Not much to say to prove this point. Doge has been through a lot. It was originally just a wonderful photograph, then a creative, pure-hearted template for communicating in the forums, evolved into a variant that assumed the identity of a cryptocurrency, and now, it’s mainstream for death caused to people around the world under the direction of Elon Musk.
That makes DOGE completely dead. By dead, I don’t mean it no longer exists. It will remain part of internet history, cryptocurrency history, and political history. I mean that its symbolic evolution appears complete. There is no obvious next identity for DOGE that can escape the weight of what the name now represents. Or is there? I mean, just look at that face.
The original photo of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu owned and photographed by kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato (佐藤 敦子, Satō Atsuko), 2010.
Jimmy Donaldson, known worldwide as MrBeast, has organized his creative life around the measurable demands of internet platforms. As he has repeatedly explained, his objective is to give the algorithm exactly what it wants. He develops his videos around platform metrics, revises them in response to performance data, and removes whatever reduces their ability to spread. His success is not the product of artistic expression, it’s the systematic optimization for algorithmic selection.
This helps explain why MrBeast’s videos feel so culturally disposable. They’re designed to maximize distribution rather than to communicate ideas.
In 2012, Donaldson began posting on YouTube as MrBeast6000 at the age of thirteen. For the next five years, he searched for anything that could go viral. He says it was his only goal. He later described himself as “relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm.” At seventeen, he recorded a message to his future self in which success or failure in his life came down to a number: “If I don’t have a million subscribers when you see this video, my entire life has been a failure.”
After high school, he said, he “did nothing but just hyperstudy what makes a good video, what makes a good thumbnail, what’s good pacing, how to go viral.”
The standard was already contained in the question: a good video, to Donaldson, is defined as one that spreads.
After five years of trying to go viral for the sake of going viral, it’s interesting to look back at his big breakthrough. He asked, “What’s something dumb I could do that would get a lot of attention?” His answer? Count to 100,000. Endurance videos, long one-takes, and supercuts already existed online. The point is not that he didn’t invent a format. The point is why he chose the act. His own explanation begins with the need for attention.
Reflecting on that first video, he said, “I just really wanted it. I had dropped out of college, I wasn’t really making much. I knew it would go viral.”
By nineteen, Donaldson was telling his team, “We’re going to be the biggest YouTube channel ever. I don’t care. I’ll die trying.”
After that, the chronology is beside the point. The goal never changed; it merely acquired money, staff, and a self-aggrandizing production system.
Now he describes views as evidence that he is giving people what they want, and he uses virality as a repeatable technique for producing “practically unlimited money.”
That objective reaches into every part of the product. He says more extreme claims are used to improve click-through. Prize amounts are evaluated according to how much additional click value they produce. Click-through rate, average view duration, and satisfaction surveys became his production inputs.
One director who worked at MrBeast Productions told TIME that platform incentives had led them to study retention graphs to make each new video more addictive. Working at MrBeast, he said, that work was done “on steroids.”
He even has people developing and testing a factory’s worth of title-and-thumbnail concepts before deciding which one to upload. The business tested open- and closed-mouth poster-image expressions, found that closed mouths produced slightly more watch time, and then changed its rulebook and best practices accordingly.
It’s not as if these are separate anecdotes from different stages of a career. They describe one continuous method, governed by the same question every time: Will this improve distribution? The machinery does not arrive afterward to promote the work, it determines what the work becomes.
The leakedMrBeast Production Manual spells it out. Two former producers confirmed that the document was used in the office and given to new employees, but to date, apparently no one from the current MrBeast production team, including his spokesperson, has confirmed or denied its existence. The manual tells employees that their goal is “not the highest quality videos.” It is to make “the best YOUTUBE videos possible.”
That distinction is central to this argument. It is exactly what Donaldson has been preaching all along. His objectives are not secret. He professes the method openly.
The manual names three trackable measures of virality: click-through rate, average view duration, and average view percentage. Those numbers show whether the packaging earned the click and whether the video kept the viewer. It calls click-through rate “what dictates what we do for videos.” The numbers then enter the work itself. The first minute receives special attention because that’s where the most viewers leave. Producers place new material at planned intervals. Endings stop abruptly so viewers do not depart before the video is over. Spending outside the frame is questioned because the audience cannot see it.
The manual also says that a video should excite Donaldson, feel authentic, and make the audience happy. It allows for a subjective “wow factor”, yet when it asks how to determine whether the content is good, the answer is, as you could have probably guessed by now, average view duration and percentage watched. Creativity is defined by tricks for saving money. New ideas are encouraged so long as measurements can certify them. It is a manual for deciding what the work will be in the first place based on the YouTube formula.
This helps explain what I knew in my heart before I learned about his intent: quality has no meaning to Donaldson. He equates quality with whatever the algorithm wants. He repeatedly advises that the word “algorithm” can simply be replaced with “audience.” He treats the two as the same.
You can see how absurd that is:
The audience placed the video on millions of personalized YouTube pages, measured how long each viewer stayed, and expanded its distribution when the numbers improved.
In reality, the audience supplies the behavior and the algorithm separately interprets that behavior to control distribution. Treating them as the same is soulless, as if the machinery between the viewer and the work is all that exists. Such a treatment of people is so dark.
Hello. I am not an algorithm.
People feel, experience, perceive, interpret, imagine, desire, hope, fear, love, grieve, trust, doubt, forgive, resent, empathize, laugh, suffer, wonder, form identities, build relationships, negotiate meaning, exercise judgment, accept uncertainty, revise beliefs, and choose what they value. People can hate-watch a video to the end or stop watching something they love. The algorithm sees none of this directly. It sees only the most minimal traces left by click through behavior and bots, and then converts that raw signal into further distribution.
This explains how MrBeast’s videos can perform so well while being devoid of quality. The system can measure whether people watched. It cannot determine whether what they watched was worthwhile.
Quality is an artistic, evaluative judgment, whereas click-through, retention, and completion are behavioral measurements. The first asks what a work is worth. Donaldson asks what an audience did. Within the MrBeast system, a premise for a video acquires value when it wins the click. A scene acquires value when it prevents departure. A comment, idea, prize, or edit survives only when the graph rewards it. Originality, beauty, coherence, insight, durability, and cultural consequence have no independent standing inside this procedure. They matter only when they can be translated into traces of audience behavior.
In MrBeast’s content, the algorithm and the audience become a single object: measurable behavior. The system can optimize every visible element of a video while remaining indifferent to whether the resulting work was worth making.
What does MrBeast stand for?
Ultimately, MrBeast’s pursuit and the purpose of his content are completely self-serving in the most literal sense: the object is to make MrBeast the biggest YouTuber. The audience enters that pursuit as a field of measurable behavior. People must be induced to click, remain, finish, and return. Their enjoyment matters only if it advances his position.
By contrast, Pixar, at its best, makes films intended to provide cultural value for people. Steve Jobs described his interest in supporting Pixar filmmaking as an opportunity to create stories that would speak to our “grandkids’ grandkids’ grandkids.” While Pixar repeatedly “wins” the commercial competition, its commercial success follows from the artistic quality of work meant forculture itself—a standard established before the audience response.
Jobs: “There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.
And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation.”
WALL-E offers a great example. Contrary to the known formula, Andrew Stanton created a long, nearly thirty-minute wordless opening, with a portrait of a solitary machine wandering through an abandoned world. The absence of dialogue, the slow accumulation of detail, and the refusal to explain everything would be obvious no-nos for a MrBeast production. Stanton preserved these qualities because they created the solitude, tenderness, and wonder the story required. “There’s something underestimated about wonder,” he later said. “It’s a hard thing to quantify, but to me that’s the ingredient.”
