Week 2

I thought the lolcat article was quite interesting because I have seen and enjoyed memes of that style before but I hadn’t really thought of it all in that much detail. I agree with the premise that the meme format that allows for a greater range of expression will probably have greater longevity. I was particularly impressed that there was a bible written in the lolcat style. That seems insane to me and it really makes me wonder what sort of person created that. Clearly, it must have been someone who cares about the bible and yet it baffles me to think that someone religious would use lolcats as a vehicle for their faith. I found the second piece’s critique of the internet's ‘flatness’ interesting. I hadn’t really thought of the internet being flat before. I will admit that by virtue of being displayed (for the most part) on flat computer screens that internet does seem undeniably flat in that sense, but in terms of shallowness of conceptual depth, I don’t think I agree with the article. It’s true that there is plenty of simple meme-like content on the internet but there is also plenty of deep analysis. When academicians want to drop their wisdom from their ivory towers, the presses run to print their babble, but when a random fan wants to devote hours and hours of research to make a complicated theory about an obscure work of fiction, there is no university press for that. That analysis can only be seen on the internet. Are those analyses sometime presented with clip art? Perhaps, but I’m not sure how important that can really be.