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Odd phrase touches all the Web bases
By Janet Kornblum, USA TODAY
Time magazine, Union Square, a freeway sign, Bill
Gates' mug shot, the space shuttle, the moon, McDonald's, Al Gore, George Bush,
a fortune cookie and a tombstone. What do all these have in common? They've
all become unwitting co-stars in the cult Web phenomenon, "All Your Base Are
Belong to Us."
Simply put, the phrase (abbreviated AYBABTU) is derived
from a really bad Japanese-to-English translation in a 10-year-old video game,
Zero Wing. Over the summer, the phrase began showing up in the far corners of
the Net (according to one Web site dedicated to the history of the phenomenon).
And in the past few weeks, it has exploded. It has even climbed onto the "Lycos
50" list of top searches.
Think of AYBABTU as a kind of Web fungus. Like Mahir (the
"I kiss you!" Turk) and HampsterDance before it, it has no real purpose or deeper
meaning. But it has grabbed the attention of thousands. And there are legions,
apparently with a lot of time on their hands, who have dedicated long hours
to doctoring photos, creating videos and sites expanding on the concept.
There it is on a McDonald's sign and on a Times Square
billboard. It shows up on trucks and is seen as "cartoon balloon" quotes attributed
to everyone, including President Bush.
"In the last three weeks it blew up," says Aaron Schatz
of Lycos. "We were getting a piddly number of searches until two weeks ago.
And all of the sudden we were getting thousands." Why would a line from an old
game suddenly catch on? Who knows?"One of the great things about the Internet
is it creates this," Schatz says. "Somebody grabs something out of the past
and turns it into a phenomenon."
More details turn up on 'Ginger'
Remember Ginger, the top-secret invention by millionaire-genius
Dean Kamen? Inside, which broke the story that Kamen's invention was making
the tech elite go ga-ga, now knows why. While a lot of people guessed that the
project, code named "Ginger," was a scooter, writer Adam Penenberg says his
investigation (he did not talk to Kamen) revealed the scooter will "likely"
run on clean-burning hydrogen fuel. Inside, the magazine, goes on sale later
this week. The article won't be immediately available on Inside.com.
E-mail Janet Kornblum at jkornblum@usatoday.com.
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