Wednesday, October 20, 2010

One Shot Deal?

The conversation about memes yesterday in class threw me off--not because I didn't know what I mean was, but evidently I don't know what the most common ones are--RickRoll for example. Clueless. But it made me begin think about the value of memes. The extrinsic value I can see--you are doing it for the sake of others, because you know that your best friend is going to be irritated when he asks you about that YouTube link he showed you that you never watched

But what is the intrinsic value of a meme? Granted, the content of the meme would be highly dependent upon what intrinsic value you place upon it. So let's take those most common meme examples. NumaNuma--probably my favorite of the common memes previously listed in the link--is hilarious, sure, but only once or twice. After that I begin to question why it’s so funny and start feeling guilty. Not really amping up that intrinsic value for me. So this leads me to ask, are memes--as viral as they are--intended for multiple viewings by the consumer? Or are they a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'm one shot kind of deal?

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