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I Was Internet-Famous

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Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious? I thought it was fantastically thoughtful, insightful and witty.

It is all of those things. The language is just a bit overwrought.

My own writing style, for better or worse, tends to hover around a sixth-grade reading level, but I love experiencing authors who have distinct voices, and I especially appreciate ones who have the courage to break out all of the five dollar words and obscure metaphors.

In our anti-intellectual culture, doing that really risks mockery (case in point), but I think sophisticated, complex writing can illuminate in ways other styles can't, and it's just a fun obstacle course for the reader's language center.

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#13
Does anyone else wonder if the concept of "internet famousness" has a finite shelf life? At least at the level that these people experienced?

The internet engine seems to be cranking through memes faster and faster. Sure, a video might get several million views, but the very next week, those millions of people are already on to the next thing.

It just seems to me like our collective memory is getting shorter and shorter and the fallout from internet famousness might start shrinking, if it hasn't already.

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#15
I remember my father talking about Internet Mahir when I was kid. We were so curious how a random guy from our hometown became so famous, and got the key of the internet. Internet Mahir contributed to my life that way. My father began buying magazines about computers, those magazines would give lots of CDs that we hold and ask "what do they do with this?". Then my father went to Istanbul for funeral of my uncle, and came back with a desk, designed for computers. We didn't have a computer but there was the desk. A few years later, we bought a computer, and internet connection to our home. First website we visited was "ikissyou.com" and then I was trying to make one for me and my brother. Thanks to Internet Mahir, I have a job now.

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#16
post #6

Tay Zonday's response is hilarious. "It is hard to create Derrida’s fracture in the repetition of power structures when the loins of civil society log every person’s digital utterance."

Hilarious? I thought it was fantastically thoughtful, insightful and witty.

Yeah, I hope he takes the time to write a book, it would be great.

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#17
post #6

Tay Zonday's response is hilarious. "It is hard to create Derrida’s fracture in the repetition of power structures when the loins of civil society log every person’s digital utterance."

[deleted]

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#18

Does anyone else wonder if the concept of "internet famousness" has a finite shelf life? At least at the level that these people experienced? The internet engine seems to be cranking through memes faster and faster. Sure, a video might get several million views, but the very next week, those millions of people are already on to the next thing. It just seems to me like our collective memory is getting shorter and shor…

I don't see any evidence that the cycle has gotten faster. There were plenty of mayfly wonders on YouTube years and years ago, and the Internet had its memes well before. It doesn't look much different to me over the past decade, (Have aggregators like Fark, YTMD, SomethingAwful, 4chan, really sped up? The list is so long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena If we looked at knowyourmeme.com's lists and the Google search histories, I don't think we would see much of a speedup. Memes would still be born and die on similar timescales.)

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious? I thought it was fantastically thoughtful, insightful and witty.

It is all of those things. The language is just a bit overwrought.

To be fair, how would you expect him to talk after a decade of people pretending not to understand him because they don't like his message?

Even though it's almost nine years later, every day there are so many white people leaving comments on the Chocolate Rain video pretending not to understand what he's talking about that you'd think it was our national sport.

Re: I Was Internet-Famous

#20
This brought up so many memories...funny to think of how many of our lives' funniest moments are what we saw on YouTube.

A few other memes I thought of worth including:

- re Bloomberg's sign-language interpreter, the interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hCdtUxnOG8

- Aleksey Vayner, who posted a video resume titled, "Impossible is Nothing", and then later committed suicide: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/aleksey-vayner-death-video

- Guy Goma, who was at the BBC to interview for an IT job, but was mistaken for another guy (with the name "Guy") who was scheduled to give a tech pundit interview, and so had to improvise answers relating to an Apple pundit dispute. He ended up not getting the IT job but got a bit famous anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ

- This was one of the first times when YouTube, as a platform, really blew me away: this mystery guitarist who rocked out to Pachelbel's Canon: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725826

- One more music-famous-meme: the drummer is at the wrong gig...always brings a huge laugh to me, and got this guy some nice gigs, including an appearance on The Office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItZyaOlrb7E

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