On September 22nd, the Kanye West meme officially died.

Yo Authors, I’m really happy for you, I’m going to let you finish but Ashendorf had one of the best articles of all time. One of the best articles of all time!

For those who don’t know, a meme (pronounced meem), is a sort of inside joke that circulates through society, particularly via the series of tubes known as the Internet.

The joke originated when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards and said, “I’m happy for you, and I’ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.”

Within a matter of minutes, the moment became the fodder of many Internet users as well as those who consider that type of thing to be legitimately entertaining. Over 9000 people stopped making Photoshopped images of cats to start making Kanye West a meme.

Initially, the joke was fresh and original. Jokes like “Yo Stalin, I’m happy for and I’ma let you finish but Mao was one of the best communist dictators of all time,” were, without a doubt funny.

However, unecessary Facebook statuses concerning the event began to pop up like mushroom growths. Attempts at being funny by many people who were patently unfunny appeared at an alarming rate, as every 32-year old who had a Facebook in a desperate attempt to “stay hip” began to “get into the jokes the kids are making”. The end was in sight once a “Where Will Kanye Interrupt You?” Facebook quiz appeared. For a while there, everyone forgot that the Internet is serious business.

This combination of terrible overuse, constant unfunny attempts at Photoshop jokes and corporate acknowledgement ruined the meme for everyone. We can be fairly certain, that simply due to probability, somewhere, sometime, someone’s mother attempted to make a Kanye West joke. The meme was, at that point, on life support.

However the nail in the coffin occurred on September 22 when notable Senior Taishi Matsumoto posted a Facebook status calling for “a collaboration between well known musicians on Youtube and Taylor Swift.”
An anonymous adult woman responded, “Hey man, I’m gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best youtube collabs of all time!” Matsumoto was “shocked and appalled by the pure anti-funny of that statement, it was so bad that I saw a fat man on a tiny bicycle later that day and didn’t even laugh.” Other anonymous commentators declared that “this proved that the meme is dead.”

There are many reasons why this comment is blatantly unfunny. First and foremost, the joke was already trite and annoying by that time. Secondly, rather than changing the context of the joke to accommodate the situation, the individual chose to more or less directly quote the line, but even failed at that, and got the quote wrong. These obvious mistakes indicated that the person attempting to make the joke was a complete newbies, and once the meme had made it to newbies, it was completely, certainly, dead.

The death of Kanye West as a viable joke has huge implications for the school. No longer can unoriginal teenagers with unwarranted self importance interrupt the teacher to parody Kanye. The meme is dead.

The authors certainly do not intend to attack Kanye and the joke associated with him just for the sake of doing so. Rather, as responsible and respecting journalists, we cannot allow another joke to grow annoying and stale – to do so would be the ultimate sign of disrespect towards the joke.

Once upon a time, when Kanye West drunkenly pulled that microphone away from Taylor Swift (bringing the young woman to tears), announced how awesome Beyonce was, and then swaggered back to his seat. Drunken ramblings and crying people are funny, the whole event was funny, and the jokes were funny. But as consumers of humor, we must recognize that this joke has lost all legitimacy, and like any good crippled racehorse, must be shot as a sign of respect.

This article was edited out of respect to all of those NEWBIES who would apparently take offense to a certain other term.

Co-Written by Petersen Walrod and Jack Mulcaire