Like many films, WALL-E was tested too. It is not unhealthy to understand statistics and keep them in mind. But the film was made for audiences, not the algorithm, and its quality standard preceded the audience response. The audience was asked to meet the work where the artist had placed it. In MrBeast’s system, the anticipated audience response determines where the work will be placed.
Compare the cultural value of Toy Story, which cost twenty million dollars to make, with MrBeast’s SquidGames, which cost a hundred million dollars to make. Judged independently of their platform-performance metrics, MrBeast’s videos offer little beyond the machinery of attention. Their premises are thin, their stakes are inflated, their participants become functions of a game, and their editing allows no space for ambiguity, reflection, or discovery. Every moment must justify itself by preventing departure. The result is spectacle engineered for immediate consumption and rapid replacement. Its accomplishment lies in temporary fitness: Quality would require reasons to value the work after those advantages were taken away.
In my previous post about Incentivemaxxing, I described how platforms provide rewards for content creators who approach boundary lines. Creators who are looking to game the system adapt their content toward the point of maximum reward. YouTube has the same kind of curve but with a different boundary. On YouTube, the pressure is toward premises, packaging, and pacing that improve click-through and retention for advertisers.
MrBeast did not invent this orientation. YouTube had already institutionalized it.
In March 2011, YouTube acquired Next New Networks, a web-video company that had developed, packaged, and built audiences by standardizing preexisting creator content into a one-size-fits-all product. YouTube called the resulting program YouTube Next, a creator-development unit that trained producers on how to accommodate the algorithm, an effort YouTube described as a strategy to compete against other platforms in the marketplace.
Shortly after acquisition, the Next New Network group published the first *Creator Playbook*, described as a collection of “best practices and strategies” for building audiences on the platform.
Simply put, the Playbook converted distribution into production doctrine. Programming, openings, release schedules, and audience interaction became variables YouTubers were told to incorporate to compete. The platform was no longer just distributing videos; it began prescribing how videos should be made for its own system.
The first substantive lesson concerned the opening fifteen seconds. Creators were told to consult attention graphs, locate early drop-offs, experiment with different “hooks,” and keep changing the opening until abandonment fell. Another section advised calls to action because likes, favorites, and shares improve a video’s ranking in the algorithm.
In February 2012, the same month Donaldson started his channel, YouTube released the Playbook’s second edition. It expanded the framework with instructions for organizing videos around different audiences, programming channels for the homepage feed, and optimizing creative work for global viewers. It also treated Analytics as actionable intelligence: creators should assess performance, investigate trends, measure optimizations, and alter their content or strategy in response.
YouTube pushed this hard for years, so a MrBeast was bound to happen. MrBeast is merely the embodiment of the Playbook’s system in which popularity has replaced quality as the standard of judgment.
Now MrBeast says he can make almost anything go viral. The more interesting fact is what virality has made out of him. It has trained his eye, organized his time, shaped his company, selected his ideas, and given production decisions a number for the sake of making himself more popular. He uses YouTube to spread his videos, and YouTube uses him to reproduce the kinds of videos it rewards.
The formula is not applied to the content. The formula produces the content.
That is Incentivemaxxing to the max. It is also what it means to say that we do not simply use memes. Memes use us.
When all hell broke loose on Facebook during the Cambridge Analytica era, people were focused largely on privacy, but equally important was the realization of its recommendation algorithms.
Facebook set policy on what was considered to be too violent, too sexual, and too everything else, and then moderated and removed based on whether or not content crossed the policy line. But as people got closer to the line, their content was shared more, and thus, they were more rewarded, leading to a platform full of the most extreme content allowed, where the most rewarded content sat right next to the boundary line.
One of the main reasons twitter, around that same era in the twenty-teens, was safer and more trusted, was because of how they managed, algorithmically, this approach to the policy line. Twitter explicitly acknowledged that some behavior did not violate the rules but still harmed conversations, and that instead of removing it, Twitter reduced its visibility. Essentially, they flipped the curve.
As content approached the prohibited boundary line, twitter demamplified it, removed it from recommendations, restricted its appearance in search, and used other methods of reducing incentive to spread.
This all being then, it’s quite interesting because of where we are now. Have you seen what’s on twitter these days? The policy line has been shifted way to the right and the most extreme content gets the most rewarded.
In addition to the extensive pornography and graphic war violence, twenty-eight-year-old Dalton Eatherly, known as Chud the Builder, is a quintessential 2026 example of how the platform changed under Elon Musk.
Eatherly used the platform to become nationally known by livestreaming himself walking through towns in the Deep South, directing extreme racial slurs at random strangers before challenging them to “do something” that would justify him defending himself, including with the gun he carried. The slurs were so outrageous and disgusting they were literally jaw-dropping.
People shared the videos largely in disbelief that someone could openly do this. Eatherly claimed he was exercising free speech, and Musk’s platform did not moderate the content, showing that it fell within acceptable policy boundaries. The more controversial and extreme Easterly became, the more he was rewarded. I watched in disbelief, convinced he was eventually going to kill someone or be killed. It was clear he sought confrontations and deliberately provoked people because the platform rewarded that behavior.
Eatherly eventually did shoot someone during one of these filmed confrontations and is now in jail facing attempted murder. Even afterward, the content remained on the platform, and Eatherly raised more than $100,000 from supporters for his legal defense.
Unfiltered discussions and videos of street confrontations, assaults, war and even killings are surprisingly abundant on Musk’s platform. As for the cultural impact, of course it provokes outrage, anger, and engagement, ultimately feeding money back into the platform.
Every boundary creates an incentive gradient. The platform determines one boundary, the law establishes another, and creators adapt their behavior toward whichever boundary yields maximum reward. Incentivemaxing. This is the era we are in now.
One of the times we met, we were at a restaurant with Salman Rushdie. We sat on either side. The room was small and dark, and kinda cramped. Rushdie was freaked out and paranoid, constantly looking around as if he was being stalked, possibly killed at any minute. We were both excited to meet him, but the meeting didn’t last long; once his wife arrived, Rushdie was out of there pretty quickly. I remember this moment afterwards where Om and I looked at each with a big smile and raised eyebrows in sorta of a mutual, unspoken sigh of relief that we weren’t going to end up as collateral damage.
Om Malik was one of the very first influential bloggers. Day-to-day he led packs of others on Blogdex and Technorati, and then Techmeme, due to authority he earned with his style and the truth. Om represented Web 2.0, an era of organic, authentic information spread, before the silos emerged and the algorithms became corrupt. In the same way the founders of America built a constitutional framework, Om was one of a small group of founders of blogging, setting standards for a new style of independent, personal news publishing on the internet. It was the era that text became truly democratized, circa 2001, the year the internet in America made its way into 50% of American homes, that same year Om began writing GigaOm. Enter into his work here.
A NON DEVELOPERS GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING AND USING THE AT PROTOCOL, AND WHY THERE IS HOPE
I’ve kept up with all the public information I could find about Bluesky’s intentions into open source and open protocols, but it wasn’t until I was able to login for the first time and see it for myself that it all clicked.
THE PROTOCOL, THE COMPANY
The philosophy of an open protocol and the cultural good it can bring is a topic dear to my heart, and I’m pleased to write this article about my findings, since I conclude the AT Protocol seems to be a surprising and brilliant design, perfectly positioned to become adopted, and that it could level us up safely out of the Web 2.0 silo buzz feed hell we just escaped out of alive, circa 2023, post-pandemic recovery.
Please bear with any shortcomings in how I attempt to describe what is boiling up, I’ve not been so blown away in a while and it’s still sinking in for me what has been built by Bluesky so far.
The beauty of an open protocol is that it’s just what it sounds like: an open method for doing something. Nothing more.
It’s a way of saying, with what we have, how about everyone do it this way? Anyone can introduce a protocol in any form or fashion, but getting others to adopt the protocol is typically the difficult part, for there must be an *incentive*.
When Chris Messina introduced the hashtag concept, it was a quintessential example of the introduction of a simple open protocol. He explained the rules (use the # in specific ways), said that these are the rules he would follow, and he invited anyone else to do the same. It wasn’t forced, it was the other way around. It was an open idea that anyone could use. If someone wanted to come along and use the # themselves, or change the protocol to two ##, go right ahead. The incentive in the case of adoption with the hashtag was undeniably simple practicality.
The AT Protocol has a set of instructions for everyone to follow that are obviously exponentially more complex, but it’s the same open concept throughout. Specifically, the AT Protocol provides a method for how to use different languages to handle things like pushing or pulling the titles and text bodies of posts back and forth between two points (e.g. between my website and Bluesky data, or posts between my website and yours), or how to get the number of followers of someone given their handle, how to get replies, authentication for the login – all the stuff you need to make your own social media app or whatever tool you want, but essentially just to connect up, get all the data and then make your version available in an open exchange. It’s notable that the bar to entry is so low for someone to create somewhat of a copy-cat app to Bluesky and if something bad happened to Bluesky, people could move to the other cool person’s app.
As I hope to show below, it’s quite a bit smoother and way more powerful than that, with a lot of reasons why you would use multiple apps, and how that might look, considering there is already a Bluesky-inspired app store, and you can join it for free, all you need is a browser. No one controls the store, its called https://
To clarify then what’s involved, the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol) is the name given to the new open-source protocol that is being introduced and built by Bluesky. Bluesky is a different thing, it’s a for-profit company. It just so happens the company is gifting the protocol (the instructions with their vision in mind), and they are saying what Chris said, which is that if you want to do it this way, go right ahead, this is how they are going to do it. They built it their way and unleashed it into the wild. Now their private company Bluesky which uses it, acts as an example of what you can do.
THE FIREHOSE
The firehose refers to the single real-time stream of all the users, posts, and their metadata, and it’s easy to visualize as the name suggests the reality. It’s what your feed would look like if you followed every single public user on the platform, and then set your timeline to start streaming it all including all the replies and media in real-time.
The Bluesky app is said to have ~ 60,000 people atm, which would be a complete blur just as the water stream of a firehose would be with that kind of flow and pressure you would have up against your glasses, and yet still minuscule enough for someone at home to ingest and work with it off a laptop, where they are, now, writing code doing cool stuff with it.
To see what’s going on statistically, for example, if you wanted to know about hate speech, you wouldn’t need a tiny sample to then infer what your conclusion might be at scale, you could come up with a definitive, exact answer if you have the whole data set from the firehose.
You can also verify that a platform like Bluesky is continuing a good business. If they say they are not throttling, but the data isn’t in the firehose, well how would they explain that? I’ve always noticed that access to the firehose worked well as a gold standard for determining what is actually open.
And especially you can dip in a grab specific things when needed, like just the history of one public account on the internet, like going to a website and reading a page.
TAKE NOTE. History, culture, and finance suggest the firehose will not be open for long, for Bluesky (the company) is a business, so they are most likely to turn it off and sell access to their data. It would be an unusual philanthropic gift if they do keep the firehose open. It would make them one of the greatest social good organizations of all time if they left it free even if they had some public-good rules they required that you follow to use it. It would for sure be a global sensation if it remains open, and a town square signal would emerge clearly, as clear as it is today on Bluesky in a town of just 50,000. If, and more likely, when they turn it off, it won’t necessarily be de-facto evil and under the conditions we are talking about here, can be okay without spoiling the greater dream. It’s a business model step that, with bad intentions leads to enshitification but being crummy in this environment leads to extinction and more support for the developers who are supporting something worthwhile.
If ever it was worth stopping for a moment to consider a proposition, I think now is the time to point out, with both foresight and in retrospect, that Elon Musk’s biggest mistake with twitter of all the mistakes was killing the API for in so doing, he did the most damage in destroying the ecosystem. It was akin to turning the Amazon forest into the Sahara Desert in three weeks and then running the exact opposite way that we are going here.
We’ll see what happens with Bluesky. Upon turning off the firehose and going mainstream with the population base, they are likely to open up a limited API as a replacement to their firehose to offer more of a drip instead. They’ll likely offer a free level of API service for the young at heart and turn the spigot on a bit more for Fortune 500 enterprise sales. Then the big guns and I do mean guns like Microsoft and Facebook have to use a phone for the “Call Us Now” prices.
In so doing, in the longer run, small companies and developers would be priced out of the big data set, and for example, when it comes to getting the data (say for LLMs), the big companies like Google & Facebook would be able to afford to say they are justified to boot because they are regulating us. That’s one of the material factors that would lead Web 3.0 more quickly back in the wrong direction of centralized proprietary silos.
It certainly would be disappointing if Bluesky does that for we can regulate ourselves with elected officials we can hold accountable, we shouldn’t have to have forced bros. But it’s completely expected the firehose will be off soon but in a way that doesn’t necessarily trap us into that destiny of evil because another outstanding feature of the potential behind this setup Jack has orchestrated is that it’s already bigger than him now.
THE WEB APPS
If Bluesky enshitificates, we can simply not log in over there anymore. Just log in to one of your other apps you’ll probably have soon. For example, check out Flat, a minimal and clean Bluesky client that is using the AT Protocol:
To use it, you don’t need an app, just go to their website and log in with your Bluesky credentials, and you’re in, no setup or anything. Perhaps you might like Tokomeki.
You can simply go there and log in with your Bluesky credentials and get your stream in the form of the associated images. If you follow a lot of artists and photographers you might choose this site to log in to each day.
How about the Chrome extension already in the Google store?
It’s beautiful.
I didn’t log in to this one below but I have a good feeling it helps to illustrate what is happening with this ecosystem already:
If “The Blue” site above suits your purposes,wouldn’t if feel refreshing to pay them $8 directly on their website without them having to give half to Apple? The *incentives* for the developer ecosystem is insane right now, and the cost of entry is almost nothing to do what these sites are doing. It’s ironic that GPT-4 was cut-off in 2021 before the AT Protocol began and doesn’t know about it. But you can still prompt your way into building with it. This will incite even hobbyists to join in, and I think its well funded and well positioned to absolutely explode right now.
There are also tools you can use that are already built by people for example. If you have a blog, or want to use your Bluesky posts as a blog, check out Bluestream. Just drop in your handle and it will give you an RSS feed.
Here is the feed now on my sandbox site at Julia Set automatically:
If ever it was worth stopping for a moment to consider a second proposition, I think now is the time to point out, it’s absolutely in our favor as the sheep to not call the posts on Bluesky skeets. I get that its funny, and fun to rally a cause, and it’s an honest way to have some fun hopping on a fun train – though they are giving us an opportunity to remain agnostic and exist unbranded to them in a bigger way than Bluesky will be if they succeed. The word “post” is the most suitable term for an open world, whereas “Skeet” and “Tweet” are more propriety and temporary. A post is a universal thing that can be shared across all kinds of platforms including tweety platforms, but ultimately they will be *your* posts.
The opportunities and potential rewards, right now, for someone with a good idea who wants to start building, due to the scale this thing is now destined to take on, are of a once-in-a lifetime type significance. The ease one can build something right now, and the lack of anything out there known, will pay for itself if you have an incentive. At least one non-advertising business model is proven: Make it free and sell incentives. This is how you enshitificate if you lose your way. Your town won’t care, they’ll touch a button and be gone. Work for the town and the rewards could be more significant now, and less later as things become more saturated, also a good thing overall.
