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| It seems all but inevitable that the various strange urges compelling people to bind various ideas to these memes will eventually conspire to make them mean something - although most likely there will be no consensus on that meaning, and new meanings will spawn faster than old ones could be agreed on. A parallel is to the phrase "]" which means everything from "really, no problem, I've taken care of it and will completely indemnify and insure you for all risks of trusting me and against every conceivable threat to the maximum of my own ability" to "I have just sold you and your firstborn into slavery, to this nice man." Context defines the whole of the meaning, and the use of any phrase at all is perhaps to convey only a tone of voice or a choice of timing and conveyance. | It seems all but inevitable that the various strange urges compelling people to bind various ideas to these memes will eventually conspire to make them mean something - although most likely there will be no consensus on that meaning, and new meanings will spawn faster than old ones could be agreed on. A parallel is to the phrase "]" which means everything from "really, no problem, I've taken care of it and will completely indemnify and insure you for all risks of trusting me and against every conceivable threat to the maximum of my own ability" to "I have just sold you and your firstborn into slavery, to this nice man." Context defines the whole of the meaning, and the use of any phrase at all is perhaps to convey only a tone of voice or a choice of timing and conveyance. | ||
| It remains to be seen whether any of these phrases will acquire any global meaning at all, but if they do, you will most certainly read about it here first, as wikipedia is the authority on this kind of thing, and is certainly the only encyclopedia in any position to track such absurdity given how fast it grows. | |||
| ''propagation via the Internet'' | ''propagation via the Internet'' | ||
Revision as of 06:32, 4 April 2002
All your base are belong to us is a meme from a poor translation of the Japanese video game Zero Wing. It is simply one phrase from the game's primitive cut scenes, all of which are subtitled and very poorly translated, almost seeming to imply a strange alien English dictionary of their own behind the odd phrasing.
In 2001 a huge number of altered pictures, GIF animations, and Macromedia Flash animation exploiting the popularity of this phrase swept over the Internet and just as suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl. The heavily-overloaded word "base" seemed to make the phrase mean almost anything - and thus suitable to use as a caption for almost any photograph.
The transcript goes as follows:
In A.D. 2101 War was beginning
Captain: What happen? Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb. Operator: We get signal. Captain: What! Operator: Main screen turn on. Captain: It's You!! Cats: How are you gentlemen!! Cats: All your base are belong to us. Cats: You are on the way to destruction. Captain: What you say!! Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time. Cats: Ha Ha Ha Ha .... Captain: Take off every 'Zig'!! Captain: You know what you doing. Captain: Move 'Zig'. Captain: For great justice.
The final phrase "for great justice" appears also to have been adopted by various incomprehensible movements as their universal slogan and rationale, and there is also some broad adoption of "move 'zig'" (which resembles that of "Let's Roll" - a universal command to action) and "Somebody set up us the bomb" (basically "uh-oh!"). Also interesting is the propagation of "all yuor base are belong to us", a simple typo that arose early in the propagation on November 6, 2000, which is about as popular as "move 'zig'"
It seems all but inevitable that the various strange urges compelling people to bind various ideas to these memes will eventually conspire to make them mean something - although most likely there will be no consensus on that meaning, and new meanings will spawn faster than old ones could be agreed on. A parallel is to the phrase "no problem" which means everything from "really, no problem, I've taken care of it and will completely indemnify and insure you for all risks of trusting me and against every conceivable threat to the maximum of my own ability" to "I have just sold you and your firstborn into slavery, to this nice man." Context defines the whole of the meaning, and the use of any phrase at all is perhaps to convey only a tone of voice or a choice of timing and conveyance.
propagation via the Internet