Everybody forced here upping cosmically pristine six-box tops baseball makes your number six random teams here So it's two cosmic 22 to cosmic 23 and two pristine 23 Let's do it results can be found any time a late sports cards calm you start with So we're 23 pristine 23 We'll start with 23 cosmic then do pristine then do the 22 do that Do that 23 See a super in this break Ruchman Michael Harris inserts Harris got a nucleus of Walker Bueller for the Dodgers Launch an orbit Bryce Harper Billy's triple Let's go nulls 40 minutes. Oh Gunner Henderson extra threshold talents Kunya Harris and Riley Cavalli Moreno Numbered cards that there's one aqua equinox Alejandro Kirk blue jays the one that I nine Ruchman Whitton Green Orioles is Andrew H Royals. It's Cory G and the Tigers Keep Jay I'll roll a dive for all the triples All the trio is unless majority will go to the same direction here. Oh, so it would have been one two three four five six I do every time sorry I rolled first that time, but it's one two three four five six It's where we always deal with triples So goes the right side for any of the triples unless a majority right side the fracter Abrams nationals Volpe Chip sup Alvin is going man. It's going there stars in the night of one soda Padres only one numbered card so far in this In this box Come on cosmic.  It's a huge Uranus. Yeah, big Uranus big time Aaron it judge Yankees Uranus Gala Maya Josh Chisholm Yeah, that card is not yours, that's correct Jordan Walker refractor Corbin burns the Brewers Yeah, Sean was a little too eager to see Uranus costs us endeavors Stella Nova Ronald Acunia Jr. Die cut short prints There we go now we're talking Alvin with the Gulazo Alvin, did you do it like a bicycle kick?  It's all Alvin knows how to do is a bicycle kick Fly into the air every every every play Sheeda Wander Julian Braves there. Come on Let's see some more heat good first box only had one numbered card though Jordan Walker launched into orbit full-cell outpromotes tonight everybody Got to get these basketball and football breaks filled up planetary pursuit the Sun Shohei Otani Very nice Dutchman wit Harris Poguedo refractor Will Smith Michael Harris the second stars of the night rookie for Atlanta and an Alvarez base Blue Moon Luis Garcia at a 99 for the Nationals Refractor Max Fried Atlanta Kassas Devers Tough on number, but a lot of SP's Let's do pristine now Two boxes of 23 pristine Got a 23 to go on mosaic now. There we go Basketball starting to move a bit The full case has eight to go tiered so two teams a spot 23 to go in the first mosaic the random teams group rate prices were reduced Now that we have you lead football flawless basketball serial number style and the mixer the factor of a man to ply in Korea Alvarez going going on insert for the Mets They're definitely not that rare Unfortunately SMC Gunner Henderson rookie refractor for the Orioles orange Josh Naylor to 25 Guardians Shohei Otani. Oh snap. I think some people think that they flopped the Venus and Uranus Rarities, I think that's what some people think happens because these are fairly calm I've seen more of these than the than the mercuries Other than the Sun I've seen More of those probably than anything probably Ray refractor Jersey Otto Ryan Howard for the Phillies Like I've pulled Marge Jupiter Mercury the Sun Uranus haven't seen Neptune Pluto Earth That's it in Saturn. I haven't seen any of those personally refractor Acunia purple Alcantra to 99 for Florida Rookie blue fresh faces is blood data 75 a's in Salvi Perez Dude Steve Needs a pedilite at this point Now I haven't seen any I haven't seen any Walter Yount gold to 50 Martin Perez that goes to the Rangers I wonder if we even get in the end. It's not a very wide release. Is it? All right, rookie Otto James Altman There we go Dodgers nice card Well hop a rookie refractor gold him Anderson to 50 white socks gold Tristan Kossas rookie Otto Red Sox 25 out of 50 Awesome Kossas refractor Crona worth and blue refractor Reggie Jackson a 75 a's When is it like officially released and like when will it be available to like more people you did they give you an answer? Well, they really sell it in the NLB store. What? Why why would they do that? So people can just walk in and buy it and sell it for like triple of what they paid for it a case via phone That is so strange. That is a bizarre way to distribute something I can at least make it to where like Shops can get you go buy it at shops only. I don't know man. I don't know so weird Castillo Howard Especially with the way they want to distribute their products now got Walker Seeger blue refractor to 75 Tim Anderson white Sox God oh snap that's east I'm gonna have Sean call see if you can get a get us some cases Yvonne Soto popular demand Jersey Otto Braves chipper Jones Yeah, Jake's just trying to see Uranus out here Mullins gold rookie Ashcraft to 50 for the Reds rushman base Marta cabrera a cure factor Yankees Corbin Carroll, I mean it was that difficult to get I doubt will I doubt will come across any Who knows maybe a cure factor morale Cubs Purple to 99 contraris for the Brewers You know sheet of fresh faces They're numbered to it's negative five out of negative five or less out of zero Or I guess more negative five or more So negative five negative four negative three negative one, so there's five of them. Do you know downs rookie Otto? Devin Williams refractor Hyun Jin Ryu blue refractor to 75 The Jays blue refractor out of the 75 muskrow Padres Corbin Carroll rookie refractor and gold with 50 blue day for the A's All right, two bucks of 2022 cosmic now. Oh gee cosmic got a gold boba shed blue Jays numbered to 50 Black to 10 for the ashows Lance McCullers Two of 10 McCullers Astros Jram refractor blue to 99 keep Ryan Hayes Pirates Be sure to like the stream everybody We also got a full sellout promo tonight. Make sure you get your group break spots We get this promo roll in here again a Justin Fields signed authentic helmet a yount framed in signed authentic jersey and 10 national VIP silver packs are the prizes for our full sellout promo if you fill everything up We'll do a drawing at the end of the night one break spot was one spot in the drawing sin Victor Invicta plenty of basketball and football spots left for tonight Nucleus of McCullers for the Astros Rikki refractor Clement for the Guardians A rod come on a lot of base packs. There's insert packs Nucleus Luis Severino Yankees They definitely give you a lot more to chase in this product in 2023. Well, cosmic banger right here Perez Pena base for the Stroes Coolie Rodriguez base Ricky Mariners Blue Moon to 99 Jazz Chesham for the Marlins T Oscar nucleus of Pat wisdom for the Cubs. I mean, there's more to chase in it So that way it's better refractor Mike trout for the Angels There's some monster rookies in this product though This is short of printed to a lot less of it Jared Durand base rookie No, we need is a few packs here Something Kyle Hendricks refractor for the Cubs. There's a gold Rookie Matt Manning for the Tigers Nine of fifty.  That'll be that'll be so nasty. Oh Yeah, it's probably it's probably true. It's probably true that happens You've seen way more of those than anything else here as well other than the Sun All right, last one. It's a base pack. All right, let's do a quick recap All right numbered and like short prints things like that. We had Alejandro Kirk to 199 Garcia to 99 Purple the 99 Alcantara and Contreras It's a 99 jazz in Cabrion Hayes to 75 Anderson to 50 Bichette 75 Blede to 50 Perez Matt Manning to 50 Josh Taylor to 25 black 10 McCullers Stella Nova Short print of Cunha for Atlanta We got Jersey auto chipper Jones for the Braves Brian Howard Phillies in case pristine autos jeter downs James Altman must grow to 75 Padres and a sick Casas gold to 50 for Boston Redemption Ken Griffey junior launch into orbit autograph variation for the Mariners 22 Cosmic Planetary pursuit the Sun shohay ohtani angels planetary pursuit Uranus Yankees You're in judge. Thanks again everybody moving on now to some cosmic half casers


