Meme Watch: Greenscreen Grandmas and the formula for internet success
I use the internet professionally. That is, I receive payment and benefits for surfing the web, and then talking about it. I thought I should draw from my expertise to talk about this soon-to-become viral video Greenscreen Grandmas.
In our society we have two archetype of old people: the creepy and the cute. We fear that creepy aged person, that old man in Home Alone, because they are close to death, and death scares us. The cute old person by contrast reminds us of the nurturing we received from our grandparents. That infant love we had towards older people, has stayed with us through maturity. (I'm no Freudian so don't quote me on that.)
Cuteness is often a factor in viral videos and memes. I explicated on this idea a few months ago.
This video is Safe For Work. Sometimes I forget that people find things offensive. Offensive videos are able to gain traction across our liberal side of the internet, but they don't have universal appeal. The way you do that is by creating a video without any questionable material. JK Wedding Entrance Dance is a great example of this. There is nothing offensive about it (less the Chris Brown song, which many rubes overlook) and it now has over 36 million hits.
Greenscreen Grandmas is the type of video you can send to anyone. Including your own grandparents.
And older people use the internet too! In July, iStrategy Labs published a report that in the previous six months: "there has been a staggering increase in the number of 55+ users – with total growth of 513.7%." Retirees might enjoy the things the non-Coco's-eating set like, but they probably also want to see content about themselves. I'm sure my grandmother would love this video because she likes having fun with her friends.
Furthermore this video as an example of people playing. They are just goofin', and there is something really fun about that. Play is that act of enjoyment. It's great when we are able to do it ourselves, but we get a similar sensation when we engage in play virtually, in this case through these Greenscreen Grandmas.
These previous concepts ensure that this video, is highly transmittable. A highly transmittable video or idea becomes a meme, if it is widely imitated, but still retains an identifiable relationship to the original. The internet meme of the year was Keyboard Cat, which spawned countless variations, but each of these still referred to the original.
Greenscreen Grandmas has potential to be parodied, re-enacted, remixed, mashed-up (with another meme) or referenced. I'm not sure that this video will become a meme, but others videos with similar content have. The JK Wedding Entrance Dance has been parodied online, as well as recuperated by mass media on NBC's The Office. (Grandmas is not on as grand of a scale, as JK so it's less likely to be imitated by television.)
I think these factors will contribute to this video's success on the internet. Popularity, however is not a precondition for quality. I don't like this video very much, or that it has such mass appeal. As an expert on the subject, I need to look at this video in the context of the rest of current internet content. And the direction entertainment is traveling at the end of the first decade of this millennium is disappointing.
Imagine that a group of intelligent beings light years away pickup a radio signal from an early 1900s broadcast of Hamlet. They pick up the signal and say "WOW OTHER INTELLIGENT LIFE FORMS EXIST IN THE UNIVERSE!"They are so excited that they come to our planet, and discover that we've been wiped out by global warming. All that's left is the entertainment that we most recently enjoyed.
Videos of sleepwalking dogs, people blowing up trashcans, and elderly women pretending to be on roller-coasters. These aliens will be disappointed that our society, which had so much potential, had squandered it and reduced themselves to idiots.
Luckily we don't have to be worried what aliens think of us. We can continue to watch viral videos forever. Or at least until we are inevitably tricked and subsequently destroyed by a very cute surprised kitty.
Right now this video has 6,468 views. Hardly viral at this moment, but you can expect hundreds-of-thousands of hits.
The video was uploaded to youtube on December 19th by TheBchismar. It was then added to Joanne Casey's blog today, December 28th at 7am GMT. This was picked up by The Daily What as part of their Early Bird Special. All of these factors would bring relative success to this video, but through the miracle of RSS readers, it was picked up by bigger fish. At 2pm EST Gizmodo added this video. It has also appeared on Holy Taco, College Humor, and Buzzfeed.
So even though it has meager views at this moment, by the end of the week, I suspect that this will be a viral sensation.
The content of this video is ripe for mass distribution.
- Cute
- Safe For Work
- Older people
- Play
- Potential to become an internet meme.
In our society we have two archetype of old people: the creepy and the cute. We fear that creepy aged person, that old man in Home Alone, because they are close to death, and death scares us. The cute old person by contrast reminds us of the nurturing we received from our grandparents. That infant love we had towards older people, has stayed with us through maturity. (I'm no Freudian so don't quote me on that.)
Cuteness is often a factor in viral videos and memes. I explicated on this idea a few months ago.
This video is Safe For Work. Sometimes I forget that people find things offensive. Offensive videos are able to gain traction across our liberal side of the internet, but they don't have universal appeal. The way you do that is by creating a video without any questionable material. JK Wedding Entrance Dance is a great example of this. There is nothing offensive about it (less the Chris Brown song, which many rubes overlook) and it now has over 36 million hits.
Greenscreen Grandmas is the type of video you can send to anyone. Including your own grandparents.
And older people use the internet too! In July, iStrategy Labs published a report that in the previous six months: "there has been a staggering increase in the number of 55+ users – with total growth of 513.7%." Retirees might enjoy the things the non-Coco's-eating set like, but they probably also want to see content about themselves. I'm sure my grandmother would love this video because she likes having fun with her friends.
Furthermore this video as an example of people playing. They are just goofin', and there is something really fun about that. Play is that act of enjoyment. It's great when we are able to do it ourselves, but we get a similar sensation when we engage in play virtually, in this case through these Greenscreen Grandmas.
These previous concepts ensure that this video, is highly transmittable. A highly transmittable video or idea becomes a meme, if it is widely imitated, but still retains an identifiable relationship to the original. The internet meme of the year was Keyboard Cat, which spawned countless variations, but each of these still referred to the original.
Greenscreen Grandmas has potential to be parodied, re-enacted, remixed, mashed-up (with another meme) or referenced. I'm not sure that this video will become a meme, but others videos with similar content have. The JK Wedding Entrance Dance has been parodied online, as well as recuperated by mass media on NBC's The Office. (Grandmas is not on as grand of a scale, as JK so it's less likely to be imitated by television.)
I think these factors will contribute to this video's success on the internet. Popularity, however is not a precondition for quality. I don't like this video very much, or that it has such mass appeal. As an expert on the subject, I need to look at this video in the context of the rest of current internet content. And the direction entertainment is traveling at the end of the first decade of this millennium is disappointing.
Imagine that a group of intelligent beings light years away pickup a radio signal from an early 1900s broadcast of Hamlet. They pick up the signal and say "WOW OTHER INTELLIGENT LIFE FORMS EXIST IN THE UNIVERSE!"They are so excited that they come to our planet, and discover that we've been wiped out by global warming. All that's left is the entertainment that we most recently enjoyed.
Videos of sleepwalking dogs, people blowing up trashcans, and elderly women pretending to be on roller-coasters. These aliens will be disappointed that our society, which had so much potential, had squandered it and reduced themselves to idiots.
Luckily we don't have to be worried what aliens think of us. We can continue to watch viral videos forever. Or at least until we are inevitably tricked and subsequently destroyed by a very cute surprised kitty.
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