What's a "meme?" you ask. Well, it's a postmodern name for those silly bits of media that spread like wildfire on teh interwebs. Just about anyone can tick them off in their heads: Evolution of Dance, Star Wars Kid, Dramatic Chipmunk, LOLcats. There's a great visual timeline here.
No one knows how they start, why they catch fire, what they reflect about the underpinnings of our collective unconscience in cyberspace. Malcolm Gladwell would claim that he had that all figured out when he wrote the Tipping Point. I would argue that he was profiling the decidedly 20th-century versions of this activity, and that social media has brought us something new: the 21st-century iteration of an old-fashioned party line.
Anyway, if you look quick, you can catch the latest one in action: JK Wedding Entrance Dance. Up to more than 1.6M views on YouTube since it was posted a few days ago. The bride and groom appeared on the Today Show, well, today -- and apparently the whole wedding party is showing up to repeat the dance on the show tomorrow (which of course, will become the moment this meme jumps the shark).
Catch it now, while it's still hot:
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