Category Archives: Humor

The Joke of the Google Self-Driving Car

Nationality: Swedish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/24/18
Primary Language: Swedish
Language: English

Background information:

Palo Alto in the Silicon Valley area is located in California and is beautiful in a myriad of different ways. It is close to nature, has beautiful architecture, and is an extremely environmentally conscious, friendly, and accepting location. I grew up in Palo Alto since I moved from Sweden to the United States when I was almost six years old and went to high school just around the time that Google started releasing their self-driving cars to test-drive around in the Palo Alto and Mountain View area, as Google’s headquarters is located right next to Palo Alto in Mountain View. The Google self-driving car projected was later named Waymo, but people always referred to these unique cars as the Google self-driving cars.

 

Main piece:

Because I was enrolled in high school around the time that Google released their self-driving cars out into the public traffic, I would often see them on my way to school and driving around my neighborhood. They truly began to gain popularity throughout my junior and senior year of high school (2015-2016), however, which was just around the time that everyone my age was receiving their driver’s license. Therefore, as more and more high school students started driving themselves to and from school, and Google started releasing more self-driving cars into the public, students my age would often run into them in the traffic to and from school everyday. The Google self-driving cars are amazing in their technologically advanced feats, but the one striking problem is that they drive very slowly. Therefore, because they are extremely slow cars, people would often get stuck behind them on the rush-hour getting to school and leaving school, so getting stuck behind the Google self-driving cars became a local joke in Palo Alto that people would always use if they were running late or to simply be funny.

 

Personal thoughts:

I am very grateful to have lived in the Palo Alto community because there are countless technological advancements around us everyday. Some of these advancements come with their host of disadvantages, however, as was seen with the Google self-driving cars. I remember being very frustrated when I was in a rush and ended up behind one of these cars because there were often very few ways to get around them and they often contributed to the traffic overall, so it is nice that there are no Google self-driving cars near USC.

Daddy Nikias

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 26, 2018
Primary Language: English

This USC-specific internet meme was described by a friend after class. It refers to USC President C.L. Max Nikias.

“So, uh, there is this whole thing at USC, that like, uh, Nikias is kind of like the father figure, but also in kind of a kinky way? Uh, so people like to say he is, uh, ‘Daddy Nikias,’ um, which is of course a play on a very sexual way of uh, of uh, talking to someone. Um, you know? So, yeah, of course people are going to take this sort of older authoritarian figure and sort of bring him down to our level as college students and say, ‘Yes, let’s make him very kinky.’ So that’s ‘Daddy Nikias.’”

I thought his observation that the students were attempting to “bring him down to our level” was astute, as jokes like this can help to poke fun at authority figures. This joke originated, as far as either of us know, on the Facebook page “USC Memes for Spoiled Pre-Teens.”

Marshall Snakes

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 26, 2018
Primary Language: English

This USC-specific internet meme was described by a classmate after class had ended. It refers to students in the Marshall School of Business.

“Um, Marshall students are, like, known for being, like, snakes. And, I guess the snakes are supposed to be like, that they’re sneaky and like mean and bad, and like, um, cross you over. And so they get a lot of shit on the page for being, like, assholes really. And so like, there’s all these memes about, like, snakes, and how Marshall students are like snakes, and how it’s funny, and how everyone should hate them.”

This meme originated on the Facebook page, “USC Memes for Spoiled Pre-Teens.” She described this page to me as well:

“All of this information is…information can be found, basically like on this USC memes page, um, that a lot of USC students are on, um, or have gotten invited to, and add little posts to, and um, things that are basically just funny to the entire student generation. Or, yeah, student…not generation, I don’t even know what we’re called. Um, body, yeah that’s it.”

T-Pose Fundamentals

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student - Animation
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English

Transcription:

Interviewer: “So do you have any weird traditions in the animation department?”

