EPIC WIN FOR ANONYMOUS (20 page)

Rick Webb says that paying for content in the memesphere can help, but only up to a point.

Buzzfeed and Stumbleupon, especially, are INSANELY good at helping juice your memes in the beginning. Amazingly good. Their ad offerings are
par excellence
for cheaply getting your first million views. The name of the game is to spend a little money and kick it off then it goes viral and millions of more see it for free.

Webb says that agencies have to recognize their strengths, because today everyone has the tools to make a Subservient Chicken. He argues that brands have to step up their games in order to outshine the rest of the Internet’s fantastic amateur content. Just as Hollywood is competing with indie filmmakers by producing ever more expensive summer blockbusters like
Avatar
and
Inception
, agencies have to use their budgets to make simple ideas look fantastic. The Barbarian Group was able to do this with a campaign called Beer Cannon, in which they shot cans of Milwaukee’s Best out of a cannon into various objects, filmed with an expensive slow-motion camera. That’s a basic idea, but something your average teenager can’t replicate.

Webb tells me that most ad people are aware of 4chan and poke around there, though the Barbarian Group has never executed any formal campaigns on the site. Generally clients don’t want to have anything to do with 4chan, but agencies are happy to browse the site to keep an eye on memes bubbling up.

The Barbarian Group has been giant 4chan fans since the beginning. I still go on there constantly to poke around, reset my brain, learn about the psyche of certain types of people. There’s definitely a window into the soul going on there, though you gotta temper it by going to some deep Christian websites and remember not everyone is pure id.

In Japan, Dentsu, the world’s biggest ad agency, has a buzz research division that constantly monitors the activity of 2channel, hoping to spot memes and trends before they become mainstream. I’d bet that we’ll see this more formal research happen in the West too—if not with 4chan specifically, with the surrounding host of sites that make up the memesphere.

The speed of appropriation on 4chan has certainly affected the rest of the web. The public has an insatiable appetite for new memes, so thousands are created every day. Ad agencies are no longer just competing with other agencies for your attention, they’re competing with every teenage slacker packing a copy of Photoshop (or Final Cut, or ProTools).

Marci Ikeler is Director of Digital Strategy at Grey Group, a global marketing communications agency. She gave a presentation at South by Southwest Interactive this year, right after Christopher Poole’s keynote, called “Haters Gonna Hate: Lessons for Advertisers from 4chan.” She describes herself as a nerd first and strategist second, having taught herself to code at an early age.

Marci tells me she’s been keeping an eye on 4chan for the last few years, and says that 4chan users have managed to get mass media attention by understanding what people are intrinsically interested in, something advertisers are sometimes not very good at.

Ikeler defines five properties of 4chan that she thinks advertisers can learn from.

First, “Bump.” This refers to how communities self-select what kind of information is important to them, and furthermore what kind of information sticks around. According to Ikeler, a lot of old-school ad men hate to see chatter about their brands on social networks because it’s not under their control. But it’s in advertisers’ best interests to view even the most antagonistic comments as valuable opinions coming from an honest forum. This kind of feedback can be tremendously valuable compared to the focus groups of yore. The key is to transition from a perspective of wanting to control the conversation to engaging the audience on the same level and allowing them to define what works about a brand and what doesn’t.

Second, “Moar” (
more
in chan-speak, which often mocks bad spellers). This refers to the need for advertisers to hit the marketplace hard with many iterations of a brand concept, not just a single big piece like a Super Bowl ad. You want your audience to be hungry for more. According to Ikeler, the best way to meet that demand is with microcontent like tweets and Facebook replies.

Third, “Mods are asleep” (mods are forum moderators). On 4chan, users whisper this during off-peak hours in the hopes that someone will post content that would otherwise get them banned. Marci encourages advertisers to lay off a bit when moderating social media presence. A good example of a brand that failed to do this is Smirnoff Ice, who put the kibosh on an incredibly viral phenomenon called “Bros Icing Bros.” The game had guys pranking their friends by leaving bottles of warm Smirnoff Ice around, which, according to the game’s rules, had be drunk on sight. While Smirnoff was right in assuming that the subtext of the game was that Smirnoff Ice tastes terrible, the company lost an opportunity when it didn’t embrace the prank and capitalize on its virality.

