Meme to Human Resources

[vovat]

My journal is called Stratovania, as a reference to the stratospheric kingdom in Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz. It was basically an extension of my blog being called "The Highways and Byways of the Stratosphere." I think I had recently read Ozoplaning when I came up with that one. Besides, I just like the word "stratosphere," and I sort of also intended it as a reference to the Dukes of Stratosphear and the line "put up your picture in the stratosphere" in Frank Black's song "I've Seen Your Picture." Before that, the blog was called "Orange Juice and Parchment Paper," because it was what my mom was buying at the grocery store one day, and I thought it would be a cool, abstract-sounding title, but I don't think it really was.

My subtitle is "The Greatest Kingdom in the Stratosphere," because it modifies the title. Nothing much more to that.

My friends page is called "The Stratovanian Syndicate." It was "The Stratovanian Coalition" for a brief period of time, but then I remembered hearing that the group that wrote the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books was the Stratemeyer Syndicate, so it's kind of a play on words. (For the record, I don't think I've ever actually read a Stratemeyer book.)

My username is vovat, because it was written on the paper of the guy sitting next to me in senior year high school physics, and I thought it sounded cool, so I've used it for pretty much everything since then.

My default userpic is Mouser from Super Mario Bros. 2, because I was on a Mario kick when I first made the journal.

My webpage is VoVatia, because it's my username turned into a place name.

My name is Nathan, because, well, it really IS my name. It's not very creative, but it's true.


And something else:

1.Take your LJ username and replace each letter with the corresponding number (A=1, B=2, etc...).

22 (V) + 15 (O) + 22 (V) + 1 (A) + T (20)

2. Add all of the numbers together to create a kind of super number.

80

3. Add the digits of the number together.

8

4. Find the post of this number (step 2) in your LJ. If you don't have that many posts, add the digits together again.

I believe this is the entry.

5. Take the digit you noted in step 3, and count that many words into the post, what's the word?

It's "my." Pretty lame word, huh?

6. Use the resulting word in a google image search, and select a picture from the first page and post the results.



I know some people call these things (the things that people copy from each other's journals, not the beans in the picture) "memes," but I've never understood why. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

Well, it's sort of a (perhaps bastard) form of memetics; the theory is that ideas are viral in nature, and these viral ideas are called "memes" (Uh, I think this is Dawkins, here? Let me check... yeah; I knew I read about them first in "Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes" by him as reprinted in The Mind's I (ed. by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett), but I couldn't remember if Meme Theory was his or not. But it's lookin' like it is.), and they replicate and spread themselves much like a virus or gene does (well, metaphorically).

These -- I'm not really necessarily sure if I'd consider these actually memes per se (though I don't really have a whole lot of knowledge in memetics, and someone who does is probably reading this and travelling to Seattle to slap me right now); it seems to me that memes tend to evolve over time and change and grow as they're spread from person to person, where LJ Memes tend to be _spread_ like memes, but they don't (or, more correctly, rarely) evolve or grow. I mean, if I do a meme (espeically the quiz types), and post it in my journal, and you see it and do the same quiz, the "Hey, let's do this quiz!" idea has spread from me to you (assuming I just... I don't know, found the quiz at random, or I'm the first person to do this hypothetical quiz or whatever), but it's the same quiz and nothing's really happened with it. It's just replicated, but it hasn't evolved.

On the other hand, I suppose if you do a commentary or something, or if you see the quiz and make your own slightly different one (which is seen by someone and they make their own slightly different one and so forth), I suppose that might be more Memeish.

But, well, yeah. Memetics isn't necessarily my thing, and so the Evolution requirement I've tacked on might not actually _be_ required. It could just be the replication part of things. In which case, I'd suppose that LJ Memes _are_ Memes.

(One of my favorite things about memetics: "Memes don't exist! Tell your friends!")

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, some people included the webpage and name parts of that first "meme," and others didn't, so I guess that could count as evolving somewhat.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah -- listened to my re-consituted UK Tracklisting Of Mink Car. It's... kind of odd; parts of it really flow well, and other parts seem sort of random. Like the addition of "Boss of Me", actually; with it in the lineup, I could kinda tell why they left that one off the record. It doesn't really... fit. But, yeah, MISLIH is a pretty good opener, and Bangs isn't actually _that_ weird in the middle of the record (or, rather, the Mink Car Bangs, since the McSwy's Bangs _was_ in the middle), and Older probably does work best at the end of the record. Overall, I think UK Restless actually did a pretty good lineup; it almost works a bit better than the original, if you can forgive them for dropping a bunch of songs. Which I can't, because, dude, "Wicked Little Critta".