The premise: Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is about a man named Montresor who tricks his frenemy Fortunado into following him deep into the catacombs below his mansion, promising that is totally where he stores rare Amontillado wine. Monstresor chains Fortunado in a tiny chamber and walls him in, leaving him to die. Cold, right?
“The Cask of Amontillado” is widely considered to be Poe’s most perfect short story. The whole thing is less than fives pages long. Most people are required to read it in high school. If you haven’t read it before (or you need to reread it), you can read it HERE or HERE.
ORRRRRR you could watch an entertaining video recap HERE or HERE.
So, why’s it such a popular meme?
1) It is based on an old-but-famous short story, providing participants with a smug satisfaction at having read something intellectual and classic, BUT it’s well-known enough that people can share knowing chuckles over the reference. Because it’s no fun making a clever allusion if nobody gets the joke.
2) It becomes funnier if some people don’t get it. Because in the story, Fortunado didn’t get it, either. This creates opportunities for “just go back a little further” or “come to my basement and I’ll show you” jokes.
3) It’s easy to adapt into existing memes and pop culture references. For example:
I know the meme hivemind can adapt pretty much anything, but you’d think a Gothic short story written in the 1800s would be more of a challenge.
4) Fortunado is dressed as a jester for a costume party. That’s right: the story is about murdering aclown. People like the concept of turning the tables on those clowns.
6) It’s October, and many teachers (like me!) are busting out the Poe stories. Many Tumblr users are high school students (though some of us Tumblrites, I will remind you, are Old Peeps).
7) The entire story is teeming with dramatic irony. We, the readers, know that Montresor is planning to stone-cold murder Fortunado. But Fortunado thinks he’s just going to get some fancy wine from his friend who is totally not mad at him. Fortunado’s name even means “lucky,” which is darkly hilarious. And kids today LOVE enjoying things ironically, and enjoying irony itself. Also, Poe would probably find these memes delightfully ironic.
THAT’S IT I CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PSEUDORANDOM BOT NONSENSE AND ACTUAL PEOPLE ANYMORE WHAT EVEN IS REAL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
if it makes you feel any better, the “thank god” part was human
you can pretty much tell because i literally programmed 0 grammar into memelovingbot. it just sticks meme phrases in other meme phrases. memes are just so goddamn incoherant already that it sounds legit
way to ruin my immersion
think of it this way: you, too, can make terrible robot garbage like memelovingbot, because it is simple and fun to learn to make robots specifically designed to make jokes you, their creator, will laugh at
i have a robot army that i basically designed to make it easier for me to laugh at my own jokes. i am the ultimate bot dad
i’m robot mom
Programmers tried for generations to create a program that could pass the Turing Test. They made ever more complex conversational bots, but to no avail. How could any of us have known that it wasn’t a more intelligent bot that was needed but a less intelligent humanity?
it’s not less intelligent we just gave up on grammar in favor of joke. memes are better. everything is better. intelligence is a bullshit racist/ableist/classist/sexist social construct that doesn’t really measure anything except the abilities to do whatever brain things are most rewarded by the oppressive overclass anyway, it fails to get enormous quantities of valuable and interesting kinds of skills and talents that humans have in favor of a few rigid categories that are defined and tested by people only interested in reinforcing a marginalizing, oppressive status quo
up with memes down with that capitalist bullshit imo
THAT’S IT I CAN’T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PSEUDORANDOM BOT NONSENSE AND ACTUAL PEOPLE ANYMORE WHAT EVEN IS REAL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
if it makes you feel any better, the “thank god” part was human
you can pretty much tell because i literally programmed 0 grammar into memelovingbot. it just sticks meme phrases in other meme phrases. memes are just so goddamn incoherant already that it sounds legit
way to ruin my immersion
think of it this way: you, too, can make terrible robot garbage like memelovingbot, because it is simple and fun to learn to make robots specifically designed to make jokes you, their creator, will laugh at
i have a robot army that i basically designed to make it easier for me to laugh at my own jokes. i am the ultimate bot dad
spiders georg: I live in cave and eat over 10,000 spiders each day
everyone else: you fucked up a perfect good factoid is what you did. look at it. it’s got statistical error.
I’m so upset I can’t even believe,… 2 of the purest memes tumblr has ever soiled,, merged together into one horrible reminder of our greed and our lack of self control. I want to scream. I don’t even know if this is satire or not. Delete this site.
fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak memes stronger
Solutions Without Problems 