social content and education for organizations
As Marshall McLuhan might have said, "The meme is the message."
Tebowing, inspirational posters, auto correct text message screen shots, manipulated images and ideas . . . all popular memes. My question is do most "memers" have an actual intent (political, humorous, devotional, spiritual, rebellious), or is it imitation purely for imitation's sake?
If you've favorited a video, you've also verbed. Verbing a noun is sometimes labeled a form of anthimeria, the wordplay of swapping parts of speech. But it's not just social media (friending, trending, Googling, texting, bookmarking) that's destructioning grammar. We've been verbing nouns for centuries.
About.com grammar guide and English expert Richard Nordquist cites psychologist Steven Pinker, who estimates that up to a fifth of our verbs derived from nouns. To say "It's raining" has become second nature. And we wouldn't think twice about oiling a squeaky hinge.
Have some favorite verbed nouns? Let me know!
This post was authored by Duncan Gilman. Now everyone go party.
Every business that includes video as part of their social media campaign wants to know how to create a viral video. "So, how do we make this thing go viral? At what point do you recommend pushing the viral button? How soon can we expect our videos to go viral?"
There's nothing but disappointment and heartache in my answers: you can't, there's no such thing, and never.
No no no, I'm aware that viral videos exist. I'm not questioning virality as a real thing, despite the fact that spell check disagrees. What I'm saying is that it's almost impossible to make a viral video.
Think about it. How many of the "viral" videos you've seen were commercials? Two? Three maybe? How many were strategic YouTube marketing campaigns? One? The viral videos you've seen and passed around to your network of friends (and by doing so helped make them viral) weren't corporate awareness pieces or product announcements or case studies. You know as well as I do they were talking animals and toddlers who bite each other's fingers and kids who are still somewhat sedated after a trip to the dentist.
So what's the magic formula? It's real life. Or in the case of talking animals, it's a somewhat enhanced version of real life. Or in the case of "Chocolate Rain," it's a real person who's looking for an artistic outlet. It's not scripted. It can't be - otherwise, it wouldn't be human. There's something indelibly human about a viral video. And if you could bottle it? It wouldn't be viral anymore.
