…is the latest pop-culture buzzword, taken from a scene in the latest Indiana Jones movie. It’s roughly equivalent, in movie sequel terms, to what “jump the shark” means for TV shows. But the process by which a catch-phrase propagates has become wearying and predictable:
The original posting seems to have been deleted but the phrase caught on, infected other message boards and web sites, and is now a full-blown meme on the verge of nuking the fridge itself. Google currently returns close to 16,000 results for variations on the phrase. Some participants in the IMDB forums have already grown tired of the phrase’s repeated use. A Wikipedia page was created and has already been deleted (reason: “Protologism with no RELIABLE sources evidencing more than extremely limited usage”). A web site dedicated to the meme is available at nukingthefridge.com, not to be confused with the movie review blog at nukedthefridge.com. And of course, no meme these days is complete without the proper new media accoutrements: Facebook page, MySpace page, t-shirt, YouTube page, an auction to sell the domain name, and a post on a large-ish general interest blog way after the whole thing’s already played out. I only heard it for the first time an hour ago and I’m already sick of it.
The convergence of hipness or knowingness with social networking technology is evidently both fueling trends – the latest catch-phrase or high concept – while at the same time making them ever more trivial and short-lived. As Kottke notes, “viral” is now “virulent.” The Darwinian dynamic, via which pop culture memes endured a short, grueling ride through the lower echelons of Facebook and Wikipedia before either burning out or making it to the “show” of television and mass culture, may be burning itself up – in the process, eroding any shared notion of what’s “hot” or “not” at any particular moment. And, I might add, also eroding a source of annoyance for the vast majority of us. The more catch-phrases smothered in the cradle, the better.
I also liked the fridge-nuking scene in the movie. It was ridiculous, of course. But funny and unexpected.
