Fuck Your Arrows, Fuck Your Knees, Fuck Your Fus Ro Dah

I know, you just love Skyrim, don’t you?  You love putting buckets on people’s heads, you love shouting Fus Ro Dah at your cat as it stares up at you in bewilderment from its litter box.  You love all this as much as the America’s Funniest Home Videos audience loves a wiffle bat carelessly swung into someone’s family jewels.

I’ve been there.  I know how it feels when there is a popular meme surrounding something you’re into at a given time.  It feels great when you can perpetuate it in some clever new way, and have it acknowledged by your peers.  But have some fucking consideration for those of us who didn’t pay $60 for a burlap sack filled with buggy code and a dragon-shaped middle finger.

I wouldn’t even mind if these memes were funny, but they aren’t.  The arrow-to-the-knee one especially is a bone of contention for me.  Now I’m no meme critic (my certificate is in the mail) but the problem has to do largely with the formula of this meme.  It nearly always follows this pattern:

“I used to ________”

[PICTURE OF SOMETHING (optional)]

“Then I took an arrow to the knee.”

Now maybe you’ve already doubled over with laughter at the mere skeleton of your beloved hysteria-inducing meme but, if you’re still with me, I will explain what is wrong with this formula: you know the punchline after reading the first three words.  Furthermore, the only wiggle room for anything that may actually be humorous rests in the activity that was once being done by the speaker or subject.  More often than not, the individual constructing this joke (if we can really give them that much credit) has been conditioned into receiving a rousing applause from their peers simply for putting this formula together using any previously mentioned noun or verb.  Here is an example:

Person A: “Did you see on the news it’s supposed to snow tonight?”
Person B: “I used to be on the news, then I took an arrow to the knee!”
Persons C-Z: “OMG HAHAHA BUCKETS FUS RO DAH” *rubs bathing-suit area furiously*
Person B: *looks down at bathing suit area. pauses. goes to town*

There was a time when, and I’ve checked my math on this, at least 97% of internet users were Persons B-Z:

All you could hear for miles was the distant clacking of keyboards, muffled giggling, and the rhythmic rubbing of sweat pants against raw, chapped flesh.  Upon climaxing… well I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what these people would shout.

I somehow survived this dark era, which will no doubt be studied by internet historians and compared to similar events in human history, such as the Bubonic plague.  It was a rough time…  But I survived.  Now let’s all move on, and behave like mature adults on this, the very internet we fought so hard to protect this very week. *toddler hits Roy in crotch with garden hose*

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