Monetizing memes and other things that should never be attempted

Or, My takeaways from the Web 2.0 Expo.

In between the HTML5 and CSS3 and UI lectures and workshops at the Web 2.0 Expo, I attended a lighthearted one just to give my brain a rest, led by the Know Your Meme people. In attendance were about five people who truly understood the concept of Internet memes, and about 14 folks from various corporate marketing departments. Not a huge overlap of that particular Venn diagram. I will offer two examples. First, the KYM people made everyone go around the room and talk about a meme they had recently participated in. Three people said “The Jon Stewart march on Washington!” Now, I am not a social media expert, but I take issue with the labeling of anything Daily Show-related as a meme. It’s a TV show watched by millions every night. Not a meme.*

Second, things went south when they tried to explain 4chan to everyone, saying that this is where a lot of viral shit is birthed. And immediately the Marketing Wizards started raising their hands, saying, “Ooh ooh how do we get our stuff on 4chan? We want to monetize the confluence of the social media zeitgeist!”**

Now, again, I am not a social media expert, but in my humble opinion, the last fucking thing you want when marketing your shit-sucking product is to poke the hornet’s nest that is 4chan. You might as well resign now and do PR at Polymer Records.

There was some discussion that Internet memes are ultimately organic. And then at the end some guy launched into this bizarre and overlong pseudo-Lacanian posturing about what memes are, and we were all like “Cool story, bro.”

*I feebly offered “the baby monkey riding a pig?” because I couldn’t think of anything more substantial, but by god, it’s been on Gawker, BoingBoing, Buzzfeed, Metafilter…even Tosh.0, which is basically where the Internet goes to die.
**Or something to that effect.

Finally, I bring you this: Glengarry, Glen Sith:

VADER: Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. Because we’re adding a little something to this month’s Imperial Raffle. As you all know, first prize is a TIE Advanced Fighter model x1. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steaksabers.

VADER: Third prize is I’m your father.

And also, I bring you this, because I like demonstrating my elementary Photoshop skills: