I just remember telling jokes while vomiting
Is asking a girl out on a date while in another girls bed in poor taste?
Why is there a cactus in the microwave?
They sound like something out of a sitcom, maybe a stoner movie. Instead, theyre excerpts from the website Texts from Last Night (www.textsfromlastnight.com). The website prints texts forwarded to them by people who wake up after receiving or sending a text messages they dont remember sending. The humour can go from quirky and odd to downright dirty, but its always funny, possibly why the TFLN crew is publishing a book filled with their most hilarious entries. The book is due out January 26, and will join the Lolcats book I can have Cheezburger and FMLs F My Life in the ranks of internet projects transformed into traditional print.
People write about the internet a lot, especially on days when their volunteers dont submit articles on time. In LIN 204, professors talk about
English grammar and the particular codes of communication in text messages and emails, and commentators on new and old media cant get enough of how the interweb, once an entity unto itself, has oozed into the mainstream. Its been an interesting thing to watch I can haz cheeseburgers s and rickrolling go from obscure memes to popular culture, while the usual mainstays of said pop culture—television and movies—have been declining in the public eye.
And now the TFLN book is coming out, joining the Lolcats and FML in mainstream publishing. I have a personal stake in this because Id really like to earn my living as a writer, but the question is, how? Now that traditional media is not only being replaced but permeated by new media denizens, it seems like the web is the new place to go to earn success.
On one hand, this comes as a relief; the web has a huge democratizing factor—anyone can write, and anyone can find an audience, and in theory, with enough of an audience, payment is a cinch. On the other hand, change is terrifying, and having—for example—professionally trained, ethically bound journalists such as the folks at The New York Times being beaten by kids with a Wifi connection and fifteen minutes of spare time is worrying to say the least. TFLN and its cohorts raise some interesting questions about the future of the written word. The biggest question of all, though, is how can we start partying with the authors.