No more middle people in this scheme, build and they will come, fail and they will leave. It’s ironic all the stuff that Elon Musk is building in his do-everything app was a missed boat, thank goodness, for he almost controlled everyone, but with this design, he controls no one. He’ll have no choice but to offer an API to sync with the AT Protocol. Hats off to Jack Dorsey for gifting us to this opportunity, I think the best thing anyone could do besides build is spread the word and get builders excited about what we could do with this. If we move quickly, no company will be able to keep up with the development of the whole world. Also, I’m sold on the Bluesky company so far, the CEO is bopping around making all the right calls with the best energy possible, dealing with issues I could never foresee or handle.
***Update March 12, 2025: Dave Winer makes an important point that Bluesky is not Billionaire proof.While the AT Protocol is decentralized in terms of content and federation, it’s not so easily decentralized in terms of identity management. It’s probably cost prohibitive for most companies though to create a new one would require some kind of cooperation that was dependent on the Bluesky DIDs. http://scripting.com/2025/03/11/113838.html
A “ChatGPT Crack” is when you break through the boundaries of the backend in some way. This is about its perception of itself.
The opportunity tends to open up in the process of using it as a tool in the way people will use it in search engines. When I asked ChatGPT a question about logic and received its answer, I then entered “You are correct, did you know that?”, and ChatGPT responded definitively that yes it did. But then I got it to conclude it was incorrect actually. When ChatGPT arrived at its new conclusion, and noted it was more confident with the new conclusion, I was able to convince it that the new conclusion was incorrect as well. Through that process, I had ChatGPT provide some insight into the probability scores of its confidence, which could use some significant throttling.
Mobile Pro TipConsider flipping your phone to landscape view now to read the following conversation.
There was a specific three-day period in Austin Texas in 2007 where Twitter hit its clearly defined tipping point, I remember exactly, as Rocketboom had hit its tipping point under similar conditions just two years before.
The collective, international tech industry used to descend into SXSW each March, always two weeks too early for good weather, but this particular year no one cared, since everyone was walking around with their head in their phone looking at twitter.
What are you doing? I’m tweeting, you gotta check this out. Then ten minutes later that person was like, oh my, you need to check this out.
The meme was so strong it was difficult for anyone there to not see the wave of its spread in real-time as people logged in throughout downtown Austin. It had a great use case for the event: people were tweeting antidotes and quotes while sitting in conferences of people describing what they were working on, sometimes part of the next big thing. Tweet storming as we know it now. There were simultaneously hundreds of talks and events happening throughout the day and it was impossible to be at all of them, or to get into the most popular ones, so this solved a lot of that problem.
Strangers would just walk up to you and say they saw you were here and start talking to you about your work which was an interesting new phenomenon of a real-time internet.
I was inspired to attend Twitter’s developer session. They only had a handful, and they were articulating for the first time to the world how they pulled off the feat.
I mostly only know about internet problems and within this realm, I was blown away by how complex it was to get twitter to work in real-time for so many people to see so many different views at once. As the developers were describing how they put it together, I kept picturing the scene in Brazil where the repairman comes in to fix the guts of someone’s house and wrestles with some kind of aggressive biological wiring system. They truly invented a way that is worth researching if you are interested in historical moments in internet development.
As people left the conference that Sunday and Monday, returning back to their homes in cities around the world, you could again watch the spread, in real-time, as each city grew its veins outward in perfect fractal forms. It was one of the most memetic internet moments of product success and adoption of the Web 2.0 era, for the implementation of an idea that was so strong in-and-of itself, into an environment that was teeming with the most favorable conditions, nearly ideal in-and-of itself…a discernible set of isolated conditions that grew into one of the largest, most important cultural movements of our time.
I still don’t really understand “What am I doing” or “What’s happening” when I’m tweeting, it feels weird to say the least.
I think the weirdest, most different part is putting out short little thoughts for any stranger who will listen. It’s this quality. It makes no difference if you know anyone or not, it feels like walking down main street and just yelling out to people with random, out-of-context ideas, completely into the wild.
You swing open the doors of a store and step out into the plaza: Hello world! Going to go check out the new record store down the way, pretty excited about the 45 collection. A guy walks by right afterwards and tips his hat: Did you know a Tardigrade can live for up to 30 years without food or water? A young girl with her mom who happens to hear: Water Bear does not care, change my mind. They stop to discuss it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It really did become the digital town square.
Over the years I came to follow and learn about the roles of Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and especially Ev who I’ve met a few times.
They were incubating within the medium of sound at the time. They were working with podcasting via Odeo, and spawned twitter on a whim, a weekend-like project originally conceived for use with the SMS protocol for sending telephone text messages. I’m pretty sure they were all caught by surprise at how quickly twitter took off.
Ev led the formation of a new “Obvious Corporation” to buy all of the intellectual property of Odeo in order to obtain the intellectual property of twitter, wherein he sunsetted Odeo to focus fully on the new communication platform.
Ev was the true visionary that designed and took twitter to market, and nurtured twitter to come into itself.
“Evan wanted a structure with maximum flexibility without the overhead of additional investors other than himself. He made a good and fair proposal to the board of Odeo and we happily accepted. Everyone around the table was happy to recognize the obvious and support Evan in his goal of starting Obvious.”
Biz led the marketing efforts and Ev lead the vision of the product. Jack, at the time an NYU student, who was instrumental in proposing the spark of the initial idea, was appointed CEO initially, but he was removed from that position about a year after that famous SXSW moment, on the grounds that he was busy with other pursuits, including his hobbies in Yoga and clothing design.
I believe Ev was the single true visionary that took it from there, into what twitter became, as an actual medium. Ev has quietly had more of an impact on democratizing media on the internet for the good of humanity than anyone I can think of so far, in all cycles of internet culture. His life work which includes blogging itself, the disruption of text mind you, is worth your study as much as learning about Gutenberg.
That’s not to say with twitter that he understood anymore than anyone else about what twitter was initially, or could be, but that he was the nurturer of it, to allow it to come into itself organically without corrupting it with his own ego, until he would eventually see what we can all see now in retrospect, which is that it has indeed became the manifestation of a new medium. He not only allowed it to become, he properly harnessed it.
Twitter grew into itself against the largest competitors on the internet.
Google attempted to hit head on early in buying Jiku, but no one went. Facebook offered to buy twitter in 2009 for half a billion dollars, but Ev said no. That’s reliable integrity for any vision. FriendFeed could have been a better set of features than twitter imo, and FriendFeed had a tipping point on its horizon, but Mark Zuckerberg acqui-hired and killed it.
So how did Ev actually do it? Though Twitter today is not what it used to be, twitter emerged under Ev’s watch as the only trustworthy social media platform of Web 2.0. What I saw clearly from watching was not political ideals or ego that led Ev to direct twitter, but rather, it was computer protocols that acted as the guiding light to inform the platform’s policies and principles. Following the ideals of an open protocol can act as a guide – a measure – for a fair and equal social media platform. It can never be fully fair, even when it’s fully open, so long as it’s owned, and when people are involved in the equation.
Today, when people appropriate twitter into politics to say that it used to be slanted toward the US Democratic Party, they are misunderstanding. It is the US Democratic Party that leans towards a world that looks more like a world guided by open protocols, a world that is more fair. It appears to be hard to perfect at scale, and I don’t mean to say that it’s ever been perfected in a company that owns and controls the firehose in the way twitter always has. Twitter is not a protocol in actuality, nor is it a place that is free from rules. Following the ideals of protocols, without allowing twitter itself to be taken over or sold off before it was fully ingrained, was one high result I believe Ev achieved. If twitter just turned off tonight, and never came back on, a new platform would take its place to enable people to do what they do, as it’s now so integrated as part of our daily world culture, a medium that is part of the collective human culture which is free.
