What is a meme? What does tag and tagging for memes mean?
15 Jan
I’m going to start participating in memes that I get invited to. I wanted to explain in simple and basic terms what an online meme and tagging is, in case someone didn’t know. The terms meme and tagging have been developed by other people. I’ve coined up a few other terms in this article to help make things simpler for everyone, and myself. In this article, whenever we say meme, we’re referring to online memes.
What is a meme?
A meme is a set of actions or questions, in the form of a theme, that one addresses or focuses upon. It can be an idea like flickr, where people post pictures as part of their content. Memes get created by someone, anyone to be precise, and then get moved onto the next participant through an invitation. This invitation can either be a direct invitation in the form of an email to the person being invited, or it can be an indirect invitation in the form of mentioning the name of the person, in our own blogs, who we want to invite, or in memeic terms, tag.It can be a theme, questions, something you do online or in real life, write about, or anything else. It’s like following a guideline regarding a certain topic or atmosphere.
What is tagging for a meme?
Tagging someone for a meme means exactly what it says; you’re tagging someone else to do the same meme on their website. It’s like the tagging game you play in real life. After you’ve finished doing the meme, you tag a specific number of other people to perform the same meme; usually, that number of people you tag is exactly the same as listed in the previous meme from which you yourself were tagged.
Why participate in a meme?
The main point of an online blog meme is the content and replication; someone adds value to the meme through their participation, and in turn their own site gets more valuable and interesting content. They get more people to chip in also. Sometimes the memes results get stored in one location, like the place where the meme originated from. An example of this is Photofriday, where every week people have to participate by analyzing and coming up with interpretations about a picture by doing it on their own websites, and then posting the results on the main PhotoFriday site.
Other kinds of memes
The most common form of a meme is what I call the “Uncontrolled meme” or the “lose meme.” An uncontrolled meme, or a lose meme, don’t store the results of the participation in one place. Instead, the results can be found on the websites that participated in that specific meme. There may not be a central website to list all the websites that participated in that specific meme, so the only way to find out who participated in a meme is to actually visit the websites that participated in the meme and see who was invited to that meme, or to work our way up through the previous invitations to see who was tagged for that meme before the website we’re currently visiting participated in it.
Well, that’s it. I hope that explained things instead of complicating the concept further. Thank you for reading. :)
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Ooh. I’m glad you wrote about this… it makes me wanna get a little more involved, I used to love doing meme’s! :) Maybe it’ll force me to write more often… miracles do happen!
Good! I hope you do, heh. As long as you’re interested in it, it should be fun. :)
Now were I a scientist….
I would find it interesting to track the "meme is an online application" meme. Memerics, of course, are in reality a theory akin to genetics, involving the reproduction of ideas. Ideas never require an invitation to reproduce; they just do. And they follow the rules of natural selection as well, which makes them fascinating.
Just adding to your fact section!
Wow, a very late reply, but better than never.
Yes, thank you, that helps. =P
Thank you very much for your explanation – it was very helpful. I recently starting “friending” people on LJ and this term comes up frequently. I had a kind-of ides what it was but you made ir very clear and understandable.
You wouldn’t also no wt “squee” and “srsly” mean would you?
Thanks muchly,
Linda
squee = excuse me
srsly = seriously
No? Thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you found it useful. What’s your LJ profile by the way, if you don’t mind sharing?
squee = an interjection that expresses excitement and/or surprise (happy excited surprise, not the bad kind)
Thanks for telling us the meaning Stacee. :) I did not know that.
you’re welcome. how did you get “excuse me”?
lol. Someone I knew long time ago always said “squee me” when they were drunk, and it sounded cool. So I was assuming it meant excuse me for a lot of people. Apparently I was wrong. 0_0
It’s really obvious if you saw it in context. It’s usually “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” followed by an accompanying explaination of whatever the author is excited about, such as just obtaining tickets to a sold out show of their favorite band.
Interesting; thanks for the explanation Stacee! :D I am thinking of a post or a site with all this lingo explained. Maybe you can be the chief editor? lol.
I think I have to squee a lot from now on [rofl].
Thank you for this info…i’ll link this post to someone who was asking me about what is a blog tag or meme tag. hehehe.
hey Now I understand the term Meme tag and tagging by reading this post. I will share this post with my friends also. Thanks for the great post.
@kiasa, I am glad to hear that! Thank you.