The Complete Idiot's Guide to Memes


Book Description

The ways of memes. Memes are "viruses of the mind"—symbols, ideas, or practices that are transmitted through speech, gestures, and rituals. Understanding how symbols like the peace sign or ad slogans like "Where's the beef?" or viral videos become part of our common culture has become a primary focus of sales and marketing companies across the globe. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Memes explains how memes work, how they spread, and what memes tell us about how we make sense of our world. • First book to cover all types of memes, including viral memes in the digital age • Features the Most Influential Memes in History and the Ten Biggest Internet Memes




Post Memes


Book Description

Art-form, send-up, farce, ironic disarticulation, pastiche, propaganda, trololololol, mode of critique, mode of production, means of politicisation, even of subjectivation - memes are the inner currency of the internet's circulatory system. Independent of any one set value, memes are famously the mode of conveyance for the alt-right, the irony left, and the apoliticos alike, and they are impervious to many economic valuations: the attempts made in co-opting their discourse in advertising and big business have made little headway, and have usually been derailed by retaliative meming. POST MEMES: SEIZING THE MEMES OF PRODUCTION takes advantage of the meme's subversive adaptability and ripeness for a focused, in-depth study. Pulling together the interrogative forces of a raft of thinkers at the forefront of tech theory and media dissection, this collection of essays paves a way to articulating the semiotic fabric of the early 21st century's most prevalent means of content posting, and aims at the very seizing of the memes of production for the imagining and creation of new political horizons. With contributions from Scott and McKenzie Wark, Patricia Reed, Jay Owens, Thomas Hobson and Kaajal Modi, Dominic Pettman, Bogna M. Konior, and Eric Wilson, among others, this essay volume offers the freshest approaches available in the field of memes studies and inaugurates a new kind of writing about the newest manifestations of the written online. The book aims to become the go-to resource for all students and scholars of memes, and will be of the utmost interest to anyone interested in the internet's most viral phenomenon. ABOUT THE EDITORS ALFIE BOWN is the author of several books including "The Playstation Dreamworld" (Polity, 2017) and "In the Event of Laughter: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy" (Bloomsbury, 2018). He is also a journalist for the Guardian, the Paris Review, and other outlets. DAN BRISTOW is a recovering academic, a bookseller, and author of "Joyce and Lacan: Reading, Writing, and Psychoanalysis" (Routledge, 2016) and "2001: A Space Odyssey and Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory" (Palgrave, 2017). He is also the co-creator with Alfie Bown of Everyday Analysis, now based at New Socialist magazine.




The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays


Book Description

The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays unfolds as a series of questions, commentaries, and criticisms of the analysis, interpretation, and explanation of folklore. Can we confidently regard jokes as the catharsis of sexual and aggressive impulses? What is the basis for characterizing a joke as Jewish or Scottish or Japanese? What do we really know about “dirty jokes”? How is a text or behavior constructed so that it is perceived as humorous? Can we get a computer to reliably recognize jokes? What is the relevance of memetics and a Darwinian paradigm to understanding folklore change over time? Can we identify laws operating in the realm of folklore? How can the marginalization, extinction, or continuity of traditions be explained? In the course of addressing these questions, Elliott Oring identifies some fundamental problems, brings new evidence and observations to the discussion, and proffers some original and startling insights. While recognizing the study of jokes and other forms of folklore as a humanistic endeavor, Oring believes in the relevance of a scientific perspective to the enterprise. He values clear definitions, tests of hypotheses and theories, empirical evidence, experiment, and the search for laws. Written in a sophisticated yet accessible style, The Consolations of Humor and Other Folklore Essays stimulates both scholars and students alike and contributes to the creation of a more robust folkloristics in the twenty-first century.




Robot Memetics


Book Description

This book provides a novel perspective on the concept of memetics as applied to the development and evolution of intelligent robots and robotic communities/cultures. It provides a framework for the emergence of a hybrid community of people and intelligent robots collaborating to realize mutual benefits and scientific objectives. It aims to show that as the hybrid community emerges, so does its culture. Once this foundational work is done, the book illustrates the robot memetic ideas in the context of a space exploration scenario based on the development and operation of a human/robot settlement on Mars.




