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Oh they still haven't figured this one out at knowyourmeme?

Demon Core meme came from KanColle(2013) communities in Futaba, and permeated to nicovideo.jp as well as to Twitter. That's why it is predominantly image based with few GIFs inbetween, why it is Demon Core and Demon Core only, and why there are few comical non-girl versions created years after inception.

I'd guess overlap between outspoken (ex-)Futaba users AND HN readers(hops_max=3) OR knowyourmeme users is exactly 1.0f, and this won't ever go on record anywhere unless someone say it somewhere, so here you go.

23 hours agoby numpad0

> Because it’s a meme derived from human suffering. It’s meant to be in bad taste — that’s the source of the humor.

I don’t agree. To me, it’s derived from many things, like juxtaposing something incredibly stressful and dangerous, with something else.

I’d go further and say the suffering that happened is only important in that it made the demon core popular and well-known, but the memes would still work if it somehow became well-known without the death and suffering because no accident happened.

1 day agoby Semaphor

I feel like some conclusions of the intent here are born from being very well versed in the actual outcomes, including what I can only assume was a very painful end to someone's life.

But on the surface level of it, it's a scientist doing something knowingly incredibly dangerous and dumb for no particularly justifiable reason.

We've all felt a bit like that at some point. We just probably didn't have a core and a screwdriver.

1 day agoby cr3ative

Oddly the art is largely Japanese in style, not just the musume (e.g. "girl") images but that first one.

Between that accident and the year 2000 there were about 60 criticality accidents causing about 20 fatalities

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml0037/ML003731912.pdf

After a software project failure that overturned my life I got interested in the quality movement, Deming, Toyota Production System and all that. I was also interested in nuclear energy, actually opposed to it at that time, an opinion I have changed.

Before the Fukushima accident I became aware that Japan was leading the world in nuclear accidents, especially this criticality incident

https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...

as well as the comedy of errors at

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant

which I could summarize as "makes Superphenix look like a huge success"

Causes floated for that were that (1) Japan was more aggressive at developing nuclear technology post-1990 more than any country other than Russia (who is making the FBR look easy today) and (2) the attitudes and methods that served Japan well in cars and semiconductors served them terribly in the nuclear business. Workgroups in a Japanese factory, for instance, are expected to modify their techniques and tools to improve production but takes detailed modelling and strict following of rules to avoid criticality accidents.

1 day agoby PaulHoule

Despite it being so famous, and the memes, I still don't understand what Slotin was doing.

So I get it, it was a demonstration of how to perform an experiment. But I can't understand how the screwdriver makes any sense at all. What's being measured? What does success and failure look like? What does the experiment produce, what data in what format?

Because in my head, a proper experiment has data collection and precise measurements. Somebody's working on a data table that says "At position X, we measured value Y". But randomly wiggling stuff around with a screwdriver, I can't see how one can do anything of the sort. And I figure at this level, "more coverage = more radiation" is kind of a trivial point that doesn't really need to be demonstrated.

1 day agoby dale_glass

IMO the demon core incident resonates with people as kind of the ultimate case of "playing with fire". Humans have always played with fire, so we see the attraction, but also the dangers of it. It's a primitive behavior that's put us at risk, but also been the origin of most of our technology. The juxtaposition of a top nuclear weapons scientist taking such a "caveman" approach, playing with a new kind of "fire" that's millions of times more powerful, is poignant in the way it's absurd, but also relatable, sad & darkly funny.

20 hours agoby 00N8

The author mentions 2019. That was the year that the "Demon Core Kun" videos were put on YouTube[0]. There's no mention of them in the article, which is a bit odd. I don't know if that was the first to "memeify" the demon core, but it certainly is one of the most popular memeifications, with each of the eight videos having somewhere between three to six million views.

This also would explain the relatively large presence of anime memes in particular, since the "main" meme is a series of Japanese animations.

EDIT: knowyourmeme.com actually has an article about the Demon Core and its popularity in Japan as a meme[1]. Apparently the latter predates the Demon Core Kun series by about a year at least. Still, the latter being on YT made it a lot more accessible to non-Japanese people which might explain the spike in meme popularity in 2019.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjzx95hXRLvbVeHuE8fT...

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/demon-core

1 day agoby vanderZwan

Fun fact - if you eat the demon-core, at 124 trillion calories, it will provide enough energy for the rest of your life.

1 day agoby ndsipa_pomu

I still can’t believe that there exists rocks on this world that will make a room glow blue and kill everyone in the room if the rocks are brought close together.

1 day agoby mensetmanusman

Twice bitten, three times shy. After the Slotin incident, prompt critical assemblies by hand were prohibited. Los Alamos then built a series of remotely operated critical assembly machines. There is a fair amount of open source literature on them, especially the "Godiva" series. Some of these machines have experienced criticality excursions that damaged the machine, but spared the biological organisms operating them by remote control.

