By Alexis McLaughlin
I’m sure anyone with eyes and a working ethernet cable knows the reference eluded to in my title: the whole “adjective-noun-is-adjective” meme that sprouted up God knows how long ago in some Reddit, Memebase, 4chan kind of place.
And I’m certain I’m not the only one thinking along these lines — that this meme, like so many others, has long been sucked of any humor, originality, tolerability, or anything that would permit its continued use in our cultural vernacular.
The shameful thing of it is, most of these memes were wildly funny, when they came out! A clever caption paired with a rib-ticklingly fitting picture: it’s concise comedy! You can’t beat that.
Well, actually, you can. In fact, the whole world seems to be clubbing the life out of these poor, memed babes through their incessant, unprovoked use of every internet quip imaginable. I can’t tell you how many ulcers I’ve formed listening to potentially good punchlines devolve into trite meme plug-ins, how raw my intestinal lining has grown at the use of “Yo, dawg, I heard you like so-and-so, so I put a so-and-so in your so-and-so so you can do stuff while you do stuff.” It’s really annoying.
But seriously, can we just stop clinging on to any catchy phrase that finds its way through a few websites? Are we that void of creativity that we can’t make our own jokes? It is the worst conceivable sensation when merriment is being had, then all of a sudden, somebody makes a quick, sometimes well-placed reference to a meme, and in seconds, the whole group is chiming in with “ALL the ‘whatever-noun-the-first-friend-just-said’!” and “troloLOLOLOLO,” while you just sit there wondering when comedy became as recyclable as soda cans.
So wake up, every Internet-wielding person. Parroting a phrase that isn’t your own doesn’t make you funny — at least, not for long. It makes you un-innovative, me pissed, and this article all the more relevant.
