EllJay Science the Second

[active_apathy]

Although, really, it's kind of cheap popular science. But still! Popular EllJay Science!

What I propose to do is this: to make a meme, to track the spread of a meme.

The model I'm currently considering is posting the meme, and having people who repost the meme comment on my original post. They'd reply to the comment of the person who they took the meme from, and then they'd propagate it throughout all of LJ. Those of you who took it from here would, of course, comment on the post itself.

The problem I see with this methodology is, at its simplest, that there's very little payoff to doing the meme; they get to comment, and repost some instructions, but it's predisposed to only be done by those who have a degree of curiosity in the subject. Or, maybe, those who want to commentwhore on a post in a journal far, far away. (Plus, I'm not actually sure what I'd do with the data, except look at it and make interested noises)



Still, it would interest me to do so. This is my discussion post for it; I'm interested to see what you, my many-talented readership, think of this, this maaaadness. I'll field pretty much any comment - on the idea, on any possible value of the data gathered, on the proposed methodology, on the utter silliness of having though of it in the first place, and absolutely anything in between.

Comments

[bending-sickle.livejournal.com]

Quote: (Plus, I'm not actually sure what I'd do with the data, except look at it and make interested noises)

I'd make interested noises too, so count me in. (I've always wondered as to the scope of memes, mostly because so many have died over on my LJ. Alas, woe!)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I'm working on my interested act at the moment. It goes a little like:

*headtilt* Hmmmm...

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Well, a real scientific experiment would be near-impossible in this context, because there are so many variables. But just for fun....

What about a meme-story? Each player copies the story from their source and adds a sentence. Then they follow a link back to the comment that the person they got the story from made, and post a comment with their sentence. Finally, they post to their journal with the story (including their sentence), and a link to the comment they just made.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

It's a little too complicated that way, I think. But, it could be fun as an actual meme.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Point.

(Hmm, should I try to start it?)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Maybe after; you could use my experiment as a kind of feasibility study, or such.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, maybe. I suppose the plan would be to add different incentives to the meme, and observe how that changes the spread.

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

On a tangent, there's a memegame I've always wanted to play although I know I'm just neither organised nor lj-famous enough. It's called the Unique Interests Game. All players have the interest "The Unique Interests Game" so they can find the other players by clicking it, and the goal is not to have two linky interests in a row - that is, every non-unique interest has at least one unique interest on either side of it. The way you play is to 1) adopt unique interests that are alphabetically between your non-unique interests, and 2) undermine other players by adopting THEIR unique interests, thus making them no longer unique. Obviously you only grab the interests that would go between two of your own unique ones. And there's no way to enforce a rule against meaningless strings of letters, alas, but... you know... sportsmanship and stuff, yeah?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

If only I could wrap my head around it, I would be keenly fascinated by this game. So, um, how does it work?

[maggiebloome.livejournal.com]

You'd basically just put the game in your interests list, make up enough unique interests to separate all your non-unique ones, and then click the name-of-the-game interest to find other players so you can sabotage them! And I guess there'd be a rule against deleting interests, cos, pssssh.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

::slow headtilt:: ...yes, I think my brain broke trying to understand what she was talking about.

[bending-sickle.livejournal.com]

Through cleolinda, I've discovered MapLoco (http://www.maploco.com/) which gives you visitor locations for a particular web site onto a world map. Might be interesting for The Meme Project.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Possibly as a variant on this one; at the moment, I'm mostly interested in how it propagates digitally.