>The cake is a lie Explain how this is/was so cringe when it was creative and lightly humorous for its time. Was it cringe from the start, or did it become cringe because it hit the mainstream as a le quirky chungus thing?Discuss.
Women
I have a friend who loves Portal and he despises when people quote this.
>>744561212Why though?
>>744560936Can you explain the joke or is it only humorous as a reference?In jokes that have no punchline are cringe, even if they are enjoyable to that group.
It's one of those things unfunny people latch onto because they're boring as fuck and have no personality unless it comes pre-canned in the form of pop culture references. It's on the same tier as the annoying Plebbit fags spouting the same ol' tired pun chains "did Nazi that coming" shit. As if they're aggressively judging you in the ribs insisting that they did a funny thing and that they're funny and even just a pity laugh as some form of acknowledgement will make them visible for once in their sad lives.
>>744561175Fpbp
>>744560936It was in the immediate, a way to signal that you had either finished or nearly finished a Valve game that had to compete with being overshadowed by their previous worksin the year after, it became synonymous with being an insufferable "how do you do fellow kids" tier larp that people would parrot because the first generation emo/scene girls that people were trying to fuck thought it was HILARIOUS and it was also a relatively accessible game for them to play so they might have some internet points in a reasonably short time frame if they decided to be not-like-those-other-girls gamergawd69
>>744561442The "joke" is that it's an absurd contrast and dark comedy of sorts, when the reality is that you are intended to be thrown into an incinerator to die and be discarded.The thread isn't me saying it's hilarious (I enjoyed it in 2007), more asking how it quickly become an eye rolling cringefest quote/joke when it was authentically fresh and enjoyable at launch.
>>744560936The meme and the flash game got me into Portal but the Doug Rattmann lore got me into the rest of the series.
>>744561212He's based, the """"""joke"""""" is "arrow to the knee" tier.
>>744560936>the companion cubeanother cringe thing reeeeddit normies also seem attracted to from portal
>>744561584I almost wonder if Portal being a "nerdy puzzle game" has something to do with it. When someone makes the reference, you just kind of infer that they beat the game. Kind of feel like smarty pants (pretentious cunts) wannabes had a hand in this shit.
Another example of this is when people use that stupid Bioshock quote
>>744561516Dude, the gameThe GAME lol
It was 6-7 before 6-7.
>>744561745>Arrow to the kneeMy sides are literally in orbit.
>>744560936Within the context of the game, it wasn't a joke. It was a genuine warning that glados the AI was lying to you about your ultimate reward. Normalfags took it out of context and it became cringy afterwards.
>>744561889I think less that it was a puzzle game and more it carried some extra legitimacy because it was clearly springboarded off the physics engine of Half-Life 2, and before gamer culture had clearly perforated all aspects of the internet due to viral marketing, it might have been a reasonable assumption that someone who could make the reference and understand it was also someone who might've played enough CS and OG pc games that the Orange Box was associated with to be a "trve" nerd
I wanna eat Chell's and Glados' cake.
>>744560936The only real cringy part of Portal was all the marketing about Portal 2 being a "science game" when it was just a puzzle game with ironic humor.
>>744560936It was brilliant, and thusly overused and overmemed to the point that everyone started hating it, that's it. Especially when people would use it to 'fit in' with the nerd clique they didn't deserve to be a part of.
>>744562741she hasn't showered in like 600 years doe
>>744560936it wasn't cringe in the game, it's the overusage outside the game that became cringe.same with the "took an arrow in the knee" jokes.>>744561175root cause as always
>>744560936It was dumb retard normalfags and redditors parroting the line out of context as a way of showing that they were "lol so nerdy XD" without understanding the context.Like >>744562637 said, it makes sense in game because it's a frantic warning scrawled by previous test subjects on the walls of the crawlspaces you find inside the testing chambers to foreshadow that Glados is going to try and kill you. Once it left that context and made it to the mainstream, it just became another term to throw around randomly like pic related.
>>744560936It was a silly little thing that fit the tone of Portal nicely because Portal was a silly game. Then redditors started repeating it like faggot parrots and made it out to be this big thing rather than a small part of the game and then it became cringe.
>>744562868Imagine.
>>744562856Why did exploding lemons not take off in the same way?
>>744562006FAGGOT
>>744563415it did, it used to be a small meme back in the day
>>744560936Same reason as Chuck Norris jokes. It quickly became adopted by people with zero actual relationship to the source of the joke/reference.Except unlike Chuck Norris jokes, where this was part of the foreplanning, the joke WAS that secondaries would repeat the jokes genuinely, not realizing the joke was on them. This didn't exist for the cake, so it quickly just became a sign that someone had no genuine feelings for anything, and would repeat literally anything for popularity, even if they didn't know what it meant.
