"There is no built-in way for the web to track attribution," the Know Your Meme team notes. This is why they set up their site, to create a way for people to document memes. Memes are ideas that are not quite protected by copyright but are riding around in the internet milieu. They are what people are thinking about -- in fact, the group says "popularity" is the main criterion of their worth. The group presents the story of turn-of-last-century folklorist John Lomax, who recorded oral histories and cowboy songs which enrich our culture today. Without his work, these parts of our heritage could have been lost forever.
Similarly, The Know Your Meme team talks about the concept of losing whole internet communities when they are shut down. Recent news announcements about the shut-down of Friendster highlight this -- all that meaningful text, all those connections, all the inside jokes will be gone.
Know Your Meme actively catalogs web culture and is an authority on who gets credit for internet memes. As they explain, it's not the person who invents the first appearance of a meme (although "firsts" are another thing), but maybe the one who sets it to a new soundtrack, or the one who floats it around his or her big list of friends. Know Your Meme follows the trail of internet clues to document memes: Coinages, celebrity adoration, kitsch, and bloopers.
Know Your Meme was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 50 Best Websites of 2009, and is widely regarded as the leading source for internet culture information.
On March 29, this presentation was given at Web 2.0.
On May 2, the Meme Factory book was successfully fully funded at Kickstarter.
On June 1, I Can Haz Cheezburger acquired Know Your Meme.
Elspeth "Ellie" Rountree has appeared as an internet culture expert on major media channels, and is listed as a “2009 Silicon Alley Insider 100” and one of the “25 Need-To-Know Bloggers” by Mediaite.com. Rountree has written for the Saving Grace series blog on TNT. She was also a writer, senior producer, host, and co-creator of both highly successful Rocketboom Tech and Know Your Meme series. Rountree has also spoken at many conferences including Web 2.0, Social Media Week Brazil, Case Camp in Toronto. She is also an active member of the International Academy of the Digital Arts and Sciences, serving as a judge for the Webby Awards.
Kenyatta Cheese researches and fosters media culture and technology. He is probably best known for co-creating the web series and internet meme database Know Your Meme, often cited as the go to resource for understanding web culture. Kenyatta is often called upon to comment on the state and meaning of internet culture by the likes of NPR, MSNBC, and The New York Times. In previous iterations he has worked with the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology, Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and Rocketboom.
Jamie Wilkinson, of VHX/Internet Famous, is an Emmy Award-winning software developer & Internet culture researcher. His work focuses on open-source, pop culture and the propagation of information & ideas online. He is co-creator of the Know Your Meme video series & Internet meme database, and part of the team behind Star Wars Uncut, a crowdsourced recreation of Star Wars that was awarded an Emmy for Interactive Media in 2010. Wilkinson is also a founding member of the Free Art & Technology (FAT) Lab, an open-source research & development group. Wilkinson taught the Internet Famous class in Parsons graduate design & technology program, in which students’ grades depend on how much Internet traffic they can generate.
Patrick Davison, of WhatWeKnowSoFar/MemeFactory, is pursuing a PhD in media studies from the Media, Culture, and Communication department of NYU. He makes performance work as WhatWeKnowSoFar, writes and performs MemeFactory, and does research with the Web Ecology Project. He has spoken at ROFLcon, Ignite New York, Yale, NYU, and Social Media Week (Sao Paulo).
Mike Rugnetta is a composer and programmer. He is co-founder and co-director of the Brooklyn based performance group What We Know So Far which produces past-paced works about information, media and technology culture.
Resources
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Photo: Pinar Özger