LTTP: Portal (Old Meme Q...)

S

Stat Flow

He gonna cry in the car
So I just finished playing Portal, and it was pretty fun, and also pretty funny and clever. The ending credits song might have been my favorite part.

But the reason I created this topic was because I remember a while back, seeing the meme "The Cake Is A Lie" used in a lot of places and in various forms. I always figured that if I didnt understand it, it was because I didn't play Portal, and once I did, it would make sense and possibly be funny.

Well, I finished it about 20 minutes ago and I'm still not sure why this phrase became a big thing. I understand what the phrase means - not only was it scribbled on the wall in a (kind of) hidden room, but that the main character was never intended to get the cake. That and that sometimes motivators aren't what they appear to be blah blah blah. That's cool, but what makes it meme worthy? I still don't get it.

Edit: Great, wrong forum. That's what I get for being in the OT too much.
 
Feed it cake?
 
DeathIsTheEnd said:
Why on earth would anyone want to do that?
Click to expand...

Because they are the ones, from my experience that latched on to all that stuff from Portal. The only people i've met that actually thought it was funny to quote the game were hipsters, and they didn't exactly play a lot of other games.

I'm stereotyping of course, but Portal seems like the biggest hipster magnet in the world. I might just have been unlucky with the people i know, i guess.
 
"The cake is a lie" is a memorable phrase that references a funny joke. Simple as that. If I were a member of Valve I'd take it as a great compliment that people liked part of something I helped create well enough to spread it around.
 
Well I'm glad I didn't miss out on something. It just wasn't funny in the first place. Alrighty then.

When Portal 2 hits $20 I'll buy that!

Monocle said:
"The cake is a lie" is a memorable phrase that references a funny joke. Simple as that.
Click to expand...
Oh. Then what is the joke that it references?
 
Requeim said:
Because they are the ones, from my experience that latched on to all that stuff from Portal. The only people i've met that actually thought it was funny to quote the game were hipsters, and they didn't exactly play a lot of other games.

I'm stereotyping of course, but Portal seems like the biggest hipster magnet in the world. I might just have been unlucky with the people i know, i guess.
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It was supposed to be a joke about why anyone would want to be "fucking hipsters". Literally.
 
DeathIsTheEnd said:
It was supposed to be a joke about why anyone would want to be "fucking hipsters". Literally.
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So sorry, i missed it completely :3

FromTheFuture said:
I doubt you even know what a hipster actually is. It's not the hipsters. It's the gamers.
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Not from my experience. Also, i doubt you even know what a "gamer" actually is
 
Stat Flow said:
Well I'm glad I didn't miss out on something. It just wasn't funny in the first place. Alrighty then.

When Portal 2 hits $20 I'll buy that!


Oh. Then what is the joke that it references?
Click to expand...
There's a character called the Rat Man that's never explicitly mentioned in Portal. Strewn throughout the game are little niches that look like the've been lived in by an escapee. Open cans and a radio and such. On walls near these places there's this graffiti that looks like it's been drawn by a schizophrenic. In at least one piece the Rat Man wrote "The cake is a lie," in reference to GLaDOS telling test subject that there will be cake after they complete their tasks.

(Kinda-spoilers regarding the end of Portal)
The payoff to all this is the very last scene in the game, where one of GLaDOS's claws descends to pinch out the candle on a delicious looking black forest cake deep in the bowels of the Aperture labs. Besides revealing that GLaDOS still lives, this suggests the cake isn't a lie after all.
 
Requeim said:
Not from my experience. Also, i doubt you even know what a "gamer" actually is
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Point is: what is your reasoning to say that it's all the hipsters that blew up the Portal meme? Everyone was on that bandwagon. It's the same as any other meme: internet nerds blow it up.

Also, it's just been annoying me that everyone calls everyone a hipster. Most people don't even know what a hipster is, and all they do is throw it around as the new cool-kid catchphrase.
 
Monocle said:
Explanation
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Oh, yeah, I knew all of this (besides the fact that the character who scribbled the stuff on the wall was called the rat man). I just didn't see how that was funny. Oh well.
 
FromTheFuture said:
Point is: what is your reasoning to say that it's all the hipsters that blew up the Portal meme? Everyone was on that bandwagon. It's the same as any other meme: internet nerds blow it up.

Also, it's just been annoying me that everyone calls everyone a hipster. Most people don't even know what a hipster is, and all they do is throw it around as the new cool-kid catchphrase.
Click to expand...

