The Baby Is A Lie

[00:00:00] Who Knows Who Is Leotardo Da Vinci? Maddie? Yeah, he wrote the Da Vinci Code. Very good! Leonardo was a stupid Italian, but many years ago when my grandpa came over from Shea Stadium, they changed it!

[00:00:12] It's Dogs Barking, I am something long and this is my co-host We Too Low.

[00:01:16] We Too Low! Bang fuck how? Holy shit! You know how many times I told people the story behind that? I'm like, first of all, I'm gonna tell you something, it's incredibly racist, it's also incredibly fucking funny and I've never had anyone get offended.

[00:01:40] Oh wow, this is... Jason hand me the Grillo's Pickles Pabst Blue Ribbon Pickle Beer? Yeah. This is like something a kid hands you and says, here drink this and then they hold their hands over their face while you drink it? Try not to laugh, yeah. So, uh... What's Hot Classic? What's Hot Classic? What's Hot Classic? What's Hot Classic? Everybody's favorite.

[00:02:07] So we're gonna start off this week with something you just brought to my attention that as of prepping for the show today, I was not aware of. So thank you. A piece from Vice, Lord we love to reference Vice, don't we? The headline, Cosplay Models Sold Feet Juice Outside an Anime Convention and it sold out almost immediately. Ashley Fyke writing this a couple days back. The unofficial Parcon vending operation sold out in under an hour, according to posts from the internet.

[00:02:34] Over Memorial Day weekend in San Jose, California, cosplay models set up unofficial stands outside FanimeCon, selling what they were openly marketing as, feet juice. Fruit juice prepared in plastic buckets where they'd been soaking their bare feet. The going rate was $10 to $15 a cup. It sold out in under an hour. You know, when I first saw this I thought, I just like, I remember when I used to be this horny. Like all the time.

[00:03:03] It wasn't that long ago. God, just... Unbearable. God bless everyone involved in this story because it's just, you know, the sex scenes and movies and TV discourse, all of this. We need some real dirty pervert shit. Yes. It's a girl dressed as Power from Chainsaw Man with her feet in what appears to be a cooler full of fruit juice. Yeah. And they're just dipping the cups in, taking shots. Yeah. It says here,

[00:03:30] One cosplayer dressed as Hatsunemiku was filmed standing in a bucket of juice while handing cups to a line of paying customers. Some vendors offered to let customers drink juice dripping directly from their feet. People eagerly accepted drinking juice dripping from a bare foot in public in broad daylight and paying for it. The internet had predictable feelings. Many called it the lowest form of marketing, which doesn't quite hold up against the data, which yes, again, the product sold out. Demand exceeded supply.

[00:03:58] By any conventional measure of a successful vending operation, feet juice performed. For what it's worth, it says, nobody involved seemed to have any complaints. The sellers made money, the buyers got what they came for, and the internet got a story. Technically, everyone won. And yeah, I don't feel like anybody was being unduly exploited. These people put their feet in a bucket of juice of their own volition after all. I think everyone knew what they were in for. Yeah, it's a mutually consensual transaction. Everybody got what they wanted.

[00:04:28] Isn't this what like, uh, like anarchy is all about? Preum of association. Exactly right. If everyone has feet juice, then there can be no crime. Exactly right. Well, speaking of feet, Brian, another anime video game adjacent feet story. This one from Kotaku. We're hitting all the hits today, Vice and Kotaku. Kenneth Shepard writing, The headline, Twitch's infamous rule breaker gets banned for playing Dark Souls on her feet.

[00:04:57] MorguePie's Dark Souls, spelled S-O-L-E-S, stream is exactly what it sounds like. If you're not familiar with MorguePie, Kenneth does give us a little bit of a background. She is the Twitch streamer. We did talk about her once upon a time who helped popularize the platform's nudity meta after she streamed with specific camera angles to imply nudity without ever actually being nude.

[00:05:18] The Amazon owned company, again, Twitch later clarified in its terms of service that it would ban this type of behavior, but she continues to press the envelope on what Twitch will let streamers get away with this time. The focus of her shenanigans was feet. Her latest defending stream was May 24th's Dark Souls 3 session in which she played the game through a green screen projection of her bare feet. You know, my opinion is that she should have been banned for streaming Dark Souls 3 anyways.

[00:05:46] Are you not a fan of Dark Souls 3 or is it just... Honestly, after Elden Ring, I'm barely a fan of the first one. Because I feel like Elden Ring is really the perfect formula. Okay. I see. I think that's like the ideal. Personally, I think Dark Souls 3 has a lot of strengths. That's another conversation for another time, I guess. But yes, previously she had played Fortnite on a green screen projected on her butt. This time she painted the bottom of her feet. The show was dubbed Dark Souls. I think it's great.

[00:06:16] Oh yeah, I think it's great. When I first saw it, I was like, oh this chick again? And I'm like, oh wait, Dark Souls. Oh! Yeah. Good. And then she gets banned for... Well, temporarily suspended, but I mean, for all intents and purposes, it's a temp ban. She got probated, basically. She then posted that the playthrough would resume when her channel's back. Twitch's terms of service define intimate parts. Then they specifically say buttocks, groin and breasts. No mention of feet. Kotaku reached out to Twitch, has not heard back.

