obsessed with the phrase "we've come a long way since pac-man"
it's like a game reviewer meme, but if you search it up, the only results are ones using it in earnest
i wanna crack this open again because hooooly heck. this video (of shockingly good production quality) starts with a gigantic list of examples of people just...using that phrase
@thingywott that phrase never stood out to me
also it's funny that Nintendo just published a new Pac-Man
@noiob that's the thing though! it didn't stand out for me either, and after i started noticing it, it seemed like nobody else did
i think it started to really sink in for me when i heard justin mcelroy say it for probably the thirtieth time in The Besties, and then noticed it wasn't just a justin thing when it was also in a fake magazine cover by action button
and then, i just kinda started noticing it everywhere, like i'd just stepped into a time vortex of this previously invisible in-joke
@noiob (and yeah, the timing for this is pretty great, hee)
it has some real "come and get it" energy in how i see the phrase used in ironic contexts all the time, but it's also impossible to pinpoint any examples of it because of its sheer popularity outside of them
except, in this case, the only people who use the phrase ironically seem to almost exclusively be the people it's parodying
it's like a little self-aware joke where the only people who realize it exists are the ones telling it
is there anything else like that?