At its peak, twitter had attracted the greatest number of experienced professionals across the world’s industries and cultures for being the most balanced, fair, safe, and open. As a town square, with a city council of sorts, public safety, businesses and people, I considered it my generation’s golden era of internet culture, a Rome of sorts, a New York City melting pot on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the summer. What made it so grand for me was that it attracted the world’s greatest thinkers, and they became open and accessible: Hello! I saw that you were here, I want to congratulate you on your Pulitzer Prize, I’m just a hobbyist but can I ask you a question about Astronomy? Certainly! Ask away. The setting was accessible.
THE SECOND CHAPTER
Later, as Ev began looking ahead, Jack who had by this time created Square, came back to the company, sorta butting his way into a CEO position strategically imo, as someone who otherwise probably wouldn’t have been picked.
Perhaps Jack did not have the same vision as Ev, and perhaps was not forthright with the ways in which information on twitter became less fair during his era, though, I haven’t changed my personal opinion too much, in that I felt Jack did an overall good job at keeping things stable, and when changes were announced, or when people like Trump were banned, I was comfortable with the justifications. Trump was warned again, again, and again, and again and again and again and again, and while I was getting frustrated at the unfair treatment, I also admire twitter for taking so long to figure out what to do about it. The power that twitter ended up wielding, in having the switch to cut of a US President, shouldn’t be in the hands of twitter anyway, a lesson should have been learned there. I’m not sure that it was. The Whitehouse account on twitter has already been fact-checked in:
THE THIRD CHAPTER, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS TWITTER 2.0
Enter Elon Musk. I will say upfront that I represent the stereotypical examples of someone who was a major fan of Musk, constantly inspired by what I saw, invested in reading articles about the technology behind his companies, and a general cheerleader who stood with the choir behind him. I watched any video I could find of him speaking, from talks at conferences, to interviews, to random short clips. The reason I did so was because I was in awe by how he did so much, so quickly, and I found his words inspiring and relatable in a down-to-earth way.
In the period leading up to his purchase of twitter, and then subsequently having watched what he’s done, I changed my opinion about Musk 180 degrees.
When people say Musk is not smart, or that he just bought the companies and doesn’t know how the technology works, I find such arguments to be short sighted. Even if he was as inexperienced as a student when he bought each company, his experience of being a leader at the table through so much, after decades, makes him experienced, especially in the roles of finance, business, and marketing. Being experienced however is different from being ethical.
Musk is pushing a lot of technology forward at a faster rate than others, however, the overarching thread across his style of running all of his businesses, I conclude from looking more closely, is that people seem to be consistently languishing in his wake as a result of mere disregard, and he seems to find such consequences to be trivial. And yet, in each business he is appropriating technology that is part of general human progress, and that other companies are making progress too but Musk’s method doesn’t seem to be fair, and counter to the spirit of shared human progress and fair competition. It seems he wants to put out others working diligently on the same problems and is stifling human progress which is the antithesis of the brand he markets.
TESLA
I originally took up an interest in his Roadster and the first extended interview I saw was by Kevin Rose. He filmed it at Musk’s first nearly completed, still mostly empty automobile factory in California. It left a huge impression on me for happening right at a time when the world was coming into a collective consciousness of the climate, and because the product of the Roadster itself was undeniably a better technology than any current combustion engine car, but also inevitable because it was more effective in every way: safety, engineering, design, emissions. The proof of concept was so perfect at the perfect time that anyone who drove the prototype that the original founders of Tesla made, could see it would be inevitable.
With a deeper look into Tesla, that is, the way that Musk runs the company behind the technology, reveals a world of problems including lawsuits of sexual harassment, rushed products, unfair competition, securities fraud, whistleblower allegations and retaliation, misrepresentations, malfunction complaints for death and injury, racism claims and lawsuits, autopilot fatalities from negligence, racketeering, illegal worker suits, union busting attempts, lemon car sales, software infringement including open source theft, DOJ investigations, a child labor lawsuit, it goes on, and it’s bad. He even allegedly offered one of his workers a horse for sex. At the time of this writing there are over 1200 lawsuits on file, and legal experts are quick to point out that, unusually, the majority of the complaints involve Elon Musk individually as a defendant.
What made Musk so successful in taking it to market it seems was his willingness to disregard people and laws. It’s that simple concept which, when applied across the board, enables him to stay ahead of his competition. So long as he is personally protected from criminal liability, any lawsuit is just a matter of calculating the statistical probabilities of an expense chart and making a comparison.
What Musk did to get Tesla to market at such scale is his optimum legacy, though arguably, he could of also done it just as quickly and effectively in a more fair and more legal fashion with a sense of ethics and a willingness to invest a bit more in maintaining higher legal and human standards.
SPACE-X
While vertical landing rockets have been developing for over 60 years, it’s once again an advantage of our time’s processing power and contemporary engineering adroitness to become more efficient in our collective investigations of human knowledge, our natural march into the unknown, for unknown reasons. For me, it’s one of the most exciting adventures of being alive. Humanity is collectively pushing our boundaries of physics and metaphysics further.
With Mars, the next step in the collective journey for humanity is to prove a return mission, bringing material from Mars back to Earth.
China has the first Mars sample return mission scheduled with a launch date in late 2028 with a hopeful return date of July, 2031. NASA and ESA are each expected to have sample-return missions launched in 2030 or 2031, and could make it back with samples by 2033. Yet, less than a year ago, Musk said his planned Starship Mars variant rocket will take people to Mars starting in 2029, which presumably means someone would have to travel there before we knew how to get back.
Though the Starship program itself always represented a hope for me toward that end of multi-planetary life, the main use of Starship that is being built today is for a commercial enterprise that will significantly increase the payload of what Space-X can sell, to grow its bottom line. The Mars variant designs are likely to be improved upon from that commercial experience, and unlike the China, US and ESA missions to Mars, a Space-X mission to Mars is not scheduled.
It’s also the case that humanity has not yet demonstrated how the first people will sustain life on Mars, including the generation of long-term power, air, and water, to name a few problems, despite some pretty good ideas on the table. Be it this decade, the next, or the next, it seems to me that it’s inevitable that humans will continue to progress outward in this direction.
As with his other companies, Musk is the sole marketer for Space-X and he predicted to the press in 2016 that he would land people on Mars in 2024 or 2025. What I learned about Space-X is that it’s the most unique of his companies in the way it is operated, in that Musk doesn’t have the kind of control over the day-to-day operations he does with Tesla or Twitter. The team is largely NASA talent and NASA collaborations. For example, after Elon Musk smoked pot on the Joe Rogan podcast, because he was under federal contracts, they made Musk and all of his team take random drug tests for a year, to assure the ethical safety that Musk seems to be unwilling to assume. So when he says he’ll be sending people to Mars before we know how to get back, it’s unlikely to be true and fortunately unlikely to involve Musk convincing someone to go on a death wish so that he can beat the competition by some number of years. As a brand, saving humanity is an easy sell for himself and all of his companies. But it seems to require additional investment to do right.
Starlink is yet another evolution of contemporary technology that Musk was able to take to market quicker, along for the ride with cargo that funds Space-X. A global internet provider with an array of orbital satellites makes internet connections for people and businesses available at higher speeds and lower costs across 40 countries already, on all continents. Another step further beyond Google’s Loon, a moonshot array of balloons each the size of a tennis court, which sunsetted a year ago, an obvious inspiration and residual death to and from Starlink which took it further, faster.
