'And so the Lana Del Rey-bashing economy moves faster than the actual Lana Del Rey economy...'

'"Natural selection is a way of sorting among a range of genetic alternatives, and finding the best one. Social learning is a way of sifting among a range of alternative options or ideas, and choosing the best one of those." Pagel argues that our evolution as "social learners" has likely had the effect, as it's played out through hundreds of millennia, of encouraging the development of copying skills, perhaps over the development of originality. "We like to think we're a highly inventive, innovative species," he explains. "But social learning means that most of us can make use of what other people do, and not have to invest the time and energy in innovation ourselves ... And so, we may have had strong selection in our past to be followers, to be copiers, rather than innovators." What that also means is that as the scope of our potential copying broadens, through advances in communication and networking, we have ever less incentive to be creative. We become ever more adept at cutting and pasting.'

'Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. The data and statistics provided by Truthy are designed to aid in the study of social epidemics: How do memes propagate through the Twittersphere? What causes a burst of popularity? We also plan to use Truthy to detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution. While the vast majority of memes arise in a perfectly organic manner, driven by the complex mechanisms of life on the Web, some are engineered...'

'“The biggest problem if you’re trying to figure out ‘What is this stuff? What are they trying to do?’ is that I think even they don’t completely have a grip on it,” Scott says. “This thing — the Internet, online culture — allows you to engage with interesting people who you otherwise might not be aware of or interesting people who are, themselves, unaware that they’re interesting.” ...BuzzFeed is organized by its readers’ shorthand response to what they view — sections include LOL and OMG. “The way people interact with media is more about someone’s reaction, an emotional or even intellectual reaction,” Peretti says. “That is a kind of cultural shift. It’s not ‘I love to read the Style section,’ it’s ‘I love all the LOL stuff.’ ” “You see the news break,” Peretti says, and “the next day or 12 hours later, people are hungry for the parody of it or the comic relief.” '

'In addition to the commercials, there is "The Subservient Chicken" web page. On the page, a man in a chicken costume performs a wide range of actions based on a user's input, showing pre-recorded footage and appearing like an interactive webcam. There are more than three hundred commands that the Subservient Chicken will respond to...'

'In July 2010, Old Spice's ad company introduced a new pitchman to shill its unappealing product. The Old Spice Guy is the man you could smell like if you used Old Spice (or took showers). He is the pinnacle of manliness and an example of what every channer should strive for in their lives. He has a YT Channel, in which he replies to various YouTubers, twitards and other assorted denizens of the Internets giving advice on how they can be better people and filling /r/s for things like proposing marriage on behalf of some fag with an imaginary girlfriend.' -- Everything Is Now Diamonds

'One of the questions that keeps coming up is people saying, "Ok, this is great, but will it make me buy more Old Spice?" If you look at the comments that are publicly saying, "I'm going to go and try Old Spice after this, I'm going to wear more Old Spice."' -- Yup. The smell will become an in-joke. Shared/social object/scent.

"There is a pattern to the way these scares develop." -- FORCED MEMES ARE FORCED

'The epigenome plays a crucial role in determining which genes actually express themselves in a creature's traits: in effect, it switches certain genes on or off, or turns them up or down in intensity. It isn't news that the environment can alter the epigenome; what's news is that those changes can be inherited. Rather than genes simply "offering up" a random smorgasbord of traits in each new generation, which then either prove suited or unsuited to the environment, it seems that the environment plays a role in creating those traits in future generations, if only in a short-term and reversible way. Relatedly, there is growing evidence, at the level of microbes, of genes being transferred not just vertically, from ancestors to parents to offspring, but also horizontally, between organisms. ...what does it even mean to draw a clear line between one organism and another? Goldenfield: "It's natural to wonder, if the very concept of an organism in isolation is still valid at this level."'

'Seizing on climate change as an issue around which they can create the appearance of purposeful activity, it is political elites who are the most zealous campaigners, ...the government urges us to urge them to act. At the same time, it also berates us for our apathy. Such is the bizarre relationship between the elite and the electorate today. ...putting pressure on world leaders is really an elite wish-fulfilment fantasy, in which child-citizens across the globe put their faith in parent-politicians engaged in an heroic, planet-saving mission. Climate activists may think they are critics of officialdom, but they are simply fuelling the fantasy. -- It seems unlikely that, in the long run, the elite’s search for meaning in green politics will be successful. The vision it offers – of caution and constraint, low ambition and no progress – is a negative, dystopian one which may evoke fear and conformity, but which will never inspire. It is the ideology of a demoralised society...'

