Saturday, February 09, 2008

Week 39: Pageant of the Transmundane

There are weeks where everyone who sees the winning entry gets why it is transmundane, and then there are times when it seems likely that I am the only one who finds something funny.

So, before I unveil this week's winner, I am going to explain the key concept that made this entry transmundane, you will have to understand the concept of Rickrolling.

Rickrolling is a popular internet phenomenon. It is used when someone is tricked into clicking on a video link, thinking it to be something he or she expects, and instead the video is a music video of a song from Rick Astley (most commonly of Never Gonna Give You Up). The term is derived from the older “duckroll” phenomenon, where image links would be traps to an image of a duck on two tires, titled with the word “duckroll.” -Wedeking.org


If I was going to explain it in simpler terms, I would just say that it was the internet equivalent of the Circle Game.

And because I am warning you about it beforehand, I am not rickrolling you. Now keep the above in mind as we head towards the home stretch.

You see, there was a picture of a particular sign posted at aboutcolonblank, which was made up of ideographs demonstrating the actions of the chorus of "Never Gonna Give You Up". But isn't just the picture, which is cute and sort of funny that makes it a winner this week. No, it is string of comments that follow it, as a group of people find themselves unwittingly rickrolled by someone who added the entry to Stumbleupon, and acting like they've been betrayed by an old friend in a safe place. And now that so many people have given it thumbs up, well that comment section seems poised to become almost like a huge multicar pile up as more and more people end up getting rickrolled.

It was a nasty, nasty trick, and while I don't advocate using the rickroll against anyone, in this particular instance, the results ended up being pretty funny, even though I was a victim of it as well.

And as is the custom, I had to find a Homer Simpson-related image that was in keeping with the spirit of the winning entry, and well, something involving the internet and the seething heat of a nuclear reactor seemed to me to be the perfect fit for this week's Transmundanity Award.



Usually I congratulate someone for winning this award, which would be Jase at About:Blank, but really, it was a team effort, from the blog and its unwittingly rickrolled comment contributors to the person who actually gave the item a thumbs up to begin with.



And if I don't have to type the phrase Rickroll again this year, well, I am sure you'd all be fine with that too.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cheers MC,
Id like to thank my family without whom none of this would have been possible. I would also like to thank "ff" from turkey who originally thumbed up the post and resulted in thousands of extra visitors travelling to my humble abode.
I had no idea what the hell they were talking about to be honest when they kept on talking about being rickrolled. So thanks for the enlightenment!
Jase

Micgar said...

Those comments were the best!! Great post!

MC said...

Jase: Stumbleupon traffic, especially when it is in the thousands is always a good thing.

Micgar: And thus why it won ;)