I realize that as I grow older my interests will become more and more narrow. It’s like that with every generation, isn’t it? It is the fundamental reason why old people hate the way young people dress, listen to music and behave. Ultimately I’ll be an old curmudgeon, sitting in my rocking chair at the front of my house with my shot gun and screaming at the neighborhood kids to get off my lawn. Whoops, excuse me for a bit…

GET OFF MY LAWN! *shakes fist*

Remember when this interwebs things started becoming popular in the mid 1990’s? We used to compare the amount of time that passes to dog years. Whereas one human year was congruent to 7 dog years something along the lines of 2 months was said to be the equivalent of about 1.5 years (or something. I’ll have to go back and look through my notes from 1995). Whippersnappers started putting more technology on the web which made time go by even faster. No longer content with using ftp or gopher services, we started putting up images, audio and video. The web became more social and interactive; information became synonymous to a tsunami of mental stimulation.

I’m finding that my advancing age is becoming a detriment to keeping up with the memes.

I try not to spend as much time scouring the web for all things interesting or funny. I’ve become one of ‘those people’ who lovingly refer to such old goodies as ‘All Your Base Are Belong To Us’ as though it was ancient internet history. Luckily, I’ve come to rely on two sites to help me keep up with the emerging LOLCats, Star Wars kids and What What In The Butts.

Rocketboom’s Know Your Meme has helped me look at what goes into the making of the meme. I feel a bit lucky, though, knowing that I’ve seen almost all of them before they’ve hit this site. The deconstruction of what makes the meme interesting is a fun way to learn why I’m engrossed by people being kicked in the groin or the juxtaposition of images and videos to create completely alternate realities and meanings.

Dipity’s Internet Memes timeline, on the other hand, helps me keep track of what is ‘hot’, either at the moment or within the past few months.

For instance, it already lists ‘Obama is kind of a dick’ on the timeline and that was first seen during the first few days of February (and it still makes me chuckle)

Who knows. As I grow older I’ll probably be one of those people who talks back to the television while their stories are on. You know…like my wife.