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What's a meme, you ask?
Think of it as an idea that moves from one person to another. If a gene is a unit of genetic information, a meme is a unit of cultural information. ("Best of" lists are a meme. So are "wardrobe malfunctions." And "casual Fridays.") Like genes — or, perhaps, viruses — memes spread, multiplying and morphing. The concept of memes has been around for a while, but online memes are faster, shorter and seemingly more invasive than ever before.
Locally, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland made a video of hospital staff dancing in pink gloves, for breast cancer awareness. It got over seven million hits on YouTube, generating national news coverage and prompting other hospitals across the country to follow suit.
A few Facebook users started writing "25 Things You Didn't Know About Me" lists and posting them to their online profiles. At the trend's peak, five million of these lists were written in just one week. And Time Magazine estimated that the U.S. economy lost 800,000 hours of productivity.
These are just two examples of the seemingly unstoppable internet meme culture. What's your experience with the world of viral YouTube videos, Twitter hashtagging, and Facebook fads? Are you a lolcat man or a failblog woman? Have you been a part of a flashmob? What's your favorite internet meme? How do they affect your life? And what do they say about our society?
GUESTS:
- Martie Moore: Chief Nursing Officer, Providence St. Vincent Medical Center
- Ben Huh: CEO of the Cheezburger Network
- Bill Wasik: Senior editor at Harper's Magazine and author of And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture
Tagged as: facebook · internet · youtube
Photo credit: Kitty de Medici / Creative Commons
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Fair enough: you think the concept of the meme just describes something that we've been doing forever.
But you can still play the game! If you've found yourself forwarding a video or picture in the last year, why did you do it? What are the hallmarks of a sharable bit of digital culture from your perspective?
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Ouch. Don't pick my brain.
Mr. McDreamy's Dreamiest Memes
I spy with my little eye: American's liking French macarons. Raping the willing. It's okay to hate fat people. Designers pretending they want poor people for customers. Inconvenient truths. People who have not seen Avatar. The dehas-beenization of has-beens via reality television. Thinking Out Loud and laughing it off. Not being able to tell the difference between people poking fun at or actually liking something. Fear of SLS. Dancing creatures or people, especially at the end of movies. Making brunch reservations. Identity theft support groups. A longing for Legionnaires' disease in a luxury hotel. Buying ugly handmade things with high prices. Slow food faster recipes. People believing their blogs matter. Esoteric experts. Actresses believing there are no good parts out there, instead of 'they suck.' Love for comfort food in uncomfortable restaurants. Websites that disclose, and encourage you to disclose everything, except how profitable they are!
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Memes are like whims for me. Some days i have no desire to look at anything like that, let alone share it. And some days i want to share all these little tidbits with the world. Often what will make me post or share something (on facebook, primariyl) is if it inspires me, or makes me cry, or passionate, and sometimes it is just for a good chuckle
Example: last week i had a day where I must have posted at least 4 things. Two youtube videos of def poet Taylor Mali ("What teachers make" and "speak with conviction") -- I wanted people to be inspired, be energized. One was a video of the Danny Kaye movie on Hans Christian Anderson (singing the Ugly Duckling song) -- I had it stuck in my head b/c i was going to see my brother perform in a show also based on the ugly duckling. And thirdly i think it was a citi card add that referenced marshmallows.
All that to say, it can be inspirational, sharing a portion of my life or day, and even some thing silly...like marshmallows.
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Wait a minute...did you say "mimes?" I love mimes.
Memes... I think the ones that sneak in are insidious. "Green" products and "green" or "save the earth" conduct are some of the most invasive. By labelling certain types of behavior as "green", and by getting folks to believe it, people get a rush of satisfaction from uncoupled actions like tossing used products in certain colored bins, even if we really don't know where those products actually wind up. Same with using products labelled "green".
Maybe do a show on Mimes later, eh?
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Yes, Who doesn't like Mimes?
Are there some talking Mimes you could interview? French comes to mime.
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When it comes to forwarding ‘mimes’ I am very selective. I don’t pass on every one that comes my way. If it is incredibly funny, cute or profound - I may send it to people I think will appreciate it. Most just go into the trash. I really don’t like it when I am asked to forward one on to ten people - or some god awful thing will happen to me or my family and friends.
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Forward your mimes to Saturday Market
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Found LOLCATS amusing several years ago. My take on memes is too many take them as literal truth without thinking through their implications and consequences.
For example, on sports radio I've heard many male sportscasters say, "Hey, this is the way the world is, deal with it, nothing is going to change." This is the Deal With It meme. I don't accept that because something is broken that I should accept or perpetuate it without thought, discussion, opposition or rejection.
At first I thought the windsurfing mantra, Attitude is Everything, was a clever way to describe the effort required to persevere in this challenging sport. But over time the positive evocation "evolved" into personal selfishness. It's as if many coopted the saying to mean, "I'm above and beyond the rules because I'm cool and you're not."
Like most things in the technological age, we get wound up and excited by the newness of something before we think through its implications. I'm just saying.
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agreed. "surfing" memes are too numerous to count. Even if someone never saw an ocean they know intuitively what a bad "wipe out" is. They can also reflect on precise timing as in "catch that wave"
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i loooove 'drinking out of cups!' i watch it at least once a day and laugh 'til i cry. I've sent it to so many friends and every one of them has been hooked too!! so funny!
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My son showed me this and I forwarded it to several others.
http://playingforchange.com/journey/introduction
This is a great way to pass along ideas and unique I think in the way it can cross over cultures, age differences, countries...
This one happens to be warm and heart-felt...
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In 1999, I inadvertantly started a meme. I took an old catholic school joke, and made it a fake ad for the first issue of my magazine, BarFly. It was a picture of a kitten, with the tag lines "Stop the slaughter!" and "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten."
The first thing that happened was that somebody here in Portland made stickers of the ad, but they misspelled 'masterbate' [sic], so I was totally embarrassed to be associated with it. Then, I started getting different iterations of it, from all over the world. I think someone in Japan actually made some money off of it. Of course, I never did.
A couple of years ago, some guy from a meme-pedia contacted me to confirm that I was the progenitor of it, and it was a proud moment for me.
You're welcome, world!
--Jen Lane
BarFly
www.barflypdx.com
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when in history???? Like the spread of Christianity? Like the use of celestial navigation? Like shoes?
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What about the interactivity of things like fundraising for disaster relief in Haiti?
OhYeah
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How do your guests rationalize making money off other people's creative efforts without providing them with some sort of royalty? Sounds worse than the book publishing business.
Marc G
Forest Grove OR
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Are the contributors coerced, forced, drafted in any way? As far as I know people who have a lot of time on their hands are allowed to do as they want. I hope Ben makes a fortune when he sells his idea. Sorry Marc you don't seem to understand that he and his staff need money to provide things that entertain those with nothing better to do.
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I can hear a definite disapproval in the voice of the moderator that Ben might actually be making a profit. Good on him, the last time people worked for free who weren't slaves was when the monks of the Catholic Church copied the bible for disemination. At least he is not begging for money from his customers like OPB does. Believe it or not his parents are probably happy he doesn't have to live with them.
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Begging for money, is inherent to, um, public broadcasting, being, well, yes, public.
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Contemporary arts organizations believing they are important enough to have a biennial. Gays not wanting babies. Famous people with the suicide bug. If you were a tree, what kind of.... . People thinking what they are doing is so great that they should get paid for it---escalating self-worth. Is there enough to go around? Having dinner parties with all the food supplied by Trader Joe's. Folks believing their leathery complexion is sensitive skin. The overly social claiming they are shy. Not knowing what a meme is, so you end up labeling non-memes memes, to fit in. But, it's okay.
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I really enjoyed the caller who commented how she and her young son visit cheezburger.com in the evenings; pointing out misspellings, adding their own captions, and basically enjoying the photos. She is taking a social site, initially developed for "fun" and making it a learning tool for her son, as well as "together" time for them. One smart mom!
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Another local example of a hilarious video that went viral is the Portland Gay Men's Chorus rendition of "St. Francis de la Sissies", this silent version of the Hallelujah Chorus with a bunch of "monks" who have taken a vow of silence and "sing" with flash cards is absolutely hilarious.
Posted for local friends, it took off and now has almost 1.1 million views and has been copied by a number of choruses who have posted their own versions. Pretty funny to see a Baptist Choir mimicking a Gay Chorus!
Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HkXmOIwpkQ
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Comments are now closed.
I am glad you are taking on a broad, less local, topic like this---rather exciting! Though, I do wish I could figure out what the point of a meme was. I remember the term from Richard Dawkin's book The Selfish Gene, and didn't see much significance then. It seems like a label created to explain something obvious, in a less then obvious way. A label that adds nothing to anything; and, was conveniently conceived, as an analogy to extend evolutionary biology an unnecessary step further. A posh new umbrella to label the pedestrian, copycat, habits of humans. A meme is not a cure to the disease, or even an explanation, of 'what the hell these humans are up to,' it is merely a loopy diagnosis that they are up to something. No, really?
Is not everything a meme? Or, at least everything was at one point, until it is wholly adopted by a population. Or, it just becomes less new, so it starts to seem less meme-ish, more familiar. I suppose on this show, we will mean, when talking about memes, silly and often pointless things that lots of people seem to start doing, for no other reason then other people are doing it, and, maybe it seems like fun. I guess, even the meme concept itself, is a meme. Yes, meme is the new meme, is the new meme, is the new meme... . Icky.