Judit & Judit reenact famous internet memes in a ad for the Swedish cable provider Com Hem to celebrate ten years of providing broadband services.

This is a tribute to all of you who make the Internet what it is without you there would be empty and meaningless. We would therefore like to say a big thank you to all ROTFL: s, LOLS, WTF’s and FTWs you have given us over the years (we are celebrating ten years of broadband provider).

via Urlesque

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Our friends at I Can Has Cheezburger? have just released three new books:

How to Take Over Teh Wurld: A LOLcat Guide 2 Winning, a new compendium of LOLcat images that is a follow-up to last year’s I Can Has Cheezburger? book.

In I Can Has Cheezburger?, Professor Happycat brought LOLcats to the wurld. Nao he has gone back to his lair for 200 all-new LOLcats that give all aspiring kittehs the lessons they need to take over teh world (or at least their hoomins).

Graph Out Loud: Music. Movies. Graphs. Awesome., based on the website GraphJam that humorously explains music and pop culture in the form of graphs and pie charts.

GraphJam.com was founded in February 2008 with one mission: to rescue pie charts, Venn diagrams, decision trees, and other graphs from the terminal boredom of the office. Instead of using Excel and PowerPoint to report third- quarter sales or graph capital expenditures versus amortization, GraphJam.com users applied those tools to Jay-Z’s song “99 Problems” and Yoda’s advice to Luke Skywalker. The result is a thriving community with millions of web visitors whose creativity has produced thousands of graphs and a hilarious new interpretation of pop culture.

Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails, based on the website FAIL Blog which features photos and videos of epic failures.

From the underbelly of the nuts behind hit websites failblog.org and icanhascheezburger.com comes FAIL Nation, your silent guide and handler to the not-even-close-to-perfect nation of FAIL, chock-full of irrelevant tips and useless suggestions about why to shop, who to eat, and when to see. So fasten your exit and check for the nearest seatbelt—your FAIL plane departs now.

Speaking of FAIL, the FAILpocalypse is coming this Tuesday, October 13th at Mr. Smith’s in San Francisco, where copies of all three books will be on hand.

Join Tim and Chad for another specfailular celebration of fail.

This time, we’ve joined forces with the masters of FAIL, the crew from Failblog, to make this the ultimate FAILparty for all you junkies of teh FAIL.

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guest post by Violet Blue

Comedy is truth: While some of us scratch our heads and wonder how an environment for jobs like “social media guru” and pay-per-Tweet advertising can exist, others create scathingly brilliant and hilarious videos about an environment that is so very ripe for parody. As of today, no one’s done it better than Markham Nolan and his public service announcement video The Social Media Guru. It’s also a promo for Xtranormal Beta, text-to-video moviemaking software that we hope will be available for Mac users sooner than later. Still, the truth hurts. Telling us he’ll gladly give us a special offer for advice on our Twitter accounts (translation: “I’ll sit on your Facebook and whack you up the Twitter. Financially.”) Nolan peels back the rich tapestry of bullshit and delivers line after line of painfully familiar, nonsensical promises that the douchiest of exploitative social media consultants seem to be offering. We OH, and we weep.

We hope you watch this video and learn many ways to monetize your Twitter followers.

via edrabbit

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photo by Scott Beale

Tim Hwang has just announced ROFLCon II in Spring 2010, a follow-up to last year’s ROFLCon, the infamous conference on Internet culture and memes held at MIT.

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“Internet People 2″ by brentalfloss, SharkeyeJones and Spintown7.

Spintown explains how the video came together:

Awhile back I won an auction brentalfloss was holding on E-Bay. I decided to have him write a sequel to my favorite viral video “Internet People”. I picked who was going to be in the song, and brentalfloss did an incredible job of including every single person/item I wanted. Then I got SharkeyeJones to provide me with art work for the video. He did a great job of giving me exactly what I asked for in each illustration.

This sequel video was inspired by the 2007 video “Internet People” by Dan Meth.

via Veronica Belmont

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Christian Heilmann explains the phenomenon behind the current #songsincode meme on Twitter, where people have been posting the title or lyrics of songs in the form of programing code.

According to Christian, Adam Hepton of FrogTrade kicked things off with this ReTweet.

UPDATE: Adam Smith has more on how the #songsincode meme came about, including some Twitter trend analysis.

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“I Can Has Cheezburger: The MusicLOL!”, a musical based on the popular LOLcat blog I Can Has Cheezburger, is part of the New York International Fringe Festival with performances on August 14-28 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.

After being uploaded to ICanHasCheezburger.com, a young, impressionable LOLcat embarks on a journey to find his one true love: A cheezburger. Along the way, he meets a colorful cast of characters who help — and hinder — his mission.

