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The renowned interweb memeticist Sir Cyle Gage Ph.D. has written an excellent essay on the origins of lulz and on the various forms of internet memes.
I wasn't following this story, but back in December, Storypipe discussed Samuel Arbesman's Memespread Project . According to the initial analysis, the memetic nature of what he was studying interfered with his experiment.
One source of bias in this experiment is what is termed the Hawthorne Effect. This effect is that a study is affected by the subjects' knowledge that they are being observed. Since those who spread the meme of the Memespread Project knew that it was being recorded, they acted differently than if they had acted without the knowledge of being observed.
I am guilty of mis-casting this sort of observer effect as an example of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The Hawthorne Effect is less fun but more useful in understanding the psychology of memetic transference in the unique public places that the internet made possible.
The very recognition that a unit of information is part of a popular thread of examples - in effect, that the information is highly visible - increases the chances of the viewer copying the pattern yet again. Of course, this could just be the intersection of laziness and fame-seeking.
