Know Your Meme: The Whistles Go...

Recently, at work, my coworkers and I were recalling some of the practical jokes we had played on one another, as April Fool's day draws near. IT guys can be brutal with practical jokes, especially on April Fool's Day. There was that change in computer policy that automatically locked the workstations after 1 minute of idle time. Then there was the 36x48 poster of Manicorn one of the system engineers and I printed on the plotter and posted to the back of HR Guy's door. And then there's the myriad of ringtones I've set for the on-call phone.

Imagine waking up at 2 AM to any of those...

But it was the ringtones that got me thinking. It's been awhile since I had come up with another good one. It's not that there aren't promising candidates out there. I mean, Friday anyone?

God help you if you click that...

It's just that nothing recently really has any true trolling power. Annoying is not enough: it needs to be intentionally ridiculous. It was while I was thinking about this that the conversation had trailed off into some other topic, and the phrase "whistle blower" was uttered.

"Whoo whoo~!" I instinctively blurted out. My co-workers laughed and looked at me like I was from the moon. I explained further that the whistles go whoo whoo~, and that they're like an alarm clock. The confused looks and questions about where I come up with this stuff told me they weren't up to date on this classic gem of a meme. As tempting as it was to claim it as an original random (I do plenty of that), it would have been wrong not to take advantage of this teachable moment in internet history.

So I took them on a journey: a journey through time. Back to the year 2003. Before YouTube and Facebook, and just in time for the birth of MySpace. It was Oakland, and a new fad was taking to the streets. Kids were getting their mufflers outfitted with "Whistle Tips", a piece of metal welded to the exhaust pipe that let loose a tremendously loud howl as the vehicle accelerates. A news station out of San Francisco decided to report on the nuissance to local residents. The report itself would have been utterly forgettable, if not for the two characters they found to explain the appeal of getting eardrum-splitting modifications permanently affixed to their car: Bubb Rubb and Lil' Sis.

It's not just that they explained it. They unapologetically defended the audial assault that these things made at all hours of the day. When confronted about how loud these things were, Bubb simply stated that those people "s'posed ta be up cookin' breakfast fo somebody" and that it was "like a alarm clock." They end the interview by speeding away in a car that was just outfitted with a whistle tip, nearly running into a parked car and barreling through a stop sign into oncoming traffic. Ironically, the whistle tip didn't sound as they peeled off.

The video went as viral as a video could go in the days before YouTube. Animated GIFs, soundboards and image boards were on fire with "Whoo whoo~!" YTMND was flooded with pages of Bubb Rubb whooping. More musically savvy individuals created remixes using sound bites from the interview.

I can't think of a better ringtone. When some moron calls at 2:30AM because they can't find the power button on their printer, what better way to announce the call than that? After all, that's like an alarm clock...