'Telegraph: 2009 was the year in which "global" swept the rest of the political lexicon into obscurity. There were "global crises" and "global challenges", the only possible resolution to which lay in "global solutions" necessitating "global agreements". -- Dominant Social Theme: Rolling back to the global tide. What is so interesting about Daley's article—in our opinion—is that she has internalized the promotion without being quite able to put her finger on the larger ramifications. She has her own frame of reference, in other words, but it is not ours (or perhaps yours, dear reader). Having come to the conclusion—the epiphany really—that the underlying theme of the conference was a metaphor for the inevitability of globalization itself, she turns to the relatively mundane task of explaining why global solutions are NOT the way to tackle urgent, international crises.'

Forward march into Idiocracy.

'By first demanding that green views be put on a par with religion in the eyes of the law and by then suggesting that green views should be elevated above religion because they are ‘underpinned by science’, Nicholson not only debased religious belief but also expressed an ignorant attitude towards the scientific process. As Frank Furedi has pointed out on spiked: ‘Science emerged through an intellectual struggle to free humanity from the tyranny of sacred dogma… science depends on an open-minded and open-ended attitude towards experimentation and the testing out of ideas.’ Nicholson’s efforts to stamp out opposition to those who ‘believe in anthropogenic climate change’ is an expression of dogmatic thinking if ever there was one.' -- Back to the dark ages. It's quite shocking how far the neo-feudalism meme has spread. You'd think people would be weary of being manipulated as a useful idiot, but somehow an inflated sense of self importance takes its grip...

Unwarranted self-importance

'...twitter is an instant window into the lives’ of people. A chance to track the distractions that are filling up people’s lives’, momentarily taking over their brains. An impact significant enough to process a lil thought/meme about it. Whether it is a human, a product, a political scandal ... or a celeb death, the twitter’s portal into a generalized human psyche is priceless. We must embrace the power of this tool. We must embrace all tools that allow us to reflect/share/digitally mourn. We are growing up, learning how to use social networks to experience life together. We are learning how to mourn, celebrate, and crucify miscellaneous celebrities. We are learning that death memes are the memes that unite us. The internet/internet meme is a coping mechanism/opportunity. While events happen in ‘reality’ our opportunity to reflect upon them in a ’sillie lil online world’ helps us to cope with how deeply rattled we are by the underlying themes of highly bloggable events.''

'By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses. The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people. By keeping in close, regular contact with other healthy friends for decades, Eileen and Joseph had quite possibly kept themselves alive and thriving. And by doing precisely the opposite, the lone obese man hadn’t.' -- Monkey see, monkey do.

'Technology is that which is produced by a mind — any mind: animal, machine or alien. When we created the technology of writing, we gladly extended our memory onto paper, making ourselves smarter. But in turn the alphabets we invented changed how our minds worked. Because our inventions can reach back into our brains, and essentially transform our minds into another one of our inventions, our inventions are more powerful than our minds. In this way technology can circle back into its origins, becoming its own child. Whatever progress there is in the world, is passed down generationally via the mechanism of our culture. Whatever changes that literacies ignite in the human brain must be carried forward not in our genes, but in the continuum of technium. This gives the technium incredible power. We don't quite appreciate it yet, but our child, technology, is more powerful than we its parents are.'

'Once an idea is "in the air" its many manifestation are inevitable. You just need a sufficient number of smart, prolific people to start catching them. Gladwell observes, "The genius is not a unique source of insight; he is merely an efficient source of insight." -- "Inventions are culturally determined. Such a statement must not be given a mystical connotation." warns Kroeber. It means only that when all the required conditions generated by previous technologies are in place, the next technology can precipitate. "Discoveries become virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate," says sociologist Robert Merton, who studied simultaneous inventions in history. The ever thickening mix of existing technologies in a society create a supersaturated matrix, charged with restless potential. When the right idea is seeded within, the inevitable invention practically explodes into existence...'

'"There exists," Cohn wrote, "...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history." -- ...they are driven as much by a psychological need as a totalitarian ideology. Their delusions impose a comforting coherence on the mess of life and randomness of death. By "suggesting that there is an explanation, that human agencies are powerful and that there is order rather than chaos," the conspiracy theorist places himself in a sophisticated elite that discerns connections where the multitude sees only happenstance.' -- Um, spot the 'coherence' -making?

