| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Rage Brought On By Forwards

Page history last edited by Ocean Elf 3 years, 5 months ago

 

🧝‍♀️

 

🌊

Written during the age of email forwards being the biggest annoyance, this article will be updated to include newer sources of annoying memes.

 

--

 

🤦

 

Rage Brought On By Memes!

from this page: with a few little additions from moi here and there.

"Oooh! An e-mail or social network message from someone I KNOW!" I'd say, "I wonder what it can be?". And then I'd open it. And be confronted with "101 Reasons Why It's Better To Be A Guy Than A Girl" (or switch genders depending on who shared it and which gender you are). And I'd SCREAM forever.

You see, I just cannot STAND memes, and I can't for the LIFE of me understand why people keep spreading them. I mean, have you ever laughed at an e-mail titled "FW: Fw: Fw: Fw: Re: This is fun!!!" or a social network posts that started with "This is fun!!!"? Or been inspired by a chain letter containing a poem about drink-driving, or a story about some Mexican guy buying a carton of milk for his neighbor's wife or some other such equally ludicrously improbable tale?

If you answered "yes" all I can say is that is desperately sad...

My brain doesn't switch off at the sight of words like "Fun" or "AMAZING!". So I have never been inspired by head-gaming memes. This leads me onto one of the main problems with them.

1) They are written by the sort of people who write chain letters, naturally. More than likely they would be spotty American teenagers with no friends and nothing to do but sit at a computer all day., trying to control the masses with dreck like: "ITS NATIONAL FRIENDSHIP WEEK!!! SEND/SHARE THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND TO THE PERSON WHO SENT/SHARED IT TO YOU!" gratuitously tacked on to the bottom?

No, no

So, why, oh WHY do people whose literary talent rarely even approximates to a correct usage of punctuation and grammar feel the need to foist upon us poem after joke after inspirational story? And, more to the point, why do people read these things and actually SHARE AND RE-SHARE THEM????

Which brings me neatly to my next point.

2) People who share memes are like the people who write them. But with less creativity.

They don't even have to think. They read the meme, which plants the ideas into their heads telling them they are somehow doing the world a big favor. All the person has to do is share it and let the supposed great meme karma take care of the rest. If the meme says a child will be saved by a share, that's all it takes to get another share. If the meme says "This will brighten someone's day!!!" the person actually believes they will automatically brighten someone else's day by sharing AKA spamming cyberspace with another copy of the meme.

Here's a scenario for you to mull over. Imagine that you're incredibly bored and, as a last resort, decide to go on the Internet and have a look around for some interesting sites. "There are literally MILLIONS of websites out there," you think to yourself, "Each a suppository for varying amounts of information on extremely diverse subjects. Almost every interest I have, no matter how obscure or perverted, shall be catered for on some website or other, and although variations in quality are immense, there is SO much out there that it cannot FAIL to entertain me for the awkward half-hour between "Friends" and "Frasier"! Why, the very beauty of the 'Net is its INCREDIBLE eclecticism! And whilst I am on, I shall check my e-mail/social networks.

Ooh, one new message downloading! I wonder what it could be......

Why, it's a meme with a big, honking attachment! Which will take forever to download!

After the email program or social network page freezes, it eventually starts to resume the download, and that was several minutes of your life you will never get back.

Was it worth the wait?

Well, no.

Shall doubtless turn out to be a collection of pictures of men on bicycles taken at HILARIOUSLY unconventional angles! Ker-CHING! It's only the same stupid internet clogger shared by at least four other "friends" within the past day! Well, I know what I'LL be doing for the next half-hour! Ah, memes...... Eases the pain......"

DOES THAT SOUND LIKELY TO YOU? Because it certainly DOESN'T to me.

Just who ARE these people, that take it upon themselves to inflict their own particular brand of 'entertainment' on the rest of us? They're like the really bad karaoke singers who start belting out "I Will Survive" when you're right in the middle of a pleasant conversation. Only, instead of actually singing THEMSELVES, they play a tape-recording of someone else singing, someone who you've never seen, never heard of, and pray to GOD you'll never meet. Because, if you DID happen to bump into them on your way home one lonely winter night with no witnesses around, and they started telling you a story called "The Boy Who Never Gave Up" or "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down", your next prayer to God would be a rather lengthy one, involving a fair old bit of explaining on your part.

But, most of all, ABOVE ALL about these people, ONE thing gets to me. It's the knowledge that they haven't sent it to me for ANY real reason, other than my presence in their address book or connection on a social network.

I'm fine with someone discovering something on their own, that is not a meme from a friend of a friend. Something they saw during their browsing and thought"This is the sort of thing (Insert name) would probably appreciate!" and then shared it with me, with the best of intentions. But I DO mind when someone says "Ooh! A great/cool/funny/amazing meme! Another chance to INDISCRIMINATELY inflict upon EVERYONE with whom I have had ANY sort of correspondence in the last 5 years a completely inane and utterly pointless exercise in showing-off!!".

Because I'm fairly convinced this is the main reason they do it, you know.

1) To show that they receive memes, and thus to prove that they have friends.

2) To let everyone on their mailing/friends-list see how big their mailing/friends-list is, and further propagate the myth that they have lots of friends.

3. Because they think some stupid sappy preachy friendship meme is more sincere, inspirational, and more appreciated than an actual personal note typed up by them! Heaven forbid they should actually send you their OWN ORIGINAL THOUGHTS!!

They have no clue how insulting it is to keep getting preached at by stupid friendship or pseudo-religious chain letters that tell you you must not love God enough if you don't share a crummy meme! They don't stop to think how irritating it is to get nothing but memes from them with all this sap, corn, useless, out of date, and outright bogus e-petitions, gossip and rumors designed to blacken some famous person's reputation, etc.

And so it is that the rage induced by my finding a meme in any sector of that bit of cyber space I frequent, is directly proportional to the number of unfortunates who have also had their Inboxes/social network spaces violated in a similar fashion. The message is: there is more than enough schytte on the Internet as it is, without the relative sanctity of my mail server or social network space becoming a suppository for further crap.

Memers, no-one is impressed by your slip-shod attempts to affirm your social circles. For, when all's said and done, anyone who thinks that repeating and rehashing something that wasn't even worth saying in the first place is an adequate substitute for proper human contact needs their head examined. With a baseball bat.

Also, check out this site.

 

--

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.