Funny you should say that, as I remember somebody created a thread a while back asking what exactly defined a "hipster" and it quickly became nothing but a cesspool of people disagreeing with one another.
 
FromTheFuture said:
Point is: what is your reasoning to say that it's all the hipsters that blew up the Portal meme? Everyone was on that bandwagon. It's the same as any other meme: internet nerds blow it up.
Click to expand...

What you're saying is true, but i was not talking about the internet, because it was pretty much everywhere. Just some folks i know in real life, who thought it'd be fun to quote the game all the time.

FromTheFuture said:
Also, it's just been annoying me that everyone calls everyone a hipster. Most people don't even know what a hipster is, and all they do is throw it around as the new cool-kid catchphrase.
Click to expand...

Well you don't know me. Why not assume then, that i know what the word means.
 
Prophet Steve said:
Don't worry, it isn't meme worthy.
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This. It was never funny. GLaDOS's "remember that time I was pretending to murder you and you were like 'no way!'" line was much more funny and should've been a meme.

(Oh, but then I'd hate it just a much as the mouthbreathers had to spew other Portal 1 lines for months)
 
From The Dust said:
The intention was never funny in the first place. It was suppose to be a message that the whole testing thing was fucked up
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There was a punchline to the game though, as Monocle explained. Seemed like pretty clear-cut humor even after the whole meme thing.
 
Stat Flow said:
Oh, yeah, I knew all of this (besides the fact that the character who scribbled the stuff on the wall was called the rat man). I just didn't see how that was funny. Oh well.
Click to expand...

it's supposed to be funny cause it seems like a silly point to hold on to and scribble on the wall when your aggressor is you know trying to kill you. .......at least thats how i saw it, it never was more than an annoying meme beyond that.
 
GAF has been reduced to a never-ending argument about hipsters. Seriously, gtfo.
 
omg.kittens said:
GAF has been reduced to a never-ending argument about hipsters. Seriously, gtfo.
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GAF's interested in a new kind of argument now. You've probably never heard of it.
 
TheSeks said:
This. It was never funny. GLaDOS's "remember that time I was pretending to murder you and you were like 'no way!'" line was much more funny and should've been a meme.

(Oh, but then I'd hate it just a much as the mouthbreathers had to spew other Portal 1 lines for months)
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Yeah, I thought a lot of GlaDOS's other lines were funny during the last few sequences.
 
Stat Flow said:
Oh, yeah, I knew all of this (besides the fact that the character who scribbled the stuff on the wall was called the rat man). I just didn't see how that was funny. Oh well.
Click to expand...
The comedic effect is caused by the juxtaposition of a dispassionate AI forcing the player through a series of increasingly deadly and sadistic exercises versus the promise of a (disproportionately) mundane reward at the end of said exercises. What makes the idea especially resonating is how it speaks to the human condition of clinging to the slightest shiver of hope beyond all reason. After all, the cake is a lie.

.. noob
 
greycolumbus said:
There was a punchline to the game though, as Monocle explained. Seemed like pretty clear-cut humor even after the whole meme thing.
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Yea it was a brick joke. But as brick jokes are, you don't get it until later. So people shouting "The Cake is a Lie" are mission the second part of the joke
 
I never found it funny myself either. And it's a fucking stupid meme. Everything on the internet vaguely related to cakes or rewards became polluted with "The cake is a lie!" one-liners.
 
Different strokes I suppose. I enjoy the meme because it reminds me of the game's kooky humor. I'd be surprised if anyone actually found it laugh-out-loud hilarious. That's never really seemed to be the point of the whole thing.
 
It also took off because we knew next to nothing about the premise of the original game when it first came out, and finding that hidden room with that scrawled on the wall was actually a pretty creepy and memorable moment when you first found it, the first real confirmation that something was horrifically wrong at the facility. If you can imagine playing it before "the cake is a lie", Still Alive, GLaDOS, and all the jokes had been disseminated across the entire internet a million times over, it had quite a few moments of sublime discovery.
 
B_Rik_Schitthaus said:
Coming from the person with a chibby companion cube as an avatar.
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Well, the companion cube is not as fully blown up and stupid as THE CAKE IS A LIE!!!.
Also, it is damn cute. And GlaDOS provided plenty of reasons to love the thing.


OldJadedGamer said:
I was debating on picking this up on XBLA but it seems cheaper just to get a used Orange Box game. It's the exact same version right?
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No, there are some extra levels in the XBLA one. If you do not have the rest of the Orange Box though I would recommend that. If you have a half decent PC, I'd recommend getting Portal for that, I even have it for free if you want one for the PC.
 