[00:06:46] Says the service has been rewriting its terms of service in response to MorgPi specifically for years at this point, and it feels like it's constantly moving the goalposts. I would not be surprised if we see the company adding a new rule about lingering on your feet for too long in the coming weeks. So I'm going to go back around to a previous thought from the last story, which is like, uh... Man, why can't we just be perverts? Yeah. I'm not a feet guy either, but it's like, at some point where are we like, thought police?

[00:07:17] And I mean like THOT. That's a fair question. Cause yeah, I mean, who cares? Who at Twitch really gives a shit? Clearly, I mean they encourage the hot tub meta and all this other stuff. Oh yeah, the hot tub meta. Who was it that had like the fucking slave in the cage? It wasn't her, was it? It might have been. Let me look this up. Yeah, that wasn't MorgPi.

[00:07:44] Was she riffing on Hassan and his dog? I don't know. Oh, I think I can appreciate her a lot more now that I know she's just fucking with him over and over and over again. Hey, uh, you said we couldn't do streaming on my ass. What about my feet? That's not boobs, bud, or groin. What if feet was boobs? Yeah, I know. We've all had that thought, right?

[00:08:09] Yeah, if you ask feet guys, if you ask feet guys like it is like a different, it's like a second set of tits for them. Right. I don't get it, man. I've never, I mean like I've definitely like dated or like fooled around with women that I would say had good looking feet. Sure. I'd say the woman I'm in a relationship with has pretty good looking feet. Doesn't mean I want to fucking lube them up and make them the bun to my, my meat, my man glizzy. Yeah, that's exactly my thought too.

[00:08:37] Like I can understand the aesthetics of a nice looking foot. Kind of like how, you know, when I'm, I'm somebody who's like, Oh, so-and-so is a, this gay guy and he's really hot. I'm like, yeah, I can see it. It's not my thing. I can understand it. I can intellectualize it, but it's just not for me. Same with feet. It's, it's your deal. Hey, enjoy. What's this fucking terrible food thing you got in front of us? Yes. Our last bit of the one time classic this week is a terrible food thing.

[00:09:02] The beautiful folks at Bush's best baked beans have put out the Bush's baked beans, summer limited edition multi pack way too fucking long guys. I'm sorry. If it takes me that long to be in foursome is what they should have called it. Right. Fucked up beans. 2026. The fucked up beans pack. Get yours today. Yes. By which fucked up beans we mean the following. Okay. These are limited edition $5 and 25 cents.

[00:09:32] They said as a nod to Memorial Day, but the three flavors Bush's dill pickle baked beans. Okay. Pickles beans. I kind of get that. There's a backyard barbecue thing. Bush's apple pie baked beans. Now we're talking a sweet bean. Yeah. Cause you got the brown sugar. I can see it work. Yeah. Cause there's already that kind of thing where depending on where you get it, if the bacon has that, that anyway, but then the one that really fucked me up.

[00:09:58] Bush's rocket pop baked beans with notes of cherry lime and blue raspberry. Un-fucking-tenable. No. One of the things I do hate about like consumer food culture is that we're like taking the the Jones Soya Company Thanksgiving Soya concept. Yeah. Yeah. And we're spraying that way too thin. Way too thin. Yeah. Rocket pop baked beans. The first two I could fuck with.

[00:10:26] It makes thematic sense. I mean, rocket pops make thematic sense as well. No, no. By the line in my fucking baked beans. Thank you. Yes. Filth is what it is. It's filth. And you know what? If I was still elected office, if I can. Now that they have Watergate salad baked beans. Eh, still too sweet. Ambrosia. Ambrosia. Eh, okay. I'm just like thinking all the things that my fucking white trash family eats. Swedish meatballs baked beans. Now there. There we go.

[00:10:54] I think one of the greatest jokes in the early days of the Simpsons implies that they're kind of like trashy people. Not always the thing of Homer smelling. Right. When Selma gets married to a sideshow Bob, they talk about Swedish meatballs at the wedding. And I can't think of a trashier thing. I like them as a barbecue thing, but you're right. Like for a wedding. Mustacholi is about where I draw the line as far as trashy food at weddings. Fried chicken. Okay. Depends on the people. Yeah.

[00:11:24] That's who you're with. Oh, shake off the rocket pop baked beans. Well, isn't it implied that there's a fourth can? That's a mystery. But look at the packaging implies. Yeah, there's a mystery section on the far right. And I can't read. It says summer picnic something inside. Summer picnic swag. Oh, summer picnic swag. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. There must be like the shirt.

[00:11:47] Did you see the thing about the dog, the famous dog that got abducted in Asia and the abductee like killed it, sold it to a dog food restaurant and then told the other I did nothing wrong. Jesus. No. Yeah. See, see if you can Google that without getting on a no flight list. Shu Tu, an eight year old border colleague with over 1.5 million followers on Chinese social

[00:12:13] media platform, Duyin was stolen and sold to a dog meat trader in Henan province in China. The owner was on a solo trip to Georgia. The dog was left under the care of his father. While out in the fields that belonged to the family, Chodo disappeared. A man and a woman had forced Chodo into an electric scooter and take him away. He sold the dog for about 180 won, 34 bucks.

