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Phew, it's been a while, huh? I spent this last weekend almost completely immersed in the world of Skyrim. That is, until a song from a viral video resurfaced and has been stuck in my head ever since. So I went ahead and launched a google search to find the source of the song. To my surprise, the second result was a forum post dating back to 2004. Man, I'm getting old. Anyway, that got me thinking: how can old memes be used to find sites on google? More importantly, what does the presence of memes on sites say about the domain? What follows is a half-assed contemplation on memes and website discovery. Finding discussion forums through google is frustrating. If you want to find a site that has (or used to have) lots of activity, why not just type in a couple of memetic phrases in quotation marks and search away? You can use memes to narrow the type of userbase. The term "Over 9000," for instance, was likely used by a younger audience and people with an affinity for anime. If you want to find a comic book discussion forum, enter a string about Lex Luthor stealing 40 cakes.  A lot of these memes are transmitted by groups with similar interests and probably represent the demographics of the community in question. I also believe they are good indicators of the "health" of a community—or at least the amount of engagement. Keep in mind that forums are fueled by topics and events that happen outside of them, so awareness of memes shows that the users are "up to date." The other thing that comes to mind is about how memes are spread. The transmission of memes shows the relationship between websites and I'm sure it's a topic that will interest internet historians in the next few years. A large chunk of sites and posts will probably remain online, but I'm convinced that lots of critical details and references will be lost. A really mundane comment about a Toronto mortgage broker could in turn be a brilliant inside joke and no one would know without considering the larger context of the meme. Of course, not everyone chooses to adopt memes. Whether it's primarily a phenomenon amongst young people, I'm not sure. It's probably because this group of younger people grew up with the internet and are accustomed to things like image macros. I have to cut this post short, but I hope to return to this topic someday. I've barely thought out (much less contemplated on) the uses of memes to discover sites. If you have any in mind, please list them in the comments! Post a comment in response: |
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