'...the explosive interest in positive psychology is, like so many cultural curiosities involving self-obsession, a boomer phenomenon. ...the psychology of positivity and productivity were a perfect fit for the ethos of the bubble years. -- ...maximizers, in practically every study one can find, are far more miserable than people who are willing to make do (economists call these people satisficers). “My suspicion is that all this choice creates maximizers.” -- ...our beliefs that money and children will make us happy are super-replicators—without them, civilization wouldn’t survive. -- “Happiness is fine as a side effect. But I think it’s a cruel demand. It may even be a covert form of sadism. Everyone feels themselves prone to feelings and desires and thoughts that disturb them. And we’re being persuaded that by acts of choice, we can dispense with these thoughts. It’s a version of fundamentalism." ...happiness [is] “the most conformist of moral aims.”'

'On the net, an idea can appear virtually simultaneously in different parts of the world, and spread independently of the distance or proximity between senders and receivers. The end result is likely to be the emergence of a globally shared ideology, or "world culture", transcending the old geographical, political and religious boundaries. (Note that such homogeneization of memes only results for memes that are otherwise equivalent, such as conventions, standards or codes. Beliefs differing on the other dimensions of meme selection will be much less influenced by conformist selection.) ...the emerging global network... learns and develops in a non-random way. The network functions like a nervous system for the social superorganism, transmitting signals between its different "organs", memorizing its experiences, making them available for retrieval when needed, and generally steering and coordinating its different functions. Thus, it might be viewed as a global brain.'

"...during the different stages of their life-cycle, memes are subjected to objective, subjective intersubjective and meme-centered selection criteria. #Meme-centered Criteria: #Self-justification, the degree to which the components of a meme mutually support each other, will facilitate understanding and acceptance. #Self-reinforcement, the degree to which the meme stimulates its host to rehearse itself, e.g. by repetition, meditation, prayer, etc., will strengthen retention. #Intolerance, the degree to which a meme excludes rival memes from being assimilated or retained, will also help the meme to retain a stable position in memory. #Proselytism, the degree to which the meme urges its host to maximally spread the meme to other hosts, will increase the rates of expression and transmission."

'Starting with the simple tale of an ant, philosopher Dan Dennett unleashes a devastating salvo of ideas, making a powerful case for the existence of memes -- concepts that are literally alive.' -- "Words are memes that can be pronounced."

'At Murketing, Rob Walker notes the rise of an ironic T-shirt, “Three Wolf Moon”: "This is an example of an object acquiring a narrative, and meaning. If you were wearing it, and someone asked, you could tell them a story. In fact you could tell them the story even if they didn’t ask—it’s a good story!—particularly if you submitted a funny review which you can then recount. The object becomes a souvenir of a moment and an experience: The time we all got together and made fun of this T-shirt." -- ...the fact that this occurred online on a retail website makes the whole event seem contrived, even though it probably wasn’t. The network effects, the rapid scaling-up of online viral phenomena, generates the air of contrivance—for me at least—which makes all such spontaneous events seem feasibly pre-plannable. It seems as though there are always enough bored yet clever people out there on the internet to latch onto memes.' -- Rule 34

"I had this silly idea to isolate the backgrounds from famous Internet memes, removing all the subjects from every photo or video. Like Jon Haddock's porn sans people, these photos are banal out of context. Only someone familiar with the original memes would sense something's amiss, like the set of a play waiting for the actors to stumble into history."

"A few of my friends have been forwarding this Mr. Men and Little Miss picture around facebook, tagging friends whom they think would fit into that character. It’s loads of fun and light humored."

"The Internet video that YOU helped write." -- Lulz or it didn't happen.

'Knowledge is passed down directly from generation to generation in the animal kingdom as parents teach their children the things they will need to survive. But a new study has found that, even when the chain is broken, nature sometimes finds a way. Zebra finches, which normally learn their complex courtship songs from their fathers, spontaneously developed the same songs all on their own after only a few generations. “We found that in this case, the culture was pretty much encoded in the genome,” said Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. “It all happened so fast, and there was so little difference between the colony and in the one-to-one tutoring environment,” said lead author Olga Fehér of City College of New York. “So the process is pretty much hardwired. And the interesting thing was also that they could only get so close in a single generation, so the three to four generations were necessary for the phenotype to emerge.”' -- Regenerative