>>744563415>>744563441also SPAAAACE!
>>744563415The Cake is a Lie is 5 words. Fits on a pin, fits on a shirt. Can be repeated quickly. Cave Johnson's lemon rant is multiple sentences, easily a paragraph or two. You would have to spend effort memorizing it, or would have to read it and think about it enough to identify what parts were funny, and someone without context wouldn't get the reference unless they had done the same.
>>744563419Uh oh looks like some lost the GAME
Little Kuriboh's story about how he was in a cab with the voice actor for Naruto and the cab driver turned to them and said "The cake is a lie" and they just awkwardly stared at him before leaving is so charmingly autistic from all angles
>>744563792
>>744562856>overused and overmemedBut enough about reddit frog.
>gen x humor>edgy, mean jokes on a group>"shut up nerd">gen y humor>quirky chungus>"cake is a lie lmao">gen z humor>referential>"WAKANDAAAAA">gen a humor>meme soup>six seveeeen! fanum taaax!
>>744563623God I hate SPAAAAACE
>>744563623>>744564790...I liked the Space Core...
>>744564662Pretty sure the cake meme was actually just valve marketing, chungus is also kinda recent
>>744565123>chungus>recentAnon...
>>744561245Because its like the Baka Mitai meme everyone who quotes it doesn't give a shit about the game they just want to feel included with the people who play it. saying "LE CAKE IS LE LIE" at least back then was like virtue signalling that you were a cool epic gamer but you actually didnt do that
>>744565123No, they actually thought some random hoop that fell from the sky at the end would be the big meme
>>744565208The song is old but the meme is recent
>>744565297NVM both are from 2018 the song and the dumb meme
>>744564662>lookup "67">makes zero senseyeah gen-a is deadass cooked af fs fs nocrap skibily
>>744565294The what, I dont play valve games if thats supposed to be a reference cause they suck
>>744562001No Gogs or Gings, Only Mang :DDDDD
>>744565421humour has always made almost no sense larper people laughed at jesters farting in the middle ages didnt make sense back then did it?
>>744564662As a gen y it was mostly lolcats and these memes for me
>>744561442It wasn't a joke.At the start of the game, you're promised cake when you're done testing, as if it's all some routine thing.There is no cake.In an alcove out of sight of the cameras, someone else broke a hole in the wall and among other disturbing things affirming the suspicions you undoubtedly have, that message is left on the wall.Without context, it just seems like lolrandom humor.
>>744565474That was before corporate algorithms, microplastics and fluoride fried society.
>>744565425You blow up the lab you're trapped in at the end of the game. The ending cutscene has you land in the parking lot, followed by some random hoop. I actually had to rewatch the ending because i didn't remember it, so i don't know why they thought the internet would latch onto that.
i can't think of an equivalent cringe video game humor reference prior to this
>>744565610>it didnt make sense before>it doesnt make sense now>but now is different because of algorithms and microplasticslol wut?
How fast can you guys beat Portal? Not in a gay speedrunning using exploits way, just playing it normally. There are 3 points through the game where how fast you can move through a test is about how lucky you can get, but I've managed to do it in less than an hour.
>>744565742I actually learned about hoopy like 10 years ago, and I had to rewatch the cutscene 3 times to figure out what the fuck people were talking about. It's literally just some random fucking debris in front of you, I do not get it
>>744565826i forgot how sovlful tf2 waseven making comics just for fun
>>744565294>>744565868That's was a FUCKING JOKE. Like, i don't remember where it was mentioned, but i think that was a response to someone asking about viral stuff in a game, and instead of answering with obvious "cake is a lie" or "companion cube", they answered with the hoopy the hoop. It was the guy who was part of "old murphy" site.
>>744560936it was always unfunny and bad, and everybody was only pretending to find it funny.
>>744566595also the main purpose was to virtue signal about how you beat the game. which is the same pattern with a lot of unfunny reddit humor from back then, just virtue signalling about pointless crap like that while pretending what they say is funny. (jojo fandom did this too if you remember.)
>>74456466267 unironically owns all of these
>IS THIS LE HECKIN' JO JO REFERENCE!!!!!!????
>>744566773Yes this was pretty annoying, but people sincerely having a good time will always be more respectable than sharty cancer.
