Memes
Posted by Tom | Filed under 04. Cybercultures, trusted sources, virals and memes
The Subservient Chicken was a famous advertising meme phenomena as we talked about in our first session. The definition of a meme is highly contested, although as you have interaction with the chicken, it seems to fall outside the realm of ‘video viral’. Whether or not you count those as memes is again a matter of much debate.
Other examples of the genre: All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Rickrolling, Lolcats, the Algorithm Dance and more recently Rollercoaster Chess, 241543903, ShitMyDadSays, Sleep Talkin’ Man, Garfield Minus Garfield, Real Ultimate Power and it’s copycats.
YouTube has always been very fruitful ground for memes. Specific memes that have done well to be continually reinterpreted on this platform include the Kersal Massive (phenomenal numbers of remixes were made, here’s two of the more famous examples: The Cure, Slayer, etc). Similarly as with so many things online, Nazis seem to prove quite fertile ground, this scene from Downfall has been remixed to show Hitler responding to all kind of news, like last week’s iPad announcement.
The concept of a meme goes back to Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene (1976) and you should read his paper from 1991 called Viruses of the Mind.
- Think about where these memes may have originated.
- Why they propagate across different media, and which media they do make it onto.
- What are the challenges and opportunities these present to traditional forms of word of mouth advertising.
- This Tango advert from 1992 (video below) gained a similarly ‘cultish’ following and was pulled as a result of so many children aping the behaviour. It also coined the phrase ‘you’ve been tangoed’ which is still used in print and broadcast media today – a massive coup for any agency. What is the path that leads from this to our modern day internet meme?
- Are there any examples of a deliberate attempt to transfer a meme from one medium to another with successful marketing campaign results?
Related posts:
- 4. Cybercultures, trusted sources, virals and memes slides
- 4. Cybercultures, trusted sources, virals and memes
druwulf on
January 26, 2010 at 11:44 am
[...] talked in our first sessions about memes and virals, and touched on some of the concepts of trusting sources within the environment of [...]
February 2, 2010 at 4:23 pm
might be of interest: http://kanyegate.tumblr.com/
this is the daft punk dance i mentioned the other day, there are more on youtube. not sure if this is the original one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnL1xE1WFe0