#knobel

For this second creative-making project, I wanted to create a series of memes that demonstrate the characteristics of what makes a "successful" meme, as per Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear's findings in "Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production."

The first is a rehashing of the familiar "All your base are belong to us" meme, and is meant to demonstrate the first concept of humor. Given how broad and complicated the notion is, I thought it best to demonstrate this idea through the example given by Knobel and Lankshear when describing the subject. Because it is such a well-known and long-lasting joke, it is clear that the humor demonstrated in "All your base are belong to us" (described in the article as "geek kitsch" due to its base in syntactic error and game-based context) is an endurable one. Grammar mistakes and the unintentional ruining of a "serious" moment through them just work, it seems. Through it, however, I also wanted to demonstrate other concepts regarding memes that we've discussed, both through this article and others: the longevity of a meme and the act of "ruining" it through its oversaturation in public consciousness and use in the "mainstream" (as per the "Thanks, Obama!" joke).

The second meme is another familiar face: the "doge" joke. Through it, I wanted to demonstrate the second concept that Knobel and Lankshear discuss: intertextuality. Memes are largely memorable because they do not exist in a vacuum. They are either inspired by recognizable pieces of pop culture, or eventually incorporate other ideas as they evolve and spread. This can lead to an incredible amount of creativity, as a singular joke grows to take on multiple references to current or past events, films, music, or even other memes. As such, this use of "doge" incorporates references to several other memes and alters them to fit the context of its original idea (the bad grammar, the "wow"). I've included the aforementioned "All your base" meme, the "Afro Circus" meme, and the "Me gusta" meme.

Alexandra Thornton

E101

Drobny

10 October 2014

Internet memes are literally everywhere. In my experience, there is almost no where to go online without seeing a meme somewhere. There are even conversations comprised entirely of memes as their mediums of communication. This reading has a lot, if not too much, good research on memes on the internet. This decides that memes can be a great way to convey a message, and memes can hold literary value. I agree. I also liked the comment about how it can be an effective way for teachers to communicate with students, but it later specifies that for this to be effective, the teacher has to know what they're doing and have meme credibility. I find all of this to be very accurate. I have seen many teachers try to do this but be unsuccessful. To analyze memes in the next project, I will be googling them and assessing them on humor, comprehensiveness, effectiveness, and overall message to find the ideal meme for our purposes.

    This piece was a little harder to get something out of, because for the most part, it was statistics. However, I thought it was interesting how they were trying to suggest memes into the modern world of how we live and function in the class room. To suggest that memes online might be the new direction they are going with trying to modernize things with technology in the classrooms.  

    Now alone with everything else people are trying to make modern, some may believe that education isn't the kind to mess with. You always have those old fashioned people who say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". So why  do we turn to technology when we think we need to better something? Why do we think that is the answer? We can improve on so many things, but I feel like just turning to technology is avoiding the problem. We have the resources to change things, but people don't have that drive for regular things like they do for technology. If people cared more for other things like they do for technology, there wouldn't be as many things that need fixed.