The death of Michael Jackson caused a massive surge of traffic on the Internet yesterday.
According to this story from the LA Times, Twitter was receiving as many as 5,000 Michael Jackson-related updates a minute. A minute. Almost makes you forget about that whole Iran election thing.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mark Morford offers more in his usual snarkish but fascinating way.
P.S. The video for “Thriller” scared the crap out of me when I was a little kid. Anybody else?
This is part of a (hopefully) recurring series explaining various “Internet memes”, which are catchphrases or concepts that take on a life of their own on the Internet. We’ll discuss sources, uses and I’ll give my own insight as to whether the meme deserved to even be.
It’s a English teacher’s worst nightmare. OK, maybe not as bad as trying to decipher Shaquille O’Neal’s Tweets, but still pretty bad.
The phrase showed up everywhere, even the desert
A few years back, the phrase “all your base are belong to us” took off across the Internet, then branched out into T-shirts and hacking pranks. Besides the horrible grammar, a lot of people were left wondering what the heck the point of this phrase was.
As it turns out, it was a standard case of a more-commonly occuring source of laughter: Engrish.
Engrish is the name given to poor translations of East Asian languages such as Japanese, Korean and various forms of Chinese into English, resulting often in English phrases that make very little or no sense whatsoever. There are numerous websites (such as this one) devoted to showing off the vast examples available of Engrish.
Here's a great example of Engrish. If you have any clue what this is talking about, congratulations.
One place Engrish showed up was in a video game called Zero Wing. Originally released in Japanese arcades in 1989, the game was released in home versions in both Japan and Europe for the Sega Mega Drive (better known here in the States as the Sega Genesis) in 1991.
Problem is, the European version was a little bit rushed, so some things were scrimped on, such as accurately translating the cut scene text from Japanese to English. And, as usual, that resulted in some Engrish.
The full Engrish of the cut scene can be found on Wikipedia. But, the important one to note is that what should have been “CATS (the name of the game’s antagonist) has taken all your bases” became “All your base are belong to us.”
Sometime in the late 90’s, the Engrished version was turned into a Flash video, which you can see here on YouTube. And, for whatever reason, “all your base belong to us” caught on. Here’s one possible explination, from a 2001 Wired article on the phrase:
I think there are a number of factors that combine to make All Your Base a fairly virulent meme. First, the incongruity of “engrish” in a reasonably nicely produced game is funny, much like professionally printed signs that happen to contain typos. Second … it works well as a catchphrase and slogan and fits easily into many different contexts. And, as any 12-year-old or online gamer knows, anything that was funny once is funnier when you repeat it 100 times.
And here it is. The source of it all.
My judgement: I can understand something in Engrish becoming a meme. Right or wrong, mocking aspects of foreign cultures we find quirky is a long-standing aspect of human life. But, why this particular one? I have no clue. It was a video game, and video game quirks tend to find favor on the Internet before other concepts. That’s about the best I can offer, because otherwise I can’t find anything that makes it otherwise deserving.
Best of luck to Ashley, who faces competition on being an authority on the difficulties of being green…
Yep, another blog has launched here at the Appeal-Democrat.
Green Scene is authored by Ashley Gebb, our Yuba City/Live Oak reporter.
And no, it’s not about her love of a particular color, but about all things environmental. Ashley knows her stuff; I can tell you this both from our Chico State days and now having her as a cubicle neighbor in the office. I’ve already gotten a few lectures on composting, grades of plastic, Kleen Kanteens and double-sided paper.
So stop in and talk with her.
I mentioned a few weeks back what is being demanded of a sister paper of the Appeal-Democrat in regards to their online commenters.
There’s another attempt by the government to grab information on online commenters, and this one is closer: Sin City.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal is fighting a federal subpoena for information on online commenters who posted their thoughts in a story about a tax fraud trial.
In this case, the feds are contending it’s over safety issues because some commenters apparently threatened the safety of prosecutors and jurors.
Once again, I just have to note that I doubt a successful subpoena would gain prosecutors anywhere near the amount of information they want. At best, the gain the ISPs and have to subpoena them for more specific information.
Just add some extra security (probably cheaper than winning a subpoena fight) and call it good.
UPDATE: The feds have shrunk their subpoena request to comments, and the R-J plans to comply with it. The ACLU still doesn’t like it and will try to quash that subpoena as well.
I’ll let you look at it over on Short Form Blog.
I will note, however, I have my doubts the supposed original source of the quote is actually based in Iran. A lot of Twitter users have been switching their location info to Tehran because of a belief it may make things more difficult for government censors to block legitimate Iranian accounts.
I saw it when I was perousing Twitter this weekend.
Many Twitter users utilize “hashtags” to categorize what they’re talking about. A hashtag is a pound sign, followed by a descriptive word. For example, I made several tweets while I was walking the track at Relay for Life Saturday night, so I added “#relayforlife” at the end of those tweets. It’s designed to make it easier to search for tweets on specific topics.
But, back to this weekend. A sudden, surging hashtag on Twitter was “#CNNfail”
Basically, as this New York Times piece points out, people took to Twitter in droves this weekend to blast CNN for what they thought was lacking coverage of the unrest following elections in Iran.
CNN, for their part, is acting a little shocked, but c’mon, they ran a freakin’ re-run of Larry King talking to the “American Chopper” people. That’s a little out there even for somebody like me who tends toward MSM apologetics.
But it’s a great look into how Twitter is providing immediate news coverage feedback.
As of right now (3:15 Monday), #cnnfail is no longer a trending topic on Twitter, but #iranelection remains at the top.
A tweet I wanted to pass along from former San Jose Mercury News photographer Richard Koci Hernandez:
@koci a t-shirt i would buy!: “Google doesn’t kill newspapers. People kill newspapers.”
