Meme_Analysis

= Internet Meme:  = ** Foottacked **

__Introduction__
Even from the beginning, we knew that there was no such thing as an exact science or formula to making something go viral. We knew that a creative, innovative, and interesting meme idea might still not become memetic. That is simply because of the nature of the medium. According to Memes.org (2007) a meme "is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another." Therefore, an Internet meme would be an idea, photo, video or saying spread via the World Wide Web. Richard Dawkins, a biologist and evolutionary theorist created the term "meme" in 1976 (Memes.org 2007). Memes are like genes that replicate, duplicate and create copies of itself. Further research done by Memes.org (2007) explains that meme theorists believe, pieces of information propagate through natural selection. Memetic theorists also argue that the best memes are not necessarily the ones that survive but are the ones that can be easily copied, duplicated, replicated, etc ((Memes.org 2007). //Just like genes, only the strongest survive.// Therefore, it is the Internet audience that decides the lifespan of a specific meme.

Most of the internet memes that we were heavily influenced by incorporated similar elements - simplicity, authenticity, spontaneity, comedy, low production cost, and a spur-of-the-moment attitude. We wanted to create something that people would enjoy watching over and over again, something that had stickiness, and something that //looked// like we didn't plan it. But we also understood that this was risky. The last thing we wanted was for people to view our meme and think it was fabricated. Therefore, the ultimate issue was to create something that looked authentic and in the moment.

__The Plan__
The story of how our meme came to be is a little contradictory. We all came to the office that day to //discuss// potential meme ideas. None of us knew that by the end of the hour long session, our meme would actually by completely finished and uploaded to Youtube. We could probably argue that our meme was one of the first to be made and posted. We did our meme before the proposal was due!

We were sitting down in an office in the CCIT building having conversations about potential ideas. We were throwing ideas back and forth, some possible, and some, not so possible. Then something key happened. We began talking about unrelated subjects which led to fears and phobias. We discovered that one of our group members is grossed out by feet. And not just grossed out, but terrified. "Bare feet anywhere near me" she said, just freaked her out completely. It also didn't help that she told us about how her friends in high school would often use their feet to gross her out. The remaining three of us looked at each other and then suddenly, the door was locked and socks were coming off. We decided immediately that our meme was going to happen right then, right there, right now.

The three of us then attacked the one group member, with our bare feet. She kicked and screamed and hated what was happening to her. We recorded it on an iPhone and uploaded it to YouTube. We thought our meme was perfect. Something that happened spontaneously, something that happened unplanned, and the fear was real. None of it was ever //scripted//, but the only problem I think was in our audience - and perhaps maybe our misunderstanding of what amuses audiences and causes memes to actually become memes.

__Disseminating The Meme__
To be able to launch our video/meme to the world there were many options, however the criteria of our 'one shot' video lead us to a believe the best ways to get the most views are: Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The other options were FAILBlog and FML, the reasons as to why we could not use the previous sites were:

First, though we understand almost every FAILBlog video gets thousands possibly millions of views and we could not replicate an unfortunate incident, or were lucky enough to have access to a video of us falling down stairs, or getting hit in some way, shape or form. In our situation it was best to go with something more realistic and something within our reach. The idea behind FAILBlog is to submit videos of incidents such as someone getting hit in the face, or people crashing; our video contained no accident or funny incident that people would get a kick out of. Therefore we had to leave FAILBlog behind and concentrate our efforts on our other options.

FML (F*-k My Life) was another option that we really considered because our videos content was based on our group members phobia ("Podophobia" being afraid of feet). However, because its not a FML moment it wouldn't fit the criteria for the videos linked on the FML site. What is FML? just like FAILBlog people post unfortunate events in which the expression FML would be used in the real world. The site would allow us to get the video out there but we realized that many of the top FML post or comments that quickly pass by and really dont get meme status. FML simply has to many people posting life stories that would not allow for viewers to grab our story and actually invest themselves in it.

**__Results__**
Although we did not get as many views as we hoped and the video did not go as viral we desired, there are some findings we were able to analyze. In Snow's (2010) article __Internet users express themselves through memes__, he states how, "by simply using the Internet, [we] are part of a global, online community that creates and spreads Internet memes", therefore anything we show, share, link, repost, retweet is our way of connecting and interacting with the Internet audience. Internet memes are suppose to be spread from person to person, adding an unique piece of ourselves to the Internet culture (Snow 2010).

In our case, we used a phobia as a sense of entertainment that people can connect with and share with others. From the moment the meme our video was released to the online world, it became a piece of the Internet culture, we shared a piece of ourselves with others to watch, manipulate or pass around. The video uploaded to YouTube, giving us the freedom to add tags to the meme for the meme to be more effortless located in the search engine. The use of search words such as "girl feet" and "feet" became tags that were easy markers to locating the video. The main objective of the Internet meme was to be able to track how popular the meme became over a short period of time (Snow 2010). With the helpful statistics provided by YouTube, we were given a better understand of how the meme became a concrete part of the World Wide Web.



