Lions and Tigers and Bears: The Internet Strikes Back

by George Takei

  LMFAO indeed. (If you don’t know that group, or what those letters mean, I recommend you look it up. Do not under any circumstances ask your teenager.)

  My favorite Spock humor took “urban” lyrics and rewrote them with a Spockian twist. I enjoyed posting these on my page, challenging my fans to see how many of them would “get” them. And okay, I admit it, I occasionally had to seek the assistance of younger staff members to decode these memes for me. Here are two that made the rounds in this quadrant of the galaxy:

  These memes were popular not only for their juxtaposition of the presumably placid Spock with the decidedly raunchy or bubble-gum pop lyrics, but also because they “gameified” the moment. Puzzles like this, which ask fans to think, have their own rewards when solved. They are also most likely to be shared, as fans subconsciously wonder whether their own friends and families are as nerdy, bright and culturally attuned as they are. The “share” that results from these types of gameified posts in fact helps coalesce an otherwise ragtag, random base into one that identifies as cross-generational, savvy and clever.

  Taking up the theme of Spock and the beats and tunes of our modern day life, an image of Spock mixing tracks as an actual D.J. wasn’t far behind. He actually shares this honor with Professor Snape of Harry Potter fame, and indubitably for the same reason: When you think of that hostile head of Slytherin House, with his signature deadpan delivery, this image of Snape at the turntablemight be the furthest thing from your mind:

  Now tell me you didn’t just read that in his chilling manner.

  The Spock version of this, on the other hand, had the advantage of providing one of the worst puns I’ve ever seen.

  Let me go on “record” as saying, this puts quite a new spin on things.

  Then there is our fascination with what I have dubbed “The Sensual Spock.” If you’ve ever walked in on parents “doing it,” you will not soon shake that image from your mind. If this never happened to you, count yourself lucky. In a similar vein, we are at once repulsed and transfixed by the idea of “Spock Sex.” Few have ever seen Spock in anything less than a full Starfleet uniform, so viewing his startlingly hirsute, naked torso, in what can best be described as the beginnings of a Nazi bondage porno, can be rather disquieting, to say the least:

  We also never like to think of Vulcans as descended from primates as we “primat-ive” humans are, so this image is all the more incongruous. Spock has always been so successful at burying and shrouding his half-human heritage, with all that unseemly emotion, that we often forget that he shares our simian DNA, at least in part. Still, I’ve found this image can only be erased from our minds by adding a touch of Vulcan humor to the mix, as one of my favorite Star Trek memes did quite successfully:

  Now isn’t that better?

  Another popular meme is of Spock in the company of a small black cat. If memory serves me, this image is from a scene in an episode called “Catspaw” from the second season of Star Trek: The Original Series. It stands to reason that Vulcans might prefer cats over more emotionally-available and eager-to-please dogs; Spock would never approve of the unbridled and unconditional love and exuberance so typical of canines. Cats, on the other hand, are similar to Vulcans—dispassionate, contemplative and pointy-eared.

  His apparent affection for cats is shared with his Star Trek: The Next Generation counterpart, the android Data, whose pet cat bore the awkward name of Spot.

  In the reboot of the Star Trek movies, Spock has an improbably and steamy romantic relationship with Lieutenant Uhura. As shocking as it maybe to witness a Vulcan acting like a teenager with all the attendant raging hormones, he wouldn’t be the first Star Trek character to “get down” with Uhura. Kirk and Uhura shared the first black/white kiss ever aired on TV (another milestone for the series). Only I seemed immune to her raw sexiness (for reasons no one knew at the time), as the winning entry from my on-line “Caption This!” contest summed up brilliantly:

  As a final note, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the “new” Spock in the Star Trek movies, Zachary Quinto, is an openly gay actor, something that would have been unthinkable back when Star Trek: The Original Series aired. Perhaps the greatest thing about this fact is that, while it was met with enthusiastic “squees” from LGBT fans, the news largely received a collective shrug from straight ones. How far we have come.

  After all, as Spock might say, judging someone’s acting based on his sexual orientation is quite illogical.

  Grumpy Cat

  Those who follow my Facebook page know that, like the rest of the Internet, a good percentage of my posts are about cats. Brad and I actually feed and care for three feral cats — Fluffy, Ginger and Evil Eyes — who have made our yard in Los Angeles their home. In my first book, I devoted a whole chapter to humanity’s furred, feline friends and their conquest of the Internet. But I’d like to take a moment to give credit to the one puss that, in a very short time, has become not only the most popular felis catus in the world, but also one of its most recognizable personalities: Grumpy Cat.

  If you haven’t seen Grumpy Cat, you haven’t been paying attention. Her unique mug appears daily in tens of thousands of newsfeeds, blogs, and posts. Grumpy Cat’s mien is so distinctive, and so compelling, that she has become a cultural icon. And it took her less than a year.

  From this emerged countless memes. Fans took her apparent distaste for all things, and recast it into actual statements of general negativity. Like a giant black hole of “meh,” Grumpy Cat gave new voice to the eternally pessimistic. She had become, simply put, the world’s perfect “sourpuss.”

  From general negativity, hoewever, she quickly went from being merely “grumpy” to something darker. Others in pain? Good. Disease and pestilence? Welcome. A national disaster? Makes her day.

  Meme-makers had her quickly crossing genres, where symbols of pure evil and despair were no match for her Serene Grumpitude:

  I’ve sometimes wondered though: What accounts for this frowning feline’s huge popularity? Perhaps there is some part of our collective world outlook that she taps into, some well of pessimism which many are happy to see has finally been given not only voice but a true champion. She says what the rest of us wish we could.

  Part of her allure, of course, is that she is a cat. Domesticated cats already hold in our culture a curiously high and revered status, given that they don’t do much of anything but sleep, eat and poop in boxes. While dogs often appear attention-starved, hyperactive and desperate, cats, by contrast, have “attitude.” You must earn their affection. You will try, and you will fail. Like Galadriel with the One Ring, all would love her and despair.

  The rest of her powers, of course, lay in that frown. Like the mysterious smile of the Mona Lisa, Grumpy Cat’s mouth has the uncanny quality of saying so much more. The viewer wonders, what is she really thinking? What secrets does she hide? And why does she hate us so?

  The beauty of it, of course, is that Grumpy Cat is really just that — grumpy. She doesn’t really hate everything, we just like to think she does. And she isn’t really the face of pure evil. That honor may belong elsewhere:

  We’re as fond of Grumpy Cat’s grumpiness as we are of grumpy old people who shout at us to get off their lawns. I’m reminded of Shirley McClaine’s character Wheezer in Steel Magnolias, who famously quipped that she wasn’t a bitch, she’d just been in a bad mood for twenty years. Or Grandpa Gustafson in Grumpy Old Men itself, who groused “Kids. Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.” Even once young and glamorous stars of stage and film maintain their appeal in their golden years by going bitchy on us. As Dolly Parton put it, “I’m old enough now and cranky enough now, that if someone tried to tell me what to do, I’d tell them where to put it.”

  We adore our cranks for two reasons. First, they say what we all merely think. We septuagenarian-plussers don’t care as much what people think of us, so the world gets described without nice filters. Second, others forgive the grumpiness because the world likes t
o believe, deep down, that all that piss and vinegar coats a heart of gold.

  Case in point: Grumpy Cat became so known for saying “no” that a “yes” from her was considered revolutionary. My own experience was telling. Around the time of the marriage equality court cases in March 2013, I called upon fans to change their profile pictures to a pink equality symbol on a red background. (I devote an entire chapter later in this book to this particular point in our collective online history, which was both surprising in its reach and profoundly impactful.) As the Internet so often does, this symbol began morphing quickly, with all manner of mutations popping up. But one of my favorites simply showed Grumpy Cat, the sultana of shade and the queen of meme herself, holding up a simple sign:

  Everyone understood what this conveyed: If Grumpy Cat could bring herself to actually support something, it should be a no-brainer for mere humans.