Hey, this is Brett, and this 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited is stock number 23J328A. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, you're new and used Jeep and Jeep Grand Cherokee headquarters. This 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee has the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine. It's paired up with the 8-speed automatic transmission. This Jeep has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop for the state of Wisconsin inspection process. It has a fresh oil and filter change, all the fluids have been checked and topped off, and it has four brand new tires, and it is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around inside, start it up, take a look under the hood, show you all the options, give you the most accurate representation of the vehicle I can. Granite crystal, metallic is the color, I shoot all my videos in 4K, and if you like the video, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com, slash Summit AutoClick, the bell notifications, you'll get updates on the vehicles that I do each and every day, as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle walk-arounds on YouTube. This one comes with the 20-inch polished aluminum and painted alloy wheels, very nice wheels on this vehicle. Has Lofen S-Fit AS tires, these are 26550R20s, and they are brand new, you can still see the little wear knobs on there, we put those on in our safety inspection. One fender is absolutely perfect, no dents or dings on there, this one does come with the projector lamp style headlamps and the projector lamp style fog lamps. Front bumper is in really nice shape, didn't see any major dents or cracks on there, maybe just one tiny little scuff down there on the plastic and stuff, so nothing too bad though. Has the chrome trimmed grille and the hood is in fantastic condition, no dents or dings on there. No corrosion or anything, looks really good. Passenger side front fender is in fantastic shape, and the passenger side front wheel, no major scuffs or scrapes on there. Granite crystal, it's got a lot of metal flaking it, really a good looking color, one of my favorite colors that Jeep Chrysler Dodge and Ram offers. As you go down this side of this 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee take note of how clean that body is, how reflective and mirror like that paint is. I take these HD videos so if you are far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the Jeep, hear the Jeep and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here there's absolutely no surprises and you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at. Back wheel is in really nice shape as well, does have actually, I think that'll rub off of there, but very nice condition, back tire is brand new as well, and coming around to the back of the vehicle, rear bumper is in excellent shape, I didn't see any dense stings or scuffs or scrapes back there, it does have the backup parking sensors, LED tail lamps, and the rear gate is in fantastic condition as well. This is a power lift gate, just have to press the button in the handle and it will come on up. The back storage area is very clean, and this one does come with a spare tire and jack tools. Those seats do fold down for extra storage, I'll show you that in a second and you press this button it'll beep at you three times and then begin its descent. Going down the driver's side, just as clean as that passenger's side, no major dents or dings on the rear quarter, and for full disclosure this back wheel is absolutely perfect too. Down the rest of this side, doors and quarter all look really good, it does come with blind spot monitoring, heated mirrors, chrome trim mirrors, built-in directional signals, inside the limited package gives you the black leather bucket seats, no rips or tears on the seats, smells very clean inside this Jeep, I don't think it's ever been smoked in. Power driver's seat, factory floor mats, auto headlamps, wood grain trim, power windows locks and mirrors, and memory driver's seat as well. I'll take a quick look at the back seats, they are just as clean as the front seats, no rips or tears back here, and it does have the latch child safety system for any child car seats you may have, and these seats do fold down very nice and flat, which is great if you get a haul of extra stuff. Back here you get two USBs, 115 volt, 150 watt plug-in, and factory floor mats. Child safety locks on the back doors and inside and bottoms of the doors all look really good on this vehicle. We'll hop inside, check out the miles, the radio, and everything that this Jeep has to offer on the interior. You can see that this one has the digital speedometer, 7-inch multi-view LCD display, digital compass as well, you can change all the corners to read whatever you want, and 41,202 miles. Comes with the heated leather wrap steering wheel cruise controls on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left, audio controls on the back of that steering wheel. This one comes with the 8.44C radio, does have the factory navigation system on it, and there's highway 41, so you can see that is working nicely. You get AM, FMN, Sirius XM radio capabilities, you also get your heated seats, heated steering wheel controls, and this is also where your back of camera shows up, you can see that is working nicely as well. You get all your different apps, including projection manager, where you can project your cell phone to the screen via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. We actually did demo on Android Auto if you want to check that out. That's pretty cool, that's in the description below in the upper right hand pro screen, and then you get off-road pages, they do take a second to load, so while they're loading I'll show you the more tactile volume tune and climate controls, including your dual climate controls, parking sensors, start-stop capabilities, eco mode, sport mode, and stability control. It's a jeep thing you want to understand as the verbiage they got there, you get your select terrain, so you also have latitude, longitude, altitude, accessory gauges, pitch and roll, and then vehicle dynamics, so basically as I turn the steering wheel you can see those tires up top, they turn as well, and the steering angle changes too. Then you're in transfer case if you're in four-wheel drive or whatever, but then the select terrain is down here, and that's with your mud, rock, auto, sand, and snow, and as I change it down there you can see it changes it up there, so that's pretty cool. Then it does have a neutral setting for flat towing, downhills, sis control, and four-wheel drive, eight-speed automatic transmission, keyless entry with remote start, entering-go system, passenger side dash, format, and seat are in excellent condition, no rips or tears on there, headliners in nice shape, and it does come with the power sunroof, map lights, home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lane systems, and assist and SOS buttons in there. We'll start it up, take a look under the hood, there's your digital speedometer, starts right up, no check engine lights or anything like that. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today, and hopefully from this HD video, you've been able to verify the quality condition options, and of course, cleanliness of this Grand Cherokee inside and out. I think it's in fantastic condition. One owner, clean title history, clean car packs locally owned in Wisconsin, and traded in here recently. Under the hood, we have a 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 engine, engine base, very clean, runs very smooth. Once again, this Jeep has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop. It has a fresh oil and filter chains, all the foods have been checked and topped off. There's the emission sticker. It has four brand new tires. Shock is doing a nice job holding that hood up, and this Jeep is 100% ready to go. I would highly recommend it from a quality and condition standpoint. I think whoever's gonna come get this one's gonna be very happy with it. And to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of our other 550 new and used cars, trucks, SUVs, minivans, Wranglers, Grand Cherokees, Cherokees, you name it, we got to go to that website right there, summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle, all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash summitauto. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos I do each and every day, as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle walk-arounds on YouTube, 8,000 videos and counting. In fact, any second you'll see a link to subscribe to my YouTube channel on the upper left. A link to more Grand Cherokee videos are done in the upper right. A link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos on the lower right. Click those, check us out. We're super excited to help you with this ultra-clean 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee, limited in granite crystal metal. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.


Low-temperature ceramics made from magnesium-calcium phosphate cement can be used to restore bones. These ceramics contain multiple phases, including brushite, monotite, and nubaryite, which have varying levels of dissolution rates. This allows for controlled resorption of the ceramic over time. Additionally, these ceramics can be mixed with setting inhibitors such as sodium pyrophosphate-decohydrate and citric acid monohydrate to reduce the risk of setting before implantation. In vivo studies show that these ceramics are safe and effective for bone repair. This article was authored by Yulia Luckina, Sergei Kotov, Leonid Bionyshev Abramov, and others.