[00:12:43] Oh, he contacted the owner, contacted the trader and learned that the dog had already been resold, slaughtered and served at a dog meat restaurant. The response, the alleged thief refused to apologize, reportedly telling the owner the dog is dead. So stop making a fuss. I did not break the law. China does not have laws preventing the mistreatment or consumption of pets because dogs are primarily classified as property.

[00:13:13] The Ningling County Public Security Bureau is handling the incident as an administrative property theft case. Under local regulations, criminal theft charges can only be pursued if the market value of the stolen property exceeds 2,000 yuan. The owner stated he is working with lawyers and refuses any private settlement to ensure justice for the deceased dog. Cool. Fucking what? Border Collie too. You're a cute boy. Okay. Thanks for that.

[00:13:43] Hey, you want to hear about a dog that's dead? Thanks, Brian. I was just having fun talking about beans. You know, you can't tell, you can't spill the, the, the secret. The butcher and the butcher family is that dog. They got, they, they killed the dog because the dog knew the secrets of the colonel's herbs and spices. Roll that beautiful dog footage.

[00:14:14] Just imagine you're just like a dog in a field, right? And someone just forced, just picks you up. Just picks you up. The next thing you know, you're in a crate. That's about three inches smaller than your, your, your, your, your, your square cubage. The next thing you know, some guy with an anchor tattoo on his forearm, a joblet of sweat around the ring of his white t-shirt, just chops your head off. And then there you go. You don't exist anymore. You've. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:43] Fucking rounds of life and death band. Sam Sara, man. Yeah. I hope that, I hope the dog comes back, uh, as a person and not a hungry ghost. Amen to that. Well, as I guess as a palate cleanser, we should crypto scam over this week, huh? You're listening to 48 minutes of dogs barking the podcast. And now it's time for the crypto scam of the week. Crypto scam of the week. Someone lost their fucking money again. Exactly.

[00:15:12] Rekt.news gave us this. The headline gravity bridge wrecked. Now I love the way Rekt.news sometimes writes these stories. Cause they're real poetical about it. Nobody broke the code. The attacker didn't need to. They just needed the bridge to trust a string. Gravity bridge. The Ethereum cosmos corridor and decentralized alternative to multi-sig bridges was drained on May 29th in a DENOM mapping exploit.

[00:15:39] The attacker minted worthless tokens on osmosis, embedded real Ethereum custody addresses inside a fabricated denomination string, and called a permissionless function that the bridge accepted without question. Once the bridge's token registry was poisoned, the rest followed automatically. Validators signed the withdrawal batches legitimately. They had no way of knowing the registry mapping their signatures to real assets had been corrupted. The contract executed exactly what it was told. It always does.

[00:16:07] 4.3 million in USDC, 274 wrapped ETH, 434 K in USDT, and 14.16 PAX-G swept clean before a single public alert landed. By the time Spectre flagged it, Spectre being the security company, Spectre analysis, the funds were already moving. The fix appears to have been a lookup that already existed in the code base. It was just never called in the right place. The bridge remained offline at the time of writing.

[00:16:36] The team has said almost nothing, no postmortem, no entry point disclosed. The investigation continues, which is another way of saying nobody is ready to say out loud how a missing function call cost $5.4 million. Getting there required one preparatory step. Registering as a validator with 80 grav just enough to submit claims alongside the real ones. Validator signature was clean. Every batch withdrawal was valid.

[00:17:04] The bridge did exactly what the protocol told it to do. It just never thought to ask whether what it was told was true. As a fundamental proof of concept, this whole code is law nonsense is nonsense like I said. This is it. Because if the entire security model is built on will this function trust this function so this could never happen? Well, clearly that's just bullshit. It's all wrong. It's kind of insane.

[00:17:32] Five billion plus just explain code that was just hanging out. Yep. It doesn't sound like there's even like any fancy math or liquidity swaps or anything. It's just basically like a gimme. Yeah. So by being like a fake validator, they were able to make a call. Yep. Really? Yep. $5.4 million? And it took Gravity Bridge a couple days to figure out what to say. Quote, there was an unfortunate incident on Gravity.

[00:18:00] Validators should halt their validator. Validators should halt their validators. Okay. And orchestrators while this incident's being investigated. And then an hour and a half later, thanks to the swift action of validators, the bridge is currently halted while investigations continue. That was it. No figure, no technical detail, no acknowledgement of the 282 day dormant wallet, the validator set reduction, or the timeline of events that security researchers had already assembled in public. The bridge was halted. Everything else is silent. Yeah. The blocks phrasing here.

[00:18:28] If confirmed, this incident would fit the ongoing pattern of 2026's bridge attacks in which key security issues provide the vulnerabilities rather than flaws in the code. Similar root cause surfaced with KelpDow and Resolve earlier this year where audited code was not the weak point. Fascinating. Fascinating. But also, eerily fucking predictable. If it's happened twice already this year, maybe tighten your shit.

