atherthanradicallyexpandingtheallowablenumberofactualcharactersineachtweet,thevir-tuallimitoncharacterswasbeingexpandedbyallowingimagesandothermediatobeembeddedwithoutcountingtowardthecharacterlimit.

“TheRepliesKerfuffle,”21explainingthetechnicalandproductdesignreasonsbehindthechangeandacknowledgingthepoorcommunicationthathadaccompa-nieditsimplementation.Stonerepeatedtheargumentthatonly“3%”ofuserswantedtoseerepliesfromuserstheyfol-lowedtouserstheydidn’t,

“Ithinkit’sweirdwhenpeopledostuffwith©repliesthatIthinkshouldbedoneoverDM,”

When,sometimelater,hechangedlifecourseandenrolledinagraduateprogram,heshiftedfromusingthe@forpersonalrelationshipmaintenancetousingitsaffordancesofaddressivity,brevity,andasynchronoustemporalityforprofes-sionalnetworking

The@usernamesyntaxenabledpeopletorespondto,address,ormentionuserseveniftheyweren’tfollowingeachother.I

Firstdevelopedintypographyandshorthandasameansofindicating“at”

Atthetime,itspromptaskeduserstorespondtothequestion“Whatareyoudoing?”

Inaplatformdesignedtoannounceratherthanconverse,

Homoconnectivity—which I have defined as an arrangement of power that profits from the extraction of social production and potentiality from queer communities through on-line spaces, social media, technologies, and/or software—keys critics and users into a new modality of rainbow capitalism beyond commodifi-cation.

In June 2019, the company unleashed its latest innovation: Grindr Unlimited. For US $39.99 a month, users buy the ability to scroll an endless queue of profiles, see who has viewed their page, and know when another user is typing a reply: a homocon-nective intensification that sells users surveillance, a connectivity that further “transforms public space into private space, thereby reducing the contact sport of cruising to a practice of networking”

As Grindr made clear in April 2018, the company approaches users’ profiles as completely pub-lic information. It had no qualms with sharing data on people’s serosta-tuses and locations with partner businesses (Singer, 2018). Grindr does not hide that it uses these rich caches of information—like profiles, con-versations, and screen time—to attract advertisers and further narrow-cast the content discussed in the next section.

Navigating Grindr can be experientially boisterous—its interface stuffed with a cascading grid of user photos, pop-up ads, and red noti-fications dots—but how the app slyly moves to not be noticed is just as important as tracing how it renders the self and others salient.

shaping the affective and attentional economies of users towards for-profit technolo-gies; externalizing sites, performances, and communication of queer de-sires; quantifying, financializing, and sharing users’ activities; and sell-ing back to users the experience of immediacy, intimacy, and (stranger) sociability often constitutive of queerness and queer spaces.

Highest among these cravings is connectivity. In exchange for their time, attention, and social produc-tion, users taste moments of sociality that hide the underbelly “fueled by data, automated and organized through algorithms and interfaces, formalized through ownership relations driven by business models, and governed through user agreements

In what follows, I establish the concept of homoconnectivity to then zoom into Grindr as a specific instantiation of its data extraction. I join a growing group of scholars (Faris, 2018; Race, 2015; Shield, 2018; Woo, 2015; Yeo & Fung, 2018) taking Grindr itself as a text to counteract a general trend in queer media research that “treats the medium of de-livery—television, radio, film, the internet, and so on—as neutral, uni-versal, or presumptively masculine”

This follows a U.S. government trend of questioning how companies located in China might be pressured by the Chinese government to give up user data. In the case of Grindr, its collection of users’ sex practices, locations, and serostatuses could make rich fodder for Chinese agents to coerce peo-ple who might not be openly queer into carrying out military and cor-porate espionage

eleased in 2009, Grindr is a geolocative mobile applica-tion with over 3.8 million daily active users who are primarily men-who-have-sex-with-men, as well as transwomen and non-binary individuals

Keywords: Datafication, digital rhetoric, homonormativity, interface, platforms, privacy

GivenMasterchef’stargetdemographic,thecultural middle ground and‘everyday’cooks, Goodwin’s persona (an endearing andaccessible suburban mum) worked well for its brand.

self-branding through social media does not require initial affiliationwith the‘already powerful’.