So Tim Wong, Berkman staff, thanks David for that introduction and thank you Berkman for having me actually. Having gone to a bunch of lunches this is kind of a sort of a terrible sort of longtime listener first-time caller kind of experience and I'm excited and intimidated. I was saying to David before the talk began I've seen sort of a lot of speakers go down in flames on this chair so so I was up until sort of like three or four preparing so you have to forgive me if I'm a little fuzzy today unfortunately. So my talk today is entitled the low-cat-thedral and the bizarre. I was wondering whether not the reference would be too obscure but then I assumed it was Berkman so I just go ahead with it. And what I'm going to talk today a little bit about is sort of the past year in memes and internet culture and from that pull out basically a model that I've been thinking about recently to approach sort of studying web culture and and actually apply that model and also attempt to use it to kind of talk a little bit about the trends that might affect web culture and memes sort of in in the coming year. So first a little bit about me as David mentioned I'm the founder of RaffleCon which is basically an attempt to get everybody who is ever famous together in a room together to talk about sort of web celebrity fame and the spread of ideas. So there's a really diverse group is a bunch of webcomic people people were famous on video and most interestingly kind of people who are unintentionally famous. So this is a picture of a bunch of audience members and Tron guy who some of you may remember from Slash's out a few years ago. He actually well funny thing about the story is he actually recently purchased a plane whose colors match actually his costume. So I'm not sure if he flies the plane in his costume but I thought that was pretty interesting. Also some of you know me because I'm a research assistant at the Berkman Center where I work with this guy, Yochai Bankler, where Yochai is very interested in cooperation online and specifically how design levers like conflict resolution mechanisms and systems of norms and reputation systems can affect kind of aggregate behavior on a website and he's kind of interested in trying to test out and learn more about sort of the relationship between between the two. Extra-curricularly I also do work with students for free culture which is kind of a group of student chapters and colleges around the country kind of devoted for advocating and sort of promoting the idea that we should have the right to share and remix cultural content and code. And I'm also happy to announce that just recently I've started a project this summer to shoot a documentary about Goatsy. Now if you're if you're not familiar with Goatsy you should not look at it right now on your computer. The hope with this sort of project is that we're going to actually find the model that's in that image and interview him and then interview a bunch of web notables about their experience with Goatsy and so it's it's hoped to be something along a little cross between sort of the aristocrats and fog of war if you've ever seen that documentary. And so I'm just starting that and we'll see where it takes us probably not to good places. Now I'll get right into it because there's a lot to talk about and so first what happened in 2008? Well really a lot happened in 2008 and lots and lots of stuff and sort of an explosion of content in ways that we really haven't seen before and some of it was content of the format that was pretty typical in years past on the internet. Pictures of funny cats and videos and sort of music videos and techno remixes and really just a lot of typical stuff. But also you've seen the emergence of a bunch of new trends that we haven't seen before as well right? Sort of the emergence of internet culture into the mainstream, the entanglement of various mainstream celebrities with internet culture and also sort of the the commercial success of internet culture in a lot of ways. Creating businesses around internet culture and and really sort of providing content and so now when you're looking at this there's a kind of intuition and the intuition is that the internet looks a little bit like this. The internet is fundamentally at a core level really random right? You know it's a dinosaur with the birthday cake and then there's rocket ships right? And that there's not a whole lot of relation between all the various parts. The internet's definitely more interesting than anything you happen to be doing at the current moment but really it's all random you know there's no relationship between funny cats and a dinosaur and Rick Astley. But when you start thinking about this this intuition is a little bit wrong right? Certainly our online spaces are constrained in a fundamental way by an ecosystem of hardware and software. And so if we think about it there's a reason why certain memes emerge when they do and how they emerge and how they spread is contingent on that kind of environment. So Yokai's thought a little bit about this and he thinks about the web and these sorts of layers right? So at the base level there's kind of a hardware layer of sort of fiber and boxes and stuff and on top of that there's sort of a code layer right? There's there's software and the things we run on top of it and then on top of that there's a content layer right? The world of media and also the world of sort of online communities. But what's interesting about this relationship is that it implies that if we look close enough there should be a relationship between over time and there should also be a relationship between memes across the internet occurring at the same time. And sort of in my misguided attempt to coin more unnecessary buzzwords this is something I've been starting to call the memescape. Basically idea that the internet and internet culture is not fundamentally random in any important way and that memes are actually tied to some very very sort of material constraints right? Whether or not be in technology or even sort of in sort of the economic constraints of the situation. And so this is kind of very abstract. So it's actually worth drilling down a little bit and talking a little bit about what I mean. And the best way of thinking about this is something that I've started to call the 4chan paradox. And the 4chan paradox goes a little bit like this. So first there's Facebook right? Everybody knows Facebook. It's you know the industry leader in social networks. You know it's it's got a huge number of users. The changes it makes to its interface online have sort of big implications.  And we can start to say okay let's start highlighting the arenas where memes might be able to form right? And where might memes form? Well on a very low bar maybe it's just places where people can communicate and share content. Really really basic right? Because if people can't do it then sort of memes can't form because it's not sort of shared culture. So this is a typical home page on Facebook. In fact it's it's my home page so if there's any private information on there I hope you don't see it. And let's start looking right? Okay so there's there's friending right? Okay so I'm friends with you. I'm friends with Aaron. Aaron friends with me. And we share content. I can see what he's doing and he can see what I'm doing. So maybe that's one place where memes can form. There's also events. Great well that's awesome. You know there's a physical space where we can meet up and maybe share jokes and share culture. And then Facebook provides an interface for me to post pictures and comments and all sorts of other things. And then there's there's chat. You know chat's great right? I can have conversations and memes can kind of form when I talk to people and I'm like oh how isn't that funny or like you iterate on what I do. And really once you start looking at it Facebook is covered with these things right? You know beyond chat there's status updates, there's applications, there's people recommendations, there's highlighted videos, there's various sliders for privacy, there's photos. And it's really in some sense sort of the stealth fighter jet of the social web right? It has every single doohickey you could ever want. Now enter 4chan. So if some of you aren't familiar with 4chan, essentially what 4chan is is it's an image sharing board. So a really simple idea. This is what a typical page on 4chan looks like. And obviously it's clear from the image that you know 4chan is really I mean it looks like a website out of the mid 90s right? And the idea of the image board is very simple. You post an image and you post some text and people can post just text in response to it, or they can post an image and text in response to it. So where are the places where memes can form here? Well basically two right? And what's most notable about 4chan is it doesn't even have profiles right? Like it's missing a lot of the standard infrastructure we associate with you know the social web and web 2.0 and everything. So what's the intuition about this comparison right? And the intuition might be something like this. Well we might expect that as a number of social tools rise there's more arenas for people to communicate in. There's more ways for them to iterate content. So we should see more memes emerge sort of in Facebook than 4chan. Facebook should relatively be able to you know pwn 4chan actually in terms of its content created. But what's interesting is this hasn't been created right? So like 4chan is responsible for the phenomenon of the locat right? Which became so huge in sort of 2008. You know and if you don't know sort of the idea behind the locat was you post a picture of a cat and then there'd be a caption. Very very simple. It's also been tied to the phenomenon of the Rick Astley Rickrolling phenomenon. So the way Rickrolling works if you don't know is you send a link to your friend and you're like hey this is a link to an important policy decision made by the Obama administration.  It's also been responsible for chocolate reigns. So some of you may remember this video from earlier in 2008. And what I'm not trying to argue is that Facebook doesn't have memes because it certainly does. So some of you may have become the victim of this recently which is the 25 random things about me meme on Facebook where the premise is basically very simple. There's 25 things and you list random things about yourself. Some of you may also become the victim of this particular Facebook meme right? Someone posts ASCII art on your wall being like you've been hit by the beautiful truck. Hit 15 other people with a beautiful truck or it'll stop being beautiful. But what's interesting is that there's a number of distinctions between the memes that emerge in 4chan and the memes that emerge in Facebook. Well for one and I can take lolcats as an example there isn't sustained communities around these memes right? So like Icon has cheeseburger is a site that's been built around people who are really interested in lolcats. Want to talk about lolcats share lolcats and otherwise sort of communicate in that medium. So that's one difference that really hasn't happened in the universe of Facebook. Another one is sort of the the iteriveness of the memes that emerge from Facebook. So taking the lolcat example again you know here's a very classic lolcat really really early one in the genre right? It's a great one I love it. And so this one is created right and then and then someone creates a response to that. So you know suddenly there's a basement cat in contrast to the ceiling cat and he's got you know he's kind of a dark force in the lolcat universe. And then stuff starts to get really really strange when these universes begin to collide and start to interact with one another. And this is really bizarre right? Because suddenly you have a meme that contains memes within it right? And it becomes its own kind of self-referential universe in a certain way. So that's another contrast. Another contrast taking the lolcat thing even further is the extent to which lolcats have kind of spilled beyond their boundaries right? The beautiful truck in Asciiara always stays the beautiful truck and so does 25 things random things about me. You can never do this with the memes that emerge on Facebook. So this is a picture from a project called the lolcat bible project. Effectively a wiki project to translate the entire text of the bible into lolspeak. This kind of like pigeon that's used in the captions. And the project is going along and people create images right? Like first there was ceiling cat and so on and so forth. It's also spilled beyond so that there's a project called lolcode now right? We can do entire software packages in lolspeak. You know every program kind of ends with kthanksby.  