Let’s talk about Know Your Meme now, shall we? Critics have been made, some raid attempts too. What is the actual goal of the website? To document internet phenomena with a more scientific approach, or at least a pseudoscientific one. It always implies that it bothers a good part of that so-called internet elite which doesn’t like others stepping in “their”territory, even though some KYM members may be part of their anonymous communities without them even noticing.

First of all, I can see why there may be a first point of discordance. KYM wasn’t the first one to do that. Some years earlier, a popular satirical database meant to record drama was launched. It was some kind of Wikipedia-like site open to everyone that wanted to join in. In the beginning, the articles were mostly about LiveJournal and its drama but it quickly expanded to a broader audience when 4chan users strated writing entries. With it, a plethora of new articles about memes, internet and trivial things appeared, mainly surrounding the 4chan’s culture at the time, then a lot more about internet in general. As a matter of act, they promptly accused Know Your Meme of plagiarism, more than being simply inspired by them, slandering the site on a regular basis.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Here is their motto. Okay, it’s always good to have your own opinion on things. No doubt about that, but it’s kinda narrow-minded to think memes are just pieces of humor that can’t be analyzed unless by boring people. Some phenomena are fascinating in the way they come up and spread. It doesn’t mean you lack humor by wanting to analyze how it came to be, how it spread, and why. Why this peculiar image or video? Why not that other one? There is nothing wrong when you became amazed at something, as trivial as it may appear, that you want to thorougly know how it happened. That’s a little like what sociologists or historians do in their own ways. That doesn’t make the subject any less enjoyable, funny, lolrandom or beautiful of you take the time to enjoy it.

But, in the end, we live in an heterogenous world. There always will be cranks questioning every action of everyone. A neutral desire to analyze memes may appear as hiding a dreadful prospect to others, like making money out of it, the same as conspirationists will doubt even the most genuine of facts.
Hey, Captain Obvious, companies already try to make profit off popular trends, memes included. It’s not something new and, more often that we think, they fail.

I think the answer is “aliens”.

I’m straying a bit off-topic while it is actual at the same time, here, because some arguments from the haters aren’t groundless. Know Your Meme started its way as a sister-project on RocketBoom, a web-show about technology and “geeky” stuff with a grain of salty humor. Working as a collaboration, Know Your meme then grew its own show with its own show, its own YouTube channel. Then, some opinions diverging made most of the old staff quit and the show was brought out in March 2011 by the Cheezburger Network… which isn’t exactly known for being a philantropist company that doesn’t make money off internet phenomena at all…

Anyway, there ARE reasons to doubt KYM’s good will. We mustn’t kid ourselves. Now, with the database, KYM’s agenda is to frontpage articles, funny image and viral videos. They do the same thing with theyr Facebook page. That’s broadly what every sit dealing with internet content, like Cheeburger, reddit or even 9gag, does nowadays. The site’s neutral view is a tad compromised as a result…

From another point of view, Encyclopedia Dramatica which is known to be an über secret clubhouse for true underground net users does the same thing as well by putting favorite articles, videos or images on their front page.

The community, then, would help keeping a seal of quality to the content. They are relatively free to do whatever they want with the database. Again, There are some ups and down however.

How the website works is pretty simple. New articles are put into submission, waiting for a review. The original editor and any people who want to join in can help improve it by adding information, links, pictures, videos or any other medium dealing with the phenomenon at hand. To sum it up, what reviewers expect from an entry are the followings: A small explanation of what the phenomenon is about, a point of origin if able, reports on its spread and prominence on the web and some examples of derivatives.

After the review is done, thing that could take a while, the article is confirmed if the phenomenon has been duly proved as being, or at least having been, notable enough. If nothing has been done to prove it, then the article is put in the Deadpool, some kind of graveyard for badly-written entries, spam, forced memes that haven’t eventually gotten a more “natural” spread, astroturf and so on.

