Nuke the Fridge
Time Magazine listed UrbanDictionary.com as one of its 50 top sites of 2008 (source). This site is chock full of sayings and phrases that you may hear uttered around your kid sisters’ high school these days. When we were young, the ‘cool’ new words were spread through day to day use. New words and fads spread quickly, but only by word of mouth and many were regionalized. Today the Web has the power to spread things infinitely faster, across borders, cultures and languages. This has expanded from just words, sayings, or gestures to content and videos. There even is a word for such trends: a meme.
I was reading this morning on Kottke’s blog about a saying that has spread far and wide in just a few short weeks, one that I had not heard of called nuke the fridge:
Not so long ago, on May 24th, IMDB message board participant beachedblonde coined a new phrase: nuke the fridge. Here’s the definition from the Urban Dictionary…it’s roughly equivalent to jumping the shark:
A colloquialism used to delineate the precise moment at which a cinematic franchise has crossed over from remote plausibility to self parodying absurdity, usually indicating a low point in the series from which it is unlikely to recover. A reference to one of the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which the titular hero manages to avoid death by nuclear explosion by hiding inside a kitchen refrigerator.
There are already 16,000 results for variations of this term in Google. There are Facebook pages, t-shirts, and even a Website already set-up to expose this meme. (via Kottke). Internet meme’s are running rampant on the Web. Wikipedia and other sites have now cataloged most of these viral trends for constant enjoyment. Some of my favorite meme’s of recent memory include: The RickRoll, the Dramatic Chipmunk, Leeroy Jenkins, Tay Zonday, and who can forget All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
For that small period of time where each person with a cable modem and email shares that video, or that Website, an entrepreneur is born. Just look at iJustine, the video blogger turned Web celebrity. Her 300-page iPhone Bill video catapulted her to virtual stardom.
So, with the internet able to spread these like wildfire, do you tire of them quickly?
Tags: Memes