'What separates the Stand Alone Complex from normal copycat behavior is that the originator of the copied action is not even a real person, but merely a rumored figure that performed the copied action. Even without instruction or leadership a certain type of person will spring into action to imitate the rumored action and move toward the same goal even if only subconsciously. The result is an epidemic of copied behavior–with no originator. ...mass hysteria-with purpose. ... an emergent phenomenon catalyzed by parallelization of the human psyche through the cyberbrain networks. ...by exploiting the mechanism of information transmission in society, one could achieve a very efficient and subtle thought control. Indeed, since people tend to modify slightly the information (and forget where it came from) in the processes of consumption (or appropriation), it becomes difficult to sort genuine ideas from modified, implanted ones.' -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

{yo,sup} dawg, I heard you like X, so I put an X in your Y so you can VERB(x) while you VERB(y)

'Carles evokes the meme to end all memes, the transcendental meme which would authorize and guarantee the sense of all the others, but realizes, naturally that such a meme is not possible... ....his concluding question is more of a rhetorical taunt than a challenge: "Carles asks: Can 1 meme …change the world?" The answer is plain. One meme in isolation can achieve nothing, would not even be recognizable as a meme. All memes rely on their supplement to become legible. The meme is only epistimologically salient after it has been exposed, discredited, revealed to be nothing but an old meme. Perhaps Carles warns us of identifying ourselves and reducing ourselves to such a meme.'

"MEME is a blog post on HIPSTER RUNOFF. MEME is presented by Carles. What happens if 1 meme changed everything we once knew about memes, changing the way that we meme, and shattering pre-existing notions of memery? Is the world ready for this meme? So many memes–but when can a meme be more than ‘just another meme in the meme economy’? MEME. Presented by Carles. Carles asks: Can 1 meme …change the world?" -- First I was like: meme, but then I was like: MEME

#Do not FORCE memes on consumers. #Make sure your memes are either original, or do a good job of copying pre-existing memes. #Know your band. Know your memes. Know your audience. #Don’t feel entitled to anything. Your band’s existence is a journey. #Do not rebel against the biggest news sources. You must embrace them/manipulate them. There is no other way. Become bros. #The tastemaking economy may or may not be more important/fun than bands themselves. #Making+filtering memes = responsibility. #Every one, every band, and every website is searching for authenticity on their own terms. #Every one, every band, and every website is searching for a way to make money on any one’s terms. #Memes can be simple or complex. Usually the more ‘organic’ a meme-birth is, the more likely the meme is to help your brand #There are downsides to creating a fan base with a high demand for your memes, including lack of personal privacy and album leaks."

"Your band must invade the Perception Economy. Your Band must no longer be a band. Your band must be a meme. A Meme Which Generates subMemes. These memes must be compelling, intriguing, and interesting enough for people to ‘follow’ or at least think that you are ‘worth following. The modern band is not just about ‘music.’ The modern band must successfully win over fans by finding effective methods to generate themselves into a meme-source worth following. You are more than just your music. You are an aesthetic. You are the news that bros every where need to read about. You need to picture a world where you have at least 20K twitter followers who are eager to follow your lifestream on a meme-to-meme basis. Your band is a meme, which slowly injects the meme economy with new memes that make your band seem ‘more important.’ While your band will always be a group of friends/bros, the perception of your band will grow as the memes which you generate continue to seem ‘more important."

'FEel like s0 many people try to ‘find meaning’ on the internet, or they think they deserve to ‘get paid’ [via advertising revenue] for just sharing their memes. They are s0 out of touch with reality. It’s kinda weird how not even that many people want to be ‘mainstream famous’ any more. A more authentic version of fame comes with being ‘microfamous’ via the internet. Some people also want 2 b ‘macro-anonymous.’ -- Just want to be comfortable with who I am [in real life AND on the internet]. ////I want 2 be famesies. Just want to ‘get paid’ and be ‘critically acclaimed’ for ‘being myself’ and ‘living life’ by ‘being on the internet for 70% of my life.’

"Hyperactive teenager Boxxy was all the internet could talk about for 48 hours in January 2009... and then she vanished. Why all the fuss? Institute scientist Jamie Dubs investigates." -- I RAGED

"h8 our modern world. I can’t tell if videos like this are ‘real moments of beauty’ or just gimmick marketing. Do yall know if this act of puberty is authentic, or just something designed by marketing firms?"

"...the gang go to collect their money for being on youtube and they meet some other internet characters." -- PROFIT!!!