Informant: “Yeah so we always have jokes about people in T-Pose. So T-Pose is the default position of…a…rig. Yeah it’s…the most plain uh zeroed out position any 3D model or rig is in. Um some people have started telling horror stories about people in T-Pose. Uh we would be working in…uh…the 2D lab and horror stories would start spreading about…you know you’re sitting in a lab alone. You’re working on your in-betweens for Eric’s class when suddenly… the lights go out. You don’t know what’s going on but all of a sudden…for a while it was something about Waluigi, the Mario character. A tposing Waluigi clips through the wall…and starts coming towards you. What do you do? And it suddenly becomes this Choose Your Own Adventure story…so it always starts the exact same of like…lights go out,a Tposing someone, sometimes it was our professors, sometimes it was heads of the department of the School of Cinematic Arts. Sometimes it was our friends. But they would always be in T-Pose and not move and just move their like…like move their body position. They would always stay in T-Pose and then move towards you. And it becomes this like Choose Your Own Adventure thing and so we called them T-Pose Hypotheticals. It was…what do you do? I mean they got like pretty ridiculous. One time there was one where it was like…okay…you are a spy during the cold war and you’re…in the…in Russia like like in the arctic and suddenly you look in a cabin and you see two tposing polar bears. They clip through the walls and start coming after you. What do you do? And that’s the Animation Tposing Hypotheticals.”

Interviewer: “That was amazing. Has that been going on before your like… year?”

Informant: “No I think our year started it because it was just us bored in the kitchen. I think Efren was the one who really ran with them but like…yeah Efren was the most creative with them and…I mean it’s even become like we started getting memes like someone posted like a picture of like a bunch of people doing yoga in the park. But they were all in T-Pose so we started joking how it ‘sounds like a Hypothetical’. Yeah.”

Summary:

T-Pose Fundamentals are a series of folk jokes or folk stories that are told throughout the Animation department. As far as we know, the tradition is one that started with the current sophomores of the animation department. It’s not known who began the tradition, but Efren is well known for performing it. Overall, it’s a form of entertainment for the animation students.

Litchfield Biker Gang

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: USC Student - Interactive Meida, Music Production
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/26/18
Primary Language: English

Transcription:

Interviewer: “You’re from Litchfield?”

Informant: “Yes.”

Interviewer: “Is that a small town or a big town?”

Informant: “Small town 8000 but between two cities that I think are 50(000) or 80000, respectively.”

Interviewer: “Are there any stories with Litchfield?”

Informant: “Um…(laughs) so okay so I don’t…so there’s not really…there’s a rope swing which is creepy but…and I’m sure that had I frequented it more, I would have found some more creepy lore there but I never really did go there. Um…but…so there really isn’t a ton of specific lore. I know the town is almost 300 years old so there’s a lot of like local history. Um…there’s like a graveyard. That kind of thing. So it’s a very uh…there are spooky places in it. But what got me laughing was…there is… and this isn’t necessarily lore as it is objectively factually true but I will continue, I will tell my kids about this. Um…there’s this group of children…we called them the LBK: Litchfield Biker Krew with a ‘k’. Because they’re basically a bunch of um… I think I was in high school when we sorta like designated them but they’re about like just this pack of like 8th graders…like not even like super big but like it was a pack of like 8th graders or something who would just bike around, be punks, smoke cigarettes. And like…yeah it was just so funny because they thought they were such badasses but we’re just like ‘heh look at those kids biking like…around and just thinking that they’re badass’. So it’s like…it’s sorta just this think like ‘oh lol that’s Litchfield Biker Crew’ like everyone sorta knew about that and it was sorta like a rich topic to explore in terms of just like…jokes and things.”

Summary:

So the informant talks about a group of bikers in his hometown, known as the Litchfield Biker Krew. The LBK, as they’re known are a group of 8th grade kids who would ride around on bikes and smoke. They were well known throughout the town. The informant plans to pass this story along to his own family one day, making him an active bearer of this legend.