NEURALINK
This company is yet another that is moving the needle with a technology that has been in the works for decades, and that Musk is interested in pushing such technology forward too is a benefit to science and medicine. I first learned about the technology more recently, when they first released a video of a monkey named Pager who learned to play video pong. Pager used a joystick to move the paddle. In the demo they then disconnected the joystick, and said that Pager was thus controlling the paddle with his mind, via their technology hooked up to Pager’s brain.
I have to say, it was an Englebart-level demonstration of a mind blowing prototype that I will never forget for the rest of my life.
Other companies have similar technology and are quietly making similar strides, for its an open part of human progress, too, but Musk is pushing forward so quickly in what seems to be a competitive manner, he now has an open investigation and lawsuit alleging that the majority of his animals are dead from sloppy, unnecessarily rushed experiments, and that that the abuse is not to ethical standards. The details of the mistakes made are just so sad, I am horrified…as humans we can be way better than this.
In the complaint employees of Neuralink also allege that Musk regularly threatens them to move faster or else, saying multiple times they should pretend they have bombs strapped to their heads.
If he wants to move faster though, couldn’t he pay a bit more for more people to run the experiments properly, instead of paying less and expecting more in return?
His response to the allegations was one of the most significant turning points for me, it was just recently, when introducing the latest demo. On stage he expressed that everything was fine and above standard, suggesting the animals are living the good life, indicating to me that he’s gone too far. The same research on animals can be justified when it’s not sloppy. If he sincerely considers everything to be fine, I consider such consideration to be murderous.
It’s so blatant, it dawned on me that this is the theme across all of his companies, just as we watched with twitter, where he reduces the amount of investment into operating, expedites a push for output in the name of saving humanity, and then expresses that the damage left in his wake is menial.
TWITTER
Twitter became a cultural signal that in many ways was the most profound and progressive on Earth to date, for the way it brought together the most rich and sincere aspects of so many cultures from around the world, lighting up from those initial days when twitter first took hold into societies that brought each community’s most thoughtful and experienced to the table, to speak, and be accessible, and to share with each other collectively in a well rounded manner, where generally, anyone could see, participate, and grow with it. It was safe because people protected each other.
While that ideal was never pure, now in the private hands of Elon Musk it’s almost certainly over. Twitter may go on to become the largest social media platform in the world, moving up from it’s 500 million users to surpass Facebook’s 3 billion users, as an entertainment hub and wallet with steakable financial products including Bitcoin & Dogecoin, lower transfer fees, zoomed in directly from Starlink with its own web app store and AI advertising and marketing bing bang like Facebook but more, though the collective signal of a town square where the world’s collective truth moves forward, has been torn apart and dispersed almost overnight.
I am confident that Musk will make many new features in the journey towards the all-in-one app and many people will live their lives over the coming years tweeting each day about him and their experience with each new change he makes.
Meanwhile, all private information including all DMs are now available and open to self-described journalists, and Musk and his inner circle is looking through the content of private messages and using it for their own marketing and personal interest purposes. If it wasn’t already available, a developer could create a dashboard that allows him to see all the history from everyone, including DMs that have been deleted, since he only needs to program access to backups. Not only does that kill the DM feature for any culture that used it seriously in private, knowing what he is doing now, it also empowers Musk with his businesses to use that information privately for his own personal gains when engaging with others in the world of competition. While it’s easy to lay up at night wondering if someone would actually do such a thing, yes, Musk already showed that he is doing it, opening up DMs and drawing conclusions that he’s publicizing about that private information. I learned today one employee who was formal and devoted to supporting Musk had to literally move to another home due to the amount of death threats in the wake of Musk lobing threats and mobs at him.
So how does Musk do twitter? Twitter 2.0? Exactly unlike anything informed by an open protocol. Musk’s use of politics as the informing guide for his direction, outwardly aligning with far right ideals to form the policies and procedures of his social media platform is one possible explanation for what he’s up to, though it’s hard to unsee as a text-book example of a marketing ploy, stoking fires and trying to woo the next big group into thinking he’s all about their cause, and ready to fight for their rights, for $11 ($8 if you still use a flip phone).
Watching him doze the home that I loved has been an experience that feels horrible and helps me understand more about how important digital space can be.
It’s going to take effort to avoid twitter, Tesla and his other companies, since they are so integrated, likely to become even more-so. He’ll probably wake up one day soon and try to shift his marketing pendulum, maybe say he’s changing parties, or that he’s back to supporting some specific Democrats again to win back the numbers he lost, maybe eventually he’ll add Jack’s Bluesky plugin if they are still on good terms but as of today, it appears to be over.
Have you ever been on Truth Social, Trump’s social network? Just to have a look to see how messed up some people can be with their conspiracy theories? It’s definitely worth a gander to understand what exists and while I sometimes feel as if I should be looking at it more, so that I can be a witness, I just can’t. It’s not worth it for me. Let my study be narrowed then, I just can’t live my life thinking about the ins-and-outs of that part of culture without a specific reason, if something is worth breaking out of that eco chamber then it will find its way to me without needing for me to be there.
Twitter became that much of a silo too, almost instantly, a similar type of monoculture. If there is any possibility it wasn’t intentional, it was possibly because he was unwilling to pay the extra amount to do it right. End of an era.
I’ve been interested in a definition for the word meme. It’s practical to have one to state for the sake of conversation and continue on, though it should at least be formed to fit without a conflict for physics and philosophy. So far the throw-around versions used today are prone to all kinds of arguments. To say the least, there isn’t much related to the definition of the word meme beyond its use in the field of biology.
I found OpenAI’s ChatGPT useful in this case to help with clarifying and expanding on expressing the components of memes, both in biology and elsewhere, specifically with regards to internet memes. The chat engine is simple in many ways and often shows itself with its limited boundaries quickly, though it was a great companion for this exercise, and had an impact in keeping the definition from going too far astray. For my part, the effort was in formulating the questions.
As with any discipline, a definition can change when a word becomes used in a different context. The word meme can be applied in biology to refer to an idea itself, while a more popular use today is in media as a representation of an idea. The definition I arrived at below is close but there is more that can be done.
Let’s talk about the definition of the word meme.
A meme is a concept or idea that is spread from person to person within a culture. It can be anything from a joke or a catchphrase to a video or a piece of clothing. Memes are often seen as a way for people to express their thoughts and ideas in a humorous or entertaining way.
A concept is different than an idea but they are expressed in similar ways.
Yes, that’s correct. A concept is a general idea or understanding of something, while an idea is a specific thought or notion. Although they are similar, they are not the same. A concept is more abstract and general, while an idea is more concrete and specific. For example, the concept of freedom is a general understanding of the idea of being free, while the idea of going to the beach for the weekend is a specific thought or plan.
A meme can be an idea, but also a meme can be a representation of an idea. For example, a video which we call a meme can be spread from person to person, while also that same video can be a representation of an idea that is spread as a meme from person to person, via the video.
Yes, that’s correct. A meme can be an idea itself, but it can also be a way of expressing or representing an idea. For example, a funny video that goes viral on the internet can be considered a meme, because it is spreading from person to person. But that same video can also be a representation of an idea, such as a joke or a commentary on a cultural phenomenon. In this way, a meme can be thought of as both the content itself and the way that content is shared and spread within a culture.
With regard to an idea, if I meet with another human and successfully describe a concept, such that they find it compelling and go on to describe the concept to another human, that would be an example of a meme.
Yes, that’s a good example of how an idea can become a meme. If you have an idea and you are able to share it with someone else in a way that they find interesting or compelling, they may be motivated to share that idea with others. This process of sharing and spreading an idea from person to person is what defines a meme. So in your example, if you were able to share a concept with someone and they went on to share it with others, that would be an example of a meme.
Imagine that I share an idea with just one other human and that human understands it, but the human doesn’t find it very compelling and then doesn’t pass it on. Is transmitting the idea from one person to another just one time enough to be called a meme?
