Episode 104 - How the Internet Destroys the Meaning of Words

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Remember when memes actually made sense and weren't just screencaps of Minions with text like, 'Obama: You Only Had One Job!' Remember when 'First World Problems' wasn't an excuse to complainbrag about your yacht running out of champagne? Remember when 'LOL' wasn't a mere punctuation mark and actually meant that someone was laughing out loud?

 

Pepperidge Farm remembers. And now that meme is probably ruined too. The problem with the internet sometimes is that when creative, novel, and useful ideas get put into it, suddenly everyone has permission to reuse them. From there they get repeatedly misused, and before you know it, they completely lose all of their meaning. Literally. Or figuratively. We don't know because literally doesn't mean literally anymore.

 

On this week's podcast, Jack O'Brien is joined by Cracked editors Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) and Josh Sargent to talk about when great ideas go wrong and how the evolution of language and the internet drives them into the ground.