Our Audience

After we were trying to figure out who the audience is for the big meme sites like Know Your Meme and 9gag, I tried to do a bit of research into it.

It's pretty difficult to get information on the demographics of the website visitors, because to do that, they would need to make an account and identify their sex, age, and nationality.  Websites like these don't really need you to do this unless you want to post.
 
Finding for individual sites may have proved to be too difficult, but I did manage to find some statistics on Quantcast for the Cheezburger Network (which includes Know Your Meme, FAIL blog, I Can Has Cheezburger, Memebase and more).  The statistics are based on the US visitors, which account for over half of their monthly visitors (26.8 mill out of 49.9 mill)

The stats all reflect what we assumed, with Males apparently making up 55% of the visitors, and the 18-34 age group making up 49% of the audience.  The latter stat is actually not as significant as I expected although still is pretty sizeable.

So who's going to visit our site? Presumably a very similar demographic to this, but they will also be tech savvy, more interested in the intellectual side of memes (surprisingly exists!), and so forth.

Why blog all the memes?

When conceptualising our blog and the topic of interest, our group came to a unanimous decision to blog about Internet memes. This posed us with the problem of how would we make our blog different from the others?

knowyourmeme.com

Rather than copying or styling ourselves after knowyourmeme.com, a popular database that chronicles the popularity and origins of memes circulating the Internet, our blog will take a sociological and scholarly approach in looking at how memes shape areas of networking, communication, self-expression and participation in online spheres.

Most websites on memes such as Memebase and Memestache are just sites packed with visuals of the latest trending memes. We aim to be more than just that, we intend to have an original and investigative approach (will have to get started on writing before we find our own distinct style and unique selling proposition) to the task.

Majority of website about memes such as Memebase.com feature visuals of trending memes

So then, why are we blogging about memes, what purpose does it serve? Memes, specifically, Internet memes, are interesting Internet phenomena that are increasingly shaping popular culture and vice versa. In an era where the majority of Australians have access to the Internet, daily conversations amongst people are not so much about what was shown on the telly the night before, but more about what's trending on youtube or of the hilarious new meme that was uploaded on the 'Sydney Uni Memes' Facebook page.

With its increasing impact on online and popular cultures, the understanding of memes and everything about it will provide us with a better understanding of society itself. This, coupled with the fact that in the digital age, there are many more tools and ways to produce or replicate a message through the Internet, presents us with many areas of the topic to explore.

Memes outside of the Anglosphere

Good Guy Greg, Overly Attached Girlfriend, U Mad?, these are all memes which much of the English-speaking population on the Internet would have come across in their browsing of the Interwebs. During our group meeting, I thought of exploring the idea of looking at memes that originate from other societies and cultures outside of the English-speaking world. 

Being a regular reader of chinasmack, a website which translates posts that are trending on popular Chinese forums and news websites such as Tianya and QQ into English, one meme which I recall being popular in the Chinese websphere is that of the 'floating Chinese government officials'.

                               Origins of the floating Chinese government officials       Source: Chinasmack

The origins of the meme stem from when the Huili county government website posted a poorly photoshopped photo of three government officials who appeared to be busy inspecting a newly paved road (and also happened to be floating above it, what sorcery is this?!). 

Not long after, Chinese Internet web users caught on to the failed PR attempt and posted it on forums which were met with reactions of disgust, anger and amusement, leading web users to making their own improvements to the image as seen below.  

                                         Chinese Government officials parodied                 Source: Chinasmack

What struck me was that even in a repressive society such as China where the media, including the Internet (see Great Firewall of China) is tightly controlled, memes like this that poke fun at the government manage to slip past the censors. 

This example also highlights the universality of memes, from memes of floating Chinese government officials (same thing happened in the Philippines) to memes about Mitt Romney, societies as opposite and different as China and America can find a commonality in memes. Memes unite the world!

I can haz interview

I've found a few interviews with Cheezburger Network founder, Ben Huh which could be useful for us to understand just how significant this platform has become for the generating and spreading of memes. Before I Can Has Cheezburger, one of the only places you could reliably find memes was on the community image site 4Chan however they had little organisation and moderation of these images. Since 2007, the Cheezburger Network has formalised, categorised and certainly shaped the internet meme genre. I think it's particularly interesting to see the amount of advertising profit the network is raking in (because of the sheer size of their audience base) - considering the site is based around a series of image macros, most of which have incorrect grammar, as opposed to news/ article based websites. Huh estimates there are more than 16 million unique users monthly and more than half a million submissions per month.

