Internet Trends

Anybody who spends a lot of time on the internet (mainly the younger end of the group) starts to become familiar with the unique sense of humor that is widely used across the web. Anything from phrases to pictures can become a staple to internet usage. It started off as a small trend but now is becoming more widespread, which will slowly cause the demise of the humor, as big media names will start endorsing things that became underground-ly funny years ago. A good recent example is 'Cigar Guy'. Something like that a short while ago only would've been discussed on forums and other websites of the sort. But now, there's a story about the background of Cigar Guy on the frontpage of Yahoo! and it debunks the story behind it. This ruins all the humor of the subject, and in sense, The mass media took something funny and killed it from overexposure just to make headlines, as it does with so many other things. The story behind this particular case is, Cigar Guy was photographed as being an out-of-place onlooker as Tiger Woods fired a shot, complete with a big, bushy mustache, cigar, and turban. The unusuality of his appearance caused many photoshopped pictures inserting his likeness into pictures across history. This is a staple with most internet memes, and is how the joke is spread. But, some big media outlet picked up on the story and documented it, making it widely known outside of the internet community. Finally, in the Yahoo! story, they interviewed the man, revealing his name, background, and that the turban (when viewed from another angle) was actually a ponytail, and his cigar and mustache were only a costume, to honor his favorite golfer. By learning the story behind the joke, it removes all credibility because there is no imagination left to the joke. You know what's actually going on so you can't find it funny. If the media hunted down Keanu Reeves to ask him to explain in detail the "Sad Keanu" meme, it wouldn't be funny anymore. It's like an inside joke or fad. It's funny or interesting amongst your group of friends, but when it gets out and everyone starts doing it, it becomes boring and uninteresting, "lame" in a sense. I guess this blog is about a cross between internet humor and mass media over-promoting things and ruining them. Internet jokes are funny in their own sense. When one is picked up and goes widespread, people don't know the original story behind it, and all the other jokes it's associated with, and then they go and do stupid shit like make t-shirts and make Facebook groups, and wear the shit out of it until there's no hope of it being funny again. If I ever see someone wearing a Cigar Gut t-shirt, I'll kill them. Legit. Because it's not funny anymore because of the fucking media. I feel like more and more of a hipster every day. Cardigans and Indy bands, here I come.