5/2/2007 5:22 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: Memes: or POP culture Wierdness
Puhnner! Thank you for that. So interesting to see everything laid out so simply. I suppose it was a bit naive of me to leave out the marketing aspect of this whole deal. But if one thing is certain, it is that if there ever seems to be a cheap and effective way to spread information (INTERNET!) then the advertising agencies of the world will certainly be the first to try and take advantage of it. There is an agency in Oregon (Portland I believe) that has been ahead of the curve on advertising forms for quite a while. Or at least for catching the pulse of desire in the world's markets and taking advantage of it. For instance, they coined the term "just do it" for Nike in the nineties (late eighties maybe??). I believe they are called Wieden & Kennedy. They are also responsible for the "Bo Knows" ad campaign and getting Lou Reed to work with Honda....who knew. Just recently, they had the uber-hip dance-a-thon musician James Murphy, who goes by the name of LCD Soundsystem, make a record called 45:33 which is supposed to be the "perfect" running CD...in that it creates a buildup, and climax, and a cool down all within the 45 minutes and 33 seconds that the record lasts. All of this to say that nothing is really safe from advertising. Which is ok I guess, just as long as you keep your wits about you and try to remain from being the "sucker..." I suppose I wanted to talk about things that had to do with strange un-explicable cultural phenomenons that crop up in cyber life. Ideas or websites that become WILDLY popular out of the blue. Some of these cyber memes end up turning back on themselves to then influence a new set of memes. I have seen influences like this work in movie making too. Terintino is a good example of this. He made the movie Reservior Dogs which in turn influenced a movie called Battle Royale which in turn he claimed as a reference on the Kill Bill series. Pretty interesting. I think a perfect example of meme marketing in Movies would be the whole Snakes on a Plane phenomena. The example that I was thinking of that I wrote that non-posted email to Porcupine and SkyPilot about happened in the game of World of Warcraft. You can read more about it at the link if you dont know what it is. I play... World of Warcraft is absolutley PACKED with these internet cultural references. Whether it is a character named Linken that closely resembles the character Link from the Zelda games (you have a quest to return his sword to him in WoW), or a dragon boss referenced as the Burninator from the popular website Homestarrunner.com. There are countless examples of this. One of my favorites is an item in the game called Deviate Delight. It is a piece of food that your character can eat that turns you either into a pirate or a ninja. Now, without knowledge of this internet trend, this can still be a cool and funny side-effect of eating this particular food. However, having been in college at the time of the ninja craze on the internet, I recognize the nod to the amazingly popular site RealUltimatePower. The thing about sites like this is that thier influence goes beyond even the knowledge of its beginings. I suppose that should not be as surprising to me as it is, but I am always sort of floored when I hear someone talk about ninjas "just wanting to flip out all the time and kill people" without any knowledge of where that started. Anyway, SkyPilot asked about a rumor he had heard: That there is a Chuck Norris craze in the world of gamers. This, I told him, is very true and entertaining. SP and Porcupine and I have a liking for that which is kitchy...and Chuck Norris is nothing BUT kitchy in my opinion. Anyhow, SP asked me to find some of the Chuck Norris jokes that I had been hearing online so I did and sent him a link which I will give here as well: Chuck Norris Jokes Beware...they are dirty...but many are quite funny. They mostly have to do with Chuck Norris roundhouse kicking someone in the face or being manlier or stronger than anyone else. Things like "It was discovered that Chuck Norris's tears cure cancer.....Too bad he has never cried." This then reminded me of some jokes from a set of sketches on Saturday Night Live that appeared a few years ago that were funny. They were about Bill Brasky. These occured when a group of guys all sat down in a bar and told stories...or more appropriately...one liners about their mythical friend Bill Brasky. Jokes like: - "Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Brasky takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half — until sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Brasky yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found 'em!'"
Strangely enough, I found almost this exact same joke listed in the Chuck Norris jokes section of a different site. I suppose it just goes to show that these jokes are really just self feeding. For a very detailed look at this whole idea, you can check out the Wikipedia article on Chuck Norris. It AMAZINGLY mentions everything that I have found through some surfing and personal experience. It also mentions a World of Warcraft reference dealing with the popularity of Chuck in that game. It even goes so far as to mention the section of the game where he is talked about the most: the Barrens. Anyway, here is the link: Chuck Norris. Anway, all this to say: I dont know how to think about these things. How do they happen? What is the average time that they last? And more interestingly, WHY do they happen? I'm sure if ad agencies could get thier hands on that information...well, I assume that would be the end of free will!
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