28th
Hey Meme Haterz, let me show you some awesome.
So earlier today swamibooba, through his musings about the Favrd community, got me thinking about memes and the evolution of ideas. I know plenty of you always be hatin’ on memes, with good reason. But if there were no memes, there would be no awesome.
In some ways I see Tumblr as the next evolutionary step from Twitter, where most of us “met.” It’s looser, has more creative potential, although it’s not quite there yet. Occasionally, through a combination of mediums like Twitter, Tumblr, and Vimeo, something amazing bubbles to the top. Though it’s not exactly a series of hashtagged blurbs on The Twitter, it’s still a meme, in a sense.
I present, for your approval, Birdhouse. First, The Earl of Sandwich and Cameron came up with an awesome idea and executed it, thus producing this most excellent iPhone software. People picked up on it, since it was an idea with legs, and started writing jokes about it on Twitter. Then Geoff came up with the idea to make a video about it, and asked a bunch of creative Twitter folks to create their own Birdhouse “stories.”
Although each of these vignettes was great in of itself, it was Christa and Neven’s Catforfood scene that, to me, represented the apex of this meme. It was so bizarre, well-executed, and creative that it just really struck me. I loved it to bits, and frankly, it was pretty much the reason I became “real life” friends with Christa (“OMG YOU’RE A KOOK, TOO! BE MY FRIEND!!!111”).
So anyway, yeah, we haven’t hit on the perfect medium or combination of mediums quite yet. Lots of memes are still mundane and kinda lame. But the potential for the sublime is definitely there. In short: MORE LIKE THIS.
First of all, GO POEKS. She makes badass stuff like Twitterbelle and these Munny things and I wish I would have known her before putting together this video because I can only imagine what kind of performance she would have turned in.
That’s true for quite a number of people, in fact. The fact that we threw this thing together - from initial idea to posted product - in 5 days (mainly to preserve the surprise for Adam and Cameron), meant that the list of people I could lobby to contribute was limited to A) people I could see were using Birdhouse or tweeting about it, and B) people I had the ability to contact privately and quickly. To me, this essentially means there’s still a long list of people with whom I’m hoping to make fun stuff. If you’re into that sort of thing, now’s a good time to drop me a line and let me know.
Meanwhile, Poeks, I’d almost be embarrassed to admit how many times I’ve rewatched raw footage like Neven & Christa’s. MY LAPTOP IS A TREASURE TROVE OF AWESOME.
