memes for social good
Memes are elements of culture that often get passed on from person to person, and virally propagate around the internet. They can be images, videos, audio files and even sayings or bits of text.
meme
a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes.
a cultural item in the form of an image, video, phrase, etc., that is spread via the Internet and often altered in a creative or humorous way.
We share them on social networks like Facebook and twitter, we watch them on YouTube, they become part of our cultural language.
And there are lots of theories and research into memetics and how a meme comes to be, propagates and even evolves over time and transmission
But beyond losing track of time by searching/watching online, you can use some of the same concepts and popular memes for serious and social good outcomes.
Remixing photos can be a great way to respond to the latest meme-trend in a way that is relevant to your org’s mission
Take this example of National Wildlife Foundation, who for a Garden for Wildlife campaign, created a meme that featured both baby animals (goslings), and a reference to the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme.
Or you can host a meme contest and encourage your fans and donors to engage in creating a crowdsourced meme campaign.
Look at this example of NPR’s take on the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” theme, where they encouraged NPR fans to create memes on how much they love NPR.
One of my fav’s: “Hey Girl, Voting is Sexy. Informed voting is sexier.”
Salsa Labs, a popular fundraising management software company, took advantage of the “What People Think I Do” meme to draw light to what a day in the life of their community and support staff is like.
http://www.salsalabs.com/support-community/blog/what-people-think-i-do-support-staff
You could use a similar approach to illustrate some of the hidden work and unsung heroes within your projects by remixing this same meme.
You can also take advantage of the popularity of taking the “selfie”, by using it to encourage fans to post selfie photos holding messages relevant to your cause.
Beth Kanter has a great post on the idea of selfless for good at http://www.bethkanter.org/selfies-for-good/
We all know how much the internet loves cats. LOLcats, Cats playing piano, cats looking grumpy, cats talking, cats waiting for you to blink, cats just looking cute…
But what about kittens for good?
You have probably heard of the ridesharing service Uber. Which taps into the social economy to allow users to sign up to offer up their car and driving services for others, and folks to use their Uber app to request rides.
Well they decided to combine the internet’s love of cats and social good, by pairing with the animal adoption focused “National Cat Day” and with the meme site Cheezburger (of “I can haz Cheezburger” fame).
So in celebration of National Cat Day, they hijacked their own ride share app, to offer time with kittens, on demand in several of the cities they serve (San Francisco, Seattle and New York)
I Can Has Uber Kittens?
So through their app, you could request a kitten, and they would bring one by to your location for 15 minutes of furry snuggle times..oh and cupcakes too.
Of course the catch was, it would cost $20 for each request, but all money raised went to local city shelters and organizations like the San Francisco SPCA, NYC ASPCA and the Seattle Humane Society.
They even had shelter folks along for the rides, who were assistant kitten wranglers that were there for adoption requests of available cats.
http://blog.uber.com/ICanHasUberKITTENS
…and in case you are wondering when exactly National Cat Day is, it is October 29th. (http://www.nationalcatday.com/)
Lipdubs, parodies and other meme videos you just can’t get out of your head…
Undoubtedly if you pay attention to social sharing sites or peruse youtube, you are familiar with how certain videos like Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake, or What Does the Fox Say — which is an absurd and catchy music video which you could think of as a modern day “Old MacDonald’s Farm” in theme on what sounds animals make.
All of these videos in their own right have become viral, (some with views in the millions) and then from there, numerous parodies and variants have arisen.
You can craft a video that remixes or hijacks the concept of these videos, but geared at your cause or mission.
For example, the Harlem Shake (a less then minute long video, that always has the same music and two part set up of one person dancing amongst a crowd, and then half way through, the entire crowd, often dressed funny, crazily dancing.)
Well here is the NASA Wallops Flight Facility take on the Harlem Shake video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me3WuLYHilo
Peanut Butter Jelly TIme — which was a song from the band Buckwheat Boyz, it was released to the internet with a Flash animated dancing banana and took off as a meme.
The New York City educational nonprofit Global Kids (http://globalkids.org) even used a variant of this for a slideshow video of their youth work in Second Life. (circa 2006)
Lipdubs are videos that combine lip synching to audio music dubbing, to create a music video. And often some of the best Lipdub videos are taken in one straight take, while everyone walks through a filmed environment.
Here is a provocative example that rose up from the grassroots #MyNameIs campaign to take on Facebook’s policy of having to have your ‘real name” on your profile and Facebook taking down alias and pseudonym accounts. The video is from the Manchester UK Drag Queen community, and a lipdub video of “That’s Not My Name” — http://youtu.be/x3T-aLORdv0
Some of you might know Thynka Little and her work in Second Life leading up the virtual Cooperative Extension Program in the Morrill regions since 2007. http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Cooperative_Extension_Second_Life_Educators
in celebration of the 100th birthday of Cooperative Extension, a non-formal education network of over 100 universities, bringing research-based knowledge to communities nationwide.
They created a virtual version of a LibDub machinima video featuring avatars lip-syncing and dancing to the song Happy by the musician Farrell http://youtu.be/EadsygNwc48
And, if you want to go further, and not just lip synch, but change the lyrics to a song, and create a social good focused parody of the original.
Here is a great example of that, “Read it Maybe” — a parody video of the song “Call Me Maybe” http://youtu.be/_ENO6wwdLGI by Open Books Chicago, a nonprofit, open community bookstore.
Some thoughts on if you are thinking of how to incorporate memes into your social good projects…
Amy Sample Ward (of http://NTEN.org) points to three guidelines for nonprofits, then include
1. Do not compromise your values and mission. (Some meme remixes or approaches my be off topic for your org and audience — remember to engage thoughtfully.)
2. Stick to your voice (Try to have the meme fit you and not force your to fit a current meme.)
3. Plan for it to spread. (Make sure you have the branding, link URLs and call to action as part of your image or video — if it goes viral, you want people to know how to find you!)
Remix and hijack a meme to a social good message or cause. There are many tools you can use online to craft a simple photo meme.
Someecards — is a site to make intentionally dated looking e-card images: http://www.someecards.com/usercards/create
(just make sure to make note of the Terms of Service — http://www.someecards.com/page/terms — that you can not use it for direct commercial or advertising, so you cant directly call out your org or URL)
CheezBurger.com also has a meme builder: http://builder.cheezburger.com/Builder
(This is great to find lots of pictures of cute animals to add your captions to!)
You can use imgur (http://imgur.com/memegen) and Meme Generator (http://memegenerator.net/create/instance) to create memes — though be warned not all images and memes created by the community at large on these sites are PG.
And, there are also tons of mobile apps you can create memes with: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/iphone-meme-apps/
Some other things to think on…
Remember, timeliness often matters…
What might be a very popular meme, can quickly fade away. If you are thinking of trying to hijack and remix a current meme, you might want to plan to respond as quickly as you can. Before the sharing of these meme variants wanes.
And… if you are lucky, your own campaigns, can evolve to be their own meme
Like the ALS #IceBucketChallenge — https://twitter.com/socialgood/status/510797738519580672
For inspiration you want to dive deep into a list of some of the more known internet memes, though a warning… there is a lot of the meme-o-sphere that is not PG, or in fact, is very shocking.
So tread lightly on some of the links off of this wikipedia page list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_phenomena
Some more memes for good — food for thought:
https://charityvillage.com/Content.aspx?topic=I_Can_Has_Memes_for_social_good#.VFNbZ4vF_mp
and remember…in true internet meme fashion…
I’m never gonna give you up…
