You’ll have to go over here to The Poke to see the whole narrative of how this started. And the gif, don’t forget to watch the gif. But it’s interesting to see how Ryan Gosling wearing a T-Shirt of Macaulay Culkin last year evolved into a whole storyline involving the two actors that has now become–as they say– a viral sensation, a pop culture phenomena.
How do these things happen? Why do some things capture our collective imagination and others fall flat?
And it’s a harmless bit of diversion, right? After all, The Poke’s tagline is “time well wasted”. HuffPoUK called this a meta-narrative, a theme for our times, one seen as an “essential part of modernity.”
If you are busy wasting time—which is a well-needed activity during our busy, stressful times—perhaps it is simply more fun to waste it watching things that millions of other people are watching at the same time. It may not be essential, but it sure seems inescapable.
Your thoughts?
Phew. I was going to point out that the whole things is a crappy photoshop job – indeed, it was borne out of a subreddit – but then I realised I’d just be buying into the whole ‘wasting time’ thing.
Way too meta for me.
Remember when Tim Roth and Gary Oldman did this? I do.