Monday, September 06, 2010

Understanding internet memes and the language of the net

The other day I came across a couple of experienced communications professionals who were unaware of Lolcats and several other well-known internet memes.

I believe it is quite important to understand the language, trends and traditions of a medium that you wish to use to communicate with and engage your audiences, so in the interests of spreading knowledge, here's a couple of good sources of information.

It is particularly useful for those who are newer to the internet (less than 10 years of use) or who are on the mature side of 40.

And in case you think all this meme stuff is some freaky internet phenomenon - many similar memes exist in traditional media as well - and you probably know them...

Such as Whatcha talkin bout Willis and Jumping the shark.

Know your meme - A great collection of short videos, each explaining a different popular internet meme. Yes there are lots of them. It's very useful for looking up those strange words used by your resident internet junkie, or when they send you to the last page on the internet.

Memesfactory - an entertaining, yet sometimes confronting, journey through the internet's wild west. Gives a great overview of the main internet memes and key terminology. This is designed as entertainment and is best suited to those with some familiarity with memes but little idea of where they come from.

3 comments:

  1. Invaluable! It's right up there now with Urban Dictionary as my 'go to' site for all things odd and youthful on the internet!

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  2. And Urban Dictionary is at: www.urbandictionary.com

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  3. I have introduced what I call the LOLcat test to my presentations. "Hand up if you know what this is?" (show picture of a LOLcat). I anticipated that I would get 75% of people with their hands up. Since introducing this test, I have had about 10% of hands go up. I was astounded! But anyway, here's to increasing our efforts to bridge the digital divide :-)

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