Deadpoolception

It looks OK on paper. In practice, it looks OK too, generally speaking, if it wasn’t for a key problem: a constant stream of comments signed “Deadpool” every freaking time a user, new but sometime older as well, doesn’t like the article/phenomenon or isn’t convinced by it. Many users think that their strong opinions are taken into account when choosing to confirm or deadpool an entry. They are not. Of course, they can write a comment to help improve the entry but spitting out “+1 Deadpool!” or “+1 Confirm!” won’t influence the review at all. The confirmation process doesn’t work that way,. It doesn’t involve votes and thankfully so because KYM’s will for a neutral view that had already been a bit criticized would have gotten far worse.
Moreover, a feeling of superiority and contempt can transpire from “older researchers”, me included. Researching on the internet teach you some basis in trying to find answers. The fact we want to find “serious” answers to things that may appear as superficial, trivial and that doesn’t need as much attention can make us appear as pedantic, craving for attention. That’s not what we want. At least, I do not. However, this is an attitude we can’t escape from and some people take things way more seriously than they should.
It is an elitism of some sort, kind of similar to the one I ranted about earlier in this article. It’s not always for the greater good.

Anyway, if you want to get “reliable” pieces of information about a meme, Know Your Meme is a good place to go along with Encyclopedia Dramatica in order to corroborate things.

It’s up to you if you are interested by it, after all.

I want to go for a parody here. It doesn’t really have anything to do with memes in general, even though it has a bit of prominence on the web. First of all, this article is meant to echo back to another one written by l’Elfe, in French quite obviously. As a matter of fact and because I can foresee an incoming shitstorm in the comments, I should add that I kinda agree with L’Elfe to some of her points, mainly on the fact that women aren’t token machines in which you shall expect kindess to be rewarded with sex or love, for that matter. It’s always better to simply go and tell your feelings to someone and see what happens than to wait and try to monetize your friendship. However, I don’t fully agree with some of her views on things and whatnot. Anyway, I invite you to go read it if you know a little bit of French.

Pertinent, pertinent

In her article, she used everyday fruit as a metaphor. I’m gonna reuse it because I like it.
Imagine. There is Grapefruit. Grapefruit has her own desires, her hown feelings. She is cute even though she has some hang-ups with her physical appearance like many others do. She is strong-headed, she knows what she wants and she has plenty of friends, some who are Peaches, some others who are Melons. Anyway, Grapefruit is happy. She found Banana as an ideal boyfriend. Little is known of Banana actually. He is handsome, he knows how to have fun in bed and he is sometime acting romantic.
Yet, everything isn’t as dreamy as it may sound. Banana, on a regular basis, like to be away from Grapefruit when she wants him to be with her. Banana happens to prefer talking to other girls than to stay with her when they go to a party. Grapefruit sometimes waits, feverishly, that Banana answers her messages on his phone. It happens that it takes longer than it should for him to do so. Sometimes, they get in an argument because of this, in which Grapefruit eventually flees and goes take comfort in the friendly arms of some nice Peach guy, crying and swearing about how all Bananas are true assholes.

Grapefruit didn’t understand : Why wasn’t Banana here as often as he should for her? Why did he treat her like that? After all, when he came to her and chatted her up, he knew what to do to convince her he was good to go.
Or maybe… maybe she was simply a piece of meat to him, in the end. Maybe he simply was another manipulative prick. No, she couldn’t believe it. Was she used?

Her suspicions grew stronger when Banana called her and said he wanted to talk. that’s when he stated he needed a break in their relationship. Grapefruit was stunned, more than ever. Ah ! There must be a good reason for that! I’m sure he cheated on me!
Grapefruit knew a lot of possible culprits and she needed to get to the bottom of it. Was it Mango, maybe? Last night, they were pretty close. Or surely it was Orange! Grapefruit found out that they exchanged e-mails on Banana’s computer.

