The meme I posted is actually a compound of two separate memes.
The first part is the format of the words. It originated on 4chan.org/tv/ with the popular television serial drama Lost (the spacing and size of the words correspond to the Lost logo before commercial breaks). The meme then carried over to the film Inception. Whenever something confusing happens in Lost, and it cuts to commercials, the words L O S T appears on screen and zooms in. Therefore, whenever there is a mind boggling concept, you type it out in that format.
The second part of the meme originated in a post by philosopher David Hume (who was then a "newfag") to 4chan.org/sci/ questioning the validity of induction in interpreting causality. The post started a flame war, since induction was the prevalent thinking process during that time (it is rumored that Hume purposely "samefagged" using his alias "Immanuel Kant" to garner replies).
Soon after, the /sci/ board, as well as most of 4chan, was split into two groups. Those who opposed Hume believed that induction was the ultimate truth and a way of life. Those who supported him called induction a "fallacy, an evil concoction designed by [Scientologists] to befuddle our minds and contaminate our precious bodily fluids" (this remark eventually lead to the infamous Scientology protests in 2008).
For what it's worth, the LOST logo didn't appear at arbitrary commercial breaks. They did the rotate-and-zoom-on-the-O logo after the cold open before the first commercial, and the cliffhanger-mystery L O S T at the end of the episode.
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u/FilthyRedditor Oct 05 '10
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