"The cake is a lie" also worked as a meme because it was short and rolled off the tongue easily. Portal 2 won't have quite the same problem, but I'm betting the quote that will most approach those levels is (spoilers ahoy)
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
 
I think it's funny to see that people gets annoyed by hearing the phrase. It's not funny on it's own, but it sure was in the game, as a part of an absurd atmosphere and style that we didn't expect from the game. And people like to hear things that remind them of the game.

It became big because the whole Portal experience was a breath of fresh air in the first person genre that almost always takes itself way to seriously.
 
The_Technomancer said:
"The cake is a lie" also worked as a meme because it was short and rolled off the tongue easily. Portal 2 won't have quite the same problem, but I'm betting the quote that will most approach those levels is (spoilers ahoy)
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Click to expand...
Other candidates:

"The best solution for one of both of us."

Adoption.

Lemons.
 
Requeim said:
Because they are the ones, from my experience that latched on to all that stuff from Portal. The only people i've met that actually thought it was funny to quote the game were hipsters, and they didn't exactly play a lot of other games.

I'm stereotyping of course, but Portal seems like the biggest hipster magnet in the world. I might just have been unlucky with the people i know, i guess.
Click to expand...

Then they're still gamers. Just look at how many of the jokes were ruined from both Portal and Portal 2. If you played either game, you're a gamer.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
It also took off because we knew next to nothing about the premise of the original game when it first came out, and finding that hidden room with that scrawled on the wall was actually a pretty creepy and memorable moment when you first found it, the first real confirmation that something was horrifically wrong at the facility. If you can imagine playing it before "the cake is a lie", Still Alive, GLaDOS, and all the jokes had been disseminated across the entire internet a million times over, it had quite a few moments of sublime discovery.
Click to expand...

This!

The really cool trick Portal pulled off was that initially seems to be one kind of game-- a "series of puzzles" game like Angry Birds or any of a zillion other games dating back to the dawn of videogames, only with a humorous and ironic setting/narrator. And then midway changes into more of a first-person action game using the same mechanics, and the narrator is revealed to be an actual antagonist and not just a joke.

"The cake is a lie" was an early hint to the fact that soemthing was *wrong*-- not only in-story, but with how we, the player, were perceiving the game.

Fucking brilliant.
 
Really guys? Are we talking about what is "meme worthy?" That phrase itself makes no sense. Are any memes at all really that funny individually? Or is there some intellectual standard for memes I'm not aware of?

Anyway, try not to worry about it too much. I was LTTP to Portal just a few months ago and wasn't blown away by "The cake is a lie!" either. For memes, sometimes you just have to be there when they happen in order to get the funny. No big deal.
 
Just finished the game for the first time a few weeks ago. Great game and very hilarious. It had its issues but it was fun.

I'm playing Portal 2 right now and it's clearly not any better. It's not as hilarious as the first game and most of the time the jokes are absurd and/or lame. It succeeded in becoming a full game, but that's pretty much it. I'm close to the end now I think. The gameplay is great but it's starting to get a little old near the end.
 
TheSeks said:
This. It was never funny. GLaDOS's "remember that time I was pretending to murder you and you were like 'no way!'" line was much more funny and should've been a meme.
Click to expand...

I'm rather partial to "In layman's terms, speedythinggoesin, speedythingcomesout."
 
mclem said:
I'm rather partial to "In layman's terms, speedythinggoesin, speedythingcomesout."
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Thats a line I actually often use.

Also I'm a little ashamed to admit that when I'm about to start a lab I often say "well look at me still talking when there's science to do"
 
It wasn't memeworthy material and that's why Valve completely ignored for Portal 2. It got unfunny after a while since it was just amusing while everyone was in their "Portal-1-phase".
 
The_Technomancer said:
"The cake is a lie" also worked as a meme because it was short and rolled off the tongue easily. Portal 2 won't have quite the same problem, but I'm betting the quote that will most approach those levels is (spoilers ahoy)
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!
Click to expand...
imo that's actually kind of meme worthy
 
Kinyou said:
imo that's actually kind of meme worthy
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The "meme" people are using from P2 is generally
Johnson's lemon speech
... Which totally sucks because taking that out of context repeatedly is going to ruin it forever..... much like the cake reference, which would still be pretty great if it wasn't beaten to death years ago.
 
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