Faxlore, and the related xeroxlore and photocopylore, is a kind of folklore circulated via fax machine. Since many originate in office settings, they most often are jokes, art, and urban legends related to the workplace, sent and reset and degrading in visual quality. By some definitions, they are memes, in that they a individual units of meaning passed on through cultural transmission.
Unfortunately, the age of faxlore is long over by now due to the internet and the use of email to communicate. However, a variety of faxlore artifacts are preserved in a series of books by Alan Dundes and Carl R. Pagter, several of which are featured in this post:
Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (1978)
When You're Up to Your Ass in Alligators: More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (1987)
Never Try to Teach a Pig to Sing: Still More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (1991)
Sometimes the Dragon Wins: Yet More Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (1996)
Why Don't Sheep Shrink When It Rains?: A Further Collection of Photocopier Folklore (2000)
Below the read more are several examples from Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded that show variations of the cover image.
The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States. Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.
