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Guys, I think my facebook friends are getting closer and closer to discovering and understanding memes…

The problem with this is, I'm scared of gaining even more friends as bronies, and I'm also scared that the internet will leak like mad everyday! I don't want this.

What do?

Call everyone a cancerous faggot.

Delete your facebook, this is one of many reasons (Besides the U.S. government) why I do not have one.
(But I am unsure if you should but I am sure some one will give you a good explanation of what to do).
Edit Sweatie does not count.

A guy came to school today wearing a Forever Alone shirt…
D:

No.

What now!!!?

I'll never get that….

…hopefully.

Every time I'm checking Facebook, i realize i hate all of this people for some reason.

That's why i stopped checking Facebook, on /b/ is enough cancerous stuff.

Show them the shipping thread, and they'll never go on the web again!
.

It's all inevitable. There's nothing to do but

Memes propogate, that's what they're for. They happen in day-to-day life everywhere, all the time. They are not for those 'in the know', there is no secret 'meme club', we all know of and reference at least a few (remember that whole "Whazzuuuuuuuuup!" thing about a decade back? IRL meme). Even when we don't know it, we all participate in the formation, popularisation and development of memes.

In short, Quantum, there is nothing you can do, all that's happening is that these people are coming to realise what a meme is and learning the associated terminology and mememtic logic. The sooner you learn to accept it the better.

Personally, I see no problems.
 
You like memes. They may come to like memes.

I've found less zealous bronies to be just as interesting as non-bronies, if not more.

When people address and use them properly, I find the use of memes outside of the Web to be funny. Interconnectivity is what the Internet is about. It is to be expected.
 
 
Can you say why you don't want this? Because the only way I see your friends changing is if you changed their situation in a way drastic enough to limit their Internet time. That's not likely.
 
 
 
Also, leaving Facebook won't change anything. You're still going to be friends with them. You'll just have one less way to interact with them.

OP right now:

Agreed. Sorry quantum.

I have the perfect meme for the situation.

INTERNET IS LEAKING!!!!!!!!!!!

Constantly, and sometimes quite copiously. I actually had someone say "TL;DR" at me recently. My brain did backflips.

I've never liked the whole "people outside of the internet can't get the internet" thing. The culture behind the internet can't be an inside joke if we want it to grow, and the idea that only those who deserve it should get to know what's going on is stupid.

You don't understand England.

There are more internet user scattered around England and Wales who understand the internet culture than those in London and more city-like areas. It's confusing, you can never tell who's gonna know.

It's weird, actually, at how I know of 1 brony from Scotland, another from England, and 2-3 others from New Zealand dammit!

And I know just one personally in real life.

I'm not really talking about bronies here, I'm just wondering why people are discovering all this now…

You know my mom came across Goatse on her Facebook, so, she immediately made it urgent to show me this, I gazed over her labtop too see, sighed, told her I've seen worse in a relaxed slightly regretful voice, and I just knew something, this isn't the future I want, I never asked for this.

Its gonna be strange when Grandmas in the future talk about weird shit on the internet.

Kill them all quantum. Kill. Them. All.

Okay, I've got to put my $.02 in here.

When I hear people lamenting about how awful it supposedly will be that more people will know about memes, it brings up a number of issues, all of which should be addressed.

First of all, when KYM was in its infancy, other sites that had been around longer such as 4chan, Encyclopædia Dramatica, and you name it were pissed off that we existed. We were a cancer on the Internet, ruining the memes by pimping them out to corporate interests. Aside from the fact that nobody was making a significant amount of money from cataloging and describing memes--which is supposedly our main purpose here--the very valid point was brought up time and again that the nature of memes is such that no person or group "owns" them.

Yet we tend to be hipsters about the things we think are "cool" and don't want to see them go mainstream. In 1987, a variety show called The Tracey Ullman Show started to feature short humorous animations between sketches about a dysfunctional family by the name of "Simpson". The cartoons were pretty funny; in fact, they were funny enough that they spun off into their own show that so far has broadcast over 500 episodes and had a feature film. The interjection "D'oh!" was included in the Oxford dictionary several years back, making it an "official" part of the English language. So, roll back the clock again to 1990, when I was starting college. People were wearing Bart Simpson T-shirts, had Simpsons dolls and figurines, and were constantly quoting lines from the show. Part of me wanted to shout out to the world, "Hey poseurs, I was a fan of Matt Groening's work since I was in junior high and I was reading his Life in Hell comics!" However, a bigger part of me realized that The Simpsons didn't mean the end of Life in Hell, and I should be glad that Groening's comedic genius would get a chance to be recognized by a wider audience, thereby supporting a great artist.

As people have already commented, it is the nature of memes to grow and expand to fill the culture, and if they're good, solid memes, you can't keep them bottled up. I think so many people have forgotten the nature of Internet memes is rather a contradictory existence: We think of them as "in-jokes", but they're "in-jokes" that have an in-crowd of millions. Memetic spread will happen, and along with it, for better or worse, memetic mutation will occur.

Which gets back to one of my pet peeves about the way we do memes that I think people take for granted, but suddenly become aware of when the Internet grabs onto a meme like "What people think I do…" and suddenly thousands of them are made, most of them not being funny and/or appropriate. I know all of us find that sort of thing annoying, but you have to realize that large groups of people picking up on the concept of memes but somehow missing the point entirely has already happened: We are those people. Let me brag about it for the 20th time or so, but I was studying memetics before the World Wide Web existed. Richard Dawkins did not invent memes; they've always existed, but he put a name on them. Language is a meme; culture is a meme; religion is a meme; economics is a meme; heck, the Internet itself is a meme! Technically, what we study here is not so much memetics, but online viral phenomenology. We've taken a term that Dawkins coined in the 20th century and given it a new meaning in the 21st. The more that the concept of "memes" become public, the higher the chance that a new generation of people, not fully understanding what came before, will infuse it with their own personal meanings.

And that is memetic mutation. I understand that there's something irritating and confusing about taking a subject that you're interested in and having new people change it into something you may hardly recognize, but I think you have to recognize that it's inevitable. We semi-joke about being "Meme Scientists" or whatever, but if it is a scientific study, it is one that we are, by necessity, studying from within as it is changing and as it changes us.

Verbose, is that you?

I must admit, when my dad knows memes I suspect he's getting them from his girlfriend, whom I despise.

But what? It's not cool anymore if everyone knows about it? It's true…hipsters really are replacing the popular kids…

Does this mean that soon it'll be edgy and subculture-y to be one of the few remaining "cool kids"?

I've always said to Verbose that his title was rightfully mine. What's more, for quite some time I have subscribed to a method of writing suggested my Stephen King: write whatever's on your mind, then go back and edit it down by 20%. The rough draft of my double-post on the infanticide thread was actually cut back by about a third before I posted it.

You know, we ought to find a topic of interest concerning which Verbose and I disagree and have a forum debate.

@Wheatley:
Inane hipsterism has always been around. I remember (back in 1990 once again) a friend of mine lamenting without sarcasm, "I'm so pissed that Nirvana is getting popular; now I'm going to have to find a new band to listen to."

The only thing I worry about with respect to memes becoming more popular in the mainstream is (a) they'll be overused ("Family Guy Effect"?) or of course, (b) that they'll be used wrong. However neither of them worries me too much because, once again, it's just the nature of the way communication evolves.

I'm remembering that there was some upset some time back over the sudden upswing in usage of the "Butthurt Dweller" image macro by Spanish-speaking users. They referred to it as "Gordo Granudo", and seemed to be using it in a very different manner than English-speaking users. Of course, a meme is whatever society makes it to be, and since nobody owns memes, you can't stop them from evolving in ways you may not like.

However, a more significant example comes from history. I don't know if it was Dawkins himself who first pointed it out, but religions are memes, very complex and powerful ones at that. Arguably, Jesus of Nazareth created the "Christianity" meme, and 2,000 years of history have seen the rise of countless groups that--with either selfish or completely innocent intentions--have reinterpreted the Christianity meme into variations that sometimes look very little like each other. This is not proof that any of them is wrong, nor that any of them is right; it only shows that ideas evolve with the shifting of their memes the same way that living organisms evolve with the shifting of their genes.

(Interesting thought along those lines: Do you think it's coincidence that there is a large overlap between political figures that deny evolution and political figures that feel the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted "as the Founding Fathers intended"? In many ways, it's the same mindset.)

Do what I do: Post long, unintelligible statuses including bunches of memes.

For example:

"LOL ME GUSTA
>IMPLYING GUSTA
>IMPLYING IMPLICATIONS
>IMPLYING
PROBLEM, OFFICER
ROFL LOL"

I knew that.

I'm smart enough to understand the sociology of my society. My problem is how this is happening…

In my professional opinion, I find this 97.3% true.

That means 2.7% of me thinks it's just a bad thing that I need to stop.

I wonder if any of the KYM founders could give us perspective in these dark times?

[photo:264710]

But if there are no girls on the Internet, how will future grandmas know about weird shit like this?

SOMEWHAT BARELY RELATED STORY:

I think grandmas already are weird. At least mine is. My grandfather was the superintendent of an apartment building for a longass time. This little old lady died, and he had to help clean out the apartment. In it, he found two gigantic dildos. He promptly brought this home to show my grandmother how crazy that little old lady must have been. What does my grandmother do with them? What else? She mails them to her best friend's husband with a big romantic letter attached. <3 One day, I will be as great a troll as she is.

I typed up this paragraph this morning before I left for class, but didn't finish to post it.

Brucker was verbose before I was Verbose (with no edits, mind you.) I feel like I just became known for it among this class of KYM frequenters, and perhaps many of the users that knew Brucker aren't as active anymore. I think people know that, but I still feel a little awkward about it.

