If the Internet is a highway, then memes are Waffle Houses and crappy motel chains. You don't really want to stop at any of them, but if you're on the road for long enough it's practically inevitable. It was only a matter of time before this rickety internal combustion vessel called Net Insanity broke down alongside a greasy little shack with a buzzing neon sign reading "Ninjas". The only recourse is to loosen my belt, fortify my stomach with preemptive antacids and hope for the best.

I decided to open with the above video because it embodies both everything that is ostensibly awesome about the idea of ninjas as well as everything that is lame and unnecessary about them. And yes, I will continue to pluralize "ninja" with an S because the fake Internet meme version of them must be distinct from the actual assassins of yesteryear Japan, much like the plural for "mouse" is "mouses" when referring to the computer peripheral. That tangent aside, the impressive cue-ball in the header video does some really wild and utterly useless stuff. He's entertaining and he probably gets a lot of work doing his uncanny acrobatics in movies and TV shows. Also, I imagine he gets an unbelievable amount of whatever kind of tail he prefers as a result.

At the same time, there's no way any of that stuff would be effective for actual assassins. Jump, flip and climb all you want, you'll never move fast enough to dodge machine gun fire. That's why there are no more real, implemented ninja in the world but the US military will take any lughead under 30 with a trigger finger and malleable morals.

But for every stuntman who can do a standing flip on a slippery pipe, there are 10,000 annoying twats who think just saying the word "ninja" on the Internet makes them comic superstars. Take Nigahiga, just another black hole of laughter in an endless parade of crappy vloggers who spend way too much time recording themselves being embarrassments to everyone who ever gave them positive regard. Among the many, many awful Nigahiga videos is this ninja-themed atrocity that bases much of its humor on Asian guys trying to squeeze one more undeserved laugh from racial stereotypes that were never funny in the first place. None of this stuff is entertaining on its own, but adding the ridiculous ninja theme makes it unoriginal and terminally lame as well.

Deeper down the rabbit hole that is the Youtube Related Video sidebar, I found yet another specimen of an increasingly common YT trope, the moderately cute Asian girl who does inoffensive, if unremarkable, videos that get a million plus views simply because they play to multiple geek obsessions simultaneously. Michelle Phan is respectable, if only because she uses a real name and seems like a normal person. Of course, she isn't a normal person because she spends her time scripting, staging, recording and editing videos for the Internet. Still, I can dig this video if only because it's informative and relies on a bare minimum of ninja-based humor. I'll take a few arbitrary points off for the cliche quick-cut bit with the nunchucks, though.

I don't know how the stupid ninja meme started and I think it's long overdue for an unceremonious death, but the Internet is nothing if not a device designed to beat dead horses into a smelly pulp. From the corpse of the ninja meme, another equally stupid obsession will rise like some sort of phoenix that exudes the Annoying Frog sound clip instead of pure fire. Until that day, we'll have to navigate this long road littered with throwing stars and pirate hooks, starving for dignity.