What On Earth Is An Internet Meme?
Controversial British scientist and author of the God Delusion Richard Dawkins first coined the word “meme” in his book, The Selfish Gene. The concept of a meme is the evolution and dissemination of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in his book included catch-phrases and fashion/clothing.
An “Internet meme” is used to describe a trend that spreads quickly on the Internet. The content of a meme can be vastly different. Some examples of potential memes could be a rumour, a photoshopped image, an entire website or a video clip. Memes have a tendency to evolve and be spread quite quickly by other users via social media, forums, instant messaging, blogs or e-mail.
Companies Harnessing Internet Memes To Create A Buzz
Internet marketing gurus and enterprising filmmakers have harnessed Internet memes as a form of viral marketing, creating marketing buzz for their movie, company, product or service.
One of the earlier successful examples of this would be the viral promotion of the independent film “The Blair Witch Project”. Made for just $22,000 dollars, by the end of its worldwide cinema run it had cashed in an impressive $248 million at the box office. The success can be largely attributed to the hot pre-release buzz created on the Internet. The filmmakers spread rumours in chat rooms about three college kids who got lost in a wood while making a school film project. The kids were never heard from again only their camera was found. The film was restored, so the story went, revealing the horrifying journey to their deaths. Suddenly, news groups and websites started popping up all over the place. Some created by the filmmakers, leaving further strange clues, some created by people trying to piece together the story. Could the story be true? Either way, their plan worked.
In more recent years, movies like Cloverfield and Snakes On A Plane have tried to emulate the success of The Blair Witch’s Internet marketing campaign.
2204355 The Most Recent Crazy Internet Phenomenon
- 2204355 According to Google Insights, the search term ’2204355′ is the 2nd most searched breakout keyword over the past 7 days. When you enter the numbers “2204355″ into Google and click the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button you are taken, rather strangely, to an animated dancing man eating chicken. Is there some deep philosophical meaning behind this amusing occurrence? Is it giving us clues about the end of the world, or is someone just pulling our collective leg?
Top Memorable Internet Memes
- All Your Base Are Belong To Us A phrase that came about as the result of the spread of a flash animation that depicted the slogan “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”. The text is taken from the opening cut scene of the 1991 Sega Mega Drive videogame Zero Wing, which was (obviously) poorly translated from Japanese. It was popularized by the Something Awful forums, and soon every g33k was spouting the phrase at random.
- Rick Rolling A person is sent a link, claiming it is relevant to the topic at hand, but when the recipient clicks it, they are taken to a video of Rick Astley singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’. The expression ‘You’ve Been Rickrolled’ was coined from this prank.
- Numa Numa Dance – A webcam video of a guy called Gary Brolsma of himself miming and dancing to the song ‘Dragostea din tei’ (otherwise known as ‘Numa Numa’). The video was watched (enjoyed??) by millions of people worldwide.
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