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“Three Keyboard Cat Moon”, a Threadless t-shirt submission by OXEN.

via Ellie Rountree

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Know Your Meme explains Keyboard Cat

See Previously: Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat Makes YouTube Fun Again (Briefly)

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Memes collide when Super Mario Bros. meets Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat in Super Keyboard Cat Bros. animated by Jude Buffum with music by Doctor Octoroc.

via Daily C

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Andy Baio shows what popular Internet memes look like with their backgrounds only in his series “Meme Scenery”. Kind of leaves you with an empty feeling, eh?

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guest post by mikl-em

We’ve been through it with YouTube, right? I mean it used to be fun, spending hours watching video after video of people dressed up as Peter Pan, lip-synching to gangsta rap, newscasters dropping f-bombs, and random animal attacks on the tourist class. Who needed to leave the house when the computer machine could spew endless reels of people who are too intense about Britney, sporting bad toupees and get-rich schemes, and whose extreme ignorance of basics physics results in extreme doom for their motor vehicles (and maximum laffs for us)?

But we kinda wore all the dopamine out of it, didn’t we? Sure we did. And while those videos continue to be cranked out daily, which used to make us so happy, now it seems hollow. Something’s missing. But what?

Then I discovered what was missing. It’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s a cat of course. But not just any cat. No.

It’s a cat playing a little piano. Accompanying the face-planting floor exercise and the corpulent schitzophrenic outer space sermon alike. And not, as you might at first expect, playing way down on the left-hand side the bass notes of impending doom. But instead a jaunty tune, a fluffy riff that reminds us “It’s not real, it’s YouTube!”

Breathing new life into old FAIL-pr0n like gravity vs the grape-stomping-newslady:

Learning about gun safety:

And, this is super sweet, canine FAIL-pr0n:

And then on serious issues, when things are bad, real bad, and you need some perspective to help you through, let the kitty cat Korla Pandit cut the tension like a paper knife…

For instance, talking to your kids about religion:

Or that time you let Walker, Texas Ranger communicate sensitive medical information to a child

Yup, nothing like two paws on an organ to help you through those tough times.

A rising trend in the keyboard kitty arena is cross-cutting the feline Liberace during the build–”Wait for it…” he seems to say with his non-moving non-lips. Here’s an example improving a clip from Roman Polanski’s pre-YouTube classic Chinatown:

But the Keyboard Cat has to have an origin, right? Like the Universe or the Green Goblin? And does Keyboard Cat have a secret identity?

Yes and Yes. A seemingly mild-mannered cat named “Fatso” shot a low-budget video, once upon a time, which many years later hit YouTube (on June 07, 2007, to be more or less precise) in a hot little number called Charlie’s “cool cat”. Turns out that video includes two songs from Fatso (the second deep cut has yet to catch on, but who knows, Fatso might beat the sophmore jinx).

Here is the original session (very rare!):

The info on the video reads:

Visit charlieschmidt.com -Our cat Fatso playing the keyboard with all the cool of a true jazz artist. These 2 songs prove what $1,850 worth of cat piano lessons can accomplish. These kinds of clips kick it fofr advertisers.

Sure, buddy, so does teh spellcheck.

Charlie Schmidt is still around, has his own YouTube channel, and is interesting enough to merit his own post, sometime in the near future. But for something to go mad viral, it needs someone to up the first mash.

Enter Brad O’Farrell who on February 2nd, 2009 used a clip from Schmidt’s video to accentuate the Fail in one of his own called “Play him off, Keyboard Cat.”. The rest is YouTube viral alchemy at its most straightforward. And our mindless video consumption salvation is thus at hand.

There’s now a site dedicated to these mashups: Playhimoffkeyboardcat.com what else? Shockingly, this meme has even hit Twitter @thekeyboardcat. Shocking!! There’s also an entry on this phenomena in Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme series.

Keep in mind there are faux-Fatso’s out there, pretenders to the throne. Cats like Chico and Bill bite on Fatso’s style but they don’t make the grade. While the incredible Nora is a true artiste who goes in for more of an improv, abstract style as opposed to mainstream pop. But I think that the view numbers speak for themselves, Nora. Oh, wait, Nora has 13,417,602 and counting. That’s pretty good, too.

After all this Keyboard Cat, you know what? I’m done. I’m sick of YouTube again.

Jason Schupp of member station 7au.net contributed to this report. Jason wishes to thank his old coworker Murray (@murrayfortescue) for bringing him keyboard cat enlightenment.

More Coverage:

- LA Times

- Time

- CNN

UPDATE 1: Rocketboom did an interview with Brad O’Farrell, creator of the Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat meme.

UPDATE 2: Keyboard Cat meets The Colbert Report with a little help from Green Day.

