Virality, here we come! Counting down the twenty-five worst mash-ups-cum-memes of all time:
25. Hitler’s rant in Downfall re-subtitled with a speech by Josef Stalin
24. The cast of Mama’s Family drawn as the cast of Growing Pains
23. The cast of Growing Pains drawn as the cast of Mama’s Family
22. IRS form 1040 Schedule A drawn as IRS form 1040 Schedule B
21. The domain of natural numbers drawn as the domain of irrational numbers
20. Crossover fan fiction between Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice
19. Pride and Prejudice and Tax Accountants
18. Pride and Prejudice and Sensibility
17. Pride and Prejudice
16. Being and Time as if written by Immanuel Kant
15. Being and Time as if written by Martin Heidegger, but in a comedy French accent
14. Being and Time
13. Hamlet as if written by Francis Bacon/[alternate selection] Hamlet as if written by William Shakespeare
12. Fantastic Four, Thor, X-Men, Hulk, Spider-Man as if created by Stan Lee
11. Manga and other comics and comic strips as if created without an uncredited staff of quote-assistants-unquote
10. Damien Hirst
9. Modernism as if postmodernism
8. This list as if your mom
7. As if
6. Garfield without dialogue, Garfield, Jon, Odie, Jon’s supposed girlfriend, any other characters objects or places, panel borders, panels, lines, art, language, shapes, space, time, being, non-being, non-non-being, lasagne, Mondays or that one girl cat that was Garfield’s girlfriend
5. This space intentionally left blank
4. Humour in the form of lists, alleged humour in the form of lists, self-referential alleged humour in the form of lists, physician troll thyself,
3. humour in the form of flowcharts, 99% of webcomics, any blog that turns into a book deal, Boing Boing, Deviantart, Metafilter, 4chan, tumblr, Know your “meme”, TV Tropes,
2. actually, let’s just say the entire fucking internet
1. And, finally, ninja pirates who turn into gorilla werewolves riding skateboards with the robot head of zombie Abraham Lincoln and they’re also MODOKS mashed up with the cast of Lost dressed as the Beatles drawn as kittens dressed in oversized ALF suits rendered in LEGO if LEGO were an 8-bit Nintendo game in Victorian Steampunk times as a minimalist poster of a vintage paperback
Also, Cthulu is involved somehow.
…Oh no wait you guys #1 is the most quote AWESOME unquote idea ever AMIRITE
Image attribution: Dan Clowes, Eightball #4
Careful- if anyone at ComicsAlliance sees #1, they’ll have an immediate, uncontrollable orgasm.
Sir, I’m afraid I’m not familiar with this mashed-up concept. Please elaborate.
I like these memes. Especially the tax ones.
I think we’re going to switch HU over to all charticles all the time. It had to happen eventually….
How about “Comics criticism as if written by those skinny guys in the Identity Studies major”? I’m disappointed that didn’t make the list.
Not trying to be a smartass, but number one is awesome.
i will accept the mantle of scapegoat in this situation, since it seems to be mostly my agegroup and younger that thinks this kind of crud is the height of wit.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/if-arrested-development-was-a-series-of-8-bit-ni (the royal) we are not amused.
I really kind of love musical mash-ups, though (or at least, they can be great sometimes.)
I went through a phase in the mid-00s where mash-ups were just about the only thing I listened to. My faves were pojmasta, lenlow, dj moule, and dunproofin…
4. Humour in the form of lists, alleged humour in the form of lists, self-referential alleged humour in the form of lists, physician troll thyself,
Haha.
As with any type of art, there are good and bad examples of the form. I love David Wong at cracked.com, for instance.
1) This was really funny — especially #8 and #7.
2) Mash-ups deserve some respect. Darwinism (love it or hate it) is a mash-up, as natural selection and mutation had already been posited. Rock and roll is a mash-up. Macaroni and cheese is a mash-up. Your smartphone is a mash-up (okay, that might have hurt my argument). Anyway, they’re not all bad. Some things may turn out like barbecue chicken pizza, but others turn out like alt-country, southern rock, and gangstagrass.
Alt country kind of sucks, though.
this isn’t a cracked article without a shrill, elaborate prison rape analogy (preferably in reference to inconvenient consumer electronics, or precious untouchable 90s media property getting a reboot)
Noah, I equivocally concur; much of it does. At the end, I was trying to be ambiguous about which of my contrasting examples were good and bad. Unfortunately, I think “southern rock” visibly tilted the scale — or maybe barbecue chicken pizza did, but isn’t someone eating it? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who does, but I assumed they must exist, and in some numbers.
Anyway, there are apparently limits to the precept that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some things are clearly great, and some things are barbecue chicken pizza.
Jones, aren’t you Australian? Why do you know about IRS forms? Are you a spy, trying to infiltrate the comics blogging corner of the American internet(s)?
Bee Tee Dubs, I also enjoy musical mashups (Beastles 4 life!), but good god has this crap gotten tiresome. #1 is a great expression of that obnoxiousness that has taken over so much of internet “humor”, or just what people think is cool, like “minimalist” design or whatever. I’m so fucking sick of “some recognizable thing in the style of some other recognizable thing”. Look, it’s Darth Vader as Scarface! Hey, Jake and Finn from Adventure Time dressed up as Vincent and Jules from Pulp Fiction! Wow, an entire fucking generation can’t come up with anything original, just stupid combinations of other ideas! Society deserves a swift death!
I like #12 though, that’s a good joke.
“Alt country kind of sucks, though.”
Well…90% of it does, yeah.
Matt (B): it was going to be marsupials drawn as monotremes, but I adapted it for a more general audience.
The thing with those PopCultA as PopCultB mash-ups is…you can easily see the incentives at work. You draw your own stuff, no one’s interested. You draw My Little Ponies recreating the Abu Ghraib photos and bang! you get a zillion pageviews. (Hard to believe, however, that any of that interest carries over to your other, original work).
Personally, I would love to read Heidegger writing Being and Time in a comedy French accent. “Sacre bleu! Das nichts, ‘ow you say, zey nichtet…”
“Hard to believe, however, that any of that interest carries over to your other, original work.”
Speaking as a site that got a ton of page views out of a mash up…any publicity is good publicity.
Thankfully you mentioned Cthulhu. That will get you a year’s worth of page hits in one day.
The kids do love those elder gods
Hah!