❮❮prevnext❯❯

citation so damn needed

sidebar of the people

"Cheesy is the new edgy". That's my theory going into 2008.

There seems a Moore's Law of edgy content. Every 18 months, horror movies get twice as gory, celebrity news gets twice as shameless, SomethingAwful goons and /b/tards get twice as annoying, and political bloggers get twice as strident. Sexual arousal, disgust, annoyance, and outrage are easy emotions to pump, and I'm getting tired of it.

Is it any wonder we're so enchanted with YouTube? "Chocolate Rain" has a lot of lines in it that are definitely about serious aspects of racism in America, though the complete message is a little more elusive. But the song itself, by Tay Zonday's own admission, is SO CHEESY. And it took the Internet by storm. I downloaded it and put it on my iPod.

That, my friends, is the future. Adding a pleasant cheese coating to make things easier to digest, not more difficult.

Don't believe me? Chuck Norris endorsed Huckabee for President, with many references to those Chuck Norris "facts". How will the Democrats respond to this historic use of an Internet meme in a Presidential campaign? It's a strategy that Ron Paul overlooked, that's for sure.
--Nick B
(1 comment)
(4 comments)
2007.11.21
I was thinking about Wikipedia's No Original Research policy, the rule that launched a thousand [citation needed]s.

I remember some science fiction book where history and archeology had devolved into a mere meta-research, collating and analyzing former historical studies to synthesize the truth. That was considered true scholarship, not actually going and digging up things yourself. (Wish I could remember the title.)

I understand Wikipedia's need to not be a sounding board for every Internet yahoo with an axe to grind, but in some ways it seems to be a ducking of responsibly. I mean, it has the right to determine just what its role is and firmly stake out a place low on the pantheon of "real" academics and actual discovery.

Quote of the Moment
Now here we are in the age of too much information. The landscape lined with guardrails. Warnings on everything: "Do not touch when hot." "Sharp: may penetrate skin if pressed." "Open with an extreme sense of foreboding."
Garrison Keillor
Menu of the Moment
--The Gail Ann Coffee Shop, right across the street from me. Great donuts, but this sign made me think of that Monty Python skit. "Err... do you have something without cheese in it?"