Banana wasn’t going to get away with this! Grapefruit wouldn’t let herself be used again by some monster. She should turn lesbian. Yes, as a female, she knows that her female friend are more trustworthy and are less… terrible.
Or, if that’s not the case, she would end up a spinster, surrounded by thousands of cats, she thinks.

In any case, she has to post a Facebook status about her suffering and to hurl her hatred of every man on the planet. She musts.

[Insert Condescending Wonka remark here]

At this point in my little tale, I’m going to leave you imagine the rest of the story for yourself. Grapefruit, after she calmed down, still has many ways to carry on in her life: think for herself first, met someone else or keep her hatred deep inside her.
But a relevant question should be asked: Why does Grapefruit resort to complaints against men?
Nothing is known of the true nature of the relationship between Grapefruit and Banana. Nothing is known of Banana himself, as a matter of fact. The same can be said for every other fruit I’ve mentioned here. Banana might be a jerk who actually cheated on Grapefruit many times.
But, what kind of relationship did they have? Were they engaged? Lovers? Friends with benefit? Sexfriends? We can’t tell if we haven’t followed their story in details from beginning to end.

Here, Grapefruit might have been the sole cause of her own suffering, partly if not entirely. Banana may have tried to make her understand that it wasn’t a serious relationship and that’s why he was sometimes away from here. He may not have sought a relationship in which both are always together. He may have clearly warned her at the beginning of their relationship, or hinted to it. Grapefruit may have been too much “oppressive”, in a way, and was way more passionate about something that wasn’t meant to be?
It can’t be known for sure. That’s why generalizing is a real problem. Yes, I know, I’m extrapolating things in this very instant about women, for they like to think we really are ill-mannered sex maniacs. If only it wasn’t so widespread of an idea (I love you Yahoo Answers). *sigh*
Every freaking time, women are shown as victims without, even a single time, trying to think twice about the way they acted or what they did themselves. Alright, it’s the internet, so troll-friendly, but still.

Thanksfully, it’s not THAT general of an assessment. Moreover, some assholes are more likable than others, like him (go read it if you know some basic French! it’s great!).

These days, there is a growing phenomenon challenging the mere notion of what being “in a relationship” means and I think it’s healthy. Thing is, our own education and upbriging by our parents and granparents still remain kinda traditional which means we sometimes can’t seize reality when it strikes us: living together has become less and less a need.
I don’t fully include myself in that statement. I mean, I have my own needs and desires but I still live according to this fact. Love, sexual attraction, tenderness and affection don’t pertain to the same idea anymore. It is now easier to live with someone in an open relationship because you gain “more” freedom. You are not enclosed in a “Relationship” with a capital “R” that you can’t have control over.

When confronted to this, everyone reacts differently. That’s where the matter is. Every reaction should be analyzed separately in each case. General points are an enemy. Not everyone can think back to what they did when somethings goes “wrong” in their love life while some others think too much about it. We are heterogeneous, all of us. We all have our own view on life, we all have our own personal experiences, we all have our own way of dealing with something.

How do we get things into perspective? How do we know if someone likes you even if he acts distant because he wants to live his own life? Tricky, isn’t it?
I don’t have any final answer to this.
In the end, logic dictates that words such as “trust”, “communications” and “be yourself” should be considered.

Do you know about 9gag? You know, that thing created in 2008 for the sole purpose of sharing unoriginal pictures endlessly? No, not Cheezburger… I mean that popular website everyone seems to love denigrating for its close similarity with reddit, itself said to be a cheeky copy of 4chan, itself inspired by Futaba Channel…? Does it ring any bell?

