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All Your Meme Are Belong To Us

Weblink: All Your Meme Are Belong To Us

from teh_bear, 24.05.09

http://tehbear.tumblr.com/

A friend sends you a link to a video. You click play and watch as a cat plays a keyboard and a person in a bear suit gets arrested. Alternatively, the link might happen to lead you to a video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. You have been Rick Roll’d! Even more likely, the video shows a person having something unfortunate or humiliating happen to them. You watch and chuckle at what unfolds in front of you before going back to more important business. Before too long though, you are scrolling through never-ending images of cats with captions. Some are funny, some are cute and some just don’t make any sense. If you are really eager you will even create some of your own versions of these videos or images and send them out into the inter-webs. Congratulations! You have just become involved with the evolution of Internet phenomena, also known as Internet memes. Darwin’s theory of evolution goes digital.

All Your Meme Are Belong To Us is an exploration of Internet memes and the online communities responsible for their survival (or quick death). The only way to truly explore the world of Internet memes involves the creation of our own. This project documents the adventures of those memes as they journeyed out into the inter-webs.

Created by:
Rebecca Mery
Nathalie Brough
Selwyn Joseph
Kay Kang

Special Thanks:
Kyla Brettle
Clay Burke
Evan Mery
Mitch Keane

Tags

Derived from

Creative commons material from Internet Archive - http://www.archive.org/index.php

Here’s a list of the footage we used for our videos.

“To Hear Your Banjo Play” - Irving Lerner, Willard Van Dyke

“Goldilocks and the Three Bears” - Coronet Instructional Films

“Beginning Responsibility: Lunchroom Manners” - Coronet Instructional Films

“Are You Popular?” - Coronet Instructional Films

“The Reasons Why (Part II)” - RCA Victor Corp., Television Division

“Once Upon a Honeymoon” - American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T), Bell System

“Social Courtesy” - Coronet Instructional Films

“ROFLcon ‘Internet Cult Leaders’” - Harvard Respectably French

“Rural Civic Defense TV Spots 1965” - Dept of Civil Defense

“Let’s Share With Others 1950” - Coronet Instructional Films

“Better Use of Leisure Time” - Coronet Instructional Films

“Earth asteroid impact animation” - M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen

“Earth Zero Hour”

“Play in the Snow” - Encyclopedia Britannica Films

“War We Are In Part 2: Capitalism vs Communism” - National Education Program

“The Internet” - Computer Chronicles episode 1993

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    12.06.09 — Natasha Mitchell

    (Note to wider public -

    (Note to wider public - these comments should be taken in the context of this being a university class exercise! These RMIT projects are very sophisticated, and we welcome much simpler and entirely amateur contributions to Gene Pool too!).

    Hi team (Rebecca, Nathalie, Selwyn, Kay)

    Thanks for contributing this to Gene Pool.

    Clever idea that really plays on the theme of evolution in the context of digital culture in an interesting way. Nice one. And...whoah...3500 views. The meme is spreading.

    A few brief comments:

    - Loved the "back story" to it all...the project blog, and the personal blog/s of the team members as they reflected on the project too. The tension between trying to "force" a meme as distinct from letting one evolve in it's own time and way was really interesting to read about.

    - love the footage from 1993 about that wonderful new tool called the INTERNET...feels so recent, and yet...now somehow distant. In fact, great collection and use of old footage selected from http://archive.org

    - good use of tumblr/vimeo etc. Is there an obvious way to maximize the vimeo clips to full screen in Tumblr (might be worth making this more explicit how to do, so the full detail of your footage, the actual memes, meme experiment and text narration can be enjoyed)?

    - for those who aren't in the thick of meme-culture on the interwebs...and don't know where to begin with a LOLcat or an om nom nom nom nom, Keyboard Cat etc...a bit more of a primer could help perhaps, or just a simple slide show of famous examples? Then again...I suppose that's not the point - Explanation can kill the cat after all!

    - These internet memes are fun, lighten our day, make us laugh...but I'm also really interested in memes that are meaningful - that can drive social change and make a difference. Are the number of hits all that matters in the end, or rather what is inspired in a person and what *action* they take after witnessing a meme? It'd be interesting to see where you take this research and knowledge into the makings of meme-culture next...the basis of a campaign perhaps?

    Intriguing. Thanks for a whacky ride into memetic mayhem, and for contributing to Gene Pool. Good luck with your next projects. Feel free to add your thoughts here too.

    Natasha Mitchell
    Presenter + science broadcaster - ABC Radio National
    http://abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind
    +
    Gene Pool coproducer

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