My friend and I were in class and we were bored by the professor and she found this meme. We almost got in trouble for laughing during class. When she showed me the meme she said, “I bet this is way better than our current lecture.” It is common knowledge that MIT is an incredible school for many majors, especially engineering majors. This meme is popular with current music. This version pretends that the algorithms lecture is the “hottest” track out there. My friend found this meme on the internet and it has many forms. Its origin is unknown. This version was most likely developed by someone in the computer science or engineering field. Not many people outside the field would understand it or find it funny.

My friend is a computer science major with a game development emphasis. As part of the computer science community she collects and forwards a myriad of folklore specific to this unique group. Computer science folklore is unique and reflects the beliefs and the culture of the group. Per my informant, as well as personal experience, computer science majors have a unique sense of humor that develops from the difficult coursework, the long hours spent on the computer coding, and the group dynamic required to get through the major. This humor is often expressed through memes and jokes only members of this group can understand and appreciate.

I find this meme and ones like it funny because they are incredibly relatable. Memes are able to adapt to different groups. I find that really interesting. I believe that is the main reason that memes are so popular. Every group can find or create memes specific to their folklore (i.e. jokes, tales, inside knowledge). As a result memes can seem personal and specific to the group.

“How do you comfort a JavaScript bug?………..You console it.”

My friend learned this piece from another computer science class. My friend is a computer science and business administration major with a cybersecurity minor. As part of the computer science community he collects and forwards a myriad of folklore specific to this unique group. Computer science folklore is unique and reflects the beliefs and the culture of the group. Per my informant, as well as personal experience, computer science majors have a unique sense of humor that develops from the difficult coursework, the long hours spent on the computer coding, and the group dynamic required to get through the major. This humor is often expressed through memes and jokes only members of this group can understand and appreciate.

He told the joke to me while we were working on an assignment together. We were writing JavaScript for our website project for a class that we are in together. We were trying to debug our JavaScript code. The bug was being particularly tricky to find and fix. Therefore, he remembered the joke. He then turned to me and told me the joke.

The humor of the joke comes from the wordplay on the words “bug” and “console”.  The normal use of the word bug refers to a small creature, usually an insect. However, in the computer science world it refers to a problem in the code that is often hard to find and sometimes hard to fix. In order to “comfort” or fix the bug, one must find it. Generally, in order to find the “bug” the programmer prints out statements to the console. This allows the programmer to find where the program is doing something incorrectly.

I found this joke particularly amusing because debugging programs is one of the main problems programmers face. The joke implies that it is easy to find the bug if you simply print it to the console. However, a majority of the time bugs are not that easy to find and fix. The irony as well as the word play make the joke.

My sister was watching one of her favorite television shows, Naval Criminal Investigative Service or NCIS for short. During one of the episodes a camera panned to a poster on a back wall that contained this quote. She thought of me, paused the episode, and called me into the room. She then rewound the episode and told me to watch.  Right before the sign was about to appear she yelled “watch, watch, watch!” Then the quote appeared on the screen. “There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.”  As soon as I saw the quote I started laughing. She then asked me to explain what it meant because she didn’t understand the joke. I then explained that 10 in binary means two. Thus the quote reads, “There are two types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.”  This translation makes sense everyone. The humor of the joke comes from the fact that people who don’t understand binary won’t be able to understand the joke.

My sister is a political science and economics major. She plays water polo and is a member of many “fandoms”. A “fandom” is a group of people who follow, generally, a television show or a novel. Some of the fandoms that she belongs to follow shows such as Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Naval Criminal Investigative Service(NCIS). The group develops terminology that is only understood by other members of the group. For example, many fandoms “ship” certain characters. This means that the members of the fandom or just fans of the show want two characters to become a couple.

I thought it was thoughtful of her to pass on this saying to me even though she didn’t fully understand it.

My friend Adam found this while he was taking a break from working on an assignment. He began hysterically laughing at his computer and I looked at him mystified. It took a few moments for him to control his laughter. Then he showed me his computer screen with this picture on it. I too found this image incredibly funny. After I finished laughing I was curious to see why he thought the image was funny. He told me that he thought the image reflected the irony found in the computer science major lifestyle. Often, when working on assignments programmers find something that seems like it will be a blessing. For example, solving an error or finding a helpful example or explanation of a concept online. While this helps for a little while another problem often arises very closely after this first problem is solved. I thought this image was funny for another reason. As a computer science major, we often don’t talk about much else than computer science. When we try to talk about other things we often digress back to talking about some sort of computer science topic. In the image the little girl experiences a similar situation with the pony.  Her reaction in the last frame is very similar to my reaction when I realize that we have digressed back to a computer science topic.

Adam is a computer science and business administration major with a cybersecurity minor. As part of the computer science community he collects and forwards a myriad of folklore specific to this unique group. Computer science folklore is unique and reflects the beliefs and the culture of the group. Per my informant, as well as personal experience, computer science majors have a unique sense of humor that develops from the difficult coursework, the long hours spent on the computer coding, and the group dynamic required to get through the major. This humor is often expressed through memes and jokes only members of this group can understand and appreciate.