Yet, if you happen to browse Facebook in your spare time, you should at least have one friend who likes to link back to 9gag, either because he likes the pictures he saw, because he wants to comment on something or because he simply wants to share it. It has become a persistent habit.
A big part of internet’s most underground communities (that’s what they like to call themselves anyway) loves to brag about how 9gag is evil, cancer and tasteless, planning raids against the site for quite some time now. When the Aurora shooting tragedy happened, some tried to link the website to it. Recently, 9gag was again involved in another case after some anonymous (Ha HA) sources revealed some Australian model’s twitter wall full of slandering remarks. Some accused 9gag, others 4chan pretending to be 9gaggers and even others let out some conspiracy theory about 9gag pretending to be 4chan pretending to be 9gag.

Self-explanatory

Of course, in that case, 9gag is always shown as being a place full of “faggots”, members of a despicable community. It seems so easy to forget that 4chan, mainly its LOLSORANDOM /b/ board, has done far worse in the past.

Don’t worry, 4chan has some bright side to it

Is this hatred against 9gag sensible and justified? At once I answer you: it is and it is not. 9gag isn’t different from any other site that tries to focus and profit off internets memes, simply because there is a recent crave for it. Reddit and Cheezburger don’t do any better. Of course, that doesn’t mean these two websites are liked for what they are by other communities but they aren’t as hated as 9gag to the point of desiring to have the site taken down because of its popularity. Let’s be clear, I don’t go on 9gag and I don’t like it. I don’t like it because I’ve been accustomed to the same sentiment of scepticism and “I-don’t -like-it” attitude when I see a website reusing content on their own without crediting their sources, even more so when they put watermarks on it and they enable a peculiar repost system. But the same system had already been used by reddit. Don’t even talk about the eBaumsworld era. Aaah, those good ol’ internet fight days.

Thank you, Sean

The real first problem with 9gag is its view on what is OC (Original Content) and how you have to manage your own creation on internet. It raises copyrights questions for it allows people newly introduced to image-sharing sites to browse through a wide range of content without necessarily crediting the original authors and creators. In short, “They steal content“. It’s the main argument brandished by haters, after, obviously, the whole “they kill/ruin our memes” thing which is not as true as they want you to believe. the 9gag’s community is quick to react violently against the haters too which doesn’t help in understanding the problem, mainly a matter of taste. After all, if we put the valid argument about content theft aside, what draws many to go on a rampage against 9gag is because they witness a more “mainstream” website (called “cancerous” here) abusing of memes ad nauseam. Is it enough of a reason?

Yeah, because 9gag is the only freakin’ one doing it

As far as I’m concerned, not liking 9gag doesn’t mean I senselessly “hate” it nor I want it down. Actually, like every community, 9gag has its share of good and bad. It’s very easy to use these bad bits as spearheads to launch an holy crusade against it but it clearly hides the actual motives. Those who call out “cancer”, those who speak out vehemently their hatred, are the ones who think they are some kind of net’s intelligentsia because they browse more “underground” websites. They think they are superior to the plebs who only browse Facebook or Youtube on a regular basis. Because they were once involded in some secret things in some lost threads, they feel as they are the watchmen of some kind of internet elite ruling a private clubhouse about what is tasteful or not on the internet. I find this attitude to be quite moronic, don’t you think?
Via Know Your Meme, I wrote an article dealing with this growing feeling of elitism toward a meme or a token community in which one were involved to an certain degree, then they began to feel attached to it and they can become irritated when they acknowledge other people from outside their community growing an interest for what is happening. Anyway, you can make your own mind out of it for what it’s worth.

The Favorite Band Selling out effect.

Like you like it or not, if 9gag is popular right now despite its reputation, it’s because it’s an easy way of wasting your time browsing through an impressive gallery of pictures and videos. There always is that peculiar image that makes you go “Oh yeah, totally agreed!” and sometimes “Ah! I know someone who will love it. I’m gonna share it!” These Pavlovian reflexes can’t be tone down so easily. It’s the main appeal of file-sharing. Paradoxically, this anti9gag campaign is only giving more attention to the site. I don’t think they were expecting that much, to be honest.

What do you think? What is your take on 9 gag, its community and the hatred that surrounds it?