Tag Archives: Internet
Pepe the Frog
The meme: “It’s like a frog cartoon that…people use as a reaction image…I don’t know??? Some people use it to express sadness.”
The informant is a college student who gets on Tumblr every day, regardless of having a love-hate relationship with it; the website is where she first encountered Pepe the Frog, but she says that she sees it used on Twitter as well. When I asked her what she thought when she first saw it, she said, “That it was another dumb meme.” I then asked her if she knew the exact origin of Pepe the Frog, to which she responded, “No, Amanda.” Further research on the website KnowYourMeme.com shows that “Pepe the Frog is an anthropomorphic frog character from the comic series Boy’s Club by Matt Furie. On 4chan, various illustrations of the frog creature have been used as reaction faces, including Feels Good Man, Sad Frog, Angry Pepe, Smug Frog and Well Meme’d.” The meme has spread very rapidly in the last year. This is probably due to the popularity of Twitter, Tumblr, and Reddit recently. Even if people don’t know the exact origin, they find it funny and worthy of using. The Internet is a weird place.
Leauge of Legends – Slang Words and Memes
About the Interviewed: Jared is a sophomore at the University of Southern California, studying Finance. At the time of this interview, he is also my roommate. His ethnic background is distinctively Chinese, and his parents are first-generation American immigrants. He is 20 years old.
At this point of the interview, I highlighted upon my roommate’s love of League of Legends, a massively popular online computer game.
Jared: “League of Legends is an extremely popular game. People play it all over the world. You play it by choosing a hero and joining a team. You have to help your team defeat the other team. It’s pretty simple.”
I ask him about any slang words or unique vernacular he may have encountered while playing such a globally accessed game.
Jared: “Sure. There’s a ton of humor and inside jokes between people who play the game. Internet memes and things like that are pretty popular on there. Aside from basic things like, LOL and WTF, League has other things. A few of the more recent ones- one of them is like, BM, which stands for Bad-Mannered, it’s like when you do things out of line, or sabotage the team, that’s what BM means.”
I ask him if it came about as a result of cooperative play.
Jared: “Yeah pretty much. Another one is ‘GG, no RE’, I don’t know if you’ve heard that, it means “Good Game, no Rematch”, if you want a rematch, you just type RE.”
I ask if he thinks that these phrases came from the community or the people who made the game.
Jared: “They’re probably from the community – thousands of people play the game everyday. There’s actually a meme going around right now – LOMO. There was a guy on one of the Chinese teams – Vasili – instead of typing L.M.A.O. [Laughing My Ass Off] he kept typing L.O.M.O, so people have been saying LOMO a lot lately.”
Here, I ask Jared if he thinks that League’s multi-regional nature contributes to the evolution of these slang terms and jokes.
Jared: “Totally, yeah, It’s always changing.”
Summary:
Players of the popular online game “League of Legends” has developed a number of slang terms and abbreviations as a response to the rapidly evolving culture of the game.
Games like “League of Legends”, that have large, active global communities, are sources of evolving culture. In order to make the game more efficient, players invented terminology to keep things fluid – terminology that can be recognized almost universally, from players in America to players in Korea. The Internet is full of subcultures such as this, but League’s mass popularity ensures that its culture is always on the move.
Rule 34 (of the Internet)
The informant is a USC student, an artist, an anthro major, LGBT-identified, and was born in 1994.
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Rule 34.
Rule 34 is when – have I got a story for you.
Rule 34 refers to ‘Rule 34 of the internet.’ I don’t know when the rules were decided. They were probably written by some guy in his basement like 10 years ago.
Do you know if it was written by one person?
Probably written by several people.
Because there are so many rules and people keep coming up with more rules.
Rule 34: “If it exists, there’s porn of it.” Which is true most of the time. Because usually if something exists and somebody has seen it, they probably have a fetish for it. It comes from that idea that the internet is a place where anyone can submit anything really, and Rule 34 refers to anything that’s – “Oh look, it’s Winnie the Pooh and Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. They really like each other. They like each other sooo much, that I drew porn of it.” That’s like “I ship it.” You can find anything. I think it’s tough to say how to measure Rule 34 as a medium but it’s become kind of like a category. You don’t remember any of the other categories, really, there’s like one other rule – well I can’t remember what it is, it’s like Rule 52 or something.
The genderswap category. That’s the other popular one. But those are the only two really that are famous because basically they’re like art categories now. If you draw Rule 34 – there are people who are like “Yeah, I’m a professional Rule 34 artist.” People commission you to make porn of your favorite things. It’s really fucked up, but it happens, you know. I think that there are website where you can look it up. Tumblr is a great place for finding it. I would know.
Have you looked up many Rule 34?
I can’t say I’ve looked it up, rather, I’ve stumbled across it quite frequently. I’m on my way down my feed, and y’know. One thing about it is that artists who are starting out are trying to make a living on commissions, one thing that they do is that if they’re good at drawing characters they will draw – porn is easy money actually, because people will actually pay for it. Unlike other types. Any they will – most artists go into porn because it’s easier for them to draw, and then they can just draw it. And they can just crank it out. And people will be like “Oh, your art is so good. I will buy 20.” And that’s why people make it – there’s an audience for it.
