In Massively parallel culture, Chris Anderson notes that Anil Dash “hacked” the NYT by wearing a GOATSE t-shirt in a photo shoot, and that many people are not aware of this “retina-scarring shock-pic” — or of many other “popular” geek memes:
But I was amazed to find out that almost none of my staff (and obviously no NYT editors) knew about it. So I tried a few other cultural references that have become clichés in my little world: "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"; "More Cowbell!"; "I for one welcome our new [fill in the blank] overlords", and so on.Turns out that these snippets of culture that I thought were ubiquitous are actually pretty obscure even in my own office. And when I took an informal poll at a PR conference I was speaking at I found that only about 10% of the audience had heard of any of them, and for each phrase it was a different 10%. My tribe is not always your tribe, even if we work together, play together and otherwise live in the same world; same bed, different dreams.
If you’re wondering where “I, for one, welcome our new [fill in the blank] overlords,” came from, this may jog your memory:
Ladies and gentlemen, er, we’ve just lost the picture, but, uh, what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over — “conquered”, if you will — by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.