Video Parodies as Memes on YouTube

Singapore.
The next presenter at ICA 2010 is Limor Shifman, who shifts our focus to YouTube and notes the rapid increase in the number of videos shared on the site (some 2000 more by the time this presentation is finished). There's a massive amount of people spending a massive amount of time on creating such videos - many of whom draw on existing videos by imitating and replicating them. YouTube videos which are taken up in this way are memes.

Memes are understood as similar to genes, reproduced by copying and imitation and undergoing subtle mutations in the process. The Net has further multiplied and accelerated memes; it is a paradise for memes (and for people who research them). Some such memes spread with no significant variation (Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent performance is one such example), while some serve as the basis for extensive user-generated parody and derivation.

Limor identified a range of frequently-parodied 'seed memes' on YouTube by examining videos' popularity and presence in user playlist, and selected some 30 memes from this list (with between 7 and 125 million views each), and noted a thematic focus on various aspects: 'ordinary people' (rather than celebrities), 'flawed masculinity' (e.g. geeks), humour, simplicity of format, repetitiveness in content (perhaps encouraging meme repetition itself), and whimsical content.

Common to these, then, is that they mark the videos themselves as incomplete or flawed - it seems that bad texts make good memes, in other words: incompleteness is an invitation for further dialogue in contemporary participatory culture. Additionally, the complexity and elasticity of the meme concept is notable: users don't just imitate the video at hand, but the tone, style, and characteristics of a whole class of highly spreadable memes.

Replicable means correspond with the economy of attention era; the number of its derivatives is an indicator of the attention paid on a video, and in turn draws attention to it. Additionally, the phenomenon allows for both individual expression and a connection with the wider community which forms around each meme.

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