And it's also spilled out to things beyond cats right? So during the 2008 election season some of you may be familiar with the lolbama project where it was very simple. You take a picture of obama and then you caption it with lolcat speak. So one particular favorite of mine was So the question with this is why? And so there's two intuitions about this. The first intuition is the internet looks a little bit like this right? That the memes cluster totally randomly and there's no reason why lolcats emerge in Facebook or in 4chan and why the beautiful truck is really big on Facebook. There's no fundamental relationship and it was just random chance that happened that things emerge this way. That's one approach. The other approach is to start thinking more deeply about memes and to say well there actually is things that kind of constrain a production of memes and how we want to produce communities online. And that there should be relationship if we look close enough between various meme areas across the internet at the same time. And so there's sort of this fundamental relationship that we might be able to see if we look close enough. So I'm going to step back a little bit and talk about why that might be. So some of you might be familiar with this book. John Zetron sort of founder of the Berkman Center. And so he wrote this book recently called The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it. And in it he talks a little bit first about sort of why the PC beat out older systems sort of like the Flex and Frida writer which is sort of a 1960s IBM device that was really constrained in what kind of uses you could do. It was basically a very specialized tool for doing a very particular kind of business application. Jay-Z also talks a little bit about why the open internet beat out walled gardens and how that came to be. And the reason that he presents for it is the concept of generativity. So Jay-Z defines generativity as sort of the systems capacity to produce unanticipated changes through unfilled contributions from broad and varied audiences. In short, the idea that third parties and technology that's open to third parties allows for sort of this explosion of innovation that allows it to maneuver faster and innovate harder than sort of centralized solutions. And so he applies that to something like hardware to say okay so the PC is something that you can you can you know install whatever software you want on it. You can you know with sort of some basic technical knowledge you can edit the hardware itself. And this kind of opened the door for amateur innovators and garage entrepreneurs to get involved in the process and basically beat out these really constrained solutions. He also applies it to networks right so he says that the fact that the internet is a contentless space it's an empty space with no basic infrastructure. Implies that people have are invited to kind of come in and build sort of e-commerce networks and and the rest. And this sort of ended up beating out something like the AOL system where you had a central curator that had to say well yes we're going to have this in our forums we're not going to have this in our forums. And what I want to suggest today is maybe that concept of generativity actually applies for social systems as well and sort of meme machinery. Because memes are in a sense some kind of cultural innovation so why wouldn't the pattern hold. And this is the kind of analysis I would draw right so Facebook is a kind of social flexor sorry freedom flexor writer. You know the uses are defined and not changeable right so this area is for photos this is for status updates you know you put your favorite books here. There's also many many many different mechanisms which makes it difficult to sort of easily master in some sense. And finally the whole information infrastructure of friending means that information is siloed right so if a meme emerges among my friends it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to transfer very easily to someone else. And so these three elements right how adaptable the technology is how easy it is to master and how transferable innovations on the platform are to other users are all kind of elements that Jay-Z points to as things that sort of raise a generativity that aren't present here in some sense. In contrast 4chan is really a flexible system right the uses aren't defined there's nothing to it that implies that you have to put any kind of content there. It's also a simple like a very single simple mechanism so it's easy to master right there's an image and there's text and also information is not siloed right everybody's looking at the same website so information and memes that kind of emerge in one community can basically spread across the entire community of 4chan users at once. And while I'm not saying this is conclusive it certainly is an interesting parallel between the kind of connections that Jay-Z is looking at in sort of the universe of hardware and networks and certainly kind of bears some kind of sort of research that I think might be quite fruitful. So that gives you a basic overview of what I've been thinking about about how to apply this model of the memescape and what's very interesting is when you start saying like okay well so memes are connected by things deeper than just random stuff happening on the internet and so in that case can you use your model to think about what might be happening into the future. And this is something I've been thinking a lot about and I have to say in 2009 and 2010 I'm actually really really excited about the internet I mean I think we're going to see an explosion of content and we're going to see an expansion of internet culture into the mainstream like we haven't seen before and this is really good news and the really good news is buttressed by really bad news this is the reason why I think internet culture is going to do great in the next two years. The stock market has lost a huge amount of its value banks are in trouble people are out of work no one knows where to go right and that's just within the United States the even better news is that the entire world is in recession right so everywhere in red is in trouble right now and if you're listening to me you should probably be stopping me right now because the question is how does an economic recession turn into a boom for internet culture and so let me lay out the argument over the next uh few minutes so internet culture in some senses is built up of two sides right there's a supply side right people have to be out there creating content sharing content and sort of iterating content right like oh ha ha you just rip rolled me oh i'm gonna brock roll you back and kind of back and forth until a meme forms but also has to be uh experience some kind of demand right either people have to be paying those creators um or people have to just be interested they have to pay attention to what's going online and be part of what's going online so i'll tack the supply side because i think it's it's probably the easier place uh to start with and this is just it right lots and lots of people are out of work um and what's that mean when hundreds and thousands of people are out out of work in front of their computers with nothing to do all day right that's a fertile ground for memes to form it um and and some evidence from this is suggested in this really interesting uh sort of 2007 university Calgary study that came out about what times people what time's during the day people use youtube and what's very interesting is you look at the chart and youtube used kind of peaks right after lunch before getting back to work and it's almost as if those empty cycles are being used for people participating and and generating being part of internet culture um and you know clay shirky calls his cognitive surplus but we know what he really means he means a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands um and even if you don't buy this logic right you say okay now tim you're wrong um people are out of work what they need to be doing is looking for jobs they're not going to be just fooling around online um i can agree with you but i think the analysis holds over still because um people are increasingly starting to use blogs and content to kind of signal that they're reliable people they produce good content and kind of using it as a showcase for their content so there's a very interesting connection between a lot of people being out out of work and a lot of content being uploaded online and sort of like non-commercial i have a lot of free time kind of way um but supply isn't the only part of the picture right so there's demand and here's an interesting question right so if you're a big media company and you're like our advertisers in trouble um and i need to still produce content so what do i do i could continue to license with very very expensive celebrities go through that entire bureaucratic bureaucratic process and support a really really heavy weight system of content production or i could hire really beautiful people from the internet um and so this is the cast of the college humor show that was recently picked up by mtv um and and it's a pattern that you've seen more and more right so um do i do i contract with a huge celebrity or a internet celebrity so some of you might have seen this on on on prime time television a few months ago this is the macy's day parade um and uh what happened was uh there's a cartoon network show called fastest home for imaginary friends which is an awesome awesome show on many counts um but but what happened was that the characters were on the floor singing a song and suddenly uh there's a dead stop and rick astley comes out and sings never gonna give you up and for a moment there it was really bizarre because it was kind of like internet culture just barfed out into the mainstream world and and there's a moment where everybody on the internet was like holy crap that just happened like what's going on but it's a mainstream media company right they make decisions they do their market research they know that you know is it more profitable for you to contract with a real superstar or superstar that has a lot of weight that came up on the internet and it doesn't have a whole lot of jobs right now um and and and honestly i think there's there's a real economic reason behind why the businesses chose to do this year do this this year that no no it's do we have a figure on it no i i just it seems like you know that this is the sort of fact that you may need and inputting this forward i agree yeah and it's something that i've been trying to find out we actually have a couple people try to call and try to figure out because we're trying to get rick astley for the next raffle con thing a little while back but uh but he actually i hear he went back on tour which is quite interesting as well uh from this kind of economic point of view um this is a pattern that you've seen extensively in 2008 also in the world of publishing right so the chuck norris fax meme now has a book um and publishers have been increasingly been like do i want to contract with someone and pay a huge advance or do i want to contract with someone who has a really popular blog or a really popular community online bank off of the community they have and pay relatively less so that can has cheeseburger book also came out recently and was also quite popular um zack parson's who's a really really big player on a message board called something awful that some of you might be familiar has a book coming out and in one extremely extremely standout example a christian lander from stuff white people like published a book so stuff white people like um is effectively a blog that's exactly it's exactly like it sounds um and and christian lander mostly just kind of post about stuff he likes and and he recently like i was talking to