Do you know who this is? Your teenager does

For those of you with kids going into high school, it’s the time when students typically take a foreign language. For most schools, it’s a requirement. But some teens and tweens are already speaking their own foreign language, the tongue of Internet geeks and their viral catch phrases and “rage comics.”

I can hear you saying, “What’s a ‘rage comic’?”

Exactly my point.

Thanks to the Internet, catch phrases and slang spread a gazillion times faster than when we were younger, and had to learn what “totally tubular” meant from our cousin visiting from California. So unless you want to be scratching your head in confusion wondering what the hell your teen is talking about (as if that’s not hard enough when they’re speaking straight up English), you had better start learning your memes (pronounced “meem”), and soon.

Wikipedia describes an Internet Meme as:

An idea that is propagated through the World Wide Web. The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag or just a word or phrase, such as intentionally misspelling the word “more” as “moar” or “the” as “teh”. The meme may spread from person to person via social networks, blog or direct email, news sources, or other web-based services. An Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations, parody, or by incorporating news accounts about itself. Internet memes can evolve and spread extremely rapidly, sometimes reaching world-wide popularity within a few days. Internet memes usually are formed from some social interaction (rage comic or reaction faces), pop culture reference (Xzibit in “Yo Dawg” or Bear Grylls in “Better drink my own piss”), or situation people often find themselves in (Socially Awkward Penguin or Futurama Fry / Not Sure If X). For researchers it’s hard to track down the birthplace of memes due to their viral nature, as well as the high chance of the meme spreading to the major websites nearly instantly.

If you found yourself reading that and didn’t recognize 3 or more (er, “moar”) references, you’ve got some work to do.

One of the best resources to stay on top of this online scourge is Know Your Meme, brought to you by the people that know a thing or two about memes.

There, you can find out all about rage comics (“typically used to tell stories about real life experiences, and end with a humorous punchline”), U jelly? (along with annoying cousin, U mad?), Sad Keanu, Pedobear, and whatever other silly shit bored teenagers and college students manage to put out into the hive mind.

Parents, we must unite, infiltrate, divide and conquer if we’re ever to make an impression on our dumbass teens again. I promise you, with a little perseverance and lot of battered dignity, you’ll learn to troll the Internet like a douchebag and quickly pick up this language, especially if you know where to look.