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Last month Rocketboom hosted “Know Your Meme: The Game Show” as part of Ignite NYC 3. Rocketboom has been busy producing an excellent series of Know Your Meme videos and they recently launched a comprehensive Internet Meme Database.

via Fimoculous

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guest post by Violet Blue

Above is Ely Kim’s truly awesome “Boombox: 100 days, 100 songs, 100 locations, 100 dances” — one of the three videos Jason Schultz (Dir Samuelson Law & Technology Clinic, UC Berkeley) used in his South By SouthWest Interactive 2009 panel New Threats to New Media: Fair Use On Trial. Of the many excellent panels and core conversations at SXSWi ‘09, Shultz’s stood out as one of the most exciting, unforgettable and still talked about sessions at the convention.

That’s not the only thing that left us stirred and excited: We also truly loved a couple of the packed, standing room only core conversations. Like the provocative and informative How Not To Be Evil (Even By Accident) with Danny O’Brien and Eva Galperin (both from the EFF). Also remarkable and highly valuable was the packed Therapy 2.0: Mental Health for Geeks with Dr. Keely Kolmes (professional website) and Thomas Roche. See also: the Therapy 2.0 wiki here. Don’t get me wrong: there was some pure, tiresome, self-congratulatory crap on the schedule; but the value, when found, was extremely high.

But it was the Fair Use on Trial panel that had the dynamic format, high energy, conflict and controversy that made us remember why it’s worth traveling to see this always-evolving conference. For the panel, Schultz picked Stanford’s Julie Ahrens (one of Shepard Fairey’s lawyers); her polar opposite lawyer Ben Sheffner (Fox Media, the McCain presidential campaign); and film artist Kelly Nyks.

Then Schultz set up a really exciting format: first he’d show us an Internet video where fair use was in question. Next, he’d ask the audience for a quick show of hands — was this fair use or not? No nitty gritty definition or dissection, just our initial gut reactions to the video. Fast! Schultz then gave each lawyer three minutes apiece to argue their case (and they were at odds each time). After the arguments, then Schultz would quickly ask the room again — was the video fair use, or not? Then he’d ask if anyone changed their minds. Every time, people did. Jason would then ask one of the people who’d switched to tell us the reason they switched, and only 30 seconds to sum it up for the room. It was the Fair Use Experiment. We watched three videos total, and the Q/A after was on fire.

It was intense, fast-paced and sparked conversations that continued — well, we’re still having them. One of the other videos Schultz showed was “The Films of Stanley Kubrick“. What do you think? Are either of the videos in this post fair use, or not? This slide was our guide.

* More images from the panel are here.

photo by Violet Blue

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A ridiculous comment thread on Flickr has been continuously evolving over the last week on the “Anger Is the Swiss Army Knife of Emotions” graphic that Mike Monteiro posted for his t-shirt that I talked him into making.

The absurdity of comments have been graphically fueled by Blingee, a web service that helps you add “bling” to photos. Feel free to make your contribution to history.

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“Interior crocodile alligator, I drive a Chevrolet movie theater.”

via Joe Stump on Twitter

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Rex Sorgatz (Fimoculous) has posted an interview he did with Christopher Poole (who goes by the name “moot”), the founder of the infamous internet forum and imageboard 4chan, the birthplace of popular internet memes such as LOLcats, RickRolling and the radical online community Anonymous.

4chan’s original forum /b/ is it’s most popular and controversial.

The Washington Post recently did a profile on Christopher Poole and 4chan and The Wall Street Journal and Time have done stories as well.

See Previously:

- Lolcats, A Bad Grammar Cat Macro Meme Explosion

- Rick Astley Does Live Rickroll At Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

- Anonymous vs. Church of Scientology

UPDATE 1: Rex notes that 4chan’s /b/ forum has responded. This should be interesting.

UPDATE 2: Jason Scott, who was quoted in the Washington Post article, shares his thoughts about moot as well as pointing out a correction on being misquoted in the article.

photo by Rex Sorgatz

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guest post by Violet Blue

David is a 7-year-old who had an extra tooth removed; lucky for us, his dad had a camera handy to film David’s reaction to the experience — of being high on drugs for the first time. Anyone who’s ever done psychedelics will cringe, LOL and generally empathize at David’s stages of drug-induced self-realizations and reactions. But mostly we look at what is typically experienced over a 4-6 hour trip — boiled down into a two-minute summary, point by point. It is all too familiar. Unintentionally hilarious, if anyone asks you what it’s like to try psychedelics, you can pretty much just show them this video.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal interviewed David’s father about the controversial video. [update by Scott]

Thanks, Ed Hunsinger!

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The latest Big Fat Whale comic by Brian McFadden features “Internet Anti-Memes & Non-Sensations”. Maybe all of these should join forces and start a NotROFLCon.

via Chris Glass

image via Big Fat Whale

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Rathergood presents LOLCats mutilating the song “Love Cats” by The Cure.

via Charlie Todd

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