Photo: Eugene Hsu

(With Wailin Wong from the Chicago Tribune. January 25 2012)

Q: What is the typical life cycle of an Internet meme and how has it changed since you founded the Cheezburger Network? 

Huh: We started the company back in 2007 when the life cycle of a meme was much longer. People didn't know what a meme was. You had to educate them as to what it was, although you didn't have to know it in order to enjoy it. You knew that it was a format of a joke. Now what's happening to memes is they're getting smaller and smaller. So the life cycle is actually much, much faster. It's a matter of days at most. There are very few memes that break out of that life cycle.
*Worth mentioning when discussing the spread of memes over time to a broader audience base.

(With Michael Learmoth from Advertising Age, Vol. 80, Issue 34. 10 December, 2009)

Q: Is it OK to call you a blog mogul? Do you aspire to be a big media company?

Huh: We're just going through the process of creating content that makes people happy for just a few minutes a day. We are not trying to be a TV network; we're not trying to be a big media company. We are growing small things that are gathering loyal audiences. When you show up and you want to laugh or take a break from your daily work, then we have this little blog for you. You go, load the page, you scroll, and you're done. 

Q: If users are submitting the photos, and the captions, how do you keep it funny (and clean)? 

Huh: Everything we do is screened by a moderator. We see 10,000 submissions a day across all the blogs. So they look at everything that comes in to see that it meets our terms of use, that it is editorially appropriate, and then they classify and tag it. So if there is nudity, violence toward animals, racism-the stuff advertisers fear, their worst nightmare-we guarantee that that does not happen. Then the editorial control is turned over to the users, who tell us what is funny. But before something is promoted to the home page, there is one more check to make sure it is advertiser-friendly, and then we put it on the blog.

(With Johanna Ambrosio from Computerworld, Vol. 44, Issue 10. 24 May, 2010)

Q: We live in an increasingly politically correct world, yet you have sites that some might find offensive, such as "Engrish Funny." Are you worried that this kind of humor might become outdated or irrelevant at some point?
Huh: Our data seems to [show] that people will share less but will still come to visit. People are very much in pursuit of happiness - human beings do that naturally - and as long as we can deliver on that promise, we'll still have an audience.

Q: Are you at all concerned about contributing to the grammatical delinquency of a generation?
Huh: I'm halfkidding, but educators do point to more "iM-speak" showing up in term papers and homework. And some Of the names of your sites.... [Laughs.] One of the beauties of the English language is its ability to adapt. We've been complaining about our children for thousands of years. It is a valid concern, of course, but that's how English works - and the language will hopefully continue to grow.

Creating Timelines

As part of our web feature, we came up with the idea last week that we'd create a timeline of some of most popular memes throughout the last 12 years or so just to track how far memes have come, how they have manifested over time as well as identify any that have 'stood the test of time' so to speak. 

Our thought was to create an interactive timeline complete with the year that the meme became popular,  an accompanying picture and a brief caption detailing its origins and definition. While unfortunately our skills, time and resources limits us to making a slick, well designed and easy to navigate timeline like the BBC or the NY Times, there are Wordpress widgets available that will provide us with at least with a similar effect.

Out of all the timeline widgets available to us for free, the one that looks the most professional is TimeRime. TimeRime allows you to add key images, multimedia (music and videos) and text to your timeline. By hovering the mouse over the image it brings up any associated text and when you click on it, an information box below the timeline displays any extra information. This widget should easily allow us to successfully create our meme timeline and is particularly handy if the meme originated from a video as you are able to embed that kind of multimedia material.

Source: Screenshot

While we aim to provide a comprehensive list of popular and memorable memes, we will have to be extremely selective with our choices as a timeline with too many events can become difficult to read and understand. We want to pick the key memes that defined the year and we can use reference articles (such as 'Best Memes of 2011') from the database website Know Your Meme. As I have said before I still think it is important for us to define the boundaries of what a meme is and whether it extends to viral videos (although certainly there are crossovers like Overly Attached Girlfriend which was originally a YouTube video but became an image macro) as the Know Your Meme articles do tend to include YouTube videos in them - this will also help us narrow down our options.

