Memes: if you get them, you get them… and if you don’t, you don’t. But how is a meme created? How does it spread? And how does it die? In this episode, we dig into the complex dynamics of memes– on Dawkins’ account, the most rudimentary units of social information– to see how they do (and don’t) imitate so-called “natural” processes in their generation, mutation, adaptation, and replication. 

With our special guest, Andrew Baron (creator of Rocketboom and KnowYourMeme), we also investigate what, if anything, distinguishes an “internet meme” from other kinds of memes, and how internet memes may provide a unique insight into social operations and cultural formations.

In this episode, the following ideas, thinkers, texts, events… and, yes, memes!… are referenced (explicitly or implicitly):

• Andrew Baron (@andrewbaron), founder of Rocketboom and KnowYourMeme
• Shira Lazar, “The Va Voom Behind Rocketboom” (2009)
• “She’s a 10, but…” meme
• Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)
• “Death Panels” Politifact’s 2009 “Lie of the Year”
• the meaning and etymology of “ipseity”
• our previous discussion of “Style” (Hotel Bar Sessions, Season 4, Episode 47)
• “BBS” (internet abbreviation for “bulletin board system)
• Caitlyn Dewey, “Absolutely Everything You Need To Understand 4Chan, the Internet’s Own Bogeyman” (NYT, 2014)
• “IRS” (internet abbreviation for “Internet Relay Chat”
• Technorati 
• Alexis Benveniste, “The Meaning and History of Memes” (NYT, 2022)
• “From Kilroy to Pepe: A Brief History of Memes”
• Daniel Naroditsky, “How the Queen Chess Piece Became So Powerful” (NYT, 2022)
• “Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0: Full Comparison”
• Jay Selig, “The 8 Defining Features of Web 3.0”
• “Web 3.0 and crypto adoption: Why it is more important than you think?”
• “What is the semantic web?”
• Her (film, 2013)
•  our previous discussion of “Algorithms” (Hotel Bar Sessions, Season 4, Episode 54)
• How Tiktok’s “for your page” algorithm works
• “What is a Federation and Why Should Your Apps Support It?”
• Types of internet protocols
• David Hume, “An Abstract of a Book recently published entitled A Treatise of Human Nature” (including the billiard ball argument!)
• Dennis Temple, “Modal Reasoning in Hume’s Billiard Ball Argument” 
• Aja Romano, “How Do You Solve a Problem like Joe Rogan?” (Vox, 2022)
• Lauren Bobert’s “Christmas card with guns”
• Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016)
• Prabir Purkayasthma, “How Facebook’s algorithms promote hate and drive toxic content”  
• Jessica Roy, “How Pepe the Frog went from harmless to hate symbol” (LA Times, 2016)
• “The ‘OK’ Hand Gesture is Now Listed as a Symbol of Hate” (NPR, 2019)
• the “student athlete” Twitter meme
• “The Last Supper of Jesus Conducted via Zoom” meme 
• “This is Fine” (dog on fire) meme
• “Bernie Sanders at inauguration” meme
• Bernie Sanders meme generator
• “Distracted Boyfriend” meme

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