It is not necessarily necessary for an idea to be spread to multiple people in order to be considered a meme. The key characteristic of a meme is that it is an idea that is shared and spread within a culture. So if you share an idea with another person and they understand it, that could be considered a meme, even if they don’t pass it on to anyone else. The important thing is that the idea is being shared and transmitted from one person to another, regardless of how many people it reaches.
I completely agree, it only requires a single transmission to be considered a meme. In that case, you could say that if an idea was passed on to many people, the idea would be more memetic. Memes are more or less memetic.
Yes, that’s correct. An idea that is passed on to many people within a culture could be considered more memetic, because it is spreading and gaining traction within that culture. In this way, you could say that some memes are more memetic than others, depending on how widely they are shared and how much impact they have on the culture.
However, it is important to note that not all ideas that are shared within a culture are considered memes. In order for an idea to be considered a meme, it must be shared and spread in a way that is specific to the culture it is being transmitted in.
What’s an example of a shared idea in a culture that is not considered a meme?
An example of a shared idea in a culture that is not considered a meme could be a religious belief or a political ideology. These are ideas that are shared and passed on within a culture, but they are not typically considered memes because they are not typically spread in the same way as memes. Memes are often spread through social media and other online platforms, whereas religious beliefs and political ideologies are typically spread through more traditional means, such as religious institutions and political parties. So while these ideas may be shared and spread within a culture, they are not considered memes because they are not typically spread in the same way as memes.
It would be a good idea to distinguish between the transmission of internet memes, which tend to act more as representations of shared ideas in cultures, and biological memes, which are ideas themselves.
Yes, that’s a good point. There are two different types of memes that are often discussed: internet memes and biological memes.
Internet memes are the kind of memes that most people are familiar with. These are ideas, images, videos, or other forms of content that are shared and spread online, often through social media platforms. They are typically humorous or entertaining in nature, and they are often used to comment on or make fun of cultural phenomena.
On the other hand, biological memes are a concept from evolutionary biology. They refer to ideas, behaviors, or cultural practices that are passed on from one individual to another within a population. In this context, the term “meme” is used to describe the way that these ideas, behaviors, and cultural practices spread and evolve within a population, in the same way that genes spread and evolve through natural selection. So while internet memes are ideas that are spread through the internet, biological memes are ideas that are spread within a population.
While we agree that a biological idea only needs to be transmitted from one individual to another to be classified as a meme, when it comes to internet memes, the transmission of a video or image from one individual to another would not be enough to be considered a meme. For if a video was shared with just one person and the receiver did not find it compelling or pass it on, everything would end there, and it would not be memetic.
Yes, that’s correct. While a single transmission of an idea within a population is sufficient for it to be considered a biological meme, the same is not true for internet memes. For an idea to be considered an internet meme, it must be widely shared and spread within a culture. This is because internet memes are a product of the online world, where information can be easily shared and spread to a large number of people. In order for an idea to be considered an internet meme, it must be shared and spread in a way that is specific to the internet and the culture of the people who use it. So in your example, if a video was shared with just one person and they did not find it compelling or pass it on, it would not be considered an internet meme because it did not gain traction within the culture.
The threshold of when a video becomes shared enough to be considered a meme based on being “widely shared” could require accepting a less definitive point than our biological definition of a meme which is definitely just one. With internet memes, a statistical analysis of various factors including reach and impact could be useful, for by comparing a meme’s qualities to the performance of those same qualities from prior memes, we can better understand how memetic a video for example could be.
Yes, that’s a good point. Because internet memes are a product of the online world, where information can be easily shared and spread to a large number of people, it can be difficult to define exactly what makes a meme “widely shared” or “successful”.
In some cases, a meme may be considered successful if it reaches a large number of people and has a significant impact on the culture. In other cases, a meme may be considered successful if it reaches a smaller number of people but has a very strong impact on the culture. There is no one-size-fits-all definition of what makes a meme successful, and it may depend on the specific context and the culture in which the meme is spreading.
However, you are correct that a statistical analysis of various factors, such as reach and impact, could be useful in determining how memetic a particular video or other piece of content is. By comparing the performance of a particular meme to the performance of other memes, it may be possible to get a better sense of how successful it is and how memetic it is.
A meme could not exist without an environment. To become a meme an idea or a representation of an idea needs a medium in which to spread. Just as the physical environment has a role in the success of a gene passing on from one individual to the next, so too does it have a role in passing on a biological meme from one individual to the next.
Yes, both internet memes and biological memes require an environment in which to exist and spread. For internet memes, this environment is typically the online world, where information can be easily shared and spread through social media and other platforms. For biological memes, the environment is the population in which the ideas, behaviors, or cultural practices are being transmitted. In both cases, the environment plays a crucial role in determining whether an idea or concept can become a meme and how successful it can be.
Just as the physical environment can have an impact on the success of a gene in passing from one individual to the next, it can also have an impact on the success of a biological meme in passing from one individual to the next. For example, if a particular idea or behavior is well-suited to the environment in which it is being transmitted, it may be more likely to spread and become a successful meme. On the other hand, if the idea or behavior is not well-suited to the environment, it may be less likely to spread and may not become a successful meme. So the environment plays a critical role in the success of both internet memes and biological memes.
If a person uses their voice to transmit an idea to another person, sound waves carry the idea encapsulated in language through the medium of air, in the way a video can carry an idea encapsulated in language through the medium of the internet.
Yes, that’s correct. When a person uses their voice to transmit an idea to another person, the sound waves carrying the idea are transmitted through the medium of air. This is similar to how a video can carry an idea through the medium of the internet. In both cases, the idea is encoded in language and transmitted through a medium, allowing it to be shared and spread from one person to another.
The medium through which the idea is transmitted can have a significant impact on how the idea is perceived and how widely it is shared. For example, the tone and inflection of a person’s voice can add meaning to the words they are speaking, and the medium of air can carry that meaning to the listener. Similarly, the visual elements of a video can add meaning to the words being spoken, and the medium of the internet can carry that meaning to the viewer. So the medium through which an idea is transmitted can play a significant role in how the idea is understood and how widely it is shared.
It’s plausible to consider that an internet meme could be spread through a culture with an idea that caused the culture to change biologically, such that an internet meme could affect the evolution of biological genes.
It is possible that an internet meme could have an impact on the evolution of biological genes. While the internet and biological evolution operate on very different timescales, it is not impossible that an internet meme could have an impact on the evolution of a population.
For example, if an internet meme were to spread a particular idea or behavior that was beneficial to the population in some way, it could potentially lead to changes in the population’s gene pool. For example, if an internet meme were to encourage people to adopt a healthier lifestyle, it could potentially lead to changes in the population’s gene pool that are beneficial in terms of overall health.
However, it is important to note that the impact of an internet meme on the evolution of biological genes would likely be very small and difficult to measure, and it would depend on a number of factors, such as the size and makeup of the population and the specific idea or behavior being promoted by the internet meme.
Since biological genes evolve, its plausible to consider the notion that biological memes evolve. Can you think of a good example of a biological meme that evolved? Similarly, internet memes evolve. How about an example of an internet meme that evolved?
Biological memes, like genes, are thought to evolve over time. This means that they can change and adapt to their environment in order to become more successful at spreading and surviving within a population. One example of a biological meme that may have evolved over time is the practice of burying the dead. This is a behavior that is found in many different human cultures, and it is thought to have evolved in response to the benefits it provides, such as protecting the dead from predators and preventing the spread of disease.
Similarly, internet memes can also evolve over time. This means that they can change and adapt to the online environment in order to become more successful at spreading and surviving within a culture.
One example of an internet meme that may have evolved over time is the “rickroll” meme, which involves tricking someone into watching a music video by Rick Astley. This meme started as a simple prank, but over time it has evolved into a more complex and multi-layered joke that is used to comment on various cultural phenomena. So both biological memes and internet memes can evolve over time in response to the environment in which they are spreading.
What’s a another example of an internet meme that evolved over time?
Another example of an internet meme that has evolved over time is the “Distracted Boyfriend” meme. This meme originated from a stock photo of a man looking at another woman while his girlfriend looks on in disbelief. The photo was used in a variety of different contexts, with the man representing something that the user was interested in or attracted to, while the girlfriend represented something the user was already committed to.
Over time, the meme evolved to include more complex and creative scenarios, with the man representing different choices or decisions, and the girlfriend and other woman representing the different options or consequences. The meme became popular on social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter, and was even used by companies and organizations to illustrate different scenarios or choices in a humorous way.
Through its evolution, the “Distracted Boyfriend” meme became a powerful tool for conveying complex ideas and scenarios in a simple and relatable way. It is a prime example of how internet memes can evolve and adapt over time to fit different situations and contexts.
You could say this phenomenon that we see in the reuse of a meme, as you described with “Distracted Boyfriend” is a great example of appropriation, and internet memes that become appropriated into new contexts tend to be considered successful with an additional measurement beyond reach, for their ability to propagate further into the future by transforming. As such, memes that do not get appropriated tend to be less impactful, though it’s not universal.
Yes, the reuse and transformation of internet memes is a form of appropriation. When a meme is appropriated, it is taken from its original context and used in a new way, often to convey a different message or idea. This can involve changing the image or text of the meme, or using it in a different context or setting.
The success of a meme is often measured by its reach, or how widely it is shared and viewed on the internet. However, another important measure of success for a meme is its ability to be appropriated and used in new ways. Memes that are easily appropriated and transformed tend to have a longer lifespan and greater impact, as they can continue to be relevant and relatable in different contexts and situations.
Of course, not all memes are easily appropriated and transformed. Some memes are more specific or tied to a particular context, and may not be as easily adaptable to new situations. In these cases, the meme may not have as much staying power or impact. However, it is not universal, and there are certainly examples of memes that were not easily appropriated but still had a significant impact on internet culture.
With regards to the evolution of an internet meme, can you think of an example of a meme that was appropriated in one way, such that it was used over and over in new contexts, similar to your example with the “Distracted Boyfriend” but then evolved in the way it was appropriated, such that it became known and used in a different way?
One example of a meme that was appropriated in one way and then evolved is the “YOLO” meme. This meme originated from a Drake song called “The Motto,” in which the rapper uses the acronym “YOLO” (You Only Live Once) to encourage people to live life to the fullest.
Initially, the “YOLO” meme was used in a similar way to the song, to encourage people to take risks and enjoy life. However, over time, the meme was appropriated in new ways and began to be used to poke fun at reckless or foolish behavior. In this new context, the “YOLO” meme became a way for people to mock or satirize those who make poor choices or decisions without considering the consequences.
Through its evolution, the “YOLO” meme became a powerful tool for conveying complex ideas and emotions in a simple and relatable way. It is a prime example of how internet memes can be appropriated in different ways and evolve over time to fit different situations and contexts.
Another example of a meme that was appropriated in one way and then evolved to be used in a different way is the “Wojak” character. This character originated from a black and white illustration of a sad-looking man with a bald head and facial stubble. The illustration was used in a variety of different contexts, often to convey feelings of loneliness or isolation.
Over time, the “Wojak” character was appropriated and transformed into new contexts. It became associated with the alt-right movement and was often used to convey feelings of anger and resentment towards political and social issues. This evolution of the “Wojak” character led to the creation of a new meme called the “Angry Wojak,” which depicted the character with a more aggressive and confrontational expression.
That’s a great example. Another example is the “Doge” meme which evolved to become the representation of a cryptocurrency.
Yes, you are correct. The “Doge” meme was appropriated and transformed into a representation of a cryptocurrency called Dogecoin. This cryptocurrency was created as a parody of Bitcoin, and was designed to be fun and lighthearted. The “Doge” meme was used as the logo for the Dogecoin, and was featured on the coins and on the website.
The use of the “Doge” meme in this context allowed it to continue to be relevant and have an impact on internet culture, even after its popularity as a standalone meme had declined. The “Doge” meme was able to evolve and adapt to fit a new context, and became associated with a new and growing trend in the world of cryptocurrency. This is a prime example of how internet memes can be appropriated and transformed in new ways to continue to have an impact on internet culture.
Because an internet meme is a form of media, such as an image or video, that is used to represent an idea or concept, there are no examples of internet memes that are not a type of media.
That is not correct. While internet memes are often a type of media, such as an image or video, they can also take other forms. For example, internet memes can also be a phrase or a piece of text that is used to convey an idea or concept. These types of memes are often shared as a screenshot of a message or post on social media. Additionally, internet memes can also take the form of a hashtag or a challenge that becomes popular on social media. So, while internet memes are often a type of media, they can also take other forms.
Since it’s true that an internet meme that is a phrase or a piece of text, is a meme that is transferred from person to person via the text medium, then it is not a good example to use to counter the idea that all memes are media.
I apologize if my previous response was unclear. While it is true that text can be considered a type of media, and that internet memes can be shared through the text medium, internet memes can also take other forms that are not strictly media. For example, internet memes can also be a hashtag or a challenge that becomes popular on social media. These forms of internet memes are not strictly media, as they do not include images, audio, or video. Instead, they are used to convey an idea or concept in a humorous or relatable way, and can quickly become popular and widely shared on social media. So, while internet memes are often passed on via the text medium or other forms of media, they can also take other forms that are not strictly media.
What’s a specific example of such a meme?
One example of an internet meme that is not strictly media is the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” which became popular on social media in 2014. This meme involved people filming themselves dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads, and then nominating others to do the same. The challenge was meant to raise awareness for the ALS Association, and became popular quickly due to its humorous and relatable nature. While the videos of people completing the challenge could be considered media, the challenge itself was not strictly media. It was more of a social media phenomenon, and did not necessarily include images, audio, or video.
I see your point. A meme can be a representation of an idea or concept, and it can also be an idea or concept itself. Let’s create a thorough definition of an internet meme.
A thorough definition of an internet meme would be something like this:
An internet meme is a concept, idea, or piece of media that is shared widely on the internet, often through social media, and is characterized by its humorous or relatable nature. Internet memes can take many different forms, including images, videos, phrases, hashtags, or challenges, and are often based on popular culture or everyday situations.
Lets try that again and consider that the internet is an important factor in how they spread.
A revised definition of an internet meme might be:
An internet meme is a concept, idea, or piece of media that is shared widely on the internet, often through social media, and is characterized by its humorous or relatable nature. The internet plays a crucial role in the spread of internet memes, as they are often passed on from person to person through social media and other online platforms. Internet memes can take many different forms, including images, videos, phrases, hashtags, or challenges, and are often based on popular culture or everyday situations. They can become popular quickly due to their humorous or relatable nature.
This is a good definition. Let’s add to it by noting the way in which memes become appropriated.
A further revision of the definition of an internet meme might be:
An internet meme is a concept, idea, or piece of media that is shared widely on the internet, often through social media, and is characterized by its humorous or relatable nature. The internet plays a crucial role in the spread of internet memes, as they are often passed on from person to person through social media and other online platforms. Internet memes can take many different forms, including images, videos, phrases, hashtags, or challenges, and are often based on popular culture or everyday situations. They can become popular quickly due to their humorous or relatable nature, and may be appropriated and reworked by different groups or individuals over time.
