While The Oil Drum is mostly known as a well regarded peak-oil blog, the high density of oil industry expertise there has made TOD a go-to site for quality information on the Gulf Disaster.
A couple of weeks ago, partly as a move to reduce load on the Drupal-based web servers and also to facilitate real-time commentary of the various webcast ROV operations, the admins set up an IRC channel (Freenode, #theoildrum). This channel very quickly grew, often having over 500 people logged in and was (indeed IS) the Authoritative source of ROV play-by-play commentary.
At some point, as BP began preparations for adding the “top hat” oil capturing equipment, a large hydraulic cutter was lowered a mile down from the surface, in order to trim off excess chunks of the collapsed 21″ oil riser piping. This large yellow claw-like cutter was quickly dubbed the “CRAW” by various denizens of the IRC channel. Even more quickly it became an object of adoration, especially as made several important chopped through ridiculously tough metal tubing.
Soon, with the level of punnery and CRAW-LUV snark threatening to dilute the expert commentary for which #theoildrum was created, a spinoff channel was created and the Cult moved over to #craw. And it was Good.
Just another day in the emergent memeflow of online communities.
As for the CRAW, well like all great idolatrous movements there is…a tee-shirt. It probably would be a good idea to hop on over to CafePress and pick one up (all proceeds go to the upkeep of TheOilDrum.com), just in case.
Ceiling CRAW sees all.
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