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Comment by nixpulvis | Hacker News Reader

"X is dead, long live Y", is a meme. I wouldn't read into it past, "I'm switching from X to Y".

The meme is actually "X is dead, long live X" - it's been misused here.

It is X and Y, the original phrase used the word 'king' in both places but it refers to a different person each time (i.e., the dead king and their successor). It would not make sense to say "Lynx is dead, long Live Lynx" as that implies Lynx's successor is itself. In the words of Robert Cecil: "The League is dead. Long live the United Nations."

But the word play is important, this fact seems lost on the OP.

Is it, though? The title obviously communicates that a project called Browsh aims to be a sort of successor to Lynx.

This is more like attempted regicide than succession!

> The original phrase was translated from the French: Le roi est mort, vive le roi!, which was first declared upon the accession to the French throne of Charles VII after the death of his father Charles VI in 1422.

Charles VII would have probably not been amused by this historic statement being called a meme :-D

It is actually a (pretty silly) meme itself that being a meme is derogatory :)

Back in my day we called these snowclones

The wiki page for "Snowclone" explicitly mentions X is the new Y. I wonder how many snowclones of meme there are? :P

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone

IDK, is a meme really a derogatory name for an idiom?

I tend to think of memes as simply more attached to the current era. Sure our current era is devolving into madness, but I like to believe in a world with beautiful memes and healthier societies.

On the other hand, Charles VII is dead, and thus in no position to object to the accurate description of this historic statement as a meme.

Even if he weren't, I feel like this would be pretty far down on the list, considering that the intervening centuries have also seen the fall of the French monarchy...

I doubt Charles VII had much opportunity to read Dawkins.

Y=X is a specific instance of the expression.

Back in my time those kinds of ‘memes’ were known as ‘idioms’ and one would be marked down for misusing a term or failing to identify one, but... whatever.

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