This is a little different than my previous entries because I want to talk about the popular internet phenomenon called memes. The general definition of a meme is some little nuance in society, life, film, tv, cartoons, etc. that become popular. One of the original memes was the It's Over 9000! Phenomena from Dragon Ball Z. Other earlier memes include Rickrolling (Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give you Up), Numa Numa guy, and Star Wars kid. They are early memes that achieved mass amounts of internet popularity. Memes take on a different medium nowadays in the form of pictures and captions as seen below.
This meme is one of the originals called Y U NO guy. Like many memes it has a picture in the middle and a top and bottom caption. It's usually in the format ______ Y U NO _____________?
Memes evolved from there and as a result produced many more meme characters. Some of the characters include Paranoid Parrot, Scumbag Steve, Foul Bachelor Frog, Futurama Fry, Professor Oak, Slowpoke, Success Kid, and Put it Somewhere Else Patrick. Success Kid is a favorite of mine because it's little kid logic we can all relate to. There's an example below.
It's one of my favorites but unfortunately it inspired a new meme that is the most tasteless, crude thing I've ever seen in my life. That is the ultimate point of this post. I give you Third World Success Kid.
Let's start at the beginning because it is wrong on so many levels. One, third world is not a politically correct term. The correct term would be developing country. I'm aware this picture is likely from Africa but I am currently living in a developing country and I have some things to say. Land mines are an issue, so don't f***ing joke about that! On another one that I didn't mention the caption is "worked 14 hours, made over two dollars". In a developing country, two dollars is nothing to scoff at, in Cambodia you can easily live on 2 dollars a day, and Cambodia is the second poorest country in Asia (next to Laos). It may seem like I'm making a big deal about this (and there are only 9 of these so far) but it sickens me how some people can be so insensitive and poke fun at developing countries. To people that think developing countries filled with land mines, naked children, and poverty, why don't you come see for yourself instead of making broad generalizations? I've seen the poor part of Cambodia, it's a shock and is not something to make fun of, the people here aren't lazy, they're doing whatever they can to survive. It's hard living here (or in any developing country for that matter). Okay I have been ranting for the last paragraph but there was somebody on www.quickmeme.com that recognizes the vulgarity of this meme and produced a fantastic response.
This meme is called Push it Somewhere Else Patrick. It originated from a Spongebob episode called Sandy, Spongebob, and the worm. This image comes from Patrick's line "why don't we take Bikini Bottom, and push it somewhere else?" People on the internet have called it Patrick's logic and thus it made it's way into becoming a meme. This particular one reinforces that you don't make fun of developing countries. My ultimate argument to this is, don't make generalizations about the real world, until you've lived in the real world. I may not have a lot power, being armed with only a blog, reddit, and facebook but I want Third World Success Kid off of the internet. If not, I just want it to fade into internet obscurity along with the other memes no one likes. That's my bit of internet history and opinion for you all, I apologize if I seemed heated there for awhile but this just royally pisses me off.
Till Next Time...
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