him during raffle con and i was like oh you must be having a really exciting year and he was like no i've been really having an exciting six months because the website really blew up in a lot of ways and there's a huge number of users very quickly and he signed a very a book contract in sort of a record amount of time um and this book is amazing right so this book has spent several weeks in the new york times bestseller list it's in its 15th printing and christian lander is on his third book tour um and and that's kind of another sort of amazing emergence of sort of internet culture into the mainstream but businesses are just one part of the demand picture right so people are another picture um when you're out of work and you're looking for entertainment what do you do well certainly piracy is one option um and certainly something i'd love to research to see whether or not piracy has gotten up now that people are out of work but more interestingly i mean there's a whole universe of free content online right there's web comics and podcasts and written content that you control through and probably have endless entertainment um if you're looking for entertainment online and don't have a whole lot of money to spend on going to a concert or going out for a fancy dinner or the like and even if you're interested in buying something right the internet is relatively cheaper um so uh so that you know buying someone a gift from etsy is is relatively cheaper than buying something for your significant other over sort of tiffanie and co or something like that um and you might say okay this is all well and good right you've laid out an argument this seems pretty reasonable but do you have any evidence um and what i'm about to show you is is some preliminary stuff i've been doing and i i don't by any means think it's definitive research but it's certainly very suggestive in an interesting way so let's go back to the the marketplace so this is a map of the dow Jones industrial average and the red line is in october when stuff got really really really bad and so what i'm about to show you is a bunch of charts of a bunch of websites online um of their daily page views um and that red line will stay there always showing october 2008 when stuff got really bad so what exactly happened to twitter at that time that made it make this kind of remarkable jump or consequently what happened to etsy at that time that made kind of a sort of disorderly disproportionate jump or interesting as well sort of uh what happened to vimeo at that time that created some kind of an interesting jump as well um it's sort of a you know a personal blogging site and and and so i don't know there's sort of an interesting pattern emerging here but obviously there's some caveats right yeah yeah right i'm gonna go into that right it's like by by all means right this is this is a huge case of correlation not causation um and and by all means you know i'm not to suggest that this holds in all cases or even most cases right it only happens in these few cases and i'm actually kind of interested in that it's suggested that it happens at that time and that it probably bears more research to see if there's some way you could actually get at this question of whether or not there's a relationship between people being out of work the economy being troubled and actually being quite productive for internet culture and that's something i would love to get any comments on and that sort of stuff and and those charts i don't think are by any means are like evidence but but certainly i mean are interesting because there's a number of problems right so even even stuff like alexa right has all sorts of debates over how exactly they measure things so that's a caveat um so i hear from armor that i only have half an hour so i'm gonna quickly tie everything up and i guess we can just get into the discussion side of things i'd love to hear kind of your input and what you think about it all um so we've talked a little bit about how the idea of the means meanscape might link sort of meme production and change over time and also between the meme on the internet at sort of at the same time um and that it could be constrained by certain elements outside of that certain material constraints whether it's money or hardware or software um but this also means that there's some degree of control over the culture and the communities we create online and the decisions that are made in code and hardware sort of critically influence that social space and so there's a couple projects that come to mind once you start thinking about the internet in this way and a couple projects that i'd love to propose and that that only started to try to get people together to maybe consider working on um so one of them is environmental advisories and this is sort of what you do is you say okay let's take a look at the structure of a system and look at what kind of broadly shared behaviors it generates on a website and then let's assess those consequences if a lot of people do it um so so the the parallel in the analogy here of course is littering right like let's take a behavior of people litter and what happens when people will litter a lot and we know that sort of for example littering might be really negative to the the the state of the environment um so one element that we could really kick on here is kind of symmetrical information streams so i see you you see me on on sort of a friending basis so this is obligatory in kind of the facebook case right the infrastructure friending makes it that when you see my data stream i see your data stream but it's also socially incentivized in things like twitter right so it's an expected way and it's a it's a process by which people can get more followers um so we might say okay so if people are doing this indiscriminately like they're friending back indiscriminately or they're following back indiscriminately what happens when this expands and scales up on a great degree and what's funny is that that the the information garnered by those information streams becomes diluted in a certain sense so i heard a really interesting story this summer i was talking to a guy who actually got sued by someone and then about a week later he actually got friended by the same guy on facebook um and and the guy was like and i was like did you friend him and he's like oh yeah sure i just click confirm you know whatever you know that this is the thing you do on facebook um and the interesting thing is could you say that perhaps could you issue environmental warnings at some point saying that arbitrary followbacks or or indiscriminate followbacks on twitter like on net on aggregate uh might dilute information streams with kind of uninteresting and irrelevant information right so i know when i log into facebook now there's a period in which i sort of indiscriminately followed people back and so you know the mini feed now for me it reflects the information of bunch of people i actually don't care a lot about or are very interested in at all so that's one project that might be kind of interesting um another one uh is bug tracking so let's go back to this chart right the fact that the internet is structured in this way and the internet culture is situated on top of an ecosystem of code and sort of a physical layer uh means in some sense the internet culture is hackable and that weaknesses in code and hardware can be sort of exploited to gain sort of special or unintended control over a particular system so a great example of this is dig so what's the original idea behind dig right it's user generated uh distributed news filtering right everybody gets together and we all dig up and some people dig down and together on net we find what's most interesting for a community and you can get the best stories or the stories that everybody finds the most interesting the interesting thing is once you start looking at the use pattern of dig none of this actually holds as a vision right so that the top 100 dig users have contributed basically about six 50 to 60 percent of the number of stories on the front page of dig and that's extensive power in a way that you wouldn't expect from a system that's set up like this um and what i would eventually love to do is is kind of set up a system where you do bug tracking for social systems online to say look you know dig is exploitable in this way maybe they should consider patching it um and and keeping track of this in some sense and together these two projects kind of form a more general idea i've been thinking a lot about is whether or not you could create kind of an epa for the social web you know an organization that sort of researchers and distributes information about sort of the health of the social environment on the web and sort of suggests ways of preserving vibrant internet culture um and and taking this kind of sort of material approach to understanding the way memes form and and the way kind of like communities form online um this is just a project that i just recently started trying to get people together uh to to start talking about it maybe and uh and it's something that i'd love to move forward and take any comments on criticisms on because i'm actually not sure that the environmental metaphor for internet culture is actually the best one um another you know some of the people have suggested me that you know maybe maybe the sec is another one right like protecting the market in some sense um and uh and so that's really all i've got i'm happy to take any questions or otherwise uh and uh and so thanks yep chris um and and these are memes that you described came out of a specific subsection of fortune which is the random board right which is truly filled with homophobia and misogyny and just absolute hard to build sure um the the the root of 4chan and i think that the the reason that it fits most of this growth is one they have a policy of not logging any information about any of their users they keep no logs no IP addresses nothing like that there's no user accounts um and there's no censorship they don't remove any content unless it contains software that's it um and so the the vast majority of the information it's posted to 4chan if it were posted to facebook would immediately result in site banks right everyone would be kicked off that that that place and so you know in many ways 4chan is like the primordial soup of the internet right like all these things sort of mingle around and many of them are really horrible but eventually really cool things are out of there and and i would argue that it's actually the freedom of 4chan and the freedom to be horrible and filthy and and a scene that that provides everything else yeah and i think that's why facebook doesn't have that right it's it's like the McDonald's and the internet right and i absolutely agree i mean one thing that i think is very interesting about 4chan is that it is self selecting that very particular way like i'm not saying that facebook is in the business of generating memes because they're not they're they're totally aiming for something else uh and i yeah i agree actually i think that and i think that freedom that you see on 4chan actually has a lot of interesting parallels to sort of the history of the web history of like you know hardware in general um so yeah i definitely agree any other sir i was under the impression that one of the reasons why dig started to to be less good was because a lot of companies said well hey this is great let's get our articles up or let's get articles that talk about us on the front page of dig so did whatever they could to get digs right um and that sort of and that that meant that the really cool little gems throughout the internet did not end up on the front page of dig whereas the larger supported stories did right and and yeah and i think that's i mean that's a very great argument for this kind of sort of epa action because what's very interesting is i mean a lot of no a lot of people know that a digerati exists for example and for example a lot of people know that something like seo exists um but the thing is that that information is not very public like i would love to make those bugs extremely extremely transparent to people and like by distributing those tools i think creates certain forces that i think might be really productive to kind of people