What's New, Memecat?

A blog about memes and the cultural patterns that generate them.

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Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge is a "first-person runner" from EA that appears to be inspired by parkour. Taking the role of the traceur are agents of a dystopian police state. They chase Faith across a mirrored skyline as she delivers messages and attempts to free her imprisoned sister.


Video Memes Scene From South Park

This hilarious scene from South Park features the Numa Numa kid, Star Wars Kid, Leave Brittany Alone, Chocolate Rain, and Dramadog.


Cherry Chocolate Rain

Tay Zonday has hit the big-time: he now stars in an awesome commercial for Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr Pepper.

And you know what? After watching this commercial, I am going to go to 7-11 and get me a bottle of this stuff.


LOLcats Article in the Houston Chronicle

It is not surprising that LOLcats is percolating into the glare of prime-time; it may not be long before there is a LOLcats brand of cereal and who knows what else.

For the last few months, online regulars have been seeing on various Web sites and blogs pictures of cats and other animals in strange poses, with large type captions embedded in the photos. The grammar and syntax in the captions are atrocious by design. The pictures are called LOLcats, named after the abbreviation for "laughing out loud" used by fans of text and instant messaging.

Source: I'M IN UR NEWSPAPER WRITIN MAH COLUM

This is no tragedy. Memes that inflict a strong intellectual or emotional effect on their hosts will break out. Sometimes a wall can be built around a meme complex through the use of discrimination, jargon, initialtion rites, and so on. Such a wall has been maintained by the semi-cloistered online communities of 4chan, fark, and so many others as they developed the LOLcats and the other image macro memes as a communication device. But once Boing Boing got onto this good thing, the positive-feedback bubble dynamic of mainstream attention began. And so has its demise (as something small and special). After all, how big of an audience can an in-joke effectively wink to?

Memes will either wither on the vine that created them and become historical footnoes - or they break out into mass consumption, only to be dilluted by overexploitation and the consumer-creator feedback loop.

But ubiquity - even if it is a bland ubiquity - is still not a bad way for a meme to survive and evolve again.


S. Korean B-Boys Article

The popular media is beginning to recognize the b-boys phenomenon: South Korea Embraces Breakdancing Craze.

Japan has an impressive scene as well:

There are a videos under popping that are good examples, including hyun joon popping wit his crew.