The Snowclone Awards: Googling for Cliché Memes

Image courtesy Flickr user CarbonNYC

We at Web Scout have discovered a diverting new online pastime: Snowcloning.

Snowclones are memechés, if you will: meme-ified cliches with the operative words removed, leaving spaces for you to the masses to Mad Lib their own versions.

For instance, "X is the new Y."  As Erin of the Snowclone Database pithily puts it, snowclones are like "fill in the blank headlines."

Well, there's one clever way to find out all the different original (and otherwise) ways online word smiths have filled in the snowclone over time.

Google lets you do a search like "* is the new *", where each asterisk is a blank. That search will return any phrase with "is the new" in the middle of it.  So we picked a few choice snowclones and popped them into Google to see what came out. Then we chose a winner for each phrase.

If you want to see all the variations, click the linked snowclones -- you'll probably be surprised at how often people use these constructions. Odds are you've used a few yourself -- I know I have.

THE SNOWCLONE AWARDS

X is the new Y
Origin: debatable, frequently attributed to "Pink is the new black"
Winner: Vegan Is the New Atkins.

Dammit, Jim, I'm an X, not an Y
Origin: Star Trek, X = Doctor, Y = varies
Winner: Dammit Jim I'm a moron, not a scientist.

All Your X are belong to Us
Origin: viral video circa 1999, X = Base
Winner: All Your Basemnts Are Belong To Us.

Have X, will Y
Origin: Have Gun, Will Travel (1957)
Winner: Have shingle, will sue.

What happens in X, stays in X
Origin: Las Vegas, ad campaign
Winner: What happens in Davos stays in Davos.

I X, therefore, I Y
Origin: Descartes, X = think, Y = am
Winner: I think, therefore I thwim.

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in X anymore
Origin: The Wizard of Oz, X = Kansas
Winner: Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Cannes anymore.

Friends don't let friends X
Origin / 1990s PSA, X = Drive Drunk
Winner: Friends Don't Let Friends Commit War Crimes

And straight from the hotbed of meme creation, Times intern Mark Milian has brought us some of the deep Interweb's hottest snowclones ....

Step 1. X, Step 2. X, Step 3. ???, Step 4. Profit!
Origin: The business model of South Park's Underpants gnomes
Winner: Start a blog 2. Hit Print 3. ??? 4. Profit!!

In Soviet Russia, X
Origin: The humor of Yakov Smirnoff
Winner: In Soviet Russia, joke overuses you!

Madness! This is X!
Origin: "300", X = Sparta!
Winner: Madness! This is a wet floor.

I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more X
Origin: Saturday Night Live, X = cowbell
Winner: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more 'Idol'

The X, they do nothing!
Origin: The Simpsons, "The goggles do nothing!"
Winner: The Googles,They Do Nothing!

Im in ur X Ying ur Z
Origin: gamer culture, "Im in your base killing your d00ds"
Winner: I'm in ur office, earning ur salary

Feel free to add alternate winners in the comments, or submit snowclones of your own!

Thanks to editor and Internet all-seer Sheigh Crabtree for the idea