[00:18:53] Because yeah, it's about security issues versus like something that's exploitable. I know it sounds the same, but... They're different. They are different. From an OPSEC standpoint, they are different. Because a vulnerability is something that is widely known, right? That is kind of a thing that is out there versus something niche that somebody had to really dig to find. I don't know. It feels like we're kind of just getting layups here. They're being dunked on. They're mogging. They're bridge-mogging us.

[00:19:22] Getting bridge-mogged for $5.4 million. Couldn't be me. There's no easy way to say this, Brian. I've really done a terrible thing to you. That's okay. I have a sickness where every once in a while I check in on this comic and it's like, yep, it's still bad. So, for those of you, for those of you perhaps, let's say younger than us, you may not be as familiar with the webcomic archetype, two dudes who play video games.

[00:19:52] Fucking kill me. The two dudes who play video games archetype basically exists because that is who these comics authors literally were in their 20s when they decided that they were going to make webcomic money and put their comics on the internet. This is a very well-worn trope. It has its own TV tropes page. It's also just endless versions and reconfigurations and whatnot.

[00:20:13] A lot of people point to Penny Arcade as kind of the origin of this trope, but I believe it existed in that milieu, in that time period, as kind of just the cultural miasma we were all kind of living in. It was the era post-clerks where everyone decided that they were just as funny as Randall and Dante. They even poked fun at it in the early days, 2002. Tim Buckley, the artist here, not so much of an artist. He does all right. But it's two guys on a couch playing video games and one of them calls it out.

[00:20:41] So, it's a strip about two guys who sit around and play video games? Seems a tad cliché, doesn't it? First of all, Seinfeld did this better at least 10 years before this. Yeah. Yeah, it's tried and true. Besides, we have a hook. Oh, really? What? We have a third character and he shows a watermelon with a smiley face. A beat and then what? Okay. Now, my main complaint with Control-Alt-Delete is for some reason he decided that he needed four panels to tell his jokes, whereas Penny Arcade only needed three.

[00:21:11] And I have a theory that you could cut every Control-Alt-Delete comic in half and just leave the first two panels and have it be infinitely fucking funnier. I would say yes for this one. If you just get the top two panels, that's way funnier. Yeah. It's almost 8-Willion. It's efficient. But this guy decided, nope, we need all that space for extra. This is a say nothing of his allegations. It's like, it's a lot of like, well, you think what he's, his webcomic's bad. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:40] The alligator, it was like Discord or something? Was he, was he, was he one of the first Discord kitten guys? Let's see here. There's some shoplifting, stealing food, two packets of El Paso seasoning, veal cutlet and top brown steak from his waistband. My man was just trying to make some carne asa. Yeah. There. Is that a crime officer? I was trying to just have myself, this is carne asa. You gotta arrest me. Yeah.

[00:22:06] So according to Encyclopedia Dramatica, he was showing his weenus to a 15 year old named Jackie, where he had written Jackie and Sharpie on his mons pubis. Not a great person, but what we're here to talk about today. We're here to talk about today. Something, something somehow worse than any of that. Yes. Somehow. Worse than the fact that he still plays EverQuest. Control-Alt-Delete is the comic that we're talking about, but it's been 18 years since the publishing of what is quite

[00:22:35] possibly the worst, but also most referenced four panels without dialogue in any comic since probably Watchmen, I would say. Yeah. As far as like memes and references go. The basic breakdown is this. Control-Alt-Delete from memory. I'm trying to see here. Ethan is friends with a guy named Lucas. They are the two guys on the couch. They do gaming jokes, but they also have kind of these sub stories in the background about their love lives.

[00:23:03] Ethan meets the girlfriend, Lila. The epic bacon girlfriend? Yes, because she says in their wedding vows that she rolled a nat 20 or something. Oh fuck, I forgot about that. She got the most epic loot drop of all time. A loving husband. So Tim's... I don't wanna live! We're just getting started, baby.

[00:23:30] So Tim's self-insert character, Ethan, is a GameStop employee, but I can't call it GameStop, obviously, legal reasons. It's called like GameFuck. It's like, it's like, uh, GameHomo. HomoGamer. Instead of EB Games, it's LGBTQ Games. And he clocks in by sucking off the time clock.

[00:23:59] The comic was popular for some inexplicable reason. There's an animated series, which is terrible. There was a character, I think it was like the Xbox. Yes! It was a living Xbox character who's inexplicably female for some reason. So you can fuck it. Well, okay. I guess that... There was also the attempt at a Yonan Vasquez, Happy Noodle Boy type of random-ass character named Chef Brian. He came up and was like, I have noodles in my pants! Real monkey cheese type of jokes.

[00:24:26] And there were entire four-paneled comics dedicated to Chef Brian. It was wacky and kind of silly. Fucking monkey fucking cheese. Yeah. But then, loss... .jpg, Brian. Yeah. You have to understand something. This was a wacky gamer comic. Two guys on a couch. We were doing random violence to each other. We're playing Halo. Xbox is huge. Xbox is very fucking big. The cake... Check this out.