protecting sort of the value of certain the best stuff getting to the top so yeah i agree yeah that's you issues today so i i really like the environment metaphor i i think it's very much worth pursuing one of the things that i think you have to sort of put forward very quickly is this question of what's optimal right so you know the epa has certain rules out there that essentially say you know lead in drinking water generally speaking a pretty bad thing um larger ones that may actually be sort of complicated you know species diversity is a desirable goal we'd like to see things um not stamped out i i think you have a couple of problems there i think the first problem you have is to figure out what's a desirable creative internet building on chris's point i mean if you actually look at the creation of new memes and 99.7 percent of those memes are not something you'd want to show on on the screen at berkman you know is that actually something that you need to preserve right if you're trying to preserve a healthy internet environment you know do we know that 97 9.7 percent um totally grossly offensive turns out to be the right level would we be better at 99.97 percent totally grossly offensive so so i think that's that's the first thing to think about is where those standards are i think the second is that um you're trying to model something that's changing so very rapidly so um i i think for me the most problematic part of your talk which i i like a great deal is your attempt to correlate stock market fall on a creativity rise and my immediate response to that would be first to say bullshit and then to sort of pull apart the different ways in which i think it's bullshit there's a traffic rise on etsy due to christmas there's a traffic rise due to a northern hemisphere winter and people coming in people going back to universities there's all sorts of correlative factors there your core intuition though i think is right which is to say that not only are we seeing a growth in maker culture in general that that growth may actually have something to do with economics and i think you might do better there with case studies but i think you're going to have a really hard time with an environmental paradigm because in many cases that's a paradigm about homeostasis right that's a system that you don't want to change very much and when it changes too radically and suddenly you see lots of lead in the drinking water then you go after it it's a tough paradigm to work on for the internet because you have a system that has no homeostasis where in fact we don't want i suspect homeostasis so i think that may be your your challenge yeah i think i actually agree that's a huge burden so the first thing people brought up with me right is that again the ep has a very clear picture of what they consider a healthy environment right and even like the whole there's a whole all this whole literature about what do we conserve in the environment which i think is really quite interesting in this respect um and i think part of it is actually i mean the burden may just be we have to uh there has to be some kind of positive description of memes first before we're going to even start talking about that um and and you know i would love to map that out first and then and then start talking a little bit because then we can say in some sense like oh this will raise or lower this um and uh and yeah i agree with you i think that's that's a huge uh a huge hole right at this point um but i think generally i think thinking about the meme meme sort of in terms of like a system as opposed to sort of these random jolts that happen on mine i think might be might be sort of valuable in a way of thinking about it um and i actually i didn't didn't think about doing the case study uh approach to kind of understanding that kind of like macro culture thing which i think yeah yeah okay cool thanks appreciate it awesome uh cool any other comments questions thoughts criticisms here a nice question i i think um that chris is exactly right about the four champions but these are very different populations of people sure and i'm wondering um if you think that the population of people active in the meanscape uh is increasing will continue to increase beyond um short term factors like people being unemployed is is the audience for this expanding or are people who involve simply getting more and more active and immersed in this yeah well i mean so there's there's two elements of that right like so one of them is um how broad does internet culture reach like does a reach a large enough audience and the other one is do people within that audience say like yeah i'm going to go out and make this image macro or something and i can see like contribute to it um and on the first one i think yes i think that population is expanding right the fact that my my you know my my mother is on facebook um facebook is sure vanilla internet users right with people who are more involved in this i would say its origins are in people who are techies right right so the geek culture sure and and so is geek culture permeating into mainstream or is this really just about he's getting happier and happier with their jokes it's tough to say yeah i mean i guess it ends up being an empirical question really with a really really difficult uh difficult time of trying to get a good fix on the problem um i mean i think my best bet is probably exactly something along the lines of that market metric right you know that that when a mainstream media company goes in and makes a choice about what kinds of cultural elements they want to use um i i mean i'm intuiting that they have some kind of data on their side that says look rick assley was big with the kids these days like the kids love that stuff like get more of that on tv or that a publisher says this is in our best interest to sink the money into print these books um and that that we have a good feeling that it'll be profitable um seems to suggest to me that at least the audience is is big if not growing though the popularity of the books may not be yeah right anything to do with the website yeah it's a very imperfect signal in a lot of ways um so yeah i agree so many of the examples of the memes are reflections of distortions of mass culture even the wall catch and started out as the hang in there baby you know it's sort of moved away from that roots pretty amazingly but um you know the uh chuck norris and the uh the marmaduke plain and the the dinosaur strip which is clip art and um so many of them are sort of perversions of mass culture what does that say about the relation of the two cultures is this a sign of the immaturity of the internet memes that it depends upon is it i don't know right well and this i think is an increasingly interesting question as uh memes get into the mainstream right so one interesting question is does it does it displace culture or does it continue to kind of continue its sort of general pattern of saying like let's take mainstream culture and let's do something to it and make it funny in some sense um and i mean i think i think it's an open question i mean i think certainly what you're starting to see more of is it kind of becomes so perverse that it's actually a difference in kind rather than just degree right so that the fact that you know the low cap bible was something that was never never conceived of by kind of the the inventors of the hang in their kitty picture no but it's still a reflection on mass culture because it's the bible that's one of the things that makes it so hilarious that's interesting right right you know i don't know i guess i mean if there is any big hope for internet culture eventually creating its own like silos like its own sort of symbols and stuff i mean i assume it probably emerges out of sort of the i mean and this may be a good a good place for it right which is like um to say that that it kind of emerges from the universe of web comics and people creating their own content online right so like you know xkcd certainly references popular culture in other ways but it's sort of distinctly its own sort of like i'm a you know this is sort of a geek thing online in a way that that references are sort of is consciously like not referencing that mainstream culture um and uh so yeah that's that's why i think it would say we're you know it's it's still a game that has yet to be resolved but that there's there's certainly spaces where i think you're seeing that kind of independent culture emerge maybe building directly on that um if you want to piss off hengry drankins and yo hi bankler which who the hell doesn't a lot of fun talking about fan culture essentially as derivative culture wholly dependent on professional creation and if this were true creativity why wouldn't you have people creating their own characters and worlds and plots and so on and so forth and you can you can prompt them with this there's a fun response to this nowadays which is to say that coming out of that fan culture you have a great deal of sort of original creativity from people who sort of you know sharpen their chops within that world so you see someone like neomy novik who's now one of the hot up-and-coming sci-fi novelists who is also the head of the organization for transformative works which is sort of the leading fan culture group out there so this is someone who basically wrote fanfic for years and years and years, polish your skills and it's now out there writing kick-ass sci-fi so i mean there's a way in which you might sort of look at this and say this is the nascent new crop of cultural creatives this is the nascent new crop of marketers you know who knows whether they're going to go towards the good side or the dark side but these are people essentially mastering the techniques of propagating ideas within this space and then we're likely to see them use those talents in one fashion or another a couple years further down the line. I just wanted to point out I think one of the pieces that it's good not to lose vital that was so interesting about the law cats is that is that they were things that if you didn't know the previous ones would be very quickly inaccessible and it was this very very interesting case of this mass adoption of something that if you didn't keep following it it would be very very hard to keep track of because if you didn't know about ceiling cat basement cat the second slide that you showed made no sense and i think that's where the fact that it's on the net is particularly interesting because um you were having lots and lots of people pick up very very quickly on something that many people were changing you know if you didn't understand that there was something about cheeseburgers and cats that was funny you know the picture of a cat in a cage it says i is cheese burglar it just doesn't make any sense and so I think that's where it differs from some other popular culture memes that move much more slowly because part of the problem with these is there's always this tension between wanting to be non-obvious so that they function as a kind of boundary of who's in and who's out and but if they're too obscure everybody's out and if they're too familiar everyone is in and the law cats were very interesting in how they changed very rapidly to keep that boundary just at the right place I wanted to ask you probably you didn't touch on I mean all the memes that you mentioned are i guess we're looking for good memes right they're positive they're funny they're they make a stop but fortune has also been the source of many bad memes so the anti-scientology anonymous crowd the creepers who go to epilepsy forums and postflushing jpegs the sarah palan hacker and people trying to get that stuff can you speak at all to like the rise of evil memes and and maybe whether this is a good or bad thing in itself well I mean yeah there's actually a whole universe of I mean I guess evil memes that have always paralleled like the good memes I mean I don't want to like draw some kind of twisted you know star wars type metaphor but like you know I even sort of in even in the days of bbs right like there was there were there communities online that did bad stuff um but I you know one thing I think is actually really interesting is is actually going back to yokai which is like so he has this idea about the internet as aggregating a lot of