Bojangles

Now I’m sure if you’re hip enough to understand the jokes passed around on The Big Bang Theory, you’re no stranger to Internet memes, either. Yes, all those cats.

I’ve brought up memes before, for general use, but just in the past week a new strain captivated all my attention.

It’s finally happened. The Internet has found “Bazinga.”

But I’ll channel my inner prolonging-Ted Mosby a second: before I can explain “Beezinga” and “Bojangles,” I have to explain the “Parody comic.”

Parody comics are fan-made works, intentionally messy and contrived MS-Paint productions that scrutinize the dialogue between their subjects. In this case, Sheldon, Sheldon and Penny, Raj and Penny, or, to bring this full-circle, Sheldon Cooper’s famous and favorite tag-line, “Bazinga!”

Fans and Stans discovered quickly they could reinvent “Bazinga,” just as the screenwriters coined the term on their own. The best fun comes from finding wacky B-syllables and creating ridiculous combinations for these new demonstrations. They go hand-in-hand with the nature of memes; i.e., furiously lacking in spelling and punctuation, on purpose.
In Comic Sans, no less!

The parodies originally stemmed from common fan criticisms of the show, but the actual comics quickly went viral for their chuckle-worthy pixel-prints and watered-down copies of the original humor. The silly fun gained notable ground on all manner of social media websites, from Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr. “Know Your Meme,” a website dedicated to meme-research, said,

“…Parodies of the term “Bazinga” did not begin appearing on 4chan until December 25th, in a thread on the TV (Television and Film) board. After the first poster asked why people did not enjoy The Big Bang Theory, the first four responses consisted of nonsense words “bazoopie,” “bazonkers,” “cowabazunga” and “bazopple.” “

These threads aren’t exactly naysayer “bazingas,” but they contribute, perhaps, insight into the world of the nerd, “shamed.”