Fourth, Ikeler raises how trollish behavior can cause tiny PR crises and also disrupt community managers from dealing with legitimate concerns by drawing their attention toward triviality.

Fifth, “Not your personal army.” This is a common 4chan response to any call to action deemed unworthy of anons’ attention. Ikeler interprets this as a warning not to expect too much of audiences. They need to be given the motivation to participate in branding efforts. It’s not enough to throw a bunch of social media tools online and expect people to show up and start creating buzz. In other words, “What’s in it for me?”

My conversation with Ikeler ends on a note that would surely send chills down the spine of every creative director in the industry.

Content is no longer valuable. We simply have too much content. There’s more content being produced in a day than we could consume in our entire lives. Advertisers are in the business of creating content that’s no longer valuable. We should be focusing more on curation and engagement.

She’s right. And it’s not just advertising. Publishing, show business, media, art and design too. 4chan shows us that there are enough creative people out there doing for free, and for zero recognition, what professionals have been paid to do for centuries. Furthermore, we have learned that what separated professional creatives from the amateurs wasn’t so much a level of talent, but access to distribution channels. Now that the social web has provided so many amateurs with a way to reach millions, they’re outshining the pros everwhere.

Chapter 7

The Meme Life Cycle

T
HROUGHOUT 2010 I wrote for an Internet culture blog called Urlesque. Our stated goal was to “uncover bits of the web.” We reported most memes that came along, but for me the most interesting assignments allowed me to cover the way memes spread. How exactly does a no-name tween become an overnight celebrity, sharing iTunes chart space with global pop superstars like Ke$ha and Rihanna? How are people able to find out about memes? Why does one girl’s tearful reaction to the
Twilight
trailer beat out a professionally produced viral campaign with a budget of millions? At this point we know what memes are, but where do they come from? How do they spread? The first step in answering these questions is an understanding of the Meme Life Cycle.

The following cycle is loosely defined. Memes don’t always follow this pattern in this order, nor does their rise to mainstream exposure always include all eight of these steps, but it’s a useful template.

Birth

Internet memes are born when the original source material is initially uploaded anywhere on the Internet. Fertile meme territory can be found all over the web, especially on community sites that encourage content uploading like YouTube, DeviantArt, or Facebook, but also on remote locations like personal webpages.

It could be a video of a guy riding a dirt bike into a railing, a hilariously comprehensive treatise on an obscure cartoon, a clever Photoshopped image, or video of a tween girl having a public emotional breakdown. Once a potential meme is on the web, it may sit idle for months or even years until it is discovered, likely by the meme curators at 4chan.

Discovery

Someone posts the item to 4chan, usually accompanied by a comment like, “Holy crap, you guys,” or “WTF” (or OMG or LOL or rage or any number of strong emotions). If it’s a good meme, the conversation thread explodes. Hundreds of people add their commentary. The meme spreads to other threads.

If it’s an image, we’ll see parodic Photoshops and image macros. If it’s video, we’ll likely encounter mashups and YouTube Poop, a game in which users deconstruct and piece together video footage for psychedelic or absurdist effect. If it’s audio, memes are remixed, chopped, screwed, mashed up. Even simple text memes, like creepy stories or hilarious personal experiences, will be retrofitted into a series of copypasta templates.

Before long, we can’t scroll through /b/ without being inundated by the meme.

Aggregation

At some point, the meme jumps from 4chan to the broader Internet. This usually happens when someone posts the meme to a content aggregator like Reddit or Digg. These sites allow memes to flourish beyond the niche world of 4chan. They collect news stories, photos, videos—any piece of content—by allowing their communities of users to post whatever they want. When someone posts content to an aggregator, other users have the ability to upvote or digg it. As users promote content by the simple power of their approval, the most widely approved content rises to the top, or rather the front page, exposing it to a much wider audience.

Word of Mouth

Once memes reach the front page of an aggregator like Reddit, it takes no more than a few hours for people to start tweeting and blogging about the meme. Internet savvy types send links to their friends via instant message. The meme may begin to trend on Twitter or pop up on Google Trends, a list of frequently googled search terms.

