Viral Videos and Memes

There was some interest in class today in the phenomenon of viral videos and memes. I promised I would post a couple of links to sources and common memes. In Mirriam-Webster a meme is "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture," so perhaps anthropology has something to say about what is happening with regard to "culture" and "persons." The usage comes, I believe, from the evolutionary biologist (not anthropologist) Richard Dawkins. In his book, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins says about memes: "We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me, if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'."

Anyway, here are the links

1 - Easy to access meme listing

2 - More in-depth study of individual memes

3 - Simple tool to work with established memes


And here are few of my favorites (for many people in class, this list could literally go on forever):


Success kid

Nyan Cat

Xzibit Yo Dawg