Meme. If this word is not part of your lexicon, it should be.
A Meme is a bundle of cultural ideas, beliefs and values packaged in a way that makes them easy to transmit from one person to another. The word was coined by one of my favorite authors, Richard Dawkins, to provide an evolutionary analog for the dissemination of ideas and values.
You can think of memes as a game of telephone. You start a message and as it spreads, it changes. Catch-phrases, fashion, and popular culture are all transmitted in a similar fashion--from one person to another--and as they spread, they change or "evolve."
Memes have become a common way to explain the "viral" spread of content on the Internet. Creating Internet memes is big business, but not everything posted on the internet catches on.
But what value to society is such content? And what values are contained in a picture of a cat with a poorly written caption?
It could be that the ability to find, create and share such images displays a shared understanding of Web culture. To use a worn-out term, "Web 2.0 culture."
Packaged within these amusing pictures are shared understandings of the Internet (interwebs?). And the evolution of a language used to convey these shared understandings and experiences. Thus emerges LOLspeak, also known as Engrish, an annoyingly saccharine-sweet pidgin language composed of common keyboard misspellings, acronyms, abbreviations and grammatical flatulence.
Engrish in a nutshell:
1) Mis-decline verbs, especially misuse the verb "to be"
2) Misuse gerunds
3) Overuse prepositional phrases
4) Blatant rearrangement of syntax
5) Incorrect plurals and past-tense verbs
6) "noun" your adjectives. (For instance, the adjective "blue" can become the noun "blueness")
7) Improper pronouns
8 ) Drop the articles ("a", "and", "the") in favor of adding "-age" to the end of a noun
9) Use "younger" words ("kitty" versus "cat", "fuzzy" versus "furry", etc.)
10) Use the word "with" inappropriately.
Language serves the dual purpose of uniting and dividing. If you understand the language, you are part of a community. If not, consider yourself an outsider.
But, be sure to ask yourself: "Is being in the out-group a bad thing when it comes to writing like an adolescent girl in a chat room?"
A Meme is a bundle of cultural ideas, beliefs and values packaged in a way that makes them easy to transmit from one person to another. The word was coined by one of my favorite authors, Richard Dawkins, to provide an evolutionary analog for the dissemination of ideas and values.
You can think of memes as a game of telephone. You start a message and as it spreads, it changes. Catch-phrases, fashion, and popular culture are all transmitted in a similar fashion--from one person to another--and as they spread, they change or "evolve."
Memes have become a common way to explain the "viral" spread of content on the Internet. Creating Internet memes is big business, but not everything posted on the internet catches on.
But what value to society is such content? And what values are contained in a picture of a cat with a poorly written caption?
It could be that the ability to find, create and share such images displays a shared understanding of Web culture. To use a worn-out term, "Web 2.0 culture."
Packaged within these amusing pictures are shared understandings of the Internet (interwebs?). And the evolution of a language used to convey these shared understandings and experiences. Thus emerges LOLspeak, also known as Engrish, an annoyingly saccharine-sweet pidgin language composed of common keyboard misspellings, acronyms, abbreviations and grammatical flatulence.
Engrish in a nutshell:
1) Mis-decline verbs, especially misuse the verb "to be"
2) Misuse gerunds
3) Overuse prepositional phrases
4) Blatant rearrangement of syntax
5) Incorrect plurals and past-tense verbs
6) "noun" your adjectives. (For instance, the adjective "blue" can become the noun "blueness")
7) Improper pronouns
8 ) Drop the articles ("a", "and", "the") in favor of adding "-age" to the end of a noun
9) Use "younger" words ("kitty" versus "cat", "fuzzy" versus "furry", etc.)
10) Use the word "with" inappropriately.
Language serves the dual purpose of uniting and dividing. If you understand the language, you are part of a community. If not, consider yourself an outsider.
But, be sure to ask yourself: "Is being in the out-group a bad thing when it comes to writing like an adolescent girl in a chat room?"
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