Challenge #02276-F086: Flakkin' Weebo, Man...
There're always a big group of meme fans. Humans love their funny photos.
Aliens want to run when Big Chungus come and Hit Or Miss is the second favourite song in the room "of course first is Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up." -- Anon Guest
Memetic communication is dependent entirely on the familiarity of the recipient with the subject. Some, simple images with even simpler captions, are easier to communicate than, say, a mish-mash of images with contextual dependency that requires familiarity with their embedded memes.
Archivaas will be happy to inform that the peak of 'meme-ception' occurred in the noveau-post-post-dadaist period of the early Twenty-first century, shortly before the Green Revolution, and decades before the Shattering. The surviving images from that period require explanations of well over a thousand words, thus destroying a well-known Terran saying.
Not all Humans are familiar with all known memes, especially since memetic mutation is dependent on large, interconnected communities. Some in isolation have lost some memetic formats and, though re-education is quick, no joke is ever funny after it's been explained. However, some memes are universal, Bohemian Rhapsody, aka "The Human Anthem", is one such example. Rickrolling is another, as is Loss. In fact, it is quite difficult to predict the founding structure and subsequent memetic replication once shipboard culture starts to grow.
"Wheep, wheep," chirped one Human to another. The speaker was holding something hazardous and delicate.
The Human who heard this 'message' got up, out of the way, and offered, "Wanna Tom?"
The reply was, "Ye, k'th'x."
Human Diz ran down the corridor and retrieved a trolley and assisted Human Por in gently placing the burden securely onto the trolley.
Diz apparently switched to GalStand Simple. "Why no cart first?"
"None being back."
The remaining exchange was normal Human bickering through a common tongue. However, the initial exchange was noted and logged by the Guimbe crew in the area, filed under Confusing Human Interactions. There were several others, including a resurfacing of 'mood', the evolution of non-word noises as shorthand for longer and more complicated statements, and something called 'weebo'.
The Guimbe would never understand 'weebo'. At various times, it was the name of the "ships' Gremlin", a call to cause chaos in a specific area by pointing at it, and a warning of impending chaotic activities during ship-local Silly Seasons. There were other uses for the ur-word, but the meaning escaped the rest of the crew.
It perpetuated rapidly, quickly became part of the Ships' Humans' cultural identity, and refused to be defined, even when the Guimbe were brave enough to ask.
The most they could get out of the Ships' Humans was, "Oh, man. Flakkin Weebo..." and laughter.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / mimagephotography]
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