[00:24:56] Hmm? Cake is a lie. Jack Thompson? Oh! Oh! You had the engineer do the Trollolo song? Mm-hmm. Epic! Fucking... Five. Five golden man babies. The open letter to Jack Thompson? Is that the lawyer guy? Yeah, that was the anti-video game lawyer. Made a big deal about... Video games are pornographic.

[00:25:19] And so, Control-Alt-Delete's entire thing was days and days of a wall of text of just... Oh, God. The fucking t-shirt over the long sleeve. The classic. I paused my game, there'll be here. Uh-huh. Spending days saying basically very many slanderous and libelous things in comic form that, you know, the numbers clearly show that Jack Thompson eats paint chips and sodomizes giraffes. But this one... Can I read the last panel?

[00:25:49] This one panel has been excised and used repeatedly as kind of aren't gamers epic la-may-may's thing, but go ahead. My name is Tim Buckley. I'm a 24-year-old gamer. I've played every violent game in existence and I've never killed anyone. There are millions of gamers just like me. And we're getting sick of people like you blaming your problems on us.

[00:26:18] Ignorance causes violence, not video games. Man up and take responsibility. We outnumber you. And the people that don't like you, or the people that think like you, don't fuck with us. Yeah, so he was having his very own Tyler Durden moment about Vimeo Grames and about Jack Thompson and you could just as easily... The things you own end up owning you.

[00:26:47] That's right. And Tim Buckley never really understood the movie. Clearly. I think Tim Buckley owns himself. This isn't about Tim Buckley. Well, it kind of is, but it's about loss.jpg. There's just so much... This is such like a loaded thing. Everything up to this point was gags and goofs and we're talking about comics and then there's an entire storyline about Ethan and Lila. They are expecting their first child. And then suddenly, at the end of one strip, Ethan gets a call. Now, it's Lila.

[00:27:17] She's at the hospital. He rushes out of frame. The next strip is this. It's four panels. I'm going to describe it to you as this. I'm sure some of you have seen it and not understood the reference, but Ethan rushes into the hospital. He's into the emergency room. That's panel one. He's like pushing the door. Mm-hmm. Walks up to the charge nurse who points him to the doctor. Later, different section of the hospital, making the I'm very upset face. He's talking to the doctor. Mm-hmm.

[00:27:44] In the fourth panel, Ethan, who again is a Tim Buckley self insert, stands attempting to comfort his wife who is in a hospital bed, clutching her stomach and crying. All of this is conveyed without dialogue, and it is a real dramatic tonal fucking shift. Like there was nothing like this in control, delete at all.

[00:28:09] And apparently, according to Tim Buckley, this was based on a true story. From a blog post that very same day entitled, So Then, Let's Chat. Tim says, spoiler alert, check the comic for reading. Okay. Okay. So I'll bet some people just said, that's it. I'm not reading this comic anymore. And that's fine. I respect that decision. Thank you for reading. For the rest of you, I'm sure you're curious about my motivations for this particular turn of events.

[00:28:38] I know some of you remember because you've been emailing me about it. A few months ago, I said, I was going to talk about the pregnancy storyline and then I never did. I never did because I knew that when we got to this point in the story, I was going to have to talk about it. And since I'd been saying pretty much the same thing in both instances, I chose to just wait until now. One of the common themes I heard was, why are there comics about pregnancy? This is supposed to be a gaming comic. I know that everybody has their own idea of what control-alt-delete is supposed to be.

[00:29:07] Some people feel it's a video game comic and character stories are just filler or don't belong. And some people think it's a story comic and the one shots are just filler. Most times, it's categorized as a gaming comic, which is fine and understandable. When asked directly though, I describe control-alt-delete as a gamer comic or a comic about gamers. Semantics perhaps, but an important distinction for me. While the strip has always and will always have its foundation firmly rooted in gaming, it's not the only topic I wanted to tell jokes and stories about.

[00:29:36] Well, first of all, loss is not a joke. How do you make miscarriage funny? You really don't. What if you miscarried because the Korean barbecue you're eating was too good? What if you miscarried because you accidentally ate the famous dog from the miscarried child then becomes the dog again? Okay, see? See? Now we got it. It's like a story. It's like poetry. It rhymes.

[00:30:03] What if there was an MMA fire who didn't realize that she was pregnant and she miscarried so she could make weight and the person that she was being was a trans woman? Because that's something a trans woman couldn't do to cut weight. I think now we're just describing like Ben Shapiro's personal fantasies. I don't know. I don't know. I'm workshopping. I know. I know. I understand. The CIA pays me the big bucks for these. I know. Listen, we'll make sure you get those. It's okay.

[00:30:33] Playblades now. Those Pokemon cards aren't going to buy themselves. So cutting a lot of this blog post because it's really. God, this is fucking miserable. Self-indulgent and really ridiculous. But you had sex once dude and you forgot to pull out. Congrats, man. Congrats. Me too. Guess what? Outright web comics about it. Exactly. So he says, here's one thing I think I heard mentioned a while back and then I anticipate being mentioned quote, Tim will never do a miscarriage because then the comic strip will become sad.