‘instafame’

Here,we see the“self”as a commodity for sale in the labour market, which must generate itsown rhetorically persuasive packaging, its own promotional skin, within the confines ofthe dominant corporate imaginary

For example, when news broke of TigerWoods’extramarital infidelities in late 2009, several sponsors suspended their contractswith him almost immediately, including Accenture, AT&T, Gatorade, General Motors,Gillette and TAG Heuer.

anyone can be famous

Social media tacitly promises fame (and subsequent wealth) to‘ordinary’usersand thus encourages practices of micro-celebrity.(2) Within a political culture of neoliberal individualism, self-branding is encouragedwith the promise of reward.(3) The commercial viability of some Social Media Influencers (SMIs; to be discussedshortly), whose success depends on self-branding and practices of micro-celebrity,has proven to be both inspirational and seemingly replicable

The opportunity may lie in social media (and/or reality television) to help build a strongfan base, sizable enough to interest advertisers.

modicum

Many sitcoms are characterized by am-bivalent sexual politics: they embody a certain rebellion against hegemonic masculinity, yet at the same time re-inforce traditional norms through the comic framing of their protagonists.

The prominence of “flawed masculinity” in this col-lection of memetic videos can be seen as an extreme manifestation of men’s representation in contemporary mass media genres, particularly the sitcom.

“We Are the 99 Percent”

A pivotal aspect of viral diffusion is the packaging of mes-sages. Berger and Milkman found that clear and simplenews stories spread better than complex ones.

Positive high-arousal is embedded in what the au-thors tag as “Awa” stories: pieces that generate a feeling of elevation in the face of something greater than oneself

a striking major-ity (more than 90 percent) of advertisements produced by viral advertising companies include humorous elements

One of Berger and Milkman’s key findings is that people are more likely to share positive than negative stories. In ad-dition, they prefer sharing items that are perceived as sur-prising, interesting, or practically useful

I la-bel them as the “six Ps” (or the six-pack, for the marketers among you): positivity, provocation of high-arousal emotions, participation, packaging, prestige, and positioning

will tackle the issue of viral-ity, that is, users’ tendency to propagate certain types of content. Second, I will discuss the memetic qualities that enhance people’s involvement with content by way of re-making, remixing, or imitating

The first focuses on political contexts: Pike is shown pepper-spraying iconic American symbols such as George Washington crossing the Delaware, the former US presidents on Mount Rush-more, and the Constitution itself, as well as freedom fight-ers across the globe (in Tiananmen Square, for example). These political versions share a clear idea, namely that the officer brutally violated the basic values of justice and free-dom as represented by the protestors. A second group of user-generated images is pop-culture-oriented. In these versions, Pike is pepper-spraying icons such as Snoopy and Marilyn Monroe, as well as a battery of stars identified with other Internet memes, such as “Little Baby Panda” and “Keyboard Cat.” Such pop-culture-oriented meme versions are often open to multiple interpretations.

In exploring “Leave Britney Alone” as a meme, we need to examine the distribution of the original video, but per-haps more importantly, we should investigate the struc-ture and meaning of this video’s new variations.

Crying and shouting throughout most of the clip, Crocker implored his viewers to “Leave Britney Alone”

I define an Internet meme as:(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.

This suggestion is based on two rather simple principles: (a) looking at diffused units as incorporating several memetic dimensions—namely, sev-eral aspects that people may imitate; and (b) understand-ing memes not as single entities that propagate well, but as groups of content units with common characteristics.

