I always love seeing mashups of my favorite nerdy things on the web and the weird joy that spawns from it. Not quite “euphoria” but there’s a distinct giddiness that wells up with this hodgepodge of cool geeky things. Oh cool, Wil Wheaton is talking to Jeph Jacques on twitter, awesome! And hey, Jonathan Coulton did a guest appearance on MC Frontalot’s new album. Web icons I’ve come to follow are following each other too, like some kind of secret internet dork society.

This feeling of “worlds colliding” is what I call Synerdgy (nerd + synergy). It’s that little connection being made in the back of your head when you see a combination of awesome things that are together more than the sum of their parts, yet have a distinct “uncoolness” to them. Quick breakdown of some basic elements to it:

1) nostalgia – anything that references something you knew growing up usually gets a +1 to funny. This is Family Guy’s bread and butter. Remove Thundercats, Back to the Future, hell, anything from before 1995 from the show and it becomes half as good. And let’s be honest, 90% of my posts. Van Damme’s current “career”.
2) ironic/twist – Seeing Rick Astley himself getting rickrolled. Pretty standard to jokes, but totally essential nevertheless.
3) meta humor – Anytime a character breaks the fourth wall to let you know it’s self referencing. For those Simpsons addicts, this would be like Burns getting shot and at the end of the first episode Dr. Hibbert points out to the camera and says “can YOU figure it out?” then quickly pans over to Chief Wiggum who responds “well sure, it’s my job”.
4) secrecy – It’s that little extra poke in the side you get when you’re the only one in a room full of people laughing. Probably a bit of smug superiority along with it as well. Usually not deserved, though. Think South Park’s episode on World of Warcraft.
5) random – When a combination makes absolutely no sense, and yet together they just rock. Like…a shark and a gorilla high fiving into an explosion:

Jumping back to Family Guy as an example, it’s exactly why the show was so great the first few times you see it. Easily, the first season incorporated at least 3 or 4 of these elements per show. Here’s the down side: soon enough this effect only becomes repetitive. Every person who said the show was better before it got canceled (except, of course, for the self-indulgent assholes who just say that to feel superior) instinctively know this. The Simpsons started canning this “wackiness” into premade bites after about season 9 or 10, which caused it’s own decline. So clearly there’s a point where your return on Synerdgy starts to level off. Randomness is lost to carbon copy jokes and popularization dulls the edge of inside jokes. Same thing with meta humor being repetitive and nostalgia no longer in the past (for the love of God I hope the “I love the 60′s-00′s people are reading this).

Just remember: If at any point you start enjoying the blog and then start to hate it, re-read this post. We’ve probably jumped the shark (or you’ve recovered from a head injury). But I’m meta-referencing it! So it’s funny all over again.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 11:05 pm and is filed under random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.