[00:31:03] It will become all sad and depressing. Again, I disagree. A miscarriage is definitely not a joke. I think we just proved that. Yep. And I have no intention of making light of it. And it can be a tough and emotional thing for couples to go through speaking from personal experience. And I know that it's often much harder on the woman than on the man. However, I also know that it doesn't necessarily turn you into a sad, depressed sack of tears for the rest of your life. People can move past it and heal. I get it, man. You're writing about what you know, which is like a traumatic thing that happened.

[00:31:33] I mean, like, you know, there's been people in my family. It is very upsetting. It is very sad, particularly when you spend all that money for in vitro and all that. Like, God damn, like that's like, that's like a fucking down payment on a Subaru. And you don't even get to drive it. It's not even like you got to test drive it. I'm being maybe a little flippant because I don't know if Mr. Buckley here really understands what he was writing about. He's coming at it from his own limited perspective.

[00:32:00] He did say that I wanted to see if I could write it, if I could pull it off. Well, I think the comic itself, divorced of all context, is fine. It's fairly dramatic. It has decent enough art. It conveys what happened clearly without dialogue, which is something that a lot of his other comics struggled to do. So as a formal exercise for someone who's actually trying his hand and actually making some comics with some heft and some weight, formally, I think it works.

[00:32:30] But fully understanding all this means that we have to understand context. This was haha Xbox huge into, oh, my God, this is the worst thing that's just happened to me. The baby is a lie. The pregnancy is a lie. We need you to burn the pregnancy cube. This was 2002. It was 2008. So yeah, that made sense. Loss is such a jarring thing.

[00:32:58] And so and so people have been endlessly riffing on it and remixing it. And the joke was, this isn't funny. And yet, here we go. A Trapeze Online article. Loss.jpg is insensitive, one might argue. Its origins are callous and rude. There's no way it could encapsulate the glorious meme culture of the 2010s. Why then would I award it meme of the decade?

[00:33:28] Trick question. Loss.jpg's cruelty is precisely what crowns it the meme of the decade because meme culture is characterized by disregard for the thoughts and feelings of others. The mockery of Kim Kardashian's paper magazine cover, 2014. Fergie's 2018 cover of the national anthem. 2017's mocking SpongeBob. The treatment of Harambe's death in 2016. Dicks out. Dicks out. More recently, the jeering scorn exhibited in this year's OK Boomer.

[00:33:59] Man, remember that? OK Boomer before the DNC rap fucked Bernie again? Yep. Let me tell you something, OK Boomer. I don't know. It's just sad. Why did this article make me sad? I don't know. Loss.jpg, besides withstanding the test of time by remaining relevant for more than 10 years, embodies every aspect of meme culture. It is absurd. It is universally understood. It is easily adapted into countless contexts. Above all, it's rooted in bullying.

[00:34:28] I don't know if that's necessarily true, but mocking Tim Buckley for this has been a bit of a national pastime. One of my favorite Tumblers, this is bumtickly.tumblr.com, wherein a ton of remixes of Lost.jpg have been posted, including one that was apparently available as an NFT, using things like video game screenshots, re-edited drawings of other comics.

[00:34:56] The one where it's choking. Yeah. He's choking his wife. Choking the door. Choking the doctor. Yeah. There's Terry Bogard from King Fighters showing up and doing the punch down at the wife. Hearthstone, where... The miscarrying wife card kills the baby card and then it goes lol. Photoshop.

[00:35:26] AOC at the border camp. Oh, and it just, it goes on, you know. So I know you've probably seen it. One line, two lines, two more lines, and then one line perpendicular to another line, making like an L shape. That is the basic form of Lost.jpg. Based on the exact position of characters in the original comic.

[00:35:51] So now, this particular arrangement of shapes even has come to take on that particular meaning. You will find this symbol everywhere. Someone took... Someone took the lady that looked like Bayonetta that worked on Ghostfire Tokyo whose name escapes me. I'm so sorry. But her hand gestures at the Tokyo game show made the perfect loss meme. Or there's JoJo's reference on this one. Even Zoe Quinn made a post.

[00:36:20] Hey, Zoe, can you sign this stack of books? Yeah, okay, give me one sec to piss away all the goodwill I've built up over the past three years. And it's a copy of her book Crash Override. Which is not a great book, by the way. But arranged in the Lost format. People have been doing this for a very long time. That's the political compass meme with the Lost comic overlaid underneath it. Short form CG parodies. A heptapod symbol based on the movie Arrival in the shape of loss.

[00:36:50] Because even in that movie, there is a kind of a loss, such a big time thing that happens in that film. Magic the Gathering Tests. Any number of endless remixes. This has been in the internet subconscious for 18 years now. It's old enough to buy cigarettes in most states. And go to war. Does Tim have anything on the website about this? No. A wall of text. Oh, he's tried to do better art? Mm-hmm.

[00:37:20] Like with more shading and stuff? It just... It still looks like a fucking Newgrounds. Yeah. I'm going back through March. Nothing about... It's another character who works at a game store. Oh, but now they've got like a Xbox ally. Hmm? Or something. Ugh. But Lost.jpg, man. There have been so many... There's the Doom Guy edits from the old Doom comics. There's the Evangelion final scene recreated with that. There's scenes from Seinfeld edited.

[00:37:50] Spy vs. Spy. But yeah, this image... The minimalist. The minimalist one. There's some... People have found the image in the bottom of cookies. Recreated the maps in the Game Boy games. It's very strange. It's hard to explain, right? I was trying to explain to my kids before I came out here what we're going to talk about tonight. How do you talk about something that had such a stranglehold on...

[00:38:13] I think your webcomic is bad and you should feel bad, a.k.a. the Bad Web Comics Archive did a wonderful hit piece on Control-Alt-Delete. Oh, 2007-ish. 2007? Yeah. Written by John Solomon. It's a good point that should you ever find yourself accidentally looking at Control-Alt-Delete, the title also conveys what you should do. Reboot your computer as fast as possible.

[00:38:40] Like Dominic Deegan, this is one of the worst webcomics on the entire internet and much in the same manner it is oddly popular amongst the mentally handicapped. If they ever manage to stumble upon these words, I can expect a comments page akin to a pack of hooting and shit-throwing monkeys. Much like the one in my entry about Deegan, although perhaps with less repressed sobbing. Ethan is the wacky one. He built a robot out of Xboxes. Elmau huge.

[00:39:10] Elmau. He talks about giraffes and cheese. Most Control-Alt-Delete backgrounds are images found on Google Image Search and run through a blur filter. Yep. So Control-Alt-Delete, not great. Loss even, I mean, like I said, as an exercise, as a creative thing to do. Cool. You did it. Great. Cool. Now the story continued on well past that, right? There was a lot of stuff that went on. There was a whole thing about an evil universe, Ethan, who went around killing everyone.

[00:39:37] And so the final act of our universe is Ethan in order to save Lila is to kill himself and reset the universe. That happened. That happened in 2012, a full four years after Lost.jpg, which then restarted the comic with new characters. Lila did eventually move on and founded the Ethan McManus Church of Gaming. She didn't learn anything!

[00:40:06] And then the first comic after that is a My Little Pony riff and an Assassin's Creed joke. Oh, this is... Jokes about easy mode. Oh, Dovakin! Skyrim characters wanting to bone the dragon. Lost.jpg, a strange cultural reset moment. I understand that comics about miscarriage are not funny. However... Yeah, obviously he did not have the gravitas or the context or the maturity to write about it. Yeah, he did not have the juice to pull it off.

[00:40:36] He didn't have the fucking... He did not have the juice. He was not OJ. I'm not a writer. I'm just Tim Buckley. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly right. A wonderful Polygon article is... Control deletes lost and found comics. Prove artists still struggle with meme-ified work. Yeah. The phrasing in this article... It was like Carrot Top remade Sophie's Choice.

[00:41:03] The last strip to mention Lila's pregnancy prior to loss had been published to ten installments in nearly a month prior. Readers found the sudden attempt at gravity hilarious, so they did what the internet does. Turn loss, again a comic strip about a miscarriage, into a running joke. He never addressed the meme-ification of his work, according to this Polygon article, outside of a couple interviews here and there until this month where he swapped loss with a new comic, found. Everything about the new strip is the same except for the last panel.

[00:41:31] Instead of joining his girlfriend in grieving the loss of their child, Ethan grins lecherously at the reader. The comic breaks the fourth wall with one simple message, I see you. After all these years, Buckley found a way to scream, I can play too, at all the people who mocked his comic. As he told SelectDoll in 2015, his attitude towards people's reception of that comic had changed and he eventually found it flattering. Quoting here from the article, Buckley's reaction to them has varied over the years from anger, quote,

[00:42:00] because perhaps I had miscalculated my demographic's ability slash willingness to approach such a sensitive subject matter. That's not the problem, Tim. To frustration for Cad being pigeonholed as a wacky gamer comic and on very rare occasions, quote, as much as I hate to admit it because I certainly don't want to make light of the subject matter itself, I found them quite amusing. Now he says he's flattered that something he made has been entertaining people for more than seven years. At this point, we're now at 18 years, right? I'm just sorry, but people don't forget.

[00:42:30] You know, I still think about the weird something awful guy with the red dog dick who... I don't really think of him because apparently he has connections to St. Louis. But I remember fucking two worlds. Yeah, two worlds, yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah. With his red dog dick. Uh huh. Yeah, I mean, I remember shit from 2008.

[00:42:55] I remember someone on FIAD being convinced that there were pigs in like Peru that had human hands. Like, I'm sorry, but my brain is cursed and it's never going to forget anything. Lost.jpg is just like a fucking speed bump. It keeps going because like, you know, there's a Facebook group called like, is this... Is this lost? Yes, yes. Yeah.

[00:43:18] And you know, it comes and goes as far as like people posting, but it's like other topical hot and cold things. It's, you know, like Bobby B's boar posting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just some of the weird shit that you just see like, oh yeah, that's, that's lost or, oh yeah, that's a goat see. I feel like lost in the same way as goats he has become this kind of shorthand for hey, remember that? Remember that thing? Remember that guy's butthole? Yeah.

[00:43:46] Every once in a while on Reddit, there will be somebody who posts in our explain the joke and somebody will point out that there is a loss shaped something. Right. And somebody will be like, oh, that's, that's loss without context. Right. Yeah. And so someone in our explain the joke two years ago, Chihiro's number one fan. Great. Asked, can someone please explain loss to me? I genuinely don't get it. I see it everywhere and I can't understand what makes it funny. Well, see, I think Chihiro's number one fan.

[00:44:14] Your, your main assumption is that loss itself is funny. It's not. It's the fact that someone went from wacky Xbox real big to, by the way, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Check it out. Know your meme, of course, always there for us with the loss coverage. Let's see here. By the way, know your meme has been hiring this Frankie Faye lady. Do you? You remember Frankie Faye? No, not really.

[00:44:39] She's been going all over about talking about like explaining what Sonic M-Preg art is and then now she's showing up on know your meme all the time. Do you recognize? She's good at explaining stuff and she's interesting at least. Yeah. Is this loss became a meme in and of itself? Basically, it was where I was going with that. You know, we're going for emojis or things like that. But yeah, is this loss becoming itself a meme? We've kind of circled back around and it's 18 years later.

[00:45:06] I think a lot of the cultural staying power of loss has maybe been sapped. I think people just regard it like you and I regard Goatzi's butthole. Oh, yeah, that's that thing. Remember that? It was that thing that happened. Yeah, that was the guy. Hey, don't. Tell him about the thing. Tell him about the thing. So there was this webcomic and this guy, his girlfriend had a miscarriage. It wasn't fucking funny. Not enough heavy. The Dark Souls one?

[00:45:36] Or no, the Elden Ring? I got the Giant Smasher, you know, for Smasher Giants. Tell him why would you do that? Is Malina the Sword of the Micla? Yeah. You hear this fucking guy? He's talking about his strength build. It's dexterity! You know, like what? Why does he do that thing when she jumps? Are you talking about the waterfowl? I'm thinking you're talking about the waterfowl dance. Yeah, whatever the fuck.

[00:46:07] I just throw a frozen pie at it. It works every time. I ain't got time for fucking crafting, Chrissy. I think there's a... I mean, the number of fat guys that are on that show, it's just the atmosphere, you know? You're just soaking in it. Well, speaking of soaking in it, this is where we tell you where to find us online. Brian? Yeah, if you want to tell me the perfect build for... What's the character? So it's something the Sword of Micla?

[00:46:37] Micla... No, Malina Sword of Micla. Malina Sword of Micla. You know the fucking c***. You can find me on Instagram and amusicphotographer. You can find me at... I-Shot E-B-O-R-E-R-E-I-S-H-O-T-G-U-I-D-B-O-R-D. I'm going to find you on Twitter and Blue Sky. Oh, okay. That's crazy. And if you want to check out my portfolio of well-crafted photos of people with their mouths open,

[00:47:06] you can go over to assholemusicphotographer.com. And if you want to see my grossly-neglected subsack, you can go to amusicphotographer.substack.com. And if you want to see the last and only good media website, Left and Screwy St. Louis, you can head over to theartsstl.com, where I may eventually finish my dry-cleaning slash hotline TNT wrap. Who fucking knows? Perhaps I shouldn't have had such an insane month in between the here and there.

[00:47:32] But, Mr. Sumting Wong, where can they find you? Thank you, We Too Low. Ni hao di, my fellow American. You can find me any place there's a video crime. We're talking Twitter. Not really there except to promote the show. Blue Sky, Letterboxd, a few other places. If there's a video crime on a website, eh, it's a pretty good shot at me. You can also find me on a podcast that's not this one, submitted for the approval of the Midnight Pals.

[00:47:59] There I play a fictionalized version of Horror Icon Stephen King. And two seasons are there for you to enjoy. You can also get a hold of this show in a number of ways. My personal favorite is the telephone, 314-246-9766. That's 314-Ahoy-Poo, if you like to spell with your telephone. If you want to shoot us an email, don't feel like talking on the phone, that's fine. Whatever. Shoot us an email. Jason at the number 4, the number 8, Minutes of Dogs, Barking.com.

[00:48:26] Brian with a Y at the number 4, the number 8, Minutes of Dogs, Barking.com. That's also the website where you can listen to all the latest episodes. If you prefer to do that instead of using Spotify, for example. Just an idea. You can support the show, Patreon.com, 4, 8, Minutes of Dogs. There we're going to have all of our bonus content. Available to you, a la carte, once you get in there. That's a bonus episode every week. Or a special show we like to call Thanks, I Hate It.

[00:48:54] That's where we talk about all the media we've consumed in the past week. And whatever else comes to our rotten, stinking brains. Once again, it's Patreon.com, 4, 8, Minutes of Dogs. Well, once again, we say to you, Namaste. Good luck. 25th Amendment now, for God's sake.