Many studies in this rich tradition focus on the diffusion of “innovations,” occasionally adopt-ing the term “meme” and the general memetic framework.

behavior-driven memetics

They are not simple ideas such as red, round, or cold, but complex ones such as ideas of the alphabet, chess, or impressionism

Such norms are often rooted in the history of pop-culture genres and fan cultures: music videos, for instance, are replicated as part of broader cultures of jamming, re-mix, and covers that characterize music making.7 These examples of historical roots highlight the ways in which practices of re-creating videos and images blur the lines between private and public, professional and amateur,

Since memes serve as the building blocks of complex cultures, we need to fo-cus not only on the texts but also on the cultural practices surrounding them.

This meme incorporated a simple drawing of a man with a long nose looking over a wall, alongside a myste-rious caption: “Kilroy Was Here.” It was launched during World War II, and though its origins are still a matter of debate, the most agreed-upon version, according to Dan-iel Gilmore, links it to a Massachusetts shipyard inspec-tor named James J. Kilroy.3 Kilroy’s job was to examine riveters’ work after they completed their shifts. To keep track of his inspections, he began marking inspected areas with the phrase “Kilroy Was Here.” When the ships were completed and launched to the battlefield, soldiers no-ticed these scribblings. Kilroy appeared everywhere, even in the weirdest and most unexpected internal parts of the ships. Soldiers began to inscribe the slogan on diverse sur-faces, and at some point they added a drawing of a little man with a big nose. A meme was born.

it depicts a culture in which memes have a mul-tidimensional presence.

The second strategy of digital meme repackaging, remixing, is a newer one. It involves technology-based manipulation, for instance by Photoshopping an image or adding a new soundtrack. A plethora of user-friendly applications that enable people to download and re-edit content have turned remixing into an extremely popu-lar practice.

thememe is the best concept to en-capsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet

: if the former tends to describe recent, often short-lasting fads, longevity is the key to “serious” memetics, since successful memes are defined as the ones that survive in the long term.

At one end of the spectrum are scholars such as Susan Blackmore, who claims in The Meme Machine that people are merely devices operated by the numerous memes they host and constantly spread.

The word “meme” derives from the Greek mimema, signifying “something which is imitated,” which Dawkins shortened to rhyme with “gene.”

Examples of memes in his pioneering essay include cultural artifacts such as melodies, catchphrases, and clothing fashions, as well as abstract beliefs (for instance, the concept of God).

mass-mediated content, which is often transmitted simultaneously from a single institutional source to many people. But this is no longer the case in an era of blurring boundaries between interpersonal and mass, professional and amateur, bottom-up and top-down communications.

While enthusiastic advocates argue that the meme concept explains everything and their opponents assert that it explains and changes absolutely nothing,

hypermemetic logic

participatory culture.

Internet users are on to something, and researchers should follow.

As illustrated by the Gangnam Style case, a central attribute of Internet memes is their sparking of user-created derivatives articulated as parodies, remixes, or mashups. “

netizens

The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation.

How did such a bizarre piece of culture become so successful?

Performed by a South Korean singer named PSY, “Gangnam Style” was the first clip to surpass the one-billion-view mark. But the Gang-nam phenomenon was not only a tale of sheer popular-ity

Thecirculationofmediacontentwithinparticipatoryculturecanservearangeofinterests,somecultural(suchaspromotingaparticu-largenreorperformer),somepersonal(suchasstrengtheningsocialbondsbetweenfriends),somepolitical(suchascritiquingthecon-structionofgenderandsexualitywithinmassmedia),someeconomic(suchasthosewhichservetheimmediateneedsofeverydayindividu-als,aswellasthosewhichservetheneedsofmediacompanies

Nomatterhow^^youlookatit,however,theviewershipofthewidelyspreadSusanBoyle£clipdwarfsthatofthehighest-ratedshowonU.S.broadcasttelevi-vi7ision.TheBoylevideowasbroadcastcontentmadepopularthrough^grassrootscirculation