Talk about your feelings about Rule 34
My feelings about Rule 34 – I’m indifferent to it, honestly. I’m a very easygoing person. I think that people should enjoy whatever they want to enjoy. I mean like – as an artist?
Have you ever drawn Rule 34?
I guess like – I once drew a dragon dick, and that’s probably as far as I went. I don’t think I’ve actively drawn – I’ve never contributed to the Rule 34 society, the community as a whole. I have not given back. But I will say this – y’know. It does – it definitely does have an audience. So if you need to get somewhere…
There’s a reason it’s a rule on the internet. When did you first learn about it?
Damn. I would say when I started using the internet pretty actively – so I think around twelve. I don’t think I saw it then, I just happened to know what it was then. I’d say I was familiar with the concept of Rule 34 at that point in my life.
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While by no means exclusive to younger folk, this is probably a concept more familiar to the generation who grew up with the internet as a standard part of their life. It’s a very internet-originated thing and the whole list of rules is pretty meta, given that it’s a list of rules about the internet, on the internet, generated by internet users. This particular rule highlights the relative freedom that the internet allows and calls boundaries into question.
“I Ship It”
Informant’s self-description: “Both my parents were born in Canada but both my parents on either my mom or my dads side were born in China or in Wales so I identify pretty equally with both of those cultural backgrounds. Even though I didn’t really get a chance to get to know any of my grandparents because they died when I was very little. So I don’t really know that much of the cultural background from those sides but I would like to explore it sometime. Mostly just Canadian though. Born and raised. Very Canadian. Obnoxiously so.
“I do a lot of sports. I grew up playing – my mom wouldn’t let me. I tried to play hockey but she wouldn’t let me. She told me my brain hadn’t finished growing and I would damage it by falling down skating on the ice. And I could start playing when I was twelve. But the thing is is that by the time you’re twelve, you’re already so far behind on the skating skills that catching up then becomes a mess and its not even worth starting, which she probably knew. So I never played hockey. I played soccer and softball and volleyball growing up and I did gymnastics for a while until my mom made me pick between that and soccer. I chose soccer. I’m also into fandom culture and general nerdiness. I’m in the cinema fraternity at USC. Also a social sorority somehow. I don’t know how that happened. ”
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Aside from sports, you said – fandom, let’s talk about fandom. What fandoms are you a part of?
Harry potter, Lord of the Rings, those are the two that are omnipresent. Except Lord of the Rings is picking up because of The Hobbit stuff. And then Marvel, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, definitely kind of the BBC – actors, whole sort of BBC-ness. Oh and the Hunger Games.
How do you participate in fandom?
I’m definitely more of an observer than an active participator. I’m not one of the people that writes fanfic, or does fanart. It depends how much time – usually I just scroll past it on Tumblr and absorb it. But there’s a couple fandom-specific blogs that I’ll follow. Like for certain ships.
What are ships?
When one watches a show, and one feels an intense investment in a couple of characters – sometimes friendship but more often romantic possibilities – it’s called a “ship,” it’s short for relationship. So when someone says “I ship that,” what they’re meaning to say is “I want them to be together forever and have beautiful babies.”
And the term for someone who ships two characters is a “shipper.” I can go all into the different kinds of ships.
There’s called a “one true pairing” or an OTP is what it’s referred to on the internet, which is someone’s main hardcore “I will ship these two characters ‘til the end of the days” or “I will go down with this ship” – it’s kind of like one of the things that is often heard and thrown around on the internet. For me it’s Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff from the Marvel universe – Black Widow and Hawkeye. I love them, I think they’re fantastic. They are also somewhat canon depending on the universe and timeline, but that’s a whole other story. They would be my OTP.
There’s also a broTP, so that’s two characters that you really appreciate their friendship but you don’t want romantic things for them. For me- Capt. America and Black Widow or Steve and Natasha – they’re a brotp because I think their friendship is fantastic but I don’t want them to get together romantically.
There’s also multishipping, when someone wants a character to be with whoever, and there’s also the noTP – two characters for which you hate the mention of that ship. That’s some of the lingo.
Some blogs on Tumblr are devoted to particular ships. It’s an archive of fanfic, fanart, fanmixes and playlists, or headcanons – which is something that could happen between the characters that isn’t clarified in canon – so it’s also not counteracted by the canon of the story. So it’s going beyond the material but not creating an alternative universe to make it something that could be true.
Let’s go back to shipping –
Is your fandom activity all online or do you talk to people about it in person? Have you ever used the phrase “I ship that” in a standard conversation?
Not necessarily in a standard — I do, but it’s with friend who I know who are also a part of that community. So people like Thalia, because we talked about TV shows, and that turned into talking about Marvel, and that turned into talking about Clint and Natasha, and then that turned into – we both are obsessed with anything relating to Avengers Tower, and love hearing about headcanons of what shenanigans may go on at Avengers Tower. [lists examples] It’s generally something that’s more so online unless I already know the person is interested in that kind of thing. If I know they’re interested in that kind of thing it becomes a very large part of our friendship.
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Informant neglected to mention the term “OT3,” which is also a very popular shipping term, and means what you probably think it does.