A Remembrance Of Memes Past

We all remember the Star Wars Kid, that Thriller video by the Filipino inmates, Boxxy, Afro Ninja, the cruelly hilarious Fat Asian Kid and all the many, many others. But, I ask you, where are they now? What has become of these memes, the unwitting recipients of internet infamy?

While their time as internet celebrities is fleeting, their misadventures clogging up inboxes only until the next one comes along, on the intardweb they will live on forever. Stuck in time, captured for generations to lol at, eternally lunging towards us charged with the disillusion they're a Jedi warrior or staring scared and tormented at the camera in a variety of shooped poses, or eeking and squeaking out sentences while twitching like an epileptic Tourette's sufferer who fell in a pot of tar. But like a superhero they have their own secret identities, their humdrum Clark Kent getting on with the daily grind at their own Daily Planet.

After their international fame it's a mighty fall, have they all hit the ground running? Or did they sprain an ankle, crack a shin, or dislocate a hip after such a distance...

The Filipino inmates? Well they're probably still in jail choreographing the dance moves to High School Musical 10. Counting down the days until their release when they'll no doubt storm Broadway and take the great quantum leap from internet celebrity to fully fledged 'real' celebrity, where they'll be the talk of the town, darlings to the Hollywood luvvies - at least for a week.

Boxxy has probably gone viral, literally, like Neo she is now within the internets or at the very least /b/, and that's why nobody has heard anything from her in so long. She's disappeared because she longer exists as an annoying blinking emo and has now transcended her black clothes and eyeliner and is pure information, albeit still annoying. So perhaps she's what causes your train to be late, the traffic lights to stay red for so long or your internet connection to explode.

Afro Ninja? I like to think of him in the Tibetan Himalayas perfecting his art. Waiting until the world is ready before unleashing his awesome power, halting global warming with the flick of a nunchuck and dethroning the world's tyrants with a roundhouse to the face. HI-YAA! Let's hope he's better at solving the world's ills than he is at doing a backflip.

The Star Wars Kid? Well, what can I say after what we've all seen? Leading the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire is something he does in his sleep. Anyone who can wield a golf-ball retriever like that has no doubt where his future lays - a golf caddy. Yep, he's probably a caddy to a golfing pro sweeping up golf balls like Yoda with a 9-iron up his ass, whipping through the golf course like a bumbling bolt of lightening. He pauses to give a self-satisfied look at the fairway, grins smugly, then nods his head in self-agreement and he's off! There are plenty more golfers who need plenty more golf balls retrieved. Get to it ya fat sh#t.

And poor Fat Asian Kid, what can he do? That pleading stare, "Please don't Photoshop my face and plaster it all over the internet." it says, "Please."

Maybe his time will come when the universe has had enough of us and sends that asteroid careering towards Earth - he can be our defence. We'll launch him straight at it at a high velocity and watch as the asteroid glances at us forlornly, mimicking his fat little head, before shattering into a million pieces.

If justice is served then perhaps they'll all end up in a retirement home for ex-memes, sharing urine stains with Techno Viking while Keyboard Cat tickles out a little ditty on the ivories, reminiscing on their glory days of internet stardom when for one whole week or so email inboxes across the globe were full to the brim with their cock-ups, strange behaviour and legendary dance moves.