Tostart,let’scontrastaU.S.“broadcast”phenomenonwithawidespreadentertainmentclip.Thefinaleofthe2009seasonofAmericanIdoldrew32millionviewersintheU.S.,makingitoneoftheyear’smostviewedtwo-hourblocksonbroadcasttelevision.Incomparison,avideoofScottishwomanSusanBoyleauditioningforBritain'sGotTalentwasviewedmorethan77milliontimesonYouTube

nstead,the“distribution”reachofstickydestinationsandthe“cir-culation”reachofspreadablemediashouldcoexist,arelationshipaptlyillustratedbya2010experimentbyadvertisingagencyHillHolliday.ThefirmcreatedanonlinemicrositecalledJerzifyYourselfthatallowedvisitorstoremaketheirimageinthestyleofthestarsofpopularMTVtelevisionshowJerseyShore.HillHollidaycreatedthesiteaspartofaprojectresearchingthewayswordspreadaboutcontent.Thesitegeneratedsubstantialwordofmouth,andwasfeaturedinavariety*ofarticlesandblogposts.Beyondjustresearchingtheaudiencesofthoseblogs(theirimmediate“reach”or“distributionpotential”),HillHollidayalsousedaURL-tracingmechanismtoseewhatadditionalNtrafficcamefromtheongoingspreadofthosestoriesandposts

Whatwemeanby“spreadability”willbecomeclearerbycontrast-ingitwiththisstickinessmodel.Wecomparethetermsherenottoindicatethatwebtrafficshouldn’tmatterortosuggestthatspread-abilityisthe“opposite”ofstickiness,butrathertodemonstratethelimitsofmodelstoocloselyfocusedonstickiness

Onlinepublicationslookatwhicharticlesareviewedthemostandwhichholdpeoplesattentionthelongest.Mediacompaniesassesswhichvideosareviewedthemostandlongest.Nonprofitsandcorporatewebsitesalikedefinesuccessonlinebasedonwebtraffic.

.Inbroadcastmedia,impressionsaremeasuredbyhowmanypeopleseeaparticularpieceofmedia,whereasstickinessreferstothemechanismsmotivatingpeopletoseekoutandspendtimeataparticularsite.Appliedtothedesignofawebsite,companieshopetoachievestickinessbyplacingmaterialinaneasilymeasuredlocationandassessinghowmanypeopleviewit,howmanytimesitisviewed,andhowlongvisitorsviewit

,“sticki-ness”broadlyreferstotheneedtocreatecontentthatattractsaudienceattentionandengagement.

However,whilenewtoolshaveproliferatedthemeansbywhichpeoplecancirculatematerial,word-of-mouthrecommendationsandthesharingofmediacontentareimpulsesthathavelongdrivenhowpeopleinteractwitheachother.

Spreadability”referstothepotential—bothtechni-calandcultural—foraudiencestosharecontentfortheirownpurposes,sometimeswiththepermissionofrightsholders,sometimesagainsttheirwishes.

SpreadableMediafocusesonthesociallogicsandculturalpticesthathaveenabledandpopularizedthesenewplatforms,logicsthatexplainw/y/sharinghasbecomesuchcommonpractice,notjusthow.

.Asweexplorecirculation,weseethewayvalueandmeaningarecreatedinthemultipleeconomiesthatconstitutetheemergingmedialandscape.Ourmessageissimpleanddirect:ifitdoesn’tspread,it’sdead

NewmediacallsforanewstageinmediatheorywhosebeginningsbetracedbacktotherevolutionaryworksofHaroldInnisinthe1950sandMarshallMcLuhaninthe1960s.

