Meme of the Week: Grand Rapids sings American Pie

When Grand Rapids Michigan saw that it was listed on Newsweek's America's Dying Cities list, it decided to do something about it. So they produced this incredible single-shot LipDub featuring hundreds of very-much-alive Grand Rapidians that Roger Ebert has called the Greatest Music Video Ever Made.

Just goes to show that data don't always tell the real story.

Meme of the Week: Kenneth Cole puts his shoe in his mouth

Oh, Kenneth! It must have seemed so drole and au courant in those few seconds it took to compose and send your tweet connecting the turmoil in Egypt with your new spring collection. Perhaps a few more seconds thought might have led to second thoughts.

But the cat was out of the bag and the Twittersphere was quick to judge and react. A short time later @KennethColePR was up and running, parodying the original tweet with some variations on the theme like:

"Locked in Charlie Sheen's closet? Tweet how many pairs of Coles he has!" and "People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole stores!"

The apology eventually came but, by that time, people were having way too much fun to listen or care. Lessons: 1) Think before you tweet 2) Take ownership of  your PR suffix 3) What people think is funny depends on context. While people condemned the original tweet for its crass attempt to market against a revolution-in-progress, those same people were completely OK with really outrageous tweets from @KennethColePR under its protective parody shield. You have to have a sense of who you are and how far you have permission to go.

For more on this story, read here

Meme of the Week: The man with the golden voice

It's been quite a week for Ted Williams. As this summary from The New York Times reports, after being discovered on the streets of Cleveland, he's been inundated with job offers (Cleveland Cavaliers and Kraft Mac and Cheese) and media requests including appearances on The Today Show and Jimmy Fallon. It all started with this video which introduced the world to this man with the golden voice:



Garr Reynolds wrote an interesting post on Presentation Zen earlier in the week exploring some of the elements of his story that helped propel this story into the national spotlight.

Meme of the Week: The dueling Gap logos

The new Gap logo is not getting much love from the design community. As Advertising Age says: "Detractors have been picking apart the new look, with the most common sentiment being that it looks like something a child created using a clip-art gallery."

My job is not to join the debate but rather point you to the dueling tweets, one representing the new logo (@gaplogo) and one, the old logo (@oldgaplogo). (For all I know it may be the same person.) Twitter is perfect for this kind of show:

Best of @oldgaplogo:

• (Profile) I have feelings, too. Jerks.
• This is what happens when you take a company field trip to a screening of Helvetica. Damn you Gary Hustwit!
• @kcbean I think I'm worth at least a D-.
• What I need right now is someone to go on YouTube and defend me in a video. Heavy eye-shadow is optional. Uncontrollable sobbing is a must.

Best of @oldgaplogo

• Hey @GapLogo I hear Milt Glaser is on his way over with the ghost of Paul Rand to kick your ass.
• Look at your new logo. Now back at me. Now back at your new logo. Sadly he is not me.
• Help...i've been taken hostage. Everything is dark and I don't know where I am.

The Gap itself is staying out of it. No official press release and no comment about all this noise either.

Meme of the Week deconstructed: Antoine Dodson/Bed Intruder

This is fantastic. Lab-coat-wearing Internet Scientist ElspethJane from the Rocketboom Institute for Internet Studies investigates the phenomena of Antoine Dodson / Bed Intruder, his family, and his overnight success. (If you don't know who Antoine is, that doesn't matter--the video will get you up-to-speed.)

This video is the latest to air on the KnowYourMeme channel on YouTube. KnowYourMeme, a Rocketboom spin-off, describes itself as: "A web series and online database dedicated to documenting Internet culture, one scientismic investigation at a time." Others in the series include this one about the Epic Beard Man of Oakland.

(via brandflakesforbreakfast)

Meme of the Week: Mr Slater pulls that lever

It's only Tuesday but we already have a winner for Meme of the Week. JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, come on down.

For those of you who've missed the story, Mr. Slater got into an argument with a passenger who wouldn't stay seated until the plane had come to a complete stop. After being hit in the head by that passenger's carry-on baggage, Slater lost it. According to the New York Daily News he grabbed the intercom and announced: "To the passenger who called me a m—-f—er, f—- you. I've been in the business 28 years. I've had it. That's it."

And then he grabbed a couple of beers, activated the plane's inflatable emergency slide, slid out onto the tarmac and stormed off. That spoke to us on so many levels. Who hasn't wanted to storm off the job in dramatic fashion? Who hasn't wanted to pull that lever? Who wouldn't like to
slide down that emergency slide as long as the plane wasn't about to explode behind you?

So, Mr Slater, congratulations! For being the one who did the things that the rest of us have thought of doing but have been sensible enough not to do, you win this week's prize. May the punishment you're about to receive be just and merciful.

Photo: The flight has officially begun by flyheatherfly on Flickr

Meme of the Week: Pac-Man on Google

No need for a pocket full of quarters. No need to head to the arcade (per this song).
A playable version of Pac-Man is on Google today (5/21) to celebrate its 30th birthday. Enjoy!

Brand Mix Meme of the Week: Merton on Chatroulette

So, for those who have just given up trying to keep up, let's start with: What's Chatroulette? According to the site listing, Chatroulette is "blablablabla" which pretty much sums it up. It's a website that pairs random people together for webcam-based conversations. Whenever you want, you can just leave one chat and start another. Such an unappealing concept from my point of view, until "Merton" came along and did this:



That piece of brilliance has been viewed almost 1 million times on YouTube. Not long after that video, Ben Folds performed a Merton tribute live before an audience at the Fillmore in Charlotte, North Carolina.



Notice the similarity between Ben Folds and Merton? So did lots of people and, ever since, there's been speculation about whether they are in fact one and the same. (Peter Kafka posted about this important question earlier in the week.)

As of the time of writing, I haven't seen anything that definitively answers this great mystery of our time. But now we have two great examples of Chatroulette's possibilities, which is two more than I ever thought possible. (And thanks to "Bam" for suggesting an answer to my home office dilemma.)

Meme of the week: Fake Inspirational Crap

Photo: quality-for-you by dandeluca (Flickr)

Hashtag #fakeinspirationalcrap broke through on Twitter this last week. Admittedly not as loudly as #howyouathug (Samples: #howyouathug when i saw u get smacked in the club last week by ur girl.... and #howyouathug and and u cried on titanic talkin bout...''the soundtrack just duz it to me.'' But that hashtag seemed to attract ideas from a different gang of Twitterers.

Here are some of the best I saw from #fakeinspirationalcrap:

“If you have them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow.” @dhmorton

"When the climb seems impossible, take the escalator." @word_czar

"There's no U in team." @word_czar

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; cry, and you get your own show on Fox." @word_czar (again)

"Haste makes more free time." @expatina

"Starve a cold. Feed a fashion model." @roncaldwell

"Build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life." @williamstafford

Meme of the Week: The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team's Pants

Photo: loud and proud by kennymatic (Flickr)

Rally around the pants! There are almost 500,000 fans on Facebook, almost 10% of Norway's population. All because one of the team members picked these crazy pants out of a catalog. Pantastic!

And the pants are either inspiring the Norwegians. Or distracting the competition. They are in the final against the Canadians, taking out Switzerland 7-5 in the semi-finals.

Meme of the week: Boring Movies

Photo: Big Yawn by twob on Flickr

Nothing much was hitting my radar screen this week until, late-breaking, Twitter lit up with lots of suggestions for boring movies (#boringmovies). Samples:

• Some Drivel Runs Through It @word_czar
  
• Good Morning, Virginia Beach @word_czar
• Drainspotting @VanessaKellyAut
• Debbie does Dishes (many)
• Lord of the Ring Road @EdinburghFringe
• Dusty Harry @RevSion
• Lawrence of Suburbia @tweetloaf
  

Brand Mix: Meme of the week

A new feature. If it had started last week, the award would have definitely gone to the Doppelgänger pix on Facebook. But that's more or less over now, so the first official winner is:

Winner: Urban Dictionary (Facebook Fans (as of 2/5): 279, 400)

As The Christian Science Monitor sniffily says: "The user-submitted definitions on Urban Dictionary are often intentionally revolting passages that appeal to the lowest forms of scatalogical humor." But that's why this meme has taken off. To fully participate, you need to go urbandictionary.com, enter your first name in the look-up box, and then paste the definition as your Facebook status. Given the nature of the look-up results, many will balk at the last step.

Runner-up: The very peculiar Selleck Waterfall Sandwich.

Via Darryl Ohrt who comments: "You don't have to understand it, you only have to respect it. Someday, aliens will look down on our civilization and be confused."