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The Mattress Line

Here’s an interesting example of a meme in action. I regularly read and post to the Canucks newsgroup. A fellow poster, one Asweepay (don’t ask, I don’t know), posted this message about the Canucks current forward line of Sedin-Sedin-King:


Allright, let’s hear your suggestions for line names for the Sedins and King.

Mine are
“The Mattress Line”
Why ??? 2 twins and a king.

Everybody thinks that’s pretty funny, and, crediting Asweepay for his brilliance, I email the folks at Sportspage (the most popular local TV sports show). I get the following reply from one of the hosts:


very solid Darren …….
we might just use it!!
Thanks much!!
Sincerely,
BMac

A meme is born. Not only is it heard shortly thereafter on Sportspage, but the term starts showing up all over the place. It’s heard on CKNW (local talk radio), then on the NHL Network and most recently on ESPN, TSN and CNN. It has also turned up in other discussion forums. That was quick.

It’s remarkable to me how quickly these ideas move through our culture. As an experiment, I’m going to use this entry to try to keep track of as many of the “mattress line” occurences as I can. A chart may result.

UPDATE: The term ‘Mattress Line’ has now appeared in USA Today, Canucks.com and various other forums and fan sites.

This entry was posted in:Sports
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Published by dbarefoot

Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

9 comments

  1. asweepay was the nickname of a friend of mine in junior high.. well, that’s how you say it…

    you’re supposed to spell it like this: asswipe.

    🙂

  2. Nice! What’s also great about the spread of memes now is that we can observe how they travel by consolidating and ordering their occurrences in places like discussion boards, usenet, blogs and so on. I would imagine you could use google and a bit of easy programming to find pages with your meme and then sort the search results by date of posting, then go from there as deep as you want to.

  3. I think Asweepay comes from a 1992 Saturday Night Live skit:

    UPS Man (Rob Schneider): Package for a Mr. Asswipe.

    Nicolas Cage: Um, excuse me, that’s “Ahhs-Wee-Pay.”

    UPS Man: Whatever, asswipe.

  7. If all you smart alecs click the ‘Continue reading’ link, you’ll see that I’ve updated this entry with a couple of new ‘mattress line’ hits. Cheeky monkeys. DB.

  8. That whole Asweepay thing reminds me of a trick a friend of mine played on a poor co-op once. He managed to convince the kid that the word “Fragile” on all the shipping boxes was actually pronounced “fra-gee-lee” because it’s the name of their Italian Specialty Box manufacturer.

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