Blog Pickup

This is typically when the Internet culture blogs discover the story. Sites like Buzzfeed, Know Your Meme, The Daily What, Videogum, or any members of the Cheezburger Network, will pick up the meme and attempt to add context. Where did it come from? Why is it funny? Can we get an interview with any involved parties? These are the sorts of “value-add” propositions that blogs will try to score before their competitors. It’s a race to get the most information before the meme explodes into the mainstream. The most comprehensive overview will often get the most links from mainstream media.

By this time the meme is being rehashed, as everyone wants to get in on the thing before it goes stale. Self-referential jokes and clever mutations of the meme abound on places like 4chan and Tumblr. Everyone on the Internet is able to enjoy the meme until . . .

Mainstream Exposure

There are two ways mainstream media tends to approach memes. If the meme contains anything negative or shocking, as memes often do, we see breathless nightly news exposés and daytime talk-show hosts bemoaning the State of Things.

If the meme skews toward the lighthearted or quirky, we see late-night talk-show bits or stars of popular memes guesting on morning radio shows. “Look at this wacky thing from the Internet,” we hear. “What a world.”

Commercialization

Only the biggest meme stars will ever see any money, whether it’s through corporate sponsorship or by selling meme-related merchandise. Microsoft hired Paul Vasquez, star of the Double Rainbow meme, to promote the Windows Live Photo Gallery software in a TV ad. Adah Bahner of Chocolate Rain fame shilled for Dr. Pepper, Firefox, Sony, Vizio, and more. Internet memes provide advertisers a roster of recognizable but reasonably priced spokespeople who are keen to translate their fifteen minutes of fame into some quick cash before their meme dies.

Death

Memes never truly die, but one could argue that it’s time to move on when your hopelessly unhip mom or dad asks “Hey, did you see that thing on YouTube about that guy who punched out another guy on the subway?” No more remixes or Photoshops or fervent discussion threads. The meme is over, for now, as every bit of fascination is drained by unimaginative rehashes and abundant mainstream coverage. Particularly powerful memes are subsumed into the memesphere, to be resurrected as callbacks or mashed up with newer memes as comedic references.

A Tale of Two Memes

Let’s chart the meme life cycle with two examples, both of which occurred in the summer of 2010. They weren’t the biggest memes of the season, but they represent the two ways memes are generally consumed by the mainstream: hand-wringing sensationalism and lighthearted amusement.

Consequences Will Never Be The Same

In July 2010, an 11-year-old girl using the pseudonym Jessi Slaughter became embroiled in a microcontroversy on the streaming video site Stickam, where users accused her of engaging in a sexual relationship with a 20-something member of the scene band “Blood on the Dancefloor.”

Birth: Jessi Slaughter Uploads Meme-worthy Content

Slaughter uploaded a response video to YouTube, in which she threatened those who taunted her online. Here’s a taste of what she said:

Hey YouTube it’s Jessi Slaughter here and this is to all you fucking haters. OK guess what? You guys are bitches. You know what? You don’t phase [sic] me. I’m just doing this just so you can tell I read the comments. I read the messages and I replied to them, but know what? I don’t give a fuck. I’m happy with my life, OK? And if you can’t like realize that and stop hating you know what I’ll pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushie, OK? Cause you hater bitches—you’re just, like, jealous of me. You’re just saying that because you’re jealous of me because I’m more pretty than you, I have more friends, more people like me, I have more fans . . . Um yeah, and all that shit.

The dialogue makes the girl sound like a hardened street urchin, but in the footage she comes off as a typically self-conscious little girl reeling off catchphrases she’s picked up on TV.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t conceive a video that would be more tailor-made to ignite the ire of 4chan. Here was an 11-year-old white girl taking on the thuggish bravado found between songs on gangsta rap albums. She was out of her element. On her Tumblr blog she claimed, “I can’t be tamed.” Plenty of people wanted to prove her wrong.