From our preliminary research, some of the memes we'd like to include are:

• 2001: All your bases are belong to us
• 2003: Pedobear, Orly, Trololololol
• 2005: Chuck Norris
• 2006: Lolcats, demotivators
• 2007: Rickrolling
• 2009: Kanye 'Imma let you finish'
• 2010: Bed Intruder song, Old Spice
• 2011: Planking, Friday (Rebecca Black)

Vulture.com analysis

Vulture is an online blog component of New York Magazine which describes itself as "the entertainment destination... a beacon for passionate fans who want a smart, comprehensive take on the world of culture and offers around-the-clock, wall-to-wall coverage of movies, tv, music and beyond. Vulture's writers and editors celebrate culture both high and low, because you never know where the next truly brilliant moment will come from."

New York magazine was founded in April 1968 and is a weekly magazine concerned with the life, culture, politics and style of New York City. Today, the magazine reaches 1.8 million readers each week, while the website (which allows those outside of NYC to access content), recognised as one of the industry's most innovative and success, receives seven million users monthly.

The blog is described as having the mindset of "a critic and the heart of the fan," bringing smart and funny analysis to all things popular culture. The writers are intelligent, well-informed and articulate and  convey their ideas in such a way that posts are both easy to read and interesting enough to want to keep on reading. 

The layout is minimal (as we all seem to aesthetically agree on), easy to navigate, with a categories bar at the top next to the header (movies, TV, music, books, art, theatre) and again at the bottom of the page (below the fold) with the top three stories from each category. A slideshow style banner features important articles to read while 'The Feed' to the right of it shows the latest posts (time stamped).

Unfortunately the media kit for Vulture doesn't include demographic information (fail whale), so I'm relying on the demographics for nymag.com to shed some insight into the reader of Vulture. The readership is split 40%/ 60% (men to women) while the median age is 30 years. The majority (59%) of users are 18 - 34 and 76% of their readers have a college degree. Basically for us this means that our target users will be university educated ranging from the ages of 18 - 30 (?), have an interest in popular culture and entertainment and be internet and tech savvy. This last quality is particular important given our topic is memes and so must appreciate and/ or engage in meme making. 

Vulture and the other New York magazine blogs are also popular for their blog commenters (as we noted in their Pop Culture Mysteries article about Under the Bridge with 42 comments and counting). This would be ideal (not only for the potential 'troll' factor) but to focus our web feature on stimulating thought and discussion around our topics, allowing others to contribute to ideas and even question what we put forward.

I believe Vulture would be a great publication for us to utilise for our web feature because a) They have a clean, sleek layout which we can all appreciate b) Have the target readership and demographics that match our topic c) Have a writing style that would work well with our meme investigation and is easy to follow d) Have a reader base that enjoys commenting and contributing to features. 

Although there is no 'internet' category at this point, Vulture does publish a weekly wrap up of the best viral videos which definitely poses potential to include a meme or internet phenomena type section which would be the basis of our web feature. As we're looking to analyse and break down certain memes and capture their success, track their history and significance to popular culture, I think Vulture would be a suitable publication for us allowing us to put a more serious, academic, in-depth perspective on a rather 'trivial' or 'shallow' topic (as some outsiders might say although from our research so far there is more than meets the eye) which is in line with Vulture's mission statement of the celebrating and blurring of high and low culture.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Know Your Meme's YouTube Channel

Despite being familiar with most of the popular memes, I haven't actually spent that much time on Know Your Meme.  This morning I stumbled across their latest YouTube episode, Know Your Meme: Futurama.  They give a great run through of the show, as well as where each of the appropriated memes started.

Their YouTube channel is filled with videos explaining the origins of memes including Ermahgerd, Dolan, and even video style memes such as Shit People Say. 

The videos run for about 3-5 minutes each and are surprisingly informative for videos about memes.  They're really worth a watch if you want to know how the meme started and the popularity surrounding the meme.

It's Banner Time

Mel had the idea of titling our blog "All your memes are belong to us," as an homage to one of the earliest memes to ever exist (1998!). So this was a simple banner concept based on that...

Check what you meme: Cyber Bullying

Given the domination memes currently enjoy in social media, it is inevitable that the phenomenon would garner some attention in the press.  Whilst a majority of memes are harmless, there has been a rise in memes acting as an excuse for "antisocial behaviour", a.k.a. cyber bullying. 