Memetics


Book Description

Memetics is the name commonly given to the study of memes - a term originally coined by Richard Dawkins to describe small inherited elements of human culture. Memes are the cultural equivalent of DNA genes - and memetics is the cultural equivalent of genetics. Memes have become ubiquitous in the modern world - but there has been relatively little proper scientific study of how they arise, spread and change - apparently due to turf wars within the social sciences and misguided resistance to Darwinian explanations being applied to human behaviour. However, with the modern explosion of internet memes, I think this is bound to change. With memes penetrating into every mass media channel, and with major companies riding on their coat tails for marketing purposes, social scientists will surely not be able to keep the subject at arm's length for much longer. This will be good - because an understanding of memes is important. Memes are important for marketing and advertising. They are important for defending against marketing and advertising. They are important for understanding and managing your own mind. They are important for understanding science, politics, religion, causes, propaganda and popular culture. Memetics is important for understanding the origin and evolution of modern humans. It provides insight into the rise of farming, science, industry, technology and machines. It is important for understanding the future of technological change and human evolution. This book covers the basic concepts of memetics, giving an overview of its history, development, applications and the controversy that has been associated with it.




Contagious Metaphor


Book Description

The metaphor of contagion pervades critical discourse across the humanities, the medical sciences, and the social sciences. It appears in such terms as 'social contagion' in psychology, 'financial contagion' in economics, 'viral marketing' in business, and even 'cultural contagion' in anthropology. In the twenty-first century, contagion, or 'thought contagion' has become a byword for creativity and a fundamental process by which knowledge and ideas are communicated and taken up, and resonates with André Siegfried's observation that 'there is a striking parallel between the spreading of germs and the spreading of ideas'. In Contagious Metaphor, Peta Mitchell offers an innovative, interdisciplinary study of the metaphor of contagion and its relationship to the workings of language. Examining both metaphors of contagion and metaphor as contagion, Contagious Metaphor suggests a framework through which the emergence and often epidemic-like reproduction of metaphor can be better understood.




Serial Killers in Contemporary Television


Book Description

This volume examines the significant increase in representations of serial killers as central characters in popular television over the last two decades. Via critical analyses of the philosophical and existential themes presented to viewers and their place in the cultural landscape of contemporary America, the authors ask: What is it about serial killers that incited such a boom in these types of narratives in popular television post-9/11? Looking past the serial format of television programming as uniquely suited for the presentation of the serial killer’s actions, the chapters delve into deeper reasons as to why TV has proven to be such a fertile ground for serial killer narratives in contemporary popular culture. An international team of authors question: What is it about serial killers that makes these characters deeply enlightening representations of the human condition that, although horrifically deviant, reflect complex elements of the human psyche? Why are serial killers intellectually fascinating to audiences? How do these characters so deeply affect us? Shedding new light on a contemporary phenomenon, this book will be a fascinating read for all those at the intersection of television studies, film studies, psychology, popular culture, media studies, philosophy, genre studies, and horror studies.




Memetics and Evolutionary Economics


Book Description

This book explores the question of whether and how meme theory or “memetics” can be fruitfully utilized in evolutionary economics and proposes an approach known as “economemetics” which is a combination of meme theory and complexity theory that has the potential to combat the fragmentation of evolutionary economics while re-connecting the field with cultural evolutionary theory. By studying the intersection of cultural and economic evolution, complexity economics, computational economics, and network science, the authors establish a connection between memetics and evolutionary economics at different levels of investigation. The book first demonstrates how a memetic approach to economic evolution can help to reveal links and build bridges between different but complementary concepts in evolutionary economics. Secondly, it shows how organizational memetics can help to capture the complexity of organizational culture using meme mapping. Thirdly, it presents an agent-based simulation model of knowledge diffusion and assimilation in innovation networks from a memetic perspective. The authors then use agent-based modeling and social network analysis to evaluate the diffusion pattern of the Ice Bucket Challenge as an example of a “viral meme.” Lastly, the book discusses the central issues of agency, creativity, and normativity in the context of economemetics and suggests promising avenues for further research.




The Routledge Companion to the Future of Marketing


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to the Future of Marketing provides the reader with a comprehensive and original set of visionary insights into the future of marketing. This prestigious collection aims to challenge the mindset of academics, moving their thinking processes from current thinking into new perspectives and advances in marketing knowledge. Selected Contents: Part 1: New Paradigms and Philosophical Insights Part 2: Contributions from other Scientific Fields Part 3: Reconnecting with Consumers and Markets Part 4: New Methodological Insights in Scholarly Research in the Field




The Complete Idiot's Guide to Twitter Marketing


Book Description

Twitter has tens of millions of users and its active "tweeters" and followers look to it to answer to the question, "What's happening?" Businesses both large and small can quickly and easily send out highly targeted messages to key customers using Twitter. However, simply grasping only the mechanics of Twitter and flogging a message nobody cares about isn't enough to make a measurable difference. Worse, using Twitter the wrong way can damage a company's brand. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Twitter Marketing blends an understanding of Twitter's powerful tools and reach with marketing savvy and the key to really engaging followers and converting them to customers. It also covers new features such as the increasing importance of search engine optimization.