  At one point, Grumpy Cat and I were up for the same award — the Distinguished Achievement Award for Internet Culture, given out at the Shorty Awards. (I didn’t really know what to say when I won this, other than to compare it to another unexpected honor: “Thank you for this award; it’s just as cool as having an asteroid named after me.”) I expected Grumpy Cat to come after me in light of the besting, but happily for me, she didn’t seem particularly phased by the loss. In fact, she recovered well, and apparently is now the official spokescat for Friskies cat food, which itself is the height of irony.

  A final aside: Grumpy Cat’s real name is Tardar, which is a truncation of a misspelled “Tardar Sauce.” She goes by Tard for short, which means her nickname is also a coincidental and unfortunate derogatory vernacular for the mentally handicapped. When I first used “Tard” to describe her in a post, I captioned it with what I believed was a wholly innocent line, “Don’t be tard-y to the party.”

  Many disagreed. The comment feed (and my FB wall) quickly filled up with pleas and cries from special needs advocates, who were anywhere from “saddened” to “shocked and appalled” that I would use a term like “Tard” so cavalierly.

  To be honest, it took me a while even to understand what they were talking about. As I would never use “retard” to refer to someone with a developmental disability, “tard” was an abbreviation I didn’t even know. But try explaining that to a fan. My attempt to note that the cat’s name was Tardar and that I wasn’t belittling her earned me no points with an increasingly unsettled mob. “We don’t use retard to describe things we don’t like, just as we don’t say something is ‘so gay’ anymore, George. I’m surprised and disappointed to see that you of all people would use a term like ‘tard’ on your page.”

  I should mention that many other fans, weary of the language police, leapt to my defense, pointing out that I obviously meant no offense, and was simply trying to make a clumsy pun. But this experience, bizarre as it was, has me now steering clear of controversy and avoiding even any suggestion of the term “retarded.” (For the same reasons, I wonder about terms like “crippling” and “niggardly” which have perfectly benign meanings, unrelated to the words they resemble, but in the hands of the linguistically challenged and easily “butt-hurt,” cause undue offence.) No matter: henceforth, Tard would simply be “Grumpy Cat.”

  One final observation: People have been quick to assume all manner of ills and hatefulness simply based on that look on Grumpy Cat’s face. But perhaps she merely has “bitchy resting face,” as the site Funny or Die once lampooned. She can’t help her outer frown, any more than Simon Cowell can help revealing his inner bitch during terrible auditions on American Idol. For much the same reason, we look to them for the honest, unvarnished truth. Perhaps Grumpy Cat hits a nerve precisely because we’re all a little grumpy ourselves, but have learned to hide it well. That she doesn’t, and can’t, may explain our Grumpy Cat obsession. Maybe we’re just a “tard” too much like her to admit.

  Link Wars

  It’s no secret that I use Facebook to promote my blog, books and “Takei” merchandise (the obligatory T-shirts, mugs and mousepads that certain fans love to collect) — the money from which is either donated to charity, or used to compensate my staffers, who tirelessly monitor and collect the finest Internet gems. For much of 2012, I was quite open and straightforward about what we were hawking. “My new book is out, and I’d be honored if you picked up a copy.” “I’ve designed a T-shirt for ‘straight’ supporters to wear — come be part of the TSA — the Takei Straight Alliance.” “’It’s OK to be Takei’ merchandise is now on sale, all proceeds to charity.”

  Despite this effort to be forthright, I caught a great deal of flak from fans who thought that my own page should contain nothing that isn’t there solely to amuse them, and that I shouldn’t even make it self-sustaining by, heaven forbid, selling anything on it. “Stop with the shameless plugs, George.” “This page used to be fun” and “George is just trying to push his book on us.”

  That last complaint really irks me. After all, other than during the holiday buying season, I probably post 20 funny memes or interesting articles for every one post about my book or merchandise. And even if now and then I do plug my book, is this different from any other “celebrity”? My goodness, if any of these grumblers bothered to so much as take a quick peek at the pages of pop bands, celebrity designers or even certain other Star Trek personalities, they would quickly deduce that those pages read like 24/7 infomercials. I’ve always instructed my team to keep the page quite light on commerce — aiming more for a gentle public radio-like entreaty than an ad-laden platform for self-promotion.