Linked PDF: 'Forget influentials, herd-like copying is how brands spread' --"The simple truth is that humans, being first and foremost social creatures, rather than independent agents, rely on copying to learn and to negotiate the rich and sophisticated social reality they inhabit. Copying is our species’ number one learning and adaptive strategy. Copying among a population with frequent interactions creates a pull mechanism by which things – visible behaviours, opinions, skills, fashions and so on – spread through populations. -- Two kinds of copying: #Random copying is a continual [unconscious] process. #Directed copying is somewhat more conscious. Random and directed copying leave different signatures, particularly in patterns of turnover in what constitutes the most popular behaviours. The direction of random copying is quite unpredictable over the long term. Directed copying often results in more steady, potentially predictable, change."

Ben Sones: "You do have to feel sort of sorry for [moot], but honestly, he's just not thinking creatively enough. I mean, ad impressions? Really? Here's my 4chan business model: two Paypal purchase buttons on the front page. #1. For $10, you can buy a voucher that lets you issue a single, one-day banning of any one user. #2. For $20, you can buy a "get out of jail free" voucher that allows you to nullify a banning. #3. Profit!

An Interview With The Founder of 4chan -- "Q: What have you learned from all this? A: I'm still trying to figure that out. I need to start thinking about getting a job. I don't have a resume. I've been asking myself, what have I learned about the internet, what have I learned about myself? At this point, I've been unable to articulate that."

Poole can't get a job. -- '[Poole is] not making money on 4chan–in fact, he's losing money by charging the site's server costs on his credit cards. Poole felt the ads ruined the user experience, which gets at a final irony in his strange life as the almighty moot, which is that he has standards.' -- '"4chan is the big question of the Internet wrapped into one big case study," says Hwang. "If Chris could find a way to hack the 4chan problem"–to figure out how the site can make money–"he'd be set."' -- 'How to explain what Christopher Poole actually does? He's not a programmer. He doesn't know code. His site doesn't offer a specific service, like Google. What he does is foster community. He makes millions of people feel that they have a safe space for creative–sometimes vitriolic–discussion, deciding how far things should be pushed, tamping down upsurges when they get too unruly. Or something like that. But, he says, "I have no idea how to translate my 4chan skills on paper."'

'... it's imperative that brands and their agencies do two things: #1. They become remarkably adept at understanding the cultural conversation in real-time #2. They change their process so they can respond to appropriately to the conversation. This means shrinking the planning process from weeks down to hours.' -- Hark, the future of the agency is 4chan.

'Two years ago, a YouTube member named MadV—who silently performs magic tricks while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask—put up a short, cryptic video. He held his hand up to the camera, showing what he'd written on his palm: "One World." Then he urged viewers to respond. The video was just 41 seconds long, but it caught people's imagination. Within a few days, hundreds of YouTube users had posted videos—shot on webcams, usually in their bedrooms—displaying their own scrawled messages: "Don't quit!" "Tread gently." "Think." "Carpe diem." "Open your eyes." And my favorite, "They could be gone tomorrow!" Soon, MadV had inspired 2,000 replies, making it the most-responded-to video in YouTube's history. MadV stitched them all together into a long, voiceless montage, and it's quite powerful. All these people from across the globe convey something incredibly evocative while remaining completely mute. So here's my question: What exactly is this? What do you call MadV's project?' -- ???

"It’s the things that are in heads, on screens and coming down wires that are interesting and important. Not stuff a camera can easily capture." -- TRUE.

"This entire case demonstrates some rather brutal realities of current internet culture, with lessons for all of us. A girl made some videos for her friends on Gaiaonline, which became popular through no fault of her own. She then did what most people would do, and responded to this intense interest with another innocent and harmless video. What could go wrong? Give people anonymity, and they become de-individuated, whether it be on an image board or in a rioting mob. The same internet machine that could propel you to the top of the Youtube charts and hand you online fame will happily chew you up and spit you back out just as quickly, with zero remorse or consideration for the consequences. This is the reality of the internet today, this case is not the first, and surely not the last."

