the internet

It Started with a “This”

Niall O'Donnell 4 Comments

This evening, while cycling home from work, a thought occurred to me. A slightly panicked thought. I recalled that in my post yesterday I’d linked to an article, and I thought…

 Did I include the link!? (Clearly my cycling thoughts aren’t as interesting as my running thoughts. I suppose I’m too focussed on the road)

You see, rather than write my post directly on my blog, as I usually do, yesterday I’d written it as a word document, as I wasn’t online at the time, and then copied it onto the blog later. And then of course I included all the links. Or did I? Because it would be very easy to forget to (spoiler alert: I didn’t). Before I got home and put my mind at ease, I felt a little annoyed. If I had forgotten it, how stupid would that look? It would be so obvious I’d forgotten the link, and it would be unfortunate for anyone reading it, as they’d miss out on what was a very interesting article. But then, another thought occurred to me: would that actually be so bad?

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Dank Memes

Niall O'Donnell 19 Comments

If you’re young and hip like me, you’ll have come across the term dank meme, and know that a dank meme is a cool image or video that becomes popular. Goes viral, if you will.

Though the word meme is strongly associated with internet culture, it’s got a longer history than you might imagine. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 work on evolutionary biology, The Selfish Gene. It referred to an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads between individuals within a culture. A particular fashion or popular opinion that spreads quickly, like a virus, could be considered a meme. Dawkins came up with the theory of the meme in a book on evolution, as he considered that ideas could be under the same pressures to adapt and replicate as biological organisms. Continue reading →