I'm sure I'm overthinking this whole meme experiment, but here's my response. I don't post memes. I don't know if I've ever posted a meme on this blog. I like to read them sometimes and I may post one in the future if it appeals to me, but so far I just don't do it. So I don't know if I should be counted in this whole thing.
But I do link to things I find interesting, and I find this interesting, especially since they're going to talk about it at MLA. So here's a link to the Speed of Meme experiment. I'm not following the directions for tracking the meme, but I am responding in the way I typically respond to things I read on other blogs--a link and a nod (look, I made a pun)--and Scott can do with it what he will.
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I participated, but for no good reason, and then had second thoughts, because it's a poorly constructed experiment that won't answer or address his actual question.
He uses "meme" to mean a good idea percolating "up" from low-traffic blogs until the idea is captured by a high-traffic blog, from where it is dispersed to all sorts of new low-traffic blogs. The confusion around "meme" (since it's acquired a very blog-specific connotation, with the quizzes and the lists of questions) strikes me as an ironic play on his research. Since what he did create is far more like a quiz meme and far less like a good idea.
I think Kaufman's got the right idea about how ideas spread around blogs (although I suspect there's less "upflow" from low-traffic to high-traffic blogs than his model suggests) but his experiment won't really answer his questions.
BTW, I got here via Mama(e) in Translation -- it's my day for following academic blogs.
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