As far as plagiarism, or “stealing other people’s memes” etc. – I see this every day in retail: There are generic copies of different kinds of granola bars, cereals, candy, etc. In a court of law, everybody could be sued, then. Not to mention generic perfumes or even prescription medicines. “If u love Opium, you’ll love __ ” perfume, etc. Yesterday I saw “Positively Radiant,” a beauty / moisturizing product made by Aveeno. Next to it was a generic product called “Absolutely ___ ” – I forget the word, but it was like they had used a thesaurus to look up the word “radiant” and come up with something that would sound good…..

So….. Should someone begin to sharply criticize those folks for imitating the others? That would be a little ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
— And of course there are imitation Coach purses!

— But, Ben, I wouldn’t have known about any of this stuff (fail, lolcats, cheezburger, memes) if I hadn’t read the Wired magazine article. I’m one of those older fogies who hadn’t known that this existed, except from maybe a few comments from my siblings that I didn’t quite understand. Still I am now just beginning to find out what “fail” means. engrishfunny is great, by the way.