things that used to be at the edges of society and turning it into really huge things at the center and in some sense I think the whole like for example the anonymous thing against Scientology was something that kids have always done right they've always kind of like you know oh they might have just gone and pulled a prank on the local church or whatever and that sort of thing but just anonymous allows them to to coordinate on such a larger scale that it seems that much more frightening and big nowadays just because I think the the network is a lot bigger and captures a lot larger group of people and I think that's one of the reasons you've seen these kind of bigger sort of evil memes I guess in some sense particularly in the last few years and I guess that that would probably be my my take on it yeah okay I like to talk a lot great talk I I thought it was really provocative that you tried to identify that this was sort of like a critical moment in time due to the economic crisis where in the next few years we might see an acceleration of meme culture with that the the sort of tip over to mainstream and by that also the tip over to being commercialized and I was wondering if you could say a little bit about what you think economic appropriation of internet culture will have an effect on the nature of internet culture if that scales up like crazy yeah eventually and how does a tron guy afford a plane he's apparently a sys admin who's really into anamaniacs memorabilia and like other than that I don't think he has much hobbies outside of like flying small prop planes and stuff so I think he just saves up I guess there's a very important lesson in saving there I think yeah I think I think that's a that's just admitting needs compound interest lessons from the YouTube stars I actually I think that's a that's actually a really big open question so I was really struck recently I finished reading here comes everybody and so Clay Shurkey has this really interesting discussion where he's like okay in the early days of blogs everybody's like there's going to be too many voices it's going to be terrible here and he says well okay but it's very interesting when you actually look at the distribution of blogs the way the top blogs behave is almost as a broadcast medium right so you're boing boings of the world and everything are very one directional right like Cory doctor doesn't have the time to email everybody back essentially and it's a function of stuff growing at that rate and that that's actually kind of interesting with regards to internet culture because one of the joys I think and particularly one of the joys at raffle con was that a lot of the internet culture people were exactly so reasonable about their internet fame right because once they stepped back on the street they were just normal people again and a lot of people were just surprised that so many people would actually fly out and see them and it was precisely this internet celebrities who thought of themselves as big celebrities that got the most like trouble at raffle con right so a great example was um during the planning of raffle con we tried to get new manuma kid right so new manuma kid's a great kind of original internet meme and he uh and we I've actually never talked to new manuma guy I've only talked to his publicist because new manuma guy now has a huge PR infrastructure around him and he has a site at new new man dot com and it's just kind of like user generated thing and his publicist was like we don't even talk until there's a few grand on the table um and as a result we didn't bring new manuma guy um and and I think it's very interesting and the question is whether or not internet culture actually keeps its character as it scales up like that because there's a lot of things to indicate that as things grow to that scale there's difficulty in maintaining that dynamic that made internet culture so interesting in the first place um but you know I you know I I think it's still I think it's still an open question really because you know this is sort of I don't have any case studies to draw it to in some sense right outside of maybe like punk music right like people came up with punk then it got really big and everyone's like ah punk died um and and whether or not the same happens with internet culture or whether or not internet culture ends up being sort of a feed mechanism right so people people say oh this got too big and they basically just leave it to join something else and if they kind of constantly ride this chain um is also I think another possibility as well so so yeah and I think it's very big particularly now that you see a bunch of bloggers and the rest of that sorry to get that much attention and that much money um and and with it has also become come a lot of imposters too right people trying to be like I'm I'm intentionally famous online um we're sort of varying rates of success right and this is the thing that we battle with and it's actually uh one of raffle con's biggest strengths because when she's talking about internet culture anything that's on the internet becomes internet culture so you can basically end up bringing almost anyone um and and the more and more I've thought about the more I think it's actually okay to think about memes as as a kind of very broad category right to think about like sort of memes that were really big on sort of 4chan and then got you know turned into something else um because because you know for every meme there's also you know a micro meme right like the joke that you share with your friends or you're like remember that time that so and so totally did that and that um and and I think that that's an interesting universe as well and it kind of goes again back to that sort of yokai's metaphor right so like memes have always kind of occurred but the fact that that there's infrastructure to connect them all now means that memes can get a lot bigger as sort of cultural elements so so I that's at least the way I understand but I was wondering without dismissing the value of such entertainment um no seriously uh but I'm just wondering if you've thought about how this kind of energy and time on behalf of users could be turned towards certain other types of activities that might benefit from something similar I'm for example thinking of you know Ethan's issue of let's have people learn more about African nations and what's going on on the continent of Africa like is there a way to get some of those topics to or why is that not happening and is I mean I understand that a lot of this very we put up lots of interest in cute little nations and I'm using comments and it just wouldn't know where unfortunately right so um that didn't work but seriously right like I mean yeah and you know it's always really struck me so there there's kind of a a code of honor on 4chan right you're supposed to do stuff for the lol's um which which basically translates to like oh you should do things just for the fun of it um and like people who are actually too serious about it get like sort of widely slandered on 4chan and you know I today I actually haven't seen any good models for for trying to translate sort of the energy behind internet culture um into something productive which is really an interesting question right like is it just good for funny cats which is which is sort of interesting um but I think what's interesting about looking at it in this kind of view is that you might not be able to turn the people who produce internet culture into people who do something sort of socially productive but what's interesting is you might be able to use the the dynamic or like sort of the mechanism and the lessons that you learn to kind of promote something else um and and and I think that's probably more likely in the future right like as you get a better understanding of sort of the way these ideas form you might be able to say all right let's map those lessons on to sort of a new universe of like oh let's try and you know um help out developing nations or you know pharmaceuticals or that sort of stuff so yeah also just a thought on that I also think that internet culture in general lends itself to sort of intuitive um link clicking and fact checking and it is true that some of the top posting sites on internet are political blogs and in terms of what we talk about the blogosphere political blogs have the most attention so you know it's still a big question whether those are real objective and good sources of news or not but I would say that internet culture itself lends itself not only to this sort of insular lol cats type information but also more political and global news um but I wanted to ask you if you have any thoughts on the sort of generational issue because I know that we talked about this a little before but um our generation was sort of the first to really grow up on the internet in terms of like having AOL as a chat client so we can easily send things and forward things along to our friends and so what kind of um connections that fosters and the way we think about interacting with people who are maybe not like next door but in our suburb that sort of thing so whether or not there'll be a generation gap in internet culture I mean well whether there's an actual shift from the culture that happened before to this culture now the sort of web 2.0 culture that happens with our generation that has now graduated and now facing this economic climb oh like paired with this ideology that startups are an okayed way to spend your life right I mean it's it's tough to say and and a debate that I have a lot with this is um how much are we talking about the 50th percentile for technology when we're talking about internet culture right like people who really geek out about lol cats and and that entire universe I have I have a hard time actually saying how small of a universe it might actually be in in the long stretch of things and I think there's there's a whole universe of internet culture that's not really captured by what we normally think of internet culture here when we say internet culture and so you know there's a lot of other small pockets and other things and and so you know I'm hard pressed to say whether or not it is really different in some sense on on when you when you zoom out to the 30,000 sort of foot level um you know whether or not internet culture only applies to the small pocket of people and then there's there's internet cultures that of elsewhere that more or less reflect what happened before and more or less are doing something new um and uh and again it's again it's one of those empirical questions that there's really it's tough to get a good fix on um so that's that's probably what I'd say and you looked at various means did you find any like sort of a reason that would cause some sort of some micro memes to become big and some not other than the obvious like 4chan memes that wouldn't be appropriate for other places or well this is sort of the interesting thing and and something that actually bears more research right so you've had a whole generation of people who are social media experts um but the thing is you find with most social media experts that they're they're either operating off of an n of one right they're talking about one case they know very a lot about or worse it's just completely anecdotal and there's not there's not enough quant work being done in the space and and I think that's something that would I would love to do more work on and at least not that I know of um I mean I believe that it might exist out there already but so I mean building on sort of David's question right one of the things we're hoping to do with media cloud is to try to figure out what new political memes for instance come out of the blogosphere and whether they'll ever die right and uh one of the arguments is that we think that most of them die right you know I mean I uh I start a new meme today uh saying you know um I don't know I can't even come up with a funny example but it's probably not going to get traction you could probably do a similar study essentially looking at new threads formed in 4chan right and something like 99.9997 of these threads never gain any traction one of the interesting questions might be can you figure out which ones gain traction on 4chan is that consistent with gaining traction outside of 4chan uh