There’s an interesting (I think) article on Wired, titled Every Old Meme Is New Again. It refers to the creation of Godwin’s Law, which is something of an internet staple, especially on Slashdot, and probably Usenet still, if I ever looked at it more than once a year. The interesting bit is that it was consciously and deliberately created, by going and using the term, until it got picked up and took on something of a life of it’s own.
It also talks about someone recreating this effect in a much more overt and webserver destroying sort of way. Probably a good thing he’s hosted on typepad. However, in this case, it’s for a worthy cause (not that stopping endless Nazi/Hitler comparisons isn’t worthy). He plans to present something at the Modern Language Association conference about it, and wants people to link to his blog so that he can track the spread of this meta-meme (that is, seeing how a meme about how a meme spreads over the internet spreads over the internet). Just like I’m doing really (the linking, that is).
Apparently it took off a lot faster than he expected, and he’s having trouble tracking it. So I feel compelled to do my part and make it that much harder. Of course, I don’t expect my little blog with somewhere between half a dozen and one dozen readers[0] to make much of an impact. Unless of course, everybody links back to here and then to his, just to make me look more important…
[0] unless it’s something about Java[1], in which case it gets syndicated and spreads a bit further over the intertubes.
[1] I wonder if that mention of Java is enough to warrant putting the Java tag on this post and getting it syndicated far and wide. I might go with ‘no’ for now.