One man's spam is another man's meme.
Wikipedia's discussion page on memes and internet phenomena has some excellent back and forth. But we want to hear your opinion! Let us know what you think about memes.
Meme Discussion | Internet Phenomena Discussion | Your Input
While Youtube and Myspace are popular websites, I don't feel they can be classified as an Internet Meme. If Popularity = Meme, then Wikipedia is also a meme, as well as google, and 100,000 other webpages. I submit that Youtube and Myspace should be removed as memes. -Engunnee
Although they aren't memes, they are Internet phenomena. There are 3 references for MySpace as being a net phenomenon.
-Seraphim Whipp
Agreed, they're not Internet Phenomena. Nor is 2channel . It's probably mislabeling. They are websites where Internet phenomena propagate but they are not themselves. Those sources don't show anything, they just have the word "phenomenon" in the title or article body. This article is a list of Internet memes in the notable sense described in the introduction section, not about phenomena in the common usage of that word. Every thing that exists is a phenomenon. That's not what we mean. -Wikidemo
The references are reliable and discuss in detail how MySpace is an internet phenomenon. They don't necessarily have to repeat a specific mantra of "MySpace is an internet phenomena because...". The title of this article is not "List of Internet memes"; it is "List of Internet phenomena". The distinction should be made for a reason and the content should uphold the articles title. I don't know what discussion has come before or whether there was a debate to change it to its current title...
-Seraphim Whipp
Phenomena and memes are interchangeable. See the talk history of the parent article, Internet meme. This list is about things on the Internet that are notable but also become popular in the way a meme does. The common usage of phenomenon meaning, an event or a big event, wouldn't make any sense. If this article were just about things that were big on the Internet it would encompass nearly everything, and thereby be completely non-notable.
On sources, see Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms. Neologisms like "Internet meme" and "Internet phenomena" have to be supported with articles about the subject, not articles that happen to use the word. That would run into problems with WP:OR and WP:SYN. Of the sources for myspace, this only says that Myspace is a big thing. this one does the same and uses "phenomenon" in its common sense; there is no discussion of the meme-ness of myspace, probably because it has none. It's a platform/service, not a content fad. This one too is just a statement that Myspace is popular and a casual use of "phenomenon" in the common sense. -Wikidemo
MySpace itself is a fad. Also, if phenomena and memes are interchangeable then MySpace would belong on this list. I have nothing more to say...If you wanna take it out, please do so as consensus leans that way. Thanks for your time :-).-Seraphim Whipp
"-Memes are memes regardless of popularity or success.
-Memes are memes regardless of amusement or entertainment.
-Digital data, eg videos, websites, images, etc, are not memes. They do not pass from one mind to another; they generally stay on one server. EG The idea of sharing the video is a meme, quoting lines from it are memes, but the video it's self is not a meme. (You could possibly call some of them a ‘memotype’, however even this doesn’t always work as you can’t store a whole video or whole website in your mind.)
Most of later part of the page is either miscellaneous or just irrelevant info. I would correct this page but it seems to be entirely based of these misconceptions. I think it would be better just to delete this page as it can be summed up in one line: "Memes can spread via the internet." If they are particularly notable memes then the meme page can mention them. -Xep
I disagree with any proposal to delete. It claims its own notability, it is notable, it is widely discussed, and it is cited so please don't. I wrote most of the article and I stand by it. Rock solid, if rather tentative. It is cited and supported by what major publications say about Internet memes. As I say, the word is used in three senses: (1) the thing that is passed from person to person, in this case a digital file; (2) the subejct of the content, i.e. the joke itself (which is what you are probably thinking of as a meme), and (3) the phenomenon as a whole -- i.e. the fact that 1/2 million people just heard the joke is an incidence of a meme. The word "virus" is also used in the same 3 senses: the dna arrangement, the individual instance of it, and the outbreak. Describing the various classes of memes is certainly useful and correct -- particularly PR and advertising, which self-consciously claims itself to be generating Internet memes and gets covered as such by the press. This article was separated out from the list of Internet Phenomena for a reason discussed in the talk page. Wikipedia is mostly an encyclopedia of articles about things, not a list of things. Perhaps you are objecting to the application of the term "meme" to Internet phenomena. That's not for us Wikipedians to decide, because the term is so used. It's a fair criticism that what is called (and what I wrote about as) an Internet meme is not a true meme, just as there is criticism (discussed in the meme article) that memes themselves are an empty concept. If so, why not add a section like "criticism of terminology", if you can find some good citations. If not, you are doing what some semi-scientists do when they claim that white, or black, is not really a color. Fine. But please don't delete the article on white or black from Wikipedia in response. -Wikidemo
You only need to read any book that gives the definition of 'meme' to see that it is not compatible with the definition (the one given here at least) of 'internet meme'. I agree that it's become popular to call fads/popular things 'memes', but that's just a common misunderstanding. If 'internet meme' has become popular enough that it is now its own phrase with a different meaning, then you need make it clear that they are not memes in the traditional sense. This is not POV, it is a fact that we have to two different definitions, ie 'internet meme' (Popular online fads) and 'memes spread via internet' (Normal memes in the true sense of the word). -Xep
Very interesting point, and perhaps a distinction worth being made in this article. An argument that some or all of what are commonly referred to as "Internet memes" are not really memes is worth making - to avoid opinion, POV, and original research-like issues you would have to point to a secondary source that says so rather than simply making a case here based on primary sources. Then the question becomes whether real memes on the net are a distinct sub-class of memes that is worth writing about. If so they deserve their own article, or we could divide the Internet memes article between true Internet memes, and things that are known as Internet memes that are not real memes. It would be like writing an article about, say, Parmesan cheese. You could divide that article between the true cheese from Parma that meets all the criteria, versus a style of cheesemaking the world over that also carries that name. The other possibility is that there isn't really anything special about memes when they happen to be on the net. One analogy might be warriors. There is a common term called "road warriors" that covers a distinct class of people. They are not really warriors. However, there is no real sub-class of true warriors who happen to be on the road and as such "road warriors" in the sense of trained career fighters who happen to be in a passenger vehicle at the time is not a point worth making. I hope that's reasonably clear. I'm fine with and encourage you to add all the wisdom you want to this article. That's what Wikipedia is for -- make it better! Just, please, don't eviscerate the article about the pop culture phenomenon that's called an "Internet meme." It was a step in the right direction to separate the article describing the phenomenon from the other article that serves as a list of various people's favorite examples. Thx. -Wikidemo
These last two posts get to the heart of what I personally see to be the primary issue on this page, which is that there is a misunderstanding between what a "meme" is, meaning a basic unit of cultural information that Richard Dawkins proposed to exist in his book The Selfish Gene (and to the best of my knowledge his argument has not achieved the degree of success in academia that say evolution or even string theory has), and what an "internet meme" is, that is a fad that is transmitted over or otherwise engendered by the internet and the existence of which is doubted by nobody who has ever encountered one. Just ask Chuck Norris. I'm going to edit the introduction to make the faddish nature of an internet meme more apparent and also mention that the name is inspired by but has little in actuality to do with the idea of a meme. -BlackAndy "
What is a meme to you? Let the world know in the box below. We will go through and read entries to filter out spam, and then post your ideas here.