Serendipitous searching: somebody stop me NOW!!!

Some time ago a friend introduced me to the term serendipitous sarching, where looking for one thing leads to another thing, which leads to another thing, which leads to another thing… It put a name to something I had been doing for years. Serendipitous searching was why I got a graduate degree in Library Science, so I could get paid to spend my life looking for things that would lead me to look for other things. Awesome!

So there I was as the afternoon wound down today, reading my latest blog feeds – something I try to do several times a week. (And I try really hard not to just select the Mark All News As Read option which is cheating but when the New York Times feed alone has 385 unread items what the hell choice do I HAVE?!? But I digress.) Anyway, I was innocently plowing through the Huffington Post feed (huff, huff, huff) and ran across an uncharacteristically lighthearted subject line that read: Ed Martin: Watch Weezer and Test Your Viral Video IQ. That grabbed me so much that I clicked on the subject line and the whole entry popped up in Firefox. It was all about a new symbols for facebook” title=”music symbols for facebook”>music video from Weezer called Pork and Beans (alert: this tune is seriously catchy! you will hear it in your head for some time if you listen to it!!) and how the video incorporates sntaches from all sorts of Internet memes. Okay, that was bad enough and I of course had to go listen to the video then go back and check out the Weezer website. But then the post also referenced an episode of South Park called Meet the Internet Stars (which I had to go and watch, which led me to check out more Season 12 episodes (and let me just say, “Whoa! South Park has been on TV for 12 seasons!?!”). Between the Weezer symbols for facebook” title=”music symbols for facebook”>music video and South Park, I was alarmed by how many of the memes I recognized, but there were a few that were new to me. Like Numa Numa (15 million views – okay, 15 million and one). Or Miss Teen USA 2007 (26 million views).

The Internet is such a wonderful thing! I’m going to go watch Numa Numa again. Or maybe Peanut Butter Jelly Time (6.9 million views). Or the Llama Song (4.2 million views).

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