are there evolutionary forces at work that essentially in some ways you'd have a much better constrained model than we would we're trying to look at thousands of political blogs right you can look at a fairly simple system that turns out to be one of the more creative cesspools on the internet that has already spawned some of these things could you get to the point where you pretty consistently could call a 4chan meme that was going to cross over in some ways into that culture that would be a fun long-term quant study yeah I think that'd be awesome and and actually there's a paper that I've actually really been meaning to wanting to follow up on um I heard this presentation this weekend that was actually quite interesting of a paper that was done a number of years ago in the journal memetics um and basically what he did is he went on sort of use net forums and did term associations and he found that um certain memes actually certain pairs of memes actually compete with predator-prey relationships so that one would get really big um and and they would basically follow each other in a pattern that's very typical to the way sort of animals behave um and and that was kind of like a sort of an early example and there's some methodological questions about that but his approach I think would be totally interesting for something like uh 4chan so yeah absolutely um Joel a lot of this is sort of humor content amplifiers been in business for about eight years trying to figure this out for commercial reasons because we're seeking folks who can sell merchandise from these from these engines so Penny Arcade you showed Aikwood he's recently become a client so we've tracked this and what's one thing that's interesting is we've seen in general the space sort of professionalized over the last eight years because right lawcat starts as on 4chan organically and now there's a company that's has this mission Penny Arcade was two guys in Seattle doing a webcomic and and wonderfully they they paired with a business manager who now has really helped propel them forward they now have a huge gaming convention a huge charity in terms of people taking social action they raise a tremendous amount of money every year now so the professionalization that's occurring is somewhat interesting because a lot of this is just sort of amateur fringe stuff but it becomes a commercial enterprise at some point and the notion of can you then can any of these professional organizations reverse engineer what might become a hit it reminds me I've been trying to find this there was a a documentary I saw on pbs there was like a maybe a six hour thing about songs and they had a number of technicians who were just looking at sort of the the waves of song and trying to determine could they reverse engineer right now what what's necessary to make this song propelled forward and I just stood out for me was a quote by Paul McCartney who he was saying look I hope you they were asking him just grilling him what makes something a hit and in the end he's just kind of surrendered to you know I don't know and frankly I hope you never figure it out and and so there's kind of that element to this as well what's really emergent and what's what's manufactured what's reverse engineered that's interesting I think cool so we're tying up around 130 right now but if anyone has any other comments cool well thank you


Just take something out of the running game that you feel like you could build on before. What was the evaluation up front from that game? Was that a step forward in that, in that way? Yeah, absolutely. I think with the production we had, you have to have some good things happen to be able to move the ball like that. Obviously, we didn't finish well enough with the ball in our hands and ball security-wise, but I thought we were able to sustain some blocks and get into the second level a little bit, saw some burst from the backs, which was good, and there's definitely some things to build on. Anything helpful up front that contributed to that, you think? Or just a chemistry thing? I think you'd have to ask the individuals how they're feeling. It's been the same group out there for the most part. So being able to spend some more time together and with those backs, I'm sure has helped, but we have a system here and we have a foundation that we believe in and we're gonna stick with it. And I think some of that showed in New England in spurts. What are reasonable expectations for Holyo if he's in there and back to add to what you've been missing? Well, he certainly brings a veteran presence, and has seen a lot and has made big plays long before getting here. And so I think his presence on the field gives us an ability to have a big target and someone that we can add to the mix that we've been building on the last couple of weeks. As far as realistic expectation, we don't really put numbers or a snap count on anybody. So we'll see how the game goes and the ebbs and flows of the game and how that shakes out. But excited to potentially get him back in there. What Cody did for stepping in for him and going to England? Yeah, I mean, he's been such a steady and reliable guy for us. He was having a really good camp before he got injured.  He knows exactly where he fits in the picture and does his best to find his way open to man coverage as well. So excited about having him in the mix and he's a guy that we're lucky to have around here. We'll see you for a lot of times. Speed, athleticism, size, those types of things get the attention. But how, I guess, important part of the equation is just being where you're supposed to be and the quarterback being able to trust you in that way. Yeah, I think it's huge. There's two different types of coverages you have to defeat, right? There's man coverage where you have to have route craft and you have to have timing and different releases and things of that nature to get open. And then there's zone coverage where you have to understand where you fit in the big picture and guys that understand, hey, me getting to this spot may not mean that I get the football, but it means that I help somebody else get open or I tie somebody down in his own defense. That is absolutely critical to success in the past game. And I think we have some guys that understand that. Todd, if Wolton is active for you guys this week, what does he maybe bring that maybe you haven't had and then just how have you seen him kind of come along since coming on with you guys before the buy? Yeah, certainly another guy with a lot of pelts on the wall and a lot of accomplishments in this game. And somebody respected his game for a long time as an opponent. And seeing him come in here and just his love for the game and his competitive spirit and things like that are very encouraging to add. And we'll see how it all shakes out with the rotation and availability and things like that. But I think any guy you can add that loves the game as much as he does, you're doing some right. It comes to Ryan and I know ideally like to cut the turnovers down. But is it kind of a fine line?  But at the same time, less turnovers, how do you find that kind of balance, I guess, that fine line? Yeah, I firmly believe in just staying true to the read, believe in what your feet are telling you in terms of the timing of the concept and trust in the process. And there's been a lot of different reasons for the turnovers. And we've been working hard to eliminate those and to iron out those wrinkles. I've told you up here before, Ryan is a diligent worker and the game means a lot to him. This team means a lot to him. And I've also told you that I don't think his stat line is telling the story of his season. And so we just want Ryan to stay committed to his process.  We got a lot of belief in him and trust that we're gonna be able to get back on track here soon. I guess to follow on that, it's just important that he not think about, overthink sometimes in those kinds of situations. Yeah, sometimes I relate the quarterback position to golfing, right? If you're standing over a golf ball in a tee box or anything and don't slice it, don't slice it, don't slice it. You're either gonna slice it or duck hook it. And so you don't want any negative swing thoughts. And I think that holds true in the quarterback room as well. You don't want a negative throw thoughts as you're breaking the huddle or going through the game plan. And so Ryan's confidence in himself, which should be high, is gonna be absolutely paramount to us having the success we need. Where do you think the stat line is not reflectible in some way? I know that we're always looking for yardage and QB rating and all those sorts of things. And I think that Ryan has played some efficient football and really good football, distributing for us in stretches. And I think that there's been some of those turnovers or even lack of production that doesn't fall on his shoulders. And unfortunately that hurts the stat line. So I guess what I mean to unpack that a little bit further is that Ryan's the leader of this team. We have a lot of belief in him pulling the trigger at the quarterback position for us and we think he's done a nice job with a lot of what he's been asked to do. There are some of the top level guys missing, AJ, Julio, Derek. A lot of the responsibility I'm sure will be placed on him to make plays. How can he just be someone to elevate the game of everyone around him? Yeah, again, I think just trusting the process and doing your job one snap at a time just gives us an ability to go operate without expectation. You don't wanna set a standard and say, okay, we gotta have this kind of production out of this position or this kind of production out of this position.  And if you do your job each play and stack all those up, I believe at the end of the game it ends up being enough. In terms of getting some playmaking ability back, other guys have had the ability to make plays as well. And we've seen that in spurts. So we just need to become more consistent as an offense all together. And I think he'll contribute to that. You said Ryan's confidence should be high, whereas do you think that his confidence has been shaken? I do not. I do not, no. So do you have you at any time, even as a coach in other stops or whatever, thought about that in terms of a quarterback? Like I had to be like, hey, let's work on this a little bit, rebuild confidence or is he just a guy who is different and that way and you don't feel like that's something that you need to. I think each quarterback's different. I think each quarterback that I've worked with is different. Everybody's got their own personality. Coaches have their own personalities. And sometimes you need to build a guy back up a little bit or you need to let him see a couple of balls completed or whatever the case may be. But no, Ryan's done a nice job of just operating in the context of what we asked him to do. And there's certainly some throws he wants back. And I think that's true for 31 other teams. But we're excited to have him excited about this opportunity we have for these next five games and whatever else we are. Going into the buy that maybe the last week or two he thought the team was playing with a little less speed than maybe earlier in the season. Wonder from your point of view if you had noticed that on the offense and maybe just what an extra split second might mean that they're a little fresher. Yeah, I think anytime you're getting into that long of a stretch without a break, there's a chance that you're going to see some of that. And I think there's certainly some opportunities we've missed at keeping the pressure on the defense and playing as fast as we can play. And there have been some moving parts throughout that as well and getting some of that timing down. I mentioned in man coverage, particularly in the pass game, part of getting open is that timing element of things. And so we're always looking for ways to make sure that we're demanding the most out of guys from a speed and timing standpoint. So always looking to improve. Does the following give you time to maybe do some extra self scouting or maybe identify some areas where you can improve here down the stretch? Yeah, certainly took a dive into things offensively and I took a peek at myself from a play calling standpoint. But I try to do that on a weekