Symbiotic Memes: Achieving Longevity in the Memescape

Symbiotic Memes: Achieving Longevity in the Memescape Memes, or culturally shared pieces of media, are passed between people using the available communications methods of the day. The advent, and eventual widespread adoption of the internet has changed the memescape in critical ways, allowing for interactive and highly vivid mediums, new methods of sharing and distribution, and a lasting record. The internet has also sped up the meme digestion rate. Instead of primarily circulating through geographically interconnected networks over a longer period of time, internet memes become universally available as soon as they’re posted. The low time and monetary costs of sharing digital information allow individuals to broadcast memes as far as their networks permit. One-to-many distribution allows for near simultaneous uptake of a meme by the world’s collective consciousness. Once the meme has been distributed, the public processes and divines it’s value, and then moves on to new memes. Most memes that achieve great popularity fall under what I will term “Discrete Memes”. These memes are one-shots, each with unique elements that lend them value. They are characterized by a short term of popularity, experiencing an extremely rapid growth in audience over 1-3 days from when the meme hits critical mass1 and then seeing a steep drop in the rate of new audience acquisition over a 4-5 day period before settling at a fraction of the peak audience. 1 Critical Mass in this case refers to the minimum audience necessary to allow a meme necessary network access to potentially spread widely. However, another form of meme has developed on the internet with a drastically different adoption model. These memes are comprised of a structure or system of features, and a piece of host content. The features can be applied to different pieces of source content to create-semi unique units of the meme. As both the host content and the form gain audience by being combined, I’ve termed these memes “Symbiotic Memes”. Symbiotic meme units have high fecundity compared to discrete meme units. They contain an equation for value with easily substituted variables, guiding audience members to apply the features of the meme in their own style to a piece of content they have personally selected. These new units are distributed by their creators and help to further spread the original meme’s underlying equation. The differences in adoption of symbiotic versus discrete memes can be measured using analytics on searches performed on Google, views on Youtube and wall posts on Facebook. “Ninja Cat” was a discrete meme popularized in September of 2008. It is a video of a cat owner peaking out from around a hallway corner, and each time he peeks out, his cat is sitting still but is a few feet closer to the camera. It does not use the structure or formula of any other meme. Figure 1 shows the Youtube page of “Ninja Cat”, displaying it’s 9 million views, and September 10th, 2008 upload date. [Figure 1 – “Ninja Cat Comes Closer While Not Moving!” – Youtube] Figure 2 shows mentions of “Ninja Cat” on Facebook wall posts over three years, with a large spike in September of 2008. [Figure 2 – “Ninja Cat” Mentions on Facebook Lexicon in 2007-2009] Figure 3 shows the same data but expanded. The first marked data point represents the start of widespread mentions of “Ninja Cat” on September 15th, 2008. The second point shows the meme’s peak on September 16th, 2008. The fourth point shows the plateau of mentions as the public finishes digestion on September 19th, 2008. [Figure 3 – “Ninja Car” Mentions on Facebook Lexicon, Detailed] Figure 4 shows Google Trends data on Google searches for “Ninja Cat”, and displays the rapid increase in searches from nearly zero to nearly 7 times the average number of searches for “Ninja Cat” in 2008, and then settling back down following digestion. ... - tailieumienphi.vn