What’s in a Meme? UWSMC3 Connie Rock How many are familiar with the reference on this slide? UWSMC3 Connie Rock

What is a Meme? Or … A meme is an information packet with an attitude. An idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A shortening of mimeme, from the ancient Greek: “something imitated” Or … Memes were started by mimicry. How to chip an arrowhead, start a fire, then evolved with the arrival of the Internet. A meme is an information packet with an attitude. -- Daniel Dennett, Philosopher

Where did the concept originate? First coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976). Ideas Tunes Catchphrases. “Read my lips,” “Survival of the fittest” Images: Mona Lisa, the Scream, extraterrestrials Can be beneficial or harmful (Satanism, racist myths) Crowdsourcing, collective attention, social networking and resource allocation use the language and the mathematical principles of epidemiology. But while genes replicate near perfectly—mutations relatively rare. Memes seldom copied exactly. It is staring us in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind. That “soup” is human culture; the vector of transmission is language, and the spawning ground is the brain.

What is an Internet Meme? A concept that spreads via the Internet. May be a link, video, picture, website, hashtag, or a word or phrase. How does it spread? Via social networks, blogs, direct email, new sources, other web-based services. What are qualities of a meme? Memes are complete, distinct, and memorable

What Works, What Doesn’t? Things that work: Beautiful images, happy-looking animals, people reacting stupidly to world events on Twitter, numerical lists, funny auto-corrects, Ryan Gosling, corgis, outlandish Florida articles, and the apocalypse. Things to avoid: celebrity mug shots (stale from overuse), drug stories (too many moms and employers on Facebook), and protest signs. According to Matt Stopera, senior editor at BuzzFeed. Poorly translated Japanese video games seem to be a rich source. Examples All Your Base Are Belong to Us: From opening scene of Japanese video game Zero Wing. Music from video remixed in late 2000 with a voice-over of the phrase All Your Base Are Belong to Us. You Fail it: From 1998 Japanese 16-bit game Blazing Star. “You fail it. Your skill is not enough. See you next time. Bye Bye.”

BuzzFeed: Generating the “Buzz” Created in 2006 14.2 million monthly unique visitors 100 campaigns grossing $75K each $7.5 million in revenue in 2011 Buzzfeed created in 2006 by co-founder of Huffington Post. Combines a front door portal experience fueled by aggressive news aggregation and focus n social network optimization. Designed to cater to people who organize media consumption through a social network’s newsfeed. Guy in picture is Matt Stopera, senior editor. Buttons at the top of this slide are BuzzFeed’s proprietary buttons, but Facebook Like still most important. Stopera focused on how can he get people to click on “Like.” Most content delivered by algorithm in early days Now investing in original content development Site magnet for “SuperSharers” All revenue from branded content Things on the site that demonstrate likability with Facebook sharers often reappear in slightly mutated forms.

Recent Meme: Texts from Hillary Started as a joke between two friends. 32 posts to Tumblr 83,000 shares on Facebook 45,000 Tumblr followers Major media coverage Started as a joke between 2 friends and morphed into a major meme. Image of Hillary as the ultimate power player, in charge, a bit too cool for school. Hillary herself ended up providing an autographed submission. This meme on Tumblr. Reddit also a good distribution vehicle. This submission generated the most reactions on Tumblr: 1,430 notes

Old-school career aspiration: Astronaut New school? Meme manager When your video goes viral, who ya gonna call? When it’s a company who’s trying to sell a whole bunch of t-shirts, or put [memes] into a commercial, well, you wouldn’t do that to Mickey Mouse. Anything that you can’t do to Mickey Mouse, you shouldn’t be able to do to any of the memes of the world. It’s not right that everyone is just trying to make a buck off of it … It’s not the Wild Wild West anymore on the Internet, and people are treating it like it is. Lashes has been in this career 2 years. Family friend Charlie Schmidt creator of Keyboard cat. Contacted Lashes years later when Keyboard cat hit the big time (2009). Point is not to prevent fans from sharing memes, but to keep people from cashing in on clients’ digital property. Ben Lashes, Meme Manager

Appendix: Selected Memes Classics More Recent 1996: Dancing Baby 2001: All Your Base Are Belong To Us 2003: FAIL 2005: LOLcat 2007: Better than Justin Bieber? 2009: Keyboard Cat 2009: #FollowFriday (or #FF) Success Kid (for Virgin Media Marketing) Texts from Hillary Super Cory Booker First world problems Ridiculously Photogenic Guy Scumbag Steve Success Kid meme was a meme started in 2007, then leveraged by Virgin Media earlier this year, who put up a billboard using the picture and used the picture on their website. Images use in memes somewhat sketchy but legally okay, but use in advertising requires permission and payment for use, which Virgin has. They also original image and changed the color of the boy’s top to red and white.