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There are hundreds, maybe thousands of videos on YouTube using the song “The Sound of Silence,” specifically the lyrics, ‘Hello darkness my old friend’ as a meme.

The internet, and more specifically meme culture has brought the 1960’s rock classic, “The Sound of Silence,” to a whole new generation. Would as many young people know about the song if it hadn’t been turned into a meme? There’s no way we can know for sure, but I’m guessing the answer is no.

What’s a Meme?

Let’s start putting this puzzle together by defining what a meme is. Mostly everyone under the age of 40 knows what a meme is. As described by Merriam Webster, a meme is:

an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media

Although meme looks as if it sounds like it would read, ‘me-me,’ it doesn’t. Phonetically, the word sounds much more like ‘meem’, with a hard e, as in me.

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Baseball player Bryce Harper seems to think it’s pronounced ‘maymay’ but he’s the only one.

What is the Song “The Sound of Silence”?

I’d like to think that this is a song everyone can, at least by the age of ten or so, recognize without an internet joke, but sadly that is not the world we live in. On the magazine Rolling Stone’s 2011 list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, “The Sound of Silence” ranked 157. To be fair, lists like that are subjective, and I bet a few people would place the song on a ‘Worst Songs of All Time’ list, but you get the point.

Without further gibber jab, here is the song, off of their 1964 album, Wednesday Morning, 3 a.m.

Song Credit: Columbia Records (Please report dead links to admin(at)unrulystowaway.com)

Where Do Memes and “The Sound of Silence” Collide?

Well, on the internet of course. We have the still photos, like the one of ‘Sad Affleck’ in the feature image, but those don’t tend to be nearly as good as the videos.

This first video, of a Hamster that mysteriously freezes up, seems to be one of the more popular ones.

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Why!? Why!? The trauma! All the hamster wanted was that piece of dried fruit! (It’s some sort of dried fruit, right?) Now the poor little guy is scarred for life….

Here’s another:

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So, Does Either Simon or Garfunkel Know?

We have no fucking clue, but we’d like to think yes.

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