RoboRomney, which you're likely to start seeing in your Facebook Newsfeed, is on the more incisive end of the political meme-critiques (meme-tiques?).

It's a single-serving web site that inputs your political positions on a list of topics and spits back matching Romney quotes and video montage, showing that Mitt has--at one point, at least--supported every position you could possibly take on an issue.

Tell the site you have liberal views on tax reform? It spits back Mr. Romney saying, “We can raise taxes on the people that are under the age of 55, that’s one way we can do it. And one is to say we’re gonna raise the retirement age, well that alone would… well I said we could raise taxes.” Punch in that you're more of a moderate? You get a shifting perspective: “Unless we’re going to rein in excessive federal spending, holding down taxes would mean unacceptable deficits.” Identify with the far-right? Well, there's a Romney for that too: "I’m not a fan of raising taxes. The government takes enough from the American people.”

A diligent--or extremely bored--Redditor cataloged all of the site's possible responses.

Sorry, Mitt. Even a fake Twitter army can't save you from the wrath of Redditors.

http://law-order-food.tumblr.com

Tumblr has occasionally been fruitful for writers looking to spin the germ of an idea into something viral, maybe even a book. However, the mercurial nature of the Web means few who go for it with their million-dollar Old People Sleeping On Trains Tumblr idea will ever see it morph into a dead tree version suitable for Grandma's coffee table.

There are sometimes naturally-occurring viral Tumblrs, never intended by their creators for further, offline glory. Goofs or riffs that take off and quickly become a part of the Web's pop culture Sargasso Sea, linked by every tent-pole blog and tech site. One big recent example: Law & Order & Food.

Law & Order & Food is a ridiculously simple idea: screen grabs from Law & Order (and its spin-offs, like Criminal Intent) made when a character was taking a drink or shoving a hoagie or bite of pizza  into his or her mouth. No commentary, just frozen moments from a show that ran for so long it practically merits its own cable channel.

Law & Order & Food grows on you with each new post--because it's funny and also sometimes unexpectedly poignant--like this shot of the late, great Jerry Orbach, who played Lennie Briscoe, eating takeout Chinese.

Over GChat Law & Order & Food creator  Malkah Duprix told Betabeat about the site's origin.  Ms. Duprix, a funny tweeter, blogger and musician, said she was watching the show with friends "...and my boyfriend kept talking about all the food they eat on the show. I'd never seen the original one, just the spin-offs, but every time they ate, which was frequently, we laughed. And he did a screen capture of Logan & Briscoe eating italian ice. It was HILARIOUS. It's actually the first photo on the Tumblr."

Ms. Duprix and her friends agreed someone ought to start a Tumblr. She volunteered and began watching "an unhealthy amount" of the legendary cop drama. We asked Ms. Duprix when she realized the site was becoming popular. A friend had sent the link to The Stranger's SLOG  and she soon noticed a marked and steady rise in Tumblr followers. And while she is pleased that "people really seemed to like it. Like, a whole lot," it's also been a "weird feeling." After all, said Ms. Duprix, "I basically did it to make myself and my friends laugh. I am delighted that others think it's funny, because I think it's ridiculous." The popularity of the Tumblr can be "overwhelming," she says, "but I LOVE that something so absurd is so popular. I like absurd."

It was probably inevitable someone would claim Ms. Duprix didn't arrive at the idea for her site on her own, and she got some grief after Law & Order & Food was mentioned on popular sites like Boing Boing and Laughing Squid, since another Tumblr user had indeed come up with a similar idea a few months before. While she knew some negative responses were pure trolling, Ms. Duprix admitted accusations she'd stolen the idea were upsetting. The allegations "hurt my feelings in a new way," she said. "People who have known me on Twitter and Facebook for a long time know that I would never steal an idea. I would promote someone else's instead [...] Also, the people who have insisted I must have stolen the idea, since I have some of the same screen captures as other people, I don't think they understand how the world works: a show that was on for 20 years, on which people eat in almost every episode? You're gonna have some parallel thinking about that."

Besides, Ms. Duprix said, "it's not like I'm making money on this." Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, she pointed out, "had the idea way before any of us."

Ms. Duprix's friends were very supportive, however, and she found this "hugely touching" and representative of "the good part of the Internet."

Ms. Duprix is realistic about the nature of her blog's popularity. "I won't be disappointed when it levels out," she said, "It's a flash-in-the-pan type of thing."

We asked Ms. Duprix about the life of the Tumblr, how long she intends to keep it up, regardless of a drop-off in attention. "I will keep doing this," she said, "as long as there are scenes of people putting food into their faces."

"I have around 13 seasons left to watch," said Ms. Duprix, "So, I'm just getting started."

Oh, Bennett: Destroyer of dreams, kinda.

Maybe you've heard of Texts From Bennett? It's a Tumblr that's blazed an incredible, viral trail through the internet over the past few days, made up of texts from some anonymous blogger's younger cousin Bennett, described as a "17 YEAR-OLD" who "THINKS HE'S A CRIP, WORKS AT AMOCO, HAS A GIRLFRIEND NAMED MERCEDES, AND IS ONE OF THE MOST UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY AND BRILLIANT SOULS ON THE PLANET." They are also, as the site says, "100% REAL."

