It's Time to Give It a Rest

 Everybody wants to be a part of popularity. Whether it's a company trying to capitalize on a trend or an individual wanting to participate in the current “thing,” whenever something becomes big, everyone seems to want to rush onstage and feel like they're in the show. An unfortunate byproduct of the modern era of technology is that everyone has the means to be a part of pop culture. This is unfortunate because while all of us can contribute, not everyone can contribute something good. In fact, most of the things created by your everyday citizen is pretty much absolute crap.

Just look at any running joke or fad on the internet. Anything that has open submissions from the general public will get 99% garbage. Cracked.com used to have a weekly caption contest. They'd post a funny picture, and everyone could submit a caption to make it funnier, and the winner got fifty bucks. The winning captions on these things were often hilarious. Take this one, for example:

“And the prize for Best Costume definitely goes to the Invisible Girl in the middle.”

Not bad, right? Give the man his fifty dollars. But you could also scroll down and see all of the submissions, arranged in order of how many votes each one earned. Here's one that, clearly, did not come close to winning:

“Duck, Duck, Duck.... Duck GOOSE!”

Maybe it's going way over my head, but I can't figure out what makes that funny. Like, at all. I don't even get what joke he was trying to do. But here's the thing- not only did this guy think this line was funny enough to post, but fifteen other people voted for it. Fifteen people thought it was worthy of winning the contest. Scroll down to see the ones that only got one or two, and you'll want to euthanize your computer.

I get that everyone wants to be a part of something. I understand why companies will try to capitalize on the popularity of literally anything. But the problem is that when everybody gets a shot at the horse, it's going to already be dead when most of them get a turn to beat it.

The result of all this dead-horse-beating is that things that are great become awful, through no fault of their own. Ask anyone if they want to listen to “Gangnam Style.” Of course not. There's a good chance that they might even tell you that they “hate that song” or that it's “such a stupid song.” The thing is? It's not. “Gangnam Style” is a good song. It's catchy, fun, and the absurd dance moves are funny. There's a reason the music video got over ONE POINT SEVEN BILLION views on YouTube. People watched it and listened to it because they liked it. But now, because it was so popular, it got way overplayed, a million different people made parody videos, it got played at every sporting event for a solid six months, and you can bet your life there will be a movie soon where poorly animated Smurfs or Chipmunks do a dance number to it right before the credits roll. We are all fed up with that stupid “Gangnam Style” song, even though most of us loved it at first.

So there are things that are awesome that are becoming terrible because people won't ease up on the hyperbole. Here is a list of such things:

- Bacon

- Nutella

- Sloths

- Grumpy Cat

- “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk

- “Keep Calm and Carry On”

- Doctor Who, Sherlock, The Avengers, etc.

- Chuck Norris jokes

- Every single meme and joke ever created.

All of these things, on their own merit, are great. But then everyone had to repeat the same thing, then take the thing and change it a tiny bit and think they're a comic genius. (Keep Calm + "Do A Thing That I Enjoy" = BRILLIANT.)  ("I don't always [do thing], but when I do, I [do thing differently than usual])

Then they decided it was the greatest thing ever created and they must have it tattooed on their back. They take something that people like, then apply it to completely unrelated things and declare it awesome. Yes, bacon and Nutella are delicious. But we DO NOT need bacon-scented soap. Angry Birds gummy candy is UNNECESSARY. There is NO REASON to tattoo a sloth on your chest.

“Well, you see, grandchildren, for about eight months in 2013, lots of people agreed that sloths were cute. Sure, they moved on to iguanas once they were tired of sloths, but I have never once regretted having this hideous image on my chest for my entire life.”

You guys, they are making a Grumpy Cat movie. This has to stop.