Blog post #3 - Bryanna Feldman
For this week, I have decided to analyze the third articulation, in comparison to Martin Luthers 95 theses. I will first look at Martin Luther's 95 theses, then take a closer look at the famous meme of "Woman Yelling at a Cat." Even though these articulations are different they both have similar messages and can create different meanings.
Martin Luthers 95 theses was first written as a criticism of the catholic church and its practices but it quickly went viral in a way that it was unintended too. As mentioned by Standage, they began to circulate in the form of manuscripts, then later in pamphlet form to the wider public. This was a new phenomenon and criculated way beyond the expectations of Luther. Such phenomenon opened Luther and the rest of the publics eyes to how quickly word can spread, drawing attention to the power of decentralized, person to person media systems (Standage 54).
A more relative and recent example of something going viral when it was not intended to is the meme of the "Woman Yelling at a Cat". These photo where taken in different contexts however, someone turned it into a meme that quickly went viral and gained over 78,000 retweets. Thus, showing the power of the media in making meaning of the message and passing information on to quickly. Due to the context of the internet individuals wereable to manipulate the message and create new meaning as seen within the articulation. This factor, further shows how memes can reach a much larger and broader audience then written material like Luthers 95 theses could ever reach.
Question:
Can you think of another example where something was posted with one meaning but went viral because of another?
Standage, Tom. “How Luther Went Viral: The Role of Social Media In Revolutions.” Writing on the Wall, MyLS, 2013, pp. 48–63.
Hey Bryanna, great post!
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, the character Baby Yoda from the recent Disney series went extremely viral, but not in the context of the shows themes. Baby Yoda could be seen all over the media, whether it was him constantly napping, or subtly drinking tea, judging others around him. Baby Yoda was edited into variety of memes, and definitely circulated throughout the media. In this case, the popularity of the character probably helped the Mandalorian series go viral.
Hi Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis! I agree that the 95 Theses and the cat meme takes advantage of wide distribution that results in its success. Your connection to how the meme manipulates meaning to turn it into something else within articulation was interesting to me and I couldn't agree more. To answer your question, the "Kermit Sipping Tea" meme went extremely viral on the web for the same reason. This extremely collaborative creation led to millions of users reposting, recreating, and sharing the meme across the web. There are some creative ones out there that I'm sure we've all encountered!
Best,
Jinee
Hey Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! One example that I can think of is the video of Kylie Jenner waking up Stormi and saying "rise and shine." That video took the internet by storm (no pun intended) and people made many different jokes from people turning it into their alarm to wake them up or just autotuning it. This meme was circulated on various platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. The wide distribution of this meme throughout the internet on different platforms allowed for millions of people to see it and thousands of people to manipulate it and create so many different versions of it. The intensity of the meme even got to the point where people made sweatshirts and hoodies with the picture of kylie's face surrounded by a sunshine.
Olivia
Hi Bryanna!
ReplyDeleteGreat post! In response to your question, I decided to google incidents where people went viral when they didn’t intend to or for reasons they did not think of at first. An interesting story came up on Buzzfeed from a poster named Superbleak. They had created a meme and posted it to a Libertarian page that they follow. There were about 2000 people on the page total. The meme was shared repeatedly, only like the women and the cat, the words were changed. ‘Libertarian’ was replaced with ‘Republican’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘free thinkers’. The original poster was upset because not only were they not credited for the work and didn’t make any money, their creation was being used to spread messages they didn’t agree with. I think this is a really interesting example of what can happen when messages spread farther than intended and when people are allowed to manipulate them. How far is too far?
Hi Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteI found the question at the end of your blog post very fascinating. While comparing and contrasting the works of Martin Luther to the Woman Yelling at Cat meme, we recognize that both of these mediums went viral in dramatically different ages of technology. A medium's purpose is to present a message to a specific audience. However, the message of a medium does not always translate to the consumer audience. The internet has seen many mediums go viral for reasons that do not relate to the medium's message. An older example of this would be the 2009 song Friday by Rebecca Black. Rebecca Black posted this video on YouTube to help jumpstart her pop music career. However, Rebecca Black faced harshly negative backlash for the annoying cadence of her voice in the song. The negative backlash was so strong that it would become one of the most viral YouTube videos ever for the wrong reasons. Great Post!
Hey Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteI think you highlighted an important characteristic of the two mediums that shows why the comparison made sense to use for the blog post. The fact that both the 95 theses and the woman cat meme both went viral in unexpected, but very different ways shows tthahat the right message can and will spread quickly regardless of the outlet. The 95 theses of course was distributed in a manner that Luther did not originally envision using pamphlets, but the woman cat photo followed a similar path. The two images are totally unrelated and taken for very different reasons than what they eventually vent viral for. Someone combined the two and created an alternate meaning that enhanced the qualities of each. To answer your question however, I think of Rebecca Black's single 'Friday' because it was originally made was a serious intent behind it to be an enjoyable song. Instead, it went viral for being considered abnoxious and garnering tons of negative and satirical attention.
Hi Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post for this week, I also chose to speak about articulation three and the ways in which both Luther’s 95 theses and “The Woman Yelling at a Cat” meme demonstrated similar communicative processes (even though their content is vastly different). I think we can argue here that no matter the communicative tool and era, there is power in a message and how it gets passed on (either with the help of social media or without it). Regarding your question, I remember back in my second year at Laurier, the music video for Drake’s “Hotline Bling” was HUGE. Hotline Bling was initially song turned into music video; it was not long after where I started to see the visible meme templates of ‘Drakeposting’ go viral. Drake essentially mastered meme culture. Unfortunately, this blog site will not let me upload a photo in the comments but if you head over to goole you will find it and some more examples of what sort of content social media users started filling it in- some have given me a good giggle.
Hi Bryanna,
ReplyDeleteI think your post brings up some interesting ideas! Specifically, I like your point on the power of social media to reach a broader audience than Martin Luther's 95 theses. In terms of your question, I think TikTok sounds exemplify how content can go viral in a different context than its intended meaning. Similar to how memes are formulated, the sounds that become trending on TikTok are often clipped from a different recording and applied to different scenarios. An example of this includes songs that gain attention from a single line in a song being reused to make relatable content. For instance, OMC’s song “How Bizarre” from 1996 resurfaced due to TikTok users applying the chorus to “bizarre” everyday situations. Thus, this song was not made with the intention to go viral on TikTok but ended up regaining mass popularity.
Overall, great post!
Taylor Randerson