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AMANDA BRENNAN: A
lot of my work is
focused on keeping on the pulse
of trends of internet culture.
My name is Amanda Brennan.
And I'm a Content and
Community Associate at Tumblr.
I am also a meme librarian.
A meme is a piece
of content that
travels from person to person
and changes along the way.
The term was coined in 1976 by
evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins in his book
"The Selfish Gene."
He originally used
it to describe
pieces of cultural
transmission, so stuff
like melodies or catchphrases,
even trends in fashion.
Before the internet, memes still
came in all shapes and sizes.
One of the earliest
instances is Kilroy Was Here.
It's this piece of graffiti that
was popularized in World War II
by American soldiers.
So when new soldiers
came through,
they knew that their
people had been there.
Another one that's
a great example
is the Star Wars opening crawl.
It's been used in
parodies since two years
after the original
film was released.
Internet memes can take
many different forms still.
They can be hashtags, emoticons.
They could be a video or a vine.
Songs can be memes.
What lives solely
in internet space
can sometimes be very
fleeting or temporal.
Flash animations
like Homestar Runner
were huge in the early 2000s.
2005 marked the birth of
YouTube and every video meme.
BRIAN COLLINS: And
boom goes the dynamite.
AMANDA BRENNAN: In
2009, we really thought
about stereotypes
and representing them
online in stuff like Advice
Animals and Rage Comics.
2013, we changed
language with doge.
Dogs were assigned
their own dialect,
just like cats were
in the early 2000s.
[MEOW]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Memes had a longer life
span a few years ago.
Now, we see memes like
"If a Dog Wore Pants."
It got super big.
It appeared on the "Today Show."
But after a few days, no one
was really talking about it.
It's so important
right now to be
archiving this stuff because
meme culture is really
rapidly growing.
And it represents what's
going on the outskirts of pop
culture.
We can learn so much about
how people communicate
through internet memes.
We also really learn
about communities.
There's a series of blogs called
"What Should We Call Me" where
people will change
it a little bit
to be about their profession
or their locality.
And using the
reaction gifs, they
can identify their
feelings and share it
within a community that
knows how they feel.
Memes are fun.
And they're really cool.
And it's a way to sometimes
work through hard stuff.
It adds more nuance to
speech and interaction.
We have no idea how
people were really
sharing their weird cultural
ideas before the internet.
Now, someone can tweet
something and someone
across the globe can
identify with it.
SPEAKER: Have memes
changed the way
you communicate with friends?
Let us know in the
comments below.
And to find out how a former
corporate lawyer gave up
his career to be a
full-time LEGO artist,
check out this video right here.
NATHAN SAWAYA: I left the law
firm behind to play with bricks
full time.
The bricks I use in my art
are the very same bricks
that people could
purchase at a toy store.
I don't paint them.
I don't have access to special
colors or special shapes
and sizes.
And we're in my
art studio today,
where I have over 5
million LEGO bricks.
SPEAKER: Thanks for watching.
And be sure to subscribe
for more Seeker Stories.
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