What Makes A Meme Go Mainstream? Ctd

Joe Randazzo, editor of the Onion, hates Internet memes:

Instead of acting as an organic cultural touchstone, the modern meme -- from LOL, which hasn't been used to signify physical laughter since 1997, to Lolcats -- now sucks the joy out of our interconnectedness. It destroys uniqueness. Once an "enjoyable thing" becomes a "meme," we stop enjoying the thing for its own sake, but consume and regurgitate our enjoyment of it as a symbol of hipness, as if to say: "I am aware of this thing's popularity -- therefore I, too, exist!"

Money example:

[I]f you've never had the unfortunate occasion to hear someone, forgetting that life is not a message board, yell "FAIL!" aloud, you are missing out on an exquisite kind of existential rage.

More meme talk here.