Examining both diagrams, we can see that the popularity of the meme definitely grew over the course of a few weeks. Making reference to referece point [G] where we can see that once the meme was shared/tweeted to a social network like Twitter (what is Twitter ), the number of times the video was viewed certainly increased. Later, when the viedeo was embedded on another social network, Facebook ( what is Facebook ), the number of views undoubtedly increased as people began watching, sharing (even watching from mobile devices) and expressed comments about the meme.


 * = Facebook Comments ||= Twitter Retweets ||
 * = [[image:P_Illian_FB.png width="368" height="120" align="left"]] ||= [[image:Myron_Twitter.png width="374" height="58" align="left"]] ||
 * = [[image:Myron_Zhao.png width="355" height="72" align="left"]] ||= [[image:Mark_Twitter.png width="408" height="77" align="left"]] ||
 * = [[image:Akshay_FB.png width="387" height="53" align="left"]] ||=  ||
 * [[image:Screen_shot_2010-11-18_at_3.45.03_PM.png width="287" height="60"]] ||  ||

(Diagram C) Some people showed sympathy as to what they saw, while others found it amusing. Nevertheless, it is the audience that decides whether or not the meme goes viral. It is in the finger tips of the Internet community to share, retweet, repost, link, embed, manipulate or edit the meme to bring attention to the meme.

__Discussion__
There is unpredictability in creating a video, phrase, image that will go viral. As KnowYourMeme explains "a meme is a handy, theoretical unit of culture that undergoes natural selection in its replication. On the Internet, this often comes in the form of an image, phrase or video that inspires people to manipulate it, pass it around and oftentimes seek out more of it.”

In our individual analysis of memes and our discussions of what makes a meme, we thought that a simple, spontaneous, unscripted, spur-of-the-moment, funny, low-production, authentic were key to creating a meme. Receiving the most pageviews through the Facebook networking website more than likely worked better than Twitter because we have a lot more friends on Facebook. Facebook is a visually interactive networking website where everyone in your network receives recent updates. Our social networks are much bigger. Camilo has 333 friends, Kleine has 448 friends, Justin has 873 friends and Paulina has 758 friends. But out of those friends on Facebook, how many are active users of the social networking website, checking up on what everyone else is doing? Most people that viewed the videos were friends we saw on a regular basis in real life, who know Paulina (the victim of the foottacks) and found humour in it.

In contrast, Twitter has a different atmosphere and feel to it than Facebook. Twitter is about social updates in 140 characters or less. If you don't have something that appears information relevant, or you're not a big, well known celebrity, it's hard to make something go viral. What goes viral are usually what's "trending" as in what's the topic of the day. On Kleine's (@littlekleine) Twitter account, she has 97 followers, Camilo (@camcamdiez) has 17 followers, Justin (@justinantidormi) has 46 followers and Paulina (@filepna) has 21 Followers. The number of followers is a contrast to the number of "friends" each individual has on Facebook. Twitter is all about updates and being active. To gain a wide following, an individual is already a celebrity or well-known or (almost) becomes one through meaningful, informative updates that people find useful and interesting.

Even though we used word-of-mouth, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to get our video out there and created our video ahead of the Proposal due date, all that was not enough to make this video go viral. The video did not become part of that "natural selction" that KnowYourMeme talks about in what creates a meme. Perhaps if we were really active in spreading our video, like posting the video on every one of our friend's Facebook profile page, our video might receive more hits on YouTube. But we felt that a meme isn't forced upon people and so we felt that we should post the video only on a few friends' webpages and see where that takes our video. There are so many unknown factors and unpredictability in making something go viral on the World Wide Web and we can play this "what if" game all day. On a personal success level, for a project, this is probably one of the most viewed videos in a short amount of time. As of 6:17 AM on Thursday November 18, the video "Foottacked" has 150 pageviews, 14 more pageviews since our YouTube stats were posted on November 16 (Diagram A and B)). On average, the video receives 6 pageviews a day since it posted on YouTube officially on Oct. 26.

For an inspirational quote on memes and a (humorous) secret formula on creating a successful meme, please read further.

“Culture is fundamentally made out of memes like words, pictures and concepts. As long as we are social animals who communicate with one another and as long as there is an Internet, there will be Internet memes” (Snow 2010)



__Works Cited__ Dtptampa. "So You Wanna Make a Meme." Gizmodo.com. 3 May 2010. Web.

"Definition of a Meme." Know Your Meme.com. April 2010. Web.

"Definition of Meme." Memes.org. 17 Sept. 2007. Web.

"Meme." Dictionary.com. N.d. Web

"Phobia." Dictionary.com. N.d. Web.

Snow, Robert. "Internet users express themselves through memes." //The SHEAF.com//. The Muse (Memorial University) 13 Nov 2010. Web