19 hours agoby vibrolax

I'd argue Kyle Hill [0] should have been mentioned since his coverage appears instrumental in this trend.

Also, if you are so inclined, there are also Chernobyl memes [1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z497lu4t5XI

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQeC06SdicI

1 day agoby Topfi

For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.

There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho, American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them deal with dark themes in a light way.

Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.

1 day agoby caseyy

The first time I saw the Demon Core as a "meme" is from the Japanese creator からめる, a person most known for short absurdist humor animations.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88

I'm not sure if this is the genesis of the demon core meme (probably not), but it definitely came fairly early on.

1 day agoby jchw

As Shaw said, “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”

Things can be, and often are, both at the same time.

1 day agoby jayrot

Just about all humor derives from some degree of suffering. Compared what the core could have done, the three deaths from the accident are nothing. Even things that are joked about often have much higher death tolls like wars and natural disasters.

18 hours agoby nothacking_

> So perhaps if anybody has a “right” to make jokes in poor taste about the “Demon Core”… it might be the Japanese?

> I’m not here to be the humor police, or to say things should be “off limits” for comedy, or that it’s “too soon,” or make any other scolding noises. Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.

1 day agoby shdh

There's also this one from last year:

https://old.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/12x9rxi/the...

Based on The Ol' Spicy Keychain:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-ol-spicy-keychain

22 hours agoby philipkglass

I really liked this telling of the story with illustrations: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230719-the-blue-flash-l...

19 hours agoby jkestner

Azumanga Daioh mentioned :)

I like the pun on “hot girl stuff” https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/hot.html

21 hours agoby Lammy

No mention of the earlier XKCD mentioning the demon core? It's what set in motion my particular interest in nuclear accidents.

I don't agree with the author's analysis here. I think the demon core is simply memorable. It has a scary name and the beryllium sphere is iconic in a way the Kelley and SL-1 accidents simply aren't.

https://xkcd.com/1242/

1 day agoby itishappy

Remember learning about this from the crossover with fake "bowling alley animations" like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q6MQwsJCA4

18 hours agoby kapp_in_life

As per Aquinas, every joke is a disguised form of sadness. You can only laugh at something that is sad.

22 hours agoby frozenlettuce

I had never heard of this story. What an absolutely horrible way to die. Not only do you have ample time to suffer with the knowledge of your impending death, but you get to do so in agony the whole time. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone.

21 hours agoby bigstrat2003

They didn't include my favorite example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbal-banging_monkey_toy

22 hours agoby willis936

It's pretty funny to see so many anime memes when you consider that demoncore was originally planned as the third bomb for japan.

18 hours agoby cocodill

My favourite one is the flail with the demon core attached to it. Memes aside, I find it fascinating how absurd was thinking that experiment was a good idea

21 hours agoby pawelduda

Memes are fun. Crossover memes doubly so. There's no need to overanalyze.

1 day agoby anilakar

Let me tell you about 9/11 memes…

20 hours agoby treflop

The front page of hacker news is not where I expected to see Gura fanart today.

18 hours agoby GauntletWizard

Didn’t read it, just went for the memes. The kinder surprise one is absolute genius!

22 hours agoby louthy

The "Demon Core kun" short anime series on YouTube is the most hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88

20 hours agoby Razengan

Im on the internet a ton. Very familiar with the two horrible nuclear research accidents that occurred around this time. Never once seen these meme.

Also, I love how the author tries to argue for who should be allowed to make the joke, like there is some arbiter who can tell you “oh you don’t fall into that group so you are not allowed to make that joke.”

20 hours agoby Vaslo

I can honestly say I don't understand this meme. I don't understand what it's trying to say.

I know what the Demon Core is (there was a similar, lesser known accident in my country, but it only killed the operator) and I'm all for bleak humor, but...

... I don't understand this one. What's with the animé girls and the cutesy style? What is this mocking exactly?

I'm not offended by it or anything, I just don't get it. Seems completely random as well as obscure.

13 hours agoby the_af

What is going on here? I am not exceptionally well-versed in anime or manga tropes, but I think the “obvious” reading of this is a classic case of “unexpected juxtaposition creates humor.” That is, moving something from one context (“Demon Core,” radiation experiment, horrible death) into another (cute, anime, girls) creates something that feels novel and unusual

Ah, sir, I guess you’re completely unfamiliar with anime tropes. From absurd brutality to dark drama (much worse than your Titanic Ending and Futurama Dog), everything can be found in anime. Thinking that these are cute animations for teens and children is a big mistake. I, a grown up adult, usually dread when an anime plot is too nice to its actors and think if I want to watch it further. This juxtaposition is well-expected.

1 day agoby wruza

Part of the reason why we slowed down in our progress in science is that we do not take risks like that anymore.

Now the risk takers are at private companies.

1 day agoby niemandhier