At the beginning of August we saw headlines centering around a certain Aboriginal memes page that was set up on Facebook, a topic which Jeremy covered in his most recent post.  In the article published by the SMH, once the Aboriginal meme page was taken down, the discussion posts sparked the debate of the right to free speech versus hate speech.  Debate aside, it definitely shadows the advent of memes, given their ability to be used as "jokes" even if or when offending communities of people.  

A less debated but equally damaging occurrence is cyber bullying through memes.  This has not been given as much publicity as the racist pages, but it is an issue that could very easily escalate, should  the "meme" fad stay around for long enough. 

Memes catering towards very specific, personal humour, has led to the creation of countless Facebook meme pages.  On a larger scale, we have pages like NBA Memes (with around 800 K "likes"), on a smaller level, the Sydney Uni Memes (13 K "likes), and even smaller, pages for individual high schools.  

Now the biggest problem that occurs here is on such a small scale like a High School page, there is far less "generic" jokes that can be used for the memes.  Less content could lead to more personal targeting of both students and teachers.  Meaning for the page to have some success amongst the School group, they will need to push the boundaries and do as much as possible to get attention.  

Just this week in Rotorua, New Zealand, meme pages for high schools were featured in the national newspaper after a Principal was informed of the groups on Facebook.  Whilst there has been no "bullying" actually recorded from the pages, the Principal saw the red flag and acted on it.  The administrator of the page responded, as mentioned in the aforementioned article, by saying "if anyone finds any of these offensive just let me know and I will take them off."

This is all well and good, but to think a high school student, who presumably has limited access to Facebook during school hours, can moderate a page containing 350 members, is a somewhat naive notion.  We all know how quickly things get shared over the internet, so all it takes is one smart ass kid to post a meme aimed towards a fellow student, and BAM, everyone has seen it before the moderator even gets to their computer.

Cyber bullying through memes could just be a moral panic led by the older generations who struggle to grasp the humour of memes, or it could become a very serious issue.  Only time will tell, but for now, can we rely on the education system to guide them towards "ethical" meme creation? 

Videos gone viral

What does the video footage of a pubescent-looking teenager with an unusually baritone voice singing about chocolate rain and a video recording of what sounds like a drugged-up hippie chronicling his sighting of a double rainbow both have in common? They are viral videos which have a greater number of hits on the video-sharing website, Youtube, than the population of Australia.

Of the seemingly mundane, to the downright outrageous, viral videos are constantly springing up with increasing frequency. This especially so with the exponential growth of the Internet and convergences in technology that result in cheaper and handier gadgets allowing for more of these Internet gems to be produced and uploaded.

With all that said, one does not simply 'make a viral video' (meme reference!). Viral videos often gain popularity much to the surprise of the producers of these videos. Of all the videos cached on the Interwebs, who would have thought that a video of a infant boy chomping on his older brother's finger would be able to garner more than 470 million views and 940,000 likes?

                                                      "Charlie, that really hurt!"                          Source: Youtube.com

So what then is a recipe of a viral video? They can range from the humorous, to the controversial, professionally made in a studio, or filmed with a camera-phone by the man on the street. There is no precise formula or equation for the makings of a viral video, it organically gains popularity through a series of sharing and likes from web-user to web-user. Much like the spread of a viral infection which lends its name to the term.

One thing that is certain about viral videos, however, is that there is a common element of human interest in them. Viral videos achieve the attention that they get because there is something in them which compels the viewer to stay on to finish watching the video rather than clicking on another link. Until the day scientists and brainiacs in lab coats are able to formulate them, viral videos will remain the holy grail for marketing practitioners and attention-seekers the world around.

Trollface: Origins

These days, a troll is no longer a fearsome creature who lives under a bridge, eating everyone that passes. Although they may just serve the same purpose on the internet.

The original "trollface" comic. Source: deviantART

"Trollface" has quickly become one of the most popular memes on the internet today, thanks to the viral power of the infamous 4chan. What's interesting however is how the word "troll" has evolved over the years, and the majority of today's youth would barely recall its origins as a mythical creature.

