pirates vs ninjas

internet memes are strange things, since these little social genes are usually confined to a small locality, in the old days memes were so useful in identifying a person, like how people from massachusetts use wicked and northern californians use hella. television helped to break down those boundaries, and at first people were afraid that the bland midwestern accent used on major news networks would destroy the american dialects but in fact only made them stronger, but just doesn't have the reach that the internet has.

this leads me to the new form of meme, the ones that spread and proliferate on the internet. we all know that pirates and ninjas are the worst of enemies but what's the new battle brewing out there? will it still be the violent and criminal type that we idolize now, or maybe some underrepresented ethnicity, like the basque? regardless at the rate that the internet is evolving there's no telling what will pop up next, much like that new YouTube video will sweep the internet like wildfire only to be forgotten a the next turnover of the internet scene. in any event, pirates and ninjas are dead to me, bring on the matchup between the yale men and little lord fauntleroy.

fnord!

i want to talk about fnords now. they're a really cool idea that i found on wikipedia. i'm not certain of the veracity of then concept but it's a great thought experiment anyway. a fnord is a word, but it's not just any word it's a special one that everyone can recognize. in theory the government designates which words are fnords and the populace is conditioned to ignore them when read but at the same time people get really uncomfortable when they see fnords. this ties in to their use, making people feel edgy all the time about news, by filling the papers with fnords, and encouraging people to buy more things, by forbidding their presence in ads.

of course this is all just a simple model for the way that manipulation of a populace really works. conspiracy theorists can postulate on the actual keywords that elicit these kinds of responses but in truth the situation is much more subtle. has anyone ever seen a personality cult, one of the most powerful forms of thought control, in it's beginnings? or do they only become recognizable after the fact? it's a pity that things aren't more clear cut.

whispered apologies

i recently found a really cool concept comic called whispered apologies. the premise is that any old person can draw a comic and send it to the site, then one of the guys from the site, the crew of which is composed of several webcomic authors, will add text to it. it's delightfully quirky and while the comics are not uniformly good there are gems where the both the illustrator and writer are definitely channeling the same good vibe.

this leads me to another genre of comic that i really enjoy called constrained comics. there are only a few examples of this type, dinosaur comics is the best one, and they are all artificially bound in some way. for example, dinosaur comics uses the same panels every day and the only thing that the creator has to work with is text. despite this the comic is varied and fresh, in actuality it's simply a constant and interesting way for the creator to espouse whatever it is that he's been thinking about that day. another benefit to the constrained comic, although it also applies to any comic with a simple format, is that it can update everyday allowing much more content to be released into the muck of the internet. in short, i like them and think that they are good representations of the kind of art that evolves on the net.