All your memes are belonging to us

Christopher Beam has a nice discussion of the origins of the terms "Fail" and "Epic Fail"

It's nearly impossible to pinpoint the first reference, given how common the verb fail is, but online commenters suggest it started with a 1998 Neo Geo arcade game called Blazing Star. (References to the fail meme go as far back as 2003.) Of all the game's obvious draws--among them fast-paced action, disco music, and anime-style cut scenes--its staying power comes from its wonderfully terrible Japanese-to-English translations. If you beat a level, the screen flashes with the words: "You beat it! Your skill is great!" If you lose, you are mocked: "You fail it! Your skill is not enough! See you next time! Bye bye!"

Haha--"You Fail It!" And then there is this:

The highest form of fail--the epic fail--involves not just catastrophic failure but hubris as well. Not just coming in second in a bike race but doing so because you fell off your bike after prematurely raising your arms in victory. Totaling your pickup not because the brakes failed but because you were trying to ride on the windshield. Not just destroying your fish tank but doing it while trying to film yourself lifting weights.

It's really interesting because Beam argues--persuasively--that "fail" preceeded "epic fail." My experience was the exact opposite. In MMOs (Multimedia Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games for uninitiated) like Everquest, WOW, and now Warhammer, they have quests which reward you with gold and/or experience. The hardest, and most rewarding, quests were called "Epic Quests." There are also "Epic" swords, "Epic" chest-plates,  and "Epic" staves etc. The point is that "Epic" is the ultimate. When people I played with said "Epic Fail" it was the opposite of "Epic Quest." And then later people just started saying "Fail," which I always took as short for "Epic Fail"--not a lesser kind of "Epic Fail." But that may just be how I caught it.

Frankly, I'm fascinated by how language is developing online. My favorite meme I encountered in my whole time in WoW was ROFLcopter. The booby prize to whoever can figure out what that means. Man, just writing about this makes we want to throw on my head-piece, boot up Ventrillo and go stomp some fools in Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin. But I'm older now, and a respectable Negro. I have standards to maintain, no?