night in 2005, Ian Spector was sitting at his computer, unable to get ahold of any of his real-life friends. So, the high school senior eventually got antsy and decided to connect with his virtual friends instead.
"It was a group of people who probably wouldn't ever want to hang out in person in real life," Spector says."But they did want to hang out there." Spector was a brilliant kid, so savvy with computers that he taught an internet class for senior citizens when he was in third grade. As he got older, Spector became known as the kid who could rip R-rated comedy CDs for you. He used his web savviness to fit in, and slipping the cool kids a bootleg Chris Rock or Wanda Sykes album was the ultimate icebreaker.
He shrugged his shoulders and kept pulling from SomethingAwful while also adding some of his own. His generator continued to rack up views for a month or two. Either way, Spector had a clear winner to try for future"facts," and he couldn't help but giggle as he began to type in the name"Chuck Norris" over and over again. The internet was a few minutes away from getting a roundhouse kick that changed it forever.Cannon Pictures/Getty Images, Chuck Norris was on the second tier of a wave of martial arts and fighting movies that would bank billions at the box office.
But by the mid-1990s, the repetition of his movies -- all the fighting movies, actually -- seemed to have worn out movie crowds. Norris took a job on"Walker, Texas Ranger," a hokey but popular TV series about Norris having a badge as he spinning-back fisted criminals in the face. Walker ran for eight successful years. But as he hit his early 60s in the 2000s, ass kicking roles became a bit of a stretch -- even for Chuck Norris, a guy whose vehicles supposedly run on fear.
Lankshear goes so far as to say maybe every elementary school class lesson should start with a meme. He believes that telling 25 third-graders in 2023 to crack open a textbook or look at a smartboard in the front of the class is setting up kids for failure. That's not how they've learned for the first chapter of their lives. They grow up on screens, with emojis and memes and GIFs and photos with short captions.