Meme 101

“Internet media is almost like literature,” says Bruckert. “Unless it’s your full-time job, you can’t possibly read everything.” The What We Know So Far dudes don’t want your tour of the hypertubes to feel like one big inside joke. So brush up on your Internets! Here are five terms they suggest you commit to memory prior to the Factory event. O RLY? YA RLY!

MEME
“A meme is an idea, practice or image that travels between and across members of a culture. Coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, it’s most easily described as a unit of culture. The focus of Memefactory is Internet memes: trends or pieces of media which are propagated by Internet culture.”

LOLZ vs. LULZ
“Laugh out loud is used in response to something funny, or as a prefix meaning ‘characterized by humor and Internet speak,’ e.g., Lolcats. Lulz, while similar to lolz, is specifically used in the context of laughs sought or received. Lulz are not always humorous. Frequently an action perpetrated ‘for the lulz’ is insidious in nature.”

+1
“A way to indicate approval of a post, user or posted item. +1 might be followed by a request for ‘moar.’?”

SNOWCLONE
“A commonly known and repeated sentence framework. A traditional example might be Have X, will travel or X is the new Y. The Internet has bred a fair number of its own snowclones, including I’m in yr X, Y-ing yr Z and All your X are belong to us.”

TL;DR
“Too Long; Didn’t Read. Most often used in the comments section of a blog or forum as a response to a long post. The Internet is full of lazy people who are not interested in life stories, only quick lulz.”

For more info on meme trends, What We Know So Far suggests rocketboom.com, encyclopediadramatica.com and somethingawful.com.

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