Comment by saghm
1 day ago
Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...
My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names.
The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
I'm not convinced this is specific to the format (or the platform). Whenever I try to search for a specific meme or gif on google, I find huge numbers of basically identical copies that come from separate sources. I've seen complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution.
Out of curiosity, I asked my wife about this trend specifically, and while she was familiar with the joke, she has yet to see any instance of it on her page. I have to wonder if people who are experiencing stuff like this are mostly just getting stuck in a bubble and not pushing through to other content. There's an argument that learning how to interact with the app to make the algorithm work for you isn't a great experience, but there's a large volume of people who use and enjoy the app without complaining about this issue. I'm not particularly convinced that all of these people have gone numb to brainrot to the point that they enjoy seeing the same joke 20 times in a row compared to them just having a better experience from seeing a wider variety of content.
I liked seeing the same meme because it was fun seeing the same thing be done by different people. Not everyone likes that type of novelty I guess.
> complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution
This feels like a reflection of what the person feels posting on the internet signifies. Are you publishing something, and thus you should attribute sources etc, or are you just having a conversation?
You would never attribute sources when making a joke in real life. I guess you could but it would be a pretty dorky thing to do.
> Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
Exactlym that's the feeling I get with it.
I noticed a lot of "creators" are constantly repeating the same skit over and over and over too. With different backgrounds etc. Clearly a way to try and get noticed by the algorithm. But also a great way to get them blocked by me of course.
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