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The Daily OrangeOnline revolution
Viral videos spread Internet culture to students through addictive clips and catchphrases
By Ivy Tan
Posted: 11/6/08, 10:23 PM EST Section: Feature
Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at SU, said that because the Internet is a medium that allows everyone to access all kinds of files, not just on a national scale but an international one as well, there will inevitably be a few things that get passed around through this medium.
They will get a large enough audience to be referenced by other forms of media and those who are commenting on the material.
Referring to the popular YouTube video of the boy who went wild with excitement after opening his Christmas present to find a Nintendo 64, Thompson said, "The Internet has found a home movie that would have had no distribution outside the kid's family and ends up jumping from an incredibly viral video to VH1's Web Junk 20, to mainstream broadcast, late-night talk shows and finally, to an advertising of a luxury automobile."
BK Gupta, who created the Internet Meme Timeline on his Web site Dipity.com, said there really isn't an Internet meme business where people are trying to gain money or fame through sharing their videos or posting their captions.
"It's not like the first person who put up the catch "I can has cheezburger?" on top of the image of a cat was trying to make a million bucks. They were just trying to entertain their friends," he said.
The meme "icanhascheezburger" is now a popular Web site, icanhascheezburger.com, that lets the general public put up their favorite pictures of cats, known as "LOLcats," and post phrases with poor grammar and deliberate misspellings on the images.
It was reported last year in BusinessWeek that icanhascheezburger.com was generating around $5,400 per month from advertising and traffic and has about half a million daily page views.
Thompson said maintaining a Web site like icanhascheezburger.com is not as difficult as getting a particular meme, in this case a particular LOLcat image, to become virally successful so that everyone knows about it.
He said the key to Internet videos and Internet memes is not that they are good quality and may be remembered for a long time, like the case with television or film.
They will get a large enough audience to be referenced by other forms of media and those who are commenting on the material.
Referring to the popular YouTube video of the boy who went wild with excitement after opening his Christmas present to find a Nintendo 64, Thompson said, "The Internet has found a home movie that would have had no distribution outside the kid's family and ends up jumping from an incredibly viral video to VH1's Web Junk 20, to mainstream broadcast, late-night talk shows and finally, to an advertising of a luxury automobile."
BK Gupta, who created the Internet Meme Timeline on his Web site Dipity.com, said there really isn't an Internet meme business where people are trying to gain money or fame through sharing their videos or posting their captions.
"It's not like the first person who put up the catch "I can has cheezburger?" on top of the image of a cat was trying to make a million bucks. They were just trying to entertain their friends," he said.
The meme "icanhascheezburger" is now a popular Web site, icanhascheezburger.com, that lets the general public put up their favorite pictures of cats, known as "LOLcats," and post phrases with poor grammar and deliberate misspellings on the images.
It was reported last year in BusinessWeek that icanhascheezburger.com was generating around $5,400 per month from advertising and traffic and has about half a million daily page views.
Thompson said maintaining a Web site like icanhascheezburger.com is not as difficult as getting a particular meme, in this case a particular LOLcat image, to become virally successful so that everyone knows about it.
He said the key to Internet videos and Internet memes is not that they are good quality and may be remembered for a long time, like the case with television or film.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Ash
posted 11/07/08 @ 3:02 PM EST
Its amazing how viral a video can become so quickly. When you think about all the people in the world who are sending emails to their friends with the subject line "Check this out!" to get these videos viral overnight its amazing. (Continued…)
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