\nI find the dynamics of internet meme popularity fascinating. Something explodes onto the scene, sort of plateaus in popularity, and then it hits a secondary market of sorts—a whole new population that missed it on the first go-round—and it takes off again.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe latest of these to hit my inbox first arrived almost two months ago. It was a simple request to go to Google, type in “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and hit the “I’m feeling lucky” button. Up pops a page that looks like the standard Internet Explorer “This page cannot be displayed<\/a>” page, but with some added social commentary (the effect is naturally somewhat diminshed for those of us who don’t use MSIE all the time). I hesitate to create another link to this thing, but if you must<\/em> see it, you can find it here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nStrangely, this thing has shown up in my inbox almost 10 times in the past week. Normally, the only<\/em> email I get is spam, but this has been coming from friends. I do appreciate the thought, that you wanted to share with me a laugh, or at least a dolorous smile and shaking head. Really, I appreciate it. I can only say, though, at this point: message received. No need to send me another message telling me to Google “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”\n<\/p>\n \nI should also probably clear up some seemingly common misconceptions. First of all, the page to which the message refers has nothing to do with Google<\/a>. It’s a piece of satire written by a guy who maintains a website about adverse drug reactions. Second, he wrote it months<\/em> ago. Now, it’s everywhere<\/em>. \nIf you want to know what memes are “fresh” and what aren’t, there is help. Good places to look include Memepool<\/a> and Boing Boing<\/a> and, you know, Google<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n<\/vent>\n<\/p>\n \nOn an entirely different note, I think I’m teetering on the edge of insanity. All I can say is, “Ooh, the pretty colors!”\n<\/p>\n \nNP: The Decemberists, Grace Cathedral Hill<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I find the dynamics of internet meme popularity fascinating. Something explodes onto the scene, sort of plateaus in popularity, and then it hits a secondary market of sorts—a whole new population that missed it on the first go-round—and it takes off again. The latest of these to hit my inbox first arrived almost two months […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhoke.name\/oldblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf, by chance, it is (or was) the first page that Google returns on that particular search, it has gotten there entirely because certain people keep sending other certain people to that page, and certain people keep<\/a> linking<\/a> to it, etc.\n<\/p>\n