"The 'boxxy lovers' of 4chan were by now declaring her the 'Queen of /b/' and a instant new meme. The haters labelled this as a perfect example of a forced meme. To them, she was the epitome of the 'cancer killing /b/'. Battle lines were being drawn. Boxxy threads began to fill with spam posts of 'sage this shit' and 'die in a fire'. On the 10th, with Boxxy now approaching 400,000 views and 10,000 subscribers, Operation Clampdown was declared. If Moot did not ban the users spamming boxxy threads on the 4chan /b/, the site would be brought down via a DDOS. As the attack time of 00:00 GMT approached, users began to charge their cannons. Some posted their desktops, with 4 or 5 nefarious programs open, prepared for zero hour. Within 30 minutes, 4chan became sluggish, and then crashed, displaying the desired 404. 4chan had essentially descended into civil war, with one side deciding to kill everyone including themselves, it was unprecedented."

funnay

"Xzibit is the host of the MTV show “Pimp My Ride”, and is known for his fondness of putting awesome things like fishtanks in the back of your car. Or a clothes dryer, or perhaps a a fireplace in the back of your Chevy Blazer."

F-A-L-E

"Training yourself not to think about The Game is nearly impossible, and often counter-productive. The best strategies involve causing others to lose more than yourself. The best way to do this is to always announce your loss to as many people as possible. This reminds current players about The Game and initiates new ones." -- You lose!

"What if Capitão Nascimento had read Convergence Culture?" -- How meta is this! Layers and layers of context I don't 'get' and don't much care because in this convergent cultured world it's impossible to 'get' everything and pretending otherwise only makes you an intolerable twat.

"You fail it! Your skill is not enough!" -- No U.

"#7. Duckroll mobile by Tempy-kun: This level is just a riff on duckrolling, the soon-to-be-forgotten internet meme that spawned the far more popular Rickroll. Defining moment: So why is this here? Because even silly levels like these have serious benefits: Users can take the Duckroll mobile and use it in their own levels. It'll still contain the original creator's ID in the metadata."

See original for the forced meme hack: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIo1mdHfJFI

John McCain's gift to the internets.

"Anonymous is an idea, a superconsciousness born on the internet."

"Anonymous is not a person, nor is it a group, movement or cause: Anonymous is a collective, a commune of human thought and useless imagery. Anonymous must work as one. No single Anonymous knows everything. Anonymous is everyone and noone. You are. I am. Everyone is. Anonymous is humanity when the gloves come off."

"Hello, Anonymous. We are Anonymous."

"From the planet of harlem! Teyana Taylor 1st Single 'Google Me!!!' Subcribe!!!!" -- !!!

"A demonstration of the new Meme Breaks 1.0 scratch record, which compiles the Internets’ most famous audio samples into DJ-friendly format."

21st Century = "I'm not here to make friends" = EPIC FAIL

"... this genre of video meme, where some obsessive-compulsive superfan collects every phrase/action/cliche from an episode (or entire series) of their favorite show/film/game into a single massive video montage. For lack of a better name, let's call them supercuts." -- Loads of YouTube links

ROFL:ROFL:LOL:ROFL:ROFL

A timeline of memes on the Internets.

"... one girl laughed, but then so did another, and then another, and then another, and then another.... just laughter and occasional crying between short moments of exhausted recuperation. When victims were restrained they sometimes became violent."

'... each person will have their own “personal CPM” ... every person has their own network of influence, and hence, their own personal CPM or value that they contribute to a social network.' -- (The memes are strong with this one.)

"Evolutionary psychology is focused on how evolution has shaped the mind and behavior. Though applicable to any organism with a nervous system, most research in evolutionary psychology focuses on humans."

"... true teme machines are arriving" -- "... it will look like humans are just a minor thing on this planet with masses (of) silicon-based machinery using us to drag stuff out of the ground to build more machines."

“In lulz we trust.”

"It just doesn't work." -- Right. So now that's cleared up, what's the next buzzmeme?

Dan Dennet: "the fundamental purpose of brains is to produce future…brains are, in essence, anticipation machines"

"Once an idea spread to a critical mass of easily influenced individuals, it took hold and continued to spread to other easily influenced individuals. In some networks, it was far easier to get an idea established this way than in others." Populism++

"roflbot is for adding text to a picture, a.k.a. an image macro generator. You can do it all in your browser without using Photoshop."

Fun site-as-ad canvas. (Shame about image compression.) [Another example of the current dominos/cause-and-effect ad meme ala Honda's 'Cog', Guinness 'Tipping Point'. Why is this? A yearning for past specialised, linear, literal culture.]

Pass it on: "Post the 5 books you’ve read and describe as “It completely changed the way I think about ______" The goal is to flood the blogosphere with a sweet reading list."

Pass it on: "Post the 5 books you’ve read and describe as “It completely changed the way I think about ______" The goal is to flood the blogosphere with a sweet reading list."