  Still, the complaints kept up, and I began to understand how some folks at Facebook itself might feel about their own user base: despite receiving a free service that fans are under no obligation to use, many still complained and oozed negativity, indignant to be asked to purchase something from time to time. It’s not as if the occasional promotion takes up any of their time. Goodness, no one has ever required them to buy the item in question. Unlike TV or in a movie theater, it is quite simple to ignore or “scroll past” the ads, just as someone who doesn’t want to see an ad in a magazine can just turn the page. But still a handful of the most vocal fans continued to gripe.

  So I tried a different tack, seeking a more acceptable way to offer my own items on my own page. One idea was to address the matter head-on by admitting that I was doing some shilling. After all, we are all adults here. As a self-published author, who will pitch my book if I don’t? Many other fans pointed this out when someone complained. “There’s nothing wrong with George talking about his own book on his own page,” one wrote. “If you ever write a book and want your friends to buy it, you’d do the same.”

  Another idea was, of course, to use humor. People are more likely to “forgive” even blatant self-promotion, if the script is entertaining enough. (As I observed in an earlier chapter, who doesn’t remember Wendy’s infamous “Where’s the beef?!” ad, which people stuck around to watch just to hear that old woman bark those words? Young’uns, ask your parents.) So I began a series that I called “Shameless Plugs,” where I would find images or cartoons of, well, plugs. Here’s an example:

  I’d say something like , “Here are a couple of truly shameless plugs. Speaking of which, have you ordered your copy of Oh Myyy?”

  Another read, “Shatner always got my name wrong. It’s pronounced ‘Takei,’ as in, rhymes with ‘toupee.’ And yes, it’s a well-made hairpiece, not obvious plugs. Speaking of which, have you bought my book yet?”

  I started running out of creative ways to talk about “plugs,” so I went to the next closest thing I could think of:

  after which I wrote, “Oh, you said shameless PUGS. Here you go: http://po.st/QCv79Q”

  My staffers began to report, however, that despite my efforts to keep things fresh and fun, our book sales were declining, because fewer and fewer people were actually clicking on my links. The problem was this: The links usually quite clearly indicated that they were for a book or a t-shirt or some
other sponsored merchandise. In other words, I’d become predictable, and as a consequence it was easy for fans to simply scroll on by.

  This phenomenon of ignoring links based on their previews, whether to news articles, funny stories or my merchandise, was steadily growing. I began to suspect that most people looking at a preview link were making split-second decisions not to be taken away from the primary feed. Like people reading newspaper headlines, they skimmed past the substance with the confidence that they already knew what lay on the other side of the link, and thus didn’t need to click further. The Internet is indeed so filled with clutter that yet another link with yet another preview photo can get so easily lost in the clamor.

  So my staff suggested that, for all the outside links we put on the Facebook page, we ought to remove the preview altogether. This way, if people wanted to know what the link led to, they’d actually have to click on it.

  I liked the new, uncluttered link format. It was as if we’d gift-wrapped each link, with just enough of a teaser to whet the curiosity. Fans would have to trust me that I would send them somewhere interesting. And ninety percent of the time, that was to a funny, informative or epic story that a fan or one of my staff had found and forwarded. And yes, about ten percent of the time, it was to my book or merchandise page. I actually thought that was a pretty fair balance, more or less on par with commercials on a TV show. If people didn’t want to click the link, they were free to ignore it, just scroll on by.

  I also liked knowing I wasn’t filling up fans’ newsfeeds with large images and text. You see, among the more “vocal” pundits who comment on my Facebooking, a chief criticism is the amount of “Internet noise” I am said to generate, which supposedly pushes “legitimate” news stories out of the way in favor of ridiculous cat videos. I doubt those pundits have actually spent much time on my page, on which I have laboriously included important news stories and thoughtful editorials on everything from the uprisings in Turkey to homelessness to Russia’s anti-LGBT laws. Complaining that these links take you on occasion to a cat video is like lamenting the fact that a lot of TV channels are for entertainment, not news.