Except, not.

The Smoking Gun reports that they're 100% (NOT TOTALLY) REAL and CREATED BY THE 30 YEAR-OLD GUY BEHIND ONE OF THE MOST UNINTENTIONALLY UNFUNNY AND SURPRISINGLY VIRAL HITS AS OF LATE GIVEN HOW PATENTLY UNIMPRESSED BY IT WE ARE, WHICH PUTS US IN THE MINORITY BUT WHATEVER, who you may better know as "Mac Lethal" (aka David Sheldon of Kansas), he of the "Look At Me Now" kitchen rap. Recognize this?

Yup. Same guy as Texts From Bennett, whose identity was sluethed out by talking to—who else?—his dad. But there is some validity to it:

The elder Sheldon went on to note that his son has a friend who is prone to "Yogi Berraisms" and that he uses some of these malaprops for the “Bennett” blog. The friend’s name, he said, “has been chaged to protect the innocent.”

“Mac writes them,” Sheldon said, “and puts it in the form of texts.”

And of course, like any internet fraud (or quasi-fraud) who was smoked out of their hole, he is pissed at the reporter for figuring out the truth of the matter:

Sheldon declined to disclose the true name of “Bennett,” and refused to provide any information to corroborate his claim that the texts are real. Claiming that his cousin is unaware that he is publishing the texts, Sheldon said that he would do nothing to risk alerting his kin. “He can’t ever know I do this at his expense,” he said.

Sheldon criticized a TSG reporter, saying, “You try to ruin the fun for everyone.” He then added, “We’re trying to protect the storyline.”

That said, David Sheldon deserves some kind of Presidential Merit Award for Ridiculous Things People Wasted Time Looking At On The Internet In One Week. Texts From Sheldon exploded over two days; his kitchen cooking video has millions of views. The two weren't connected until after the fact. For the record, that's really, really impressive, even if some of it is a load of shit. Also, against all odds, they are still legitimately funny, even after the fact:

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Yesterday, BetaBeat learned that the TSA screener who slipped a note into Feministe blogger Jill Filipovic's TSA-screened bag—which read "GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL," was posted on TwitPic, and promptly went viral—was removed from federal service. Filipovic recently got back to BetaBeat with her response on the matter.

Over email, she noted (emphasis ours):

It’s easy to scape-goat one individual here, but the problem with the note is that it’s representative of the bigger privacy intrusions that the U.S. government, through the TSA and other sources, levels every day. The invasion is inherent to the TSA’s mission, regardless of whether a funny note is left behind — the note only serves to highlight the absurdity of all this security theater.

As much as this is a funny and titillating story, when I put the note on Twitter for what I thought was a relatively limited audience I was hoping it would open up a bigger conversation about privacy rights (or lack thereof) in post-9/11 America. It unfortunately hasn’t done that, and instead has turned into a media circus. I would imagine that the TSA agent in question feels the same way I do at this point: I just want this story to go away.

The note was inappropriate, the agent in question acted unprofessionally when s/he put in in my bag, there should be consequences and I’m glad the TSA takes these things seriously. But I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake.

Forbes' technology-privacy blogger Kashmir Hill weighed in on the story yesterday:

I’m torn on whether this is a fire-able offense. In reaction to 9/11, flying has become an incredibly irritating and invasive exercise. Disrobing. Patdowns. Body scanners. Bags inspected. It’s all the new normal....The note was the officer remarking on something we’re all supposed to pretend doesn’t happen — that the TSA ends up encountering intimate things about us, and that it’s embarrassing. This officer did abuse his or her access to the contents of Filipovic’s bag to make a joke, or to harass her, but the bigger issue is that we regularly have people going through our bags in the first place.

The project received 425,000+ page views from 40,000+ unique nerds around the world in the few weeks it ran.

Richmond put her other projects on the back burner while dealing with the flood of interest in that site. But didn't take long to launch her next project, The Internet Wishlist, which has been burning up Twitter and Facebook since going live this morning.

"In a world of me-too startups, I hope this new project inspires entrepreneurs, developers and designers to innovate and build the products and features that people want," Richmond told The Observer in an email.

Incubating ideas is what the startup scene is all about, and Richmond's approach is refreshingly open-ended. She hopes it will become "a collection of ideas for apps and websites ranging from web to mobile, realistic to imaginary, and helpful to humorous."

For right now the site just needs to get a critical mass of attention and activity, but it would be cool if Richmond built out verticals for different kinds of ideas and a way to for users to vote up promising submissions. The top performers might also be featured on their own page. Think of it as an incubator for potential Kickstarter projects.

Some interesting suggestions from this morning.

• An app that can group similar tweets so I don’t have to read the same story from 50 different sources.
• An app for finding babysitters. Location and subscription based service of vetted and available sitters.
• A Shazam, but for people's faces.

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper