All your snakes on a plane are belong to us

Rob Walker’s “Consumed” column this week is perhaps the smartest take on the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon. He pretty much hits the mark on why the line itself was so instantly funny when he writes that the phrase spawned a season’s worth of bizarre punchlines because “the only thing funnier than a character on Entourage saying something so stupid is a real-life film industry professional saying it.”

And he decimates the buzz about citizen marketing and fan advertising—which famously failed to pay off for Snakes—with ease:

New Line didn’t get a free ride from these creators; if anything, the creators got a boost from New Line: The movie promoted the hype more than the hype promoted the movie.

And, as those who went to the rowdy opening night shows know, the hype—not the movie—was what drove those screenings. We yelled and shouted and tossed plastic glow in the dark snakes at each other not because of the movie, but because of the pre-movie hype on which we, not the movie, were finally realizing. It was a fully audience created experience, a Web 2.0 virtual community moment made physical.