Nowthechallengetendsnottobewhetherornottohaveahashtag,butwhichoneitshouldbe

WehaveseenthatthestoryofTwittercannotbeunderstoodwithoutlookingathowthird-partyplatformsandwebsitescanshapepracticesonTwit-terandhelptoinfluenceordisrupttheplatform’saffordances

UsercontributedtagswereanimportantaffordanceoftheFlickrphotosharingwebsite,wheretheyhelpeddirectpeopletoim-agesandtooneanother—apracticethatwascarriedovertoIn-stagram.

OnthemusicstreamingsiteLast.fm

everyonewhofollowedyoucouldseeeverytweetyouposted,including(©replyconversations.

The@’sadaptionafterembeddingwasfurtherfosteredandcomplicatedbyTwitter’searlydecisiontoencourageopeninno-vationthroughitsAPIs

Theaggregation,andcounting,ofthesemarkersofconversationalitycreatedanewsetofmetrics,andwiththatanewsetofaspirationsandex-ploitsthatcontinuetoreshapetheplatform.

@symbol—oneofthefirstcommunity-inventedusagecon-ventions,usedtomentionorreplytootherusers

Self-centeredness

Homonormativity marks a double-move where dominant social norms attempt to relegate all aspects of queer life to the private sphere while coopting the language of queer public politics like equality, freedom, and privacy to secure the positions of bigotry and corporate culture

Grindr and Facebook are more similar than different.

Grindr. Released in 2009,

‘authenticity’

As Marwick notes, for instance:‘With Instagram’suser base of 150 million comes the possibility of achievingInstafame, the condition ofhaving a relatively great number of followers on the app

Social media both accommodates ordinary users with distinctive stories and/or con-tent, and furnishes them with highly visible metrics of popularity and endorsement.

Self-branding through social media pivots on attention and narrative, yet significantlyextends the potential for fame and celebrity.

the merits of self-improvementand a positive attitude, but its broader resonance over the last 20 years is significant.

Among the twenty-four videos, there are three overweight characters (“Star Wars Kid,” “Numa Numa Guy,” and the “Angry German Kid”); one little person (“Little Superstar”); one constantly perspiring individual with thick glasses (“Chocolate Rain”); and the fictional Leeroy Jenkins, who manages to get his entire group killed in a World of Warcraft game.

These juxtapositions call for memetic responses: since the people featured in memetic photos appear to be out of context, their reappropriation to other contexts seems almost natural.

In addition to the social and self-presentational benefits associated with positive content in general, humorous content may be particularly sharable as it tends to be sur-prising.3

Since Internet users share for both so-cial and self-presentation purposes, they prefer spreading content that makes others feel good

The video gained over two million views within twenty-four hours,

I suggest that for Internet memes—which are often based on an extensive and swift mutation rate—it may be use-ful to turn Dawkins’s definition on its head by looking at memes not as single ideas or formulas that propagate well, but as groups of content items.

In order to be passed along from one per-son to another, memes are “loaded” on various vehicles: images, texts, artifacts, or rituals.

he referred to a meme as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.”

Why are so many people driven to re-create videos and images that others have produced? What are the potential benefits of such an activity, and for whom? While a full explanation of contemporary hypermemetic logic falls be-yond the scope of a single book (particularly a short one), to spark the discussion I will suggest three initial prisms for understanding it, rooted in economic, social, and cul-tural logics of participation

A meme was born

“My Binders Full of Women Exploded” is thus not only a striking example of intertextuality; it also demonstrates that this new arena of bottom-up expression can blend pop culture, politics, and participation in unexpected ways.

Besides watching the clip, people also responded to it creatively, in dazzling volume. Internet users from places as far-flung as Indonesia and Spain, Russia and Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia imitated the horse-riding dance from the original video

“ComcastMustDie

Gladwellproposes,“Thereisasimplewaytopackageinformationthat,undertherightcircumstances,canmakeJitirresistible.Allyouhavetodoisfindit”(2000,132)

SpreadableMediafocusesonthesociallogicsandculturalpticesthathaveenabledandpopularizedthesenewplatforms,logicsthatexplainw/y/sharinghasbecomesuchcommonpractice,notjusthow

HenryJenkins(1992)coinedthe“participatoryculture”todescribetheculturalproductionandrac-aretermsocialinteractionsoffancommunities,initiallyseekingawaytodi-fferentiatetheactivitiesoffansfromotherformsofspectatorship.

frommediatheorytosoftwaretheory.

Beginninginthenineteenthcentury,modernsocietydevelopedtechnologiesthatautomatedmediacreation—thephotocamera,filmcamera,caperecorder,videorecorder,etc.Thesetechnologiesallowedus,overthecourseof150years,toaccumulateanunprecedentedamountofmediamaterials-photoarchives,filmlibraries,audioarchives.Thisledtothenextstageinmediaevolution

Manynewmediaobjectsareinfeetcomputerprogramsthatfollowstructuralprogrammingstyle.Forexample,mostinteractivemultimediaapplicationsarewritteninMacromediaDirec-tor’sLingo.

Oneexampleismotionpicturefilm:eachframeisacontinuousphotograph,^Jr*buttimeisbrokenintoanumberofsamples(frames).Videogoesonestep^<furtherbysamplingtheframealongtheverticaldimension(scanlines).

Butmanynewmediaobjectsareconvertedfromvariousformsofoldmedia.

For most of the history of the web, companies and organizations have tried to improve on the GIF without understanding the affordances that have made it successful.

Tumblr is also responsible for igniting mainstream interest in the GIF as anaesthetic form, curating search results for the #GIF tag that foreground andcultivate original works created for their own sake.

pronounced the acroynm ‘jif’

The GIF has no maximum resolution and can display up to 256 colors out of a palette ofmillions. (Few computers were capable ofmore colors at the time.)