I don't think it was ever supposed to be humorous, it was just a "subtle" wink and nudge that you were le nerdy geek chic, which was the style at the time.
>>744560936Cake is a lie was the first meme primarily spread by people who had no idea where it originally came from
>>744560936its cringe in the same way as nerds yelling fus ro dah in public is cringe
>>744560936it was cute and clever when it came out. the rise of video games as a normie tier hobby was well under way and this was something that was latched into and ran into the ground. it's like the famous "that was epic, epic for the win" quote, which was said without irony by some dumb woman. no one says epic or for the win genuinely anymore either
>>744566853it's incredible how the shitty has become the very thing they were supposed to hate and mock. no idea how we got here.
>>744560936The joke itself was fine, I think. The more worrying stuff was posers using this as a catchphrase with no understanding of where the meme came from or why. People who never played portal would spam this in a pitiful attempt to fit in
Casuals are cringe and op is always a faggot. Thereby you are a cringe faggot.
>>744560936
>>744572946
>>744561516>>744562006>>744563419>>744563792>>744564447there's something meta and brilliant here but I'm not clever enough to describe it
>>744566934All your base are belong to us.
Most meme are pure shit anyway.
>>744560936>or did it become cringe because it hit the mainstream as a le quirky chungus thing?This. It was a fine enough joke within the context of the game. Outside of it it became referential humor, which is the worst humor. Referential humor isn't actually funny, but it's used often because it strokes one's ego.>Hey, I got that reference! I'm so knowledgeable in the nerdy things!Thus, "The cake is a lie" is basically the grandfather of reddit culture, which is just hordes of narcissists making references so they can feel like they are "in on the thing".
>>744573763>referential humorit's even really humour, it's more like a plea for belonging coupled with nervous laughterI assume
>>744563792The Game isn't so much referential as it is little innocent gotcha. Like rickrolling.If you wanted to accuse /v/ of redditisms - you have better material. Like pedoposting. It's the same shit every time and it's done for the same purposes as referential reddit humor.>She's 14 why is /v/ suddenly full of pedos?>suddenly>out of 10!
>>744566934That would be the sator square.
>>744573847Ye, that's the point I'm making. It's not comedy, it's not witty, it's not even humorous, but it's treated as "jokes" because you're supposed to go "Oh I get it!", like you would with real jokes.
It just wasn't all that funny, it felt a bit forced. Referential humor was dying at that time and everything needed to be more """organic""". Youtube poop and game and movie critics saying profanities was more popular. God I wonder what happened to that time where people were counting the days until a meme stopped being funny. Who knew jaks would stick around for over a fucking decade.
>>744564662Switch wakanda and chungus around and you're almost right
>>744573375All your base did not leave nerd circles. That meme lasted maybe six months, the flash animation included pretty much every AYB edit in existence.No, I didn't play Zero Wing, nor do I intend to.The Cake is a Lie was at the cusp of gaming intersecting with mainstream culture for the first time since Pac Man. Hence all the Hot Topic merchandise with portal shit on it and girls wearing it.
>>744575078>All your base did not leave nerd circlesNigga, not only it did leave nerd circles but the meme is so well remembered to this day that when the port of this game came out (specifically the arcade version) then 99% of comments and steam forum posts were complaints of "wtf, where is le all ur base belong to us" because originally the arcade version didn't even have this intro cutscene and only genny version did.Like that meme was literary everywhere, on ICanHasCheezburger, 9gag and similar shit. You could even buy t-shirts. It would be a complete history revisionism to say otherwise.
>>744560936Whenever I think of the joke I think of>>744561175Never men.
>>744562762All I remember from Portal 2 marketing was the potato thing.
>>744560936>it was creative and lightly humorous for its timeAnd what happens when that happens? The most obnoxious fanbase is born
It was a different time. Late 2000s was peak invader zim and ran dumb humor.In hindsight, it was a wholesome era. People weren't so irony poisoned to hate everything ironically.>xD *glomps u*
>>744578838>notices your bulge>nuzzles you >uwu what's this?
>>744578838So different unc
>>744573905I got rickrolled the other day and it made me smile. It's a really good song.
>>744560936It literally wasn't.It was never even a popular thing to say or reference.Some faggot journalist simply decided to pretend that it's a tired trope and his faggot friends copied him and then it became a tired trop before it was ever even a trope.
This one's still funny desu
>>744573905"out of 10" is a quick and handy way to say "yes, we know how old she is, we're still going to masturbate to her and we're not going to honor your objections by giving them a response other than a tired punchline. Fuck off".
