Mike Godwin’s Law: from counter-memes to countering the FBI | Culture | theguardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/oct/29/mike-godwin-nazi-analogies-meme-update#start-of-comments
Back in 1990 – before users referred to the internet as the World Wide Web and a negligible number of mavericks held discussions on Usenet newsgroups, the Well, and Bulletin board systems (BBS) – Mike Godwin, then an Austin law student, created one of the first internet memes.
It was called “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies”, and the assertion went like this:
“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
After he seeded Godwin’s Law within various BBS threads, it caught on with ease, even morphing into different versions of the same basic idea, much like the ubiquitous “condescending Willy Wonka”, or, aptly, “Hitler’s reactions to things”. Now, anyone who wields “Godwin’s Law” in any forum knows they’re talking about pretty much the same thing, regardless of context.
