...but they meme well

Social scientists coined the phrase meme (no, not the first-person babbling of a split-personality) to describe the phenomena of ideas and concepts which quickly spread and propogate with no apparent trigger, and often die just as quickly.

This is Wikipedia's take on it:

A meme is a unit of information that replicates from brains or retention systems, such as books, to other brains or retention systems. In more specific terms, a meme is a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution, analogous to the gene (the unit of genetics). Memes can represent parts of ideas, languages, tunes, designs, skills, moral and aesthetic values and anything else that is commonly learned and passed on to others as a unit.


The Melbourne University blog craze is a meme in its natural habitat. Without entering into the detail of who-said-what-to-whom-and-who's-got-the-photo, it's worth noting that since the start of October, the following people have entered the blogosphere: Nick Demiris, Jayde Lovell, Sarah Meredith, Joel Parsons, Miranda Airey-Branson, Alex Lew, Rohan D'Souza and Miranda again (a dormant blog revived in recent weeks). So is there good cause to celebrate the embracing of reflection and contemplation? Or is it in the same category as yo-yos and devotion to Yahoo Serious?

UPDATE 19/11 12:33am: It looks like the hunch hinted at in the above post has been proven correct. Of the blogs mentioned, Nick Demiris is no longer online, nor is the famous Miranda Airey Branson, or Alex, Rohan and Miranda's joint effort. Jade, Sarah and Joel have been sitting idle, with just a single post each in more than a week. Yoyos, blogs and the music of Frente, all shortlived, slick and headache-inducing (except for the blogs and yoyos).

Comments

JP said…
Ari,

The Bench is my personal blog that has been up and running since early 2003 now. It is full of fairly geeky political, economic and religious opinion.

I chose to start Proud To Be Right as a particularly Melbourne Uni Right focused blog, as the readership at The Bench is slightly more global and really couldn't care less about Melbourne Uni.
3 November 2004 at 23:31
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to build a
Read more

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Much in a name

Image
Naming a child is one of the greatest responsibilities a parent has. Short of some dramatic action by its bearer, a person is stuck with a name for life and all the nominative determinist consequences that flow from it. While opening it up to the whims of the democratic process was one option ( Baby McBabyface? ) and engaging the services of a baby name consultant was another, Melanie and I opted to take on the responsibility ourselves. Our criteria? We wanted a name that suited a child as well as the adult she will become. We wanted a name that conveyed both warmth and gravitas. We wanted a name that carried some broader meaning, within our family and beyond it. We wanted a name that was easy to say and easy to spell. And we wanted a name that sounded good, in its entirety and when each part stood on its own. For us, it wasn’t just the given names that needed to be chosen. With Melanie and I each keeping our family names when we got married, our daughter’s family name also
Read more