Simply put, a meme is a thought pattern that is spread from one person to another. Some memes are behavioral, such as the process of building a fire or brewing ale. Some are intellectual, such as religion. Some are commercial, like the Big Mac jingle.
In the tradition of the commercial meme is a phenomenon called “forced memes.” This is when somebody attempts to contrive a new pattern and propagate it for the sake of having done so. Attempts are made to short-circuit the brutal process of natural meme selection. If you have an idea and express it, then I am somehow exposed to it, absorb it, and find some value in expressing it myself and this repeats through others, you have contributed to the process by which mankind has risen up from the primordial muck and dominated the Earth. This is normal, natural, and in the grand scheme of things is the continuation of a valuable social and mental process. Posting a screenshot of Milhouse on an image board until somebody else starts doing it too, however, is just sad. Sometimes it’s so sad it’s hilarious.
A few of the blogs I frequent have fallen into a creative quagmire that not only perverts the natural meme-propagation process, but one that actually proclaims itself to be the abomination that it is, taking things further down the path of evil than normal forced memes: forced blogger memes. Logtar has been especially vulnerable to this trend, through Daniel has started a couple himself. Meesha has even gone so far as to fight back against the pervasive Fridays Feast cancer, attempting to start up a forced meme of his own in opposition. While I share his disdain for the Feast, you’ll find my forced-meme participation right next to my Adsense ads. Oh wait, I don’t participate in Adsense.
TL;DR – if you really must pollute my Internets with your prose, make it your own. Write your own content. If you see a post somewhere that you think is really cool, comment on it, write a post about it on your own site, but please for the love of all that’s holy, refuse to participate when somebody tags you. Don’t do it.
When I said “join the club” I didn’t mean literally, there is no club and I am not inviting anyone to join it. These meme things completely turn me off, I normally skip them, but even worse are sugary sweet comments other participants leave. I agree, original content and maybe share an interesting link or a clip, that’s all I am looking for.
I do meme’s for the “I want to post but I’m too lazy/short on time to write up a whole post”
@Meesha: I’ll take you at your word and rescind my judgment on you. On a probationary basis.
@Dan: I totally understand where you’re coming from on that, but do not excuse it. I wag my finger in your general direction. If you’re short on ideas for a quick post, do what Chunkbot does and leave the page stale instead. I like to think of his site as… marinading.
I was just going to chime in with “I COMPLETELY AVOID the meme problem by not even BLOGGING on my blog.”
But you beat me to it 🙂
I jump at opportunities to harp on your webpage, Chunkbot.