1.Newmediaisanalogmediaconvertedtoadigitalrepresentation.Incontrasttoanalogmedia,whichiscontinuous,digitallyencodedmediaisdiscrete.2.Alldigitalmedia(texts,stillimages,visualoraudiotimedata,shapes,3-Dspaces)sharethesamedigitalcode.Thisallowsdifferentmediatypestobedisplayedusingonemachine—acomputer—whichactsasamultimediadisplaydevice.3.Newmediaallowsforrandomaccess.Incontrasttofilmorvideotape,whichstoredatasequentially,computerstoragedevicesmakeitpossibletoaccessanydataelementequallyfast.4.Digitizationinevitablyinvolveslossofinformation.Incontrasttoananalogrepresentation,adigitallyencodedrepresentationcontainsafixedamountofinformation.5.Incontrasttoanalogmediawhereeachsuccessivecopylosesquality,digitallyencodedmediacanbecopiedendlesslywithoutdegradation.6.Newmediaisinteractive.Incontrasttooldmediawheretheorderofpresentationisfixed,theusercannowinteractwithamediaobject.Intheprocessofinteractiontheusercanchoosewhichelementstodisplayorwhichpathstofollow,thusgeneratingauniquework.Inthiswaytheuserbecomestheco-authorofthework

Theprincipleofvariabilityexemplifieshow,historically,changesinme-diatechnologiesarecorrelatedwithsocialchange.Ifthelogicofoldmediacorrespondedtothelogicofindustrialmasssociety,thelogicofnewmediafitsthelogicofthepostindustrialsociety,whichvaluesindividualityoverconformity

Thusautomationofmediaaccessbecamethengvrlogicaliqageoftheprocessthathadbeenputintomotionwhenthefirstphotographwastaken

CommandandConquer,singleattackersinfirst-personshooterssuchasQuake

Researchersarealsoworkingonwhatcanbecalled“high-level”automa-tionofmediacreation,whichrequiresacomputertounderstand,toacertaindegree,themeaningsembeddedintheobjectsbeinggenerated,

ThemostlikelyreasonmodernmediahasdiscretelevelsisbecauseitemergedduringtheIndustrialRevolution.

irst,dataissampled,mostoftenatregu-larintervals,suchaschegridofpixelsusedtorepresentadigitalimage.Thefrequencyofsamplingisreferredtoasresolutton^TciJinRturnsrnnrinuousdataintodiscretedata,thatis,dataoccurringindistinctunitsjpeople,thepagesofabook,pixels.Second,eachsampleisquantified,thatis,itisassignedanumericalvaluedrawnfromadefinedrange

mediabecomesprogrammable

Mediaelementsarestoredinamediadatabase

More narrativeformations emerged from flip books (1868)because of their linear nature

GIFs are promiscuous and frictionless, with low barriers for viewing,possessing, and sharing. It is largely because of its limitations that the GIF thrives nearly two decades after its introduction, sustaining a renewed interest in the loop.

The result is a haunting moment seemingly stuck in time that typically fetishizes a consumer good or identity

Many websites served galleries of GIFs, encouraging others to download and use them on their own sites with little regard for who originally created them.

GIF was published as an open format, hastening its availability and spread.

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.) It was designed touse Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless datacompression, which encodes the image bycreating and referencing a ‘dictionary’ ofcommon patterns.

Phenakistoscopes (1832), zoetropes (1834), and praxinoscopes (1877)offered primarily symmetrical and seamless loops, often illustrations of people or animals in motion.

Pornography makes up 11% of Tumblr’s top-visited sites despite being hidden behind a ‘safe search

The result is a digital slang, a visual vocabularyunencumbered byauthorship, where countless media artifacts are viewed, deployed, and elaborated upon as language more than as art product.

Heated arguments continue to rage online over the issue as users signal status and group affiliation based on their pronunciation. Although no known scientific data exists, online polls for the Washington Post andLos Angeles Times suggest that a majority of users pronounce the word with a hard ‘G’ by at least a 2-to-1 margin.171819

Steve Wilhite, principalengineer of the GIF, pronounced the acroynm ‘jif’.