Reply All: #80 Flash!

October 27, 2016 1:57 PM

This week: a bitter Yes Yes No rivalry, and the return of 10 Minutes on Craigslist. Someone has gone missing.

The original tweet.

Loss.

posted by SansPoint (8 comments total)

I'm amazed at the longevity of this meme.
posted by SansPoint at 1:57 PM on October 27, 2016

I feel like this meme is now the primary source of Tim Buckley's fame.

It was weird and somehow fitting that only Blumberg could actually explain why it was funny.
posted by selfnoise at 2:19 PM on October 27, 2016

I think this is the first YYN that I was completely at a loss on. There have been others where I've at least had somewhat of a hook into them (I knew who Harambe was, I am aware of Genius.com, etc. etc.). But I honestly don't think I'd ever looked at a Ctrl-Alt-Del strip until I heard the episode.

As I was listening, I was getting it confused in my head with User Friendly (which is apparently still publishing somehow?).

Anyways, this YYN makes me paranoid that I have become such an Old that I completely missed the significance of countless Loss memes that have crossed my internet paths for the last eight years.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:27 AM on October 28, 2016

A meme I find obnoxious, directed at an artist I've never heard of, working in a medium I dislike, explained by hosts 1/4 of who make me want to drive a screwdriver through my eardrums. . . and yet I'm thoroughly entertained. That's some good radio.

Also, the pacing of the tortoise piece was brilliant.

FanFare: a lot of time when I laugh, I'm just saying, "please don't hit me."
posted by eotvos at 8:36 AM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oddly enough, I used to read CAD regularly, and even vaguely remembered the Loss comic, but was completely unaware of its second life as an internet trope. In some ways this is made so much better by the fact that CAD was never that popular, and never (at least for me) rose above the level of mildly amusing. It's great that it spawned something that developed such a weird life of its own while I wasn't looking.

That's actually a big part of why I love this podcast. I love the way it turns over rocks to show the ways in which the internet and human behavior are fractally rich and strange.
posted by firechicago at 12:43 PM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I love YYN no so much.

I could have done without this week's Craigslist bit. But I do hope they find their tortoise.
posted by radioamy at 9:31 PM on October 29, 2016

The whole meme thing was sort of annoying because the gendered electoral map is a kind of important story that they could have spent like 20 seconds expanding on and I didn't really care about the Tim Buckley thing (who I thought was a dead indy singer anyway)

The tortoise story was nice and a cool format experiment that worked. More please!
posted by latkes at 3:36 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]

Surprise Jason Mantzoukas was a masterstroke and I love the way he sells everything he says, culminating in "So hold on, you just compared 'Anime Dad' to James Joyce." God, he's so good at deflating pomposity.

Literally never heard of Tim Buckley or Ctrl+Alt+Del, and now seeing that cartoon... yikes, I can't believe how tonally awful it is. It looks silly so much more than sad.

And PJ. Peej. Basic U.S. geography. Jesus.
posted by psoas at 2:32 PM on November 8, 2016