these source materials made it possible for Shaggy to become the new version of the “Chuck Norris facts” meme.  Chuck Norris facts, as helpfully explained on knowyourmeme.com are, “a series of satirical factoids and hyperbolic claims that characterize the American celebrity martial artist and actor as an extremely tough, virile and alpha-male archetype.” The meme originated in 2005, and lasted a long while. 

For instance: “When Chuck Norris goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a hand gun and a bucket.”

The Shaggy memes are usually more extreme than even the Chuck Norris facts.

In early 2019, it was popular to declare that Shaggy was actually an all powerful god who could end entire universes using only a small percentage of his powers- i.e. “Shaggy was responsible for the Big Bang while using only 14% of his power.”

Shaggy’s memed all-powerfulness also has anime/ manga inflection to it. He has recently appeared as a modded- in character in the game “Jump Force.” 

Previously some 270,000 people had signed an online petition to have Shaggy added in to the latest version of Mortal Kombat, so clearly the desire to see Shaggy fight is shared by more than just a handful of gamers. 

On this napkin, Shaggy is knocking down Goku, one of the superhuman fighters from Dragon Ball, having already trounced Godzilla. 

I would have liked to include a few more antagonists: Thanos? Darkseid? King Ghidora?

But let’s face it, just Goku and Godzilla were challenge enough.