Today, the term is used to describe a person who posts inflammatory or off-topic messages in online communities such as blogs or comments on YouTube videos, intended to evoke a negative emotional response and disrupt on-topic discussion. But the idea of the troll and the perpetuation of the term's new meaning has resulted in far more than providing a word to describe a certain person.

How far can one go before a troll becomes insidious and offensive? And can we excuse racism, sexism and religious hate by the mere fact that "they're just trolling"? Of course, this depends on personal tolerances, but what's certain is that when it gets past a point, humour is no excuse.

This is precisely what occurred just over a week ago, when the creators of an "Aboriginal memes" page on Facebook were asked to take down the offensive content after Facebook refused to take action. In its help section, Facebook states that they "allow clear attempts at humor or satire that might otherwise be considered a possible threat of attack". Apparently, in their view, the page did not constitute hate speech.

It is clear that, at least on the internet, the line between humour and vilification is a fuzzy one, and it's sad that it has gotten to this point. Roland Barthes suggested the idea of "myth", which is the representation of our dominant ideologies when meaning is conveyed through "signs" - which can be anything from images or symbols to words. Today's meaning of a "troll" has unfortunately carried with it a way for people to pass off offensive and discriminatory content as humour. Sure, we've seen insult comics and stand-up comedians, but it's a far greater issue when it's so readily accessible via the internet - including by children.

What's in a meme?

Source: Getty Images

The Olympics have come and gone for 2012 and all that we are left with is the sting of defeat and an abundance of silver medals. But one thing endures the two weeks spent in front of the couch, sacrificing sleep and throwing off our body clocks: the memes. Seeing me through the games of the XXX Olympiad was a companion Facebook page appropriately titled 'Olympic Memes' which commented on everything Olympic related, from long and unpronounceable last names, to captioned  sports action shots and everything in between.

16 year old gymnast from the United States, McKayla Maroney, shot to internet stardom when her now famous scowl after being awarded the silver medal (she was expected to win the gold) made its way onto Tumblr, her 'not impressed' face superimposed into the background of historical or spectacular scenes.

Source: Flickr

McKayla is not impressed has shown us that no one is safe from the trolls and internet enthusiasts out there. Anyone or anything has the potential to become a meme. Take for instance Zeddie Little who you probably know better as 'Ridiculously Photogenic Guy'. Little was snapped amongst a pack of runners at an annual marathon, his Colgate smile, charm and effortlessness while running 10km in South Caroline heat became the perfect formula to creating a successful meme and generated growth through the platform Reddit.

Memes were once centred around popular culture and fandoms (see 'One does not simply walk into Mordor', 'Conspiracy Keanu' and 'Strutting Leo'), forming somewhat of a subculture of meme-makers and appreciators worldwide where only certain people 'in the know' or with the right knowledge could understand the references made but now the internet is looking broader for inspiration. Memes are becoming more universal in their content (anything from a global event such as the Olympics or the Royal Wedding can bring about new memes - meaning more people can understand and appreciate memes) and also being more accessible for those who wish to create or generate their own meme.

I think it's important for us to define what exactly a meme is (although sometimes problematic given the dynamic movement of the internet) and how it differentiates from viral material on YouTube. In an article by the BBC, Chris Quigley, the organiser of a meme sharing meeting in London states, "A meme is a cultural thing that is re-mixed and changed by the community."So something like the Nyan Cat video which has over 82 million views on YouTube is viral because of its reach and spread but it is when users take the original and change, morph and mould it into their own tastes, is when it becomes a meme.

This links back to the original meaning of the word meme (mind was blown when Fiona told us) coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena (he gives the example of melodies and catch-phrases LOL and fershunz fashion). Memes evolve through the process of variation, mutation, competition and inheritance - which influence a memes repetitive success. Memes that cultivate less become extinct while others can flourish through circulation and mutation. Sound familiar?

Meme origins

Just a video compilation of memes and their original context.

Starting out...

Example publications:

• Pedestrian TV
• Vice
• Thought Catalog
• The Vine

Meme sites to explore:

• Know Your Meme
• Meme Generator
• FAIL Blog
• Memebase

Reference articles:

• U Got Meme'd: The new student activism
• Contents removed from racist Facebook page
• Internet Memes: The Mythology of Augmented Society (the article explores how memes are the myths of our generation)
• How Internet Memes went corporate
• Internet Memes and Cultural Touchstones