Brucker is not a meme! wrote:

I think so many people have forgotten the nature of Internet memes is rather a contradictory existence: We think of them as “in-jokes”, but they’re “in-jokes” that have an in-crowd of millions. Memetic spread will happen, and along with it, for better or worse, memetic mutation will occur.

I feel as if people who identify very strongly as being a Web kind of person may feel as if they aren't special anymore: Perhaps as if the mainstream is infringing upon something that was unique to us. Memes are in-jokes as they are known on this part of the Internet (you know what part I'm talking about.) But because the Internet isn't restricted by any hard, institutional boundaries, memes, as we know them, were bound to get into the mainstream. My professor just a week ago was talking about how insurance premiums were too damn high. And he was referring to Jimmy McMillan, because he showed us a video after class.

I wouldn't let that 2.7% bother you too much. This is likely the trend for the future.

Why now? Well, to be honest, the Internet as we know it is still new. It takes some time for innovations to be taken up by people. As people become more wired into Web-stuff, they'll be more likely to come across viral phenomena like bronies, Rebecca Black, 4chan, Touhou…whatever. Before now hasn't been very long in that sense.

You know, we ought to find a topic of interest concerning which Verbose and I disagree and have a forum debate.

Finally, I don't want no Brucker. I decline the offer to duke it out on the forums and will retreat into a corner to play Fire Emblem.

It sounds interesting to debate something with him, but I don't like attention to be solely on me. I'd prefer to just find interesting topics and have multiple people participate.

Well, it wouldn't have to be all-out arguing; I just thought we ought to have a nice thread made completely of tl;dr.

Well, as Brucker said, memes are supposed to be spread. That's the point. But however, even though that's the purpose of these memes, I'd too be horrified to find everything populated by memes.

Even worse, if memes like 'MOAR', 'LOL', "ROFL' and 'TEH' leak out of the Internet, everything would look dumber and would make humanity 's knowledge go backwards.

And as for that Brony problem, I think since I'm Anti-Brony I'm helping with that, friend.

Inb4 negative votes.

As long as they didn't learn it from 9gag. That site is like a parasitic baby-shaped tumour that calls everything wrong.

Sorry Quantum. I did start out with good intentions and a simple point to make, but at some stage my brain drifted into another gear and… well that post happened. I do that a lot, but mostly I catch myself in time to edit it back down to the point I wanted to make (and remove the smart-assery). I'm afraid you were just the poor victim of a brain-post filter malfunction…

It seems this thread is more about how memes work now…

Back on topic:

…yes, how can we?

Seriously Quantum, this is a first world problem if I ever saw one. If your friends become more aware of memes, all that will mean is that your FB page will look more like KYM and you can finally use more meme references in front of your friends without them giving you blank stares. I don't understand what makes that so frightening.

I used to live in a flat with 5 other people who knew and understood internet memes and were unafraid to reference them in real life…guess what: it made absolutely no difference. We were still friends and we behaved normally

You have nothing to worry about

Liking KYM was never cool, Brucker.

I've lived my life as a Little Londoner, I don't feel much like living like a Meme Hipster.

But I kinda know that feel.

^lolreference

Oh great, I'm in a status conversation with a friend who knows some memes…

I'm such a god damn hipster here…

I didn't know that understanding internet culture made you a hipster, when did that happen?

I thought hipsters were people who think they have to be uncool in order to be cool?

Of course it doesn't. My point is, I'm probably the first of all my friends to know about memes.

That's my point.

Oh, we're going along with the.whole "FIRST!" thing, aren't we? Memes are supposed to spread and grow. They can know about memes, that's how memes are made. By a bunch of people liking the same thing. I have no problem with others liking memes. I have a problem with memes IRL. Things should stay on the 'net where they belong.

Your point being?

That's a point…

They barely use them in real life, the only ones I can tell you my friend says all the time is either Nyan Cat or Over 9000.

I have a problem with memes IRL. Things should stay on the ’net where they belong.

Can I ask why?

I've been on the internet for so long that I spill the internet into real life all the time.

EG: Instead of "Joking" I say "Trolling" (I constantly do this without realizing it)

So far the gods of the internet have not smitten me yet. I don't see what the huge crime is.

2 or 3 years ago, I showed a few of my friends FiM. Eventually, they eased other people into it. Now, a bunch of the kids in my grade and the grade under me are getting super annoying, acting like idiot nerd girl. almost daily i see a facebook post saying something along the lines of "omg i watched two hours of ponies i'm such a nerd", and "omg! there's an episode where rarity has wiings!". They even roleplay over facebook, but don't stay to character and just post shipping pictures that relate to their relationships. Then i''ll mention something about the show and they'll get really confused ("wat's clopping?", "There was a controversy about Derpy?" "Who's trixie/ some other big fandom character?"). if you are in a small community, keep memes out of the real world.

This.

Not very the same to my situation but pretty close.

shrugs Idiots' gonna Id.