Discovery: 4chan Pounces

It wasn’t long before the 4chan hivemind targeted Slaughter. Her unmitigated haughtiness and filthy mouth were perfect bait for /b/tards who would relish turning her life into a living hell for a while. Her video was posted in “You Rage You Lose” threads, which consist of people sharing how long they were able to last before they exploded into a rage while watching the video in question. The girl’s complete lack of self-awareness drove 4chan into a frenzy. In their eyes, she needed to be put in her place. Since her parents clearly had no control over their daughter, it was time for Anonymous to carry out some vigilante justice.

They bombarded her social networking profiles with hateful comments, urging her to kill herself. They also sent pizza deliveries to her house and left threatening messages on her parents’ answering machine.

A large measure of deindividuation—also known as mob mentality—occurs in many 4chan raids. Everything happens quickly, and the rush to be the guy that’s able to score the dox (4chan slang for personal information like home address and phone number) is heady. When all was said and done, even some /b/tards claimed that they thought Anonymous had gone too far. At no point did the attackers stop to think, “Am I really antagonizing an 11-year-old girl? What kind of human garbage am I?”

Slaughter posted a follow-up video which rocketed the story into meme history. Teary-eyed and hysterical, Jessi Slaughter begged her attackers to stop. While this would have been enough to solidify meme status, her father provided troll bait of an unparalleled variety.

I’m gonna tell you right now. This is from her father! You’re a bunch of lying, no good punks. And I know who it’s coming from. Because I backtraced it. And I know who’s emailing and who’s doing it, and you’ve been reported to the cyber police and the state police. You better write one more thing or screw with my computer again, you’ll be arrested! End of conversation! From her father! And if you come near my daughter, guess what? Consequences will never be the same. Ya lyin’ bunch of pricks!

Slaughter’s powerless father’s empty threats, coupled with his obviously poor grasp on how the Internet works, gave 4chan trolls enough material to construct hundreds of image macros, video remixes, and more. The term “backtrace” has become a common ironic reference to one’s inability to track the online activity of hackers and trolls. Similarly, “consequences will never be the same” has become a favorite closing for troll threats.

Due to the sordid nature of the controversy, this meme bypassed the
Aggregation
stage, as aggregation sites like Reddit and Digg tend to shy away from bullying like this. They’re generally made up of friendly, positive folks, or at least people who play nice in order to maintain a reputation in the community. A lot of Redditors are also /b/tards. The community shapes the discourse.

Word of Mouth: “Check out this bratty little girl and her dumb redneck dad.”

While it’s difficult to document this sort of thing, one can easily imagine 4chan users instant messaging the video to their friends. I mean . . . I did!

Blog Pickup: Gawker and Urlesque Break The Story

Bloggers, on the other hand, had an opportunity to write hundreds of think pieces about the risks of cyberbullying and unsettling teenage Stickam subculture.

At Gawker, Adrian Chen wrote:

Don’t pick on 11 year-old girls. Seriously. No matter how dumb they seem—no matter how much they might seem to deserve it—they are, at the end of the day, 11 year-old girls. You wouldn’t make an 11 year-old girl cry in real life; why do it on the Internet?

Cyberbullying is a constant. No amount of handwringing is going to change that, because it’s nearly impossible to prosecute. Of course no one should be mean to 11-year-olds. But haters, as they say, gonna hate. The problem is more likely to be solved by empowering potential victims with knowledge of the realities of cyberbullying than by expecting anonymous sociopaths to be nice. Slaughter’s parents gave the impression in multiple interviews that they had little understanding of what she was up to online, and furthermore seemed unable to enforce appropriate disciplinary measures.

I wrote as much in a blog post for Urlesque at the time. From there, the story was dissected by countless mainstream news sites.

Mainstream Exposure: Innocent Girl Cyberbullied, are Your Children Safe? Stay Tuned to Find Out.

It only took a few days before Slaughter and her parents were brought on morning shows to talk about their experience. Child safety experts descended onto the scene to dispense advice that ranged from “ban the computer forever” to “let your kid make mistakes.”

This meme skipped the
Commercialization
stage, for obvious reasons.

Death: The Hivemind Moves On

For the most part, Jessi Slaughter has since stayed off the Internet (her father was later arrested for child abuse when he punched his daughter in the face), and as usual, trolls got bored and lost interest. While the jargon inspired by this meme will live forever, the Photoshops and remixes have mostly dried up.