EOC Week 1: Internet Meme

 The Internet is full of funny images and YouTube videos.  A new trend that originated from Reddit, is internet meme’s. They use a generic image with simple tag lines. While new images and joke are added pretty regularly, a select few seem to stick around for long periods of time. College freshman and college senior are a very popular ones on Reddit. Facebook has recently started joining in on the fun with Zoidberg and condescending Willy Wonka. QuickMeMe is one of many sites that operate as a “Generator” they host all the images and present a user interfaces that allow you to pick an image while adding in your captions. Quickmeme also keeps a collection of meme that are generating a lot of traffic. While Reddit really started to make this into a fad, various sites are picking up on the jokes. Memes can be seen on sites like 9gag, facebook, reddit, 4chan and Something Awful. Meme’s also present of option of generating revenue for business. The arrow to the knee meme started from a video game. It was the most popular meme for a few weeks. 3 weeks of free publicity for a already successful game. “A very good, low-cost way of driving large volumes of traffic to your Web is by using a technique known as memetic marketing. In this article, we look at how Web Business Engineering was used to create this technique.” That is quoted from Nick Flor who did a decent article talking about marketing with memes. This kind of advertisement also has a negative aspect where the product might be the joke. A long running joke with meme is the “Scumbag Hat”. Various jokes have come from it targeting Google’s Chrome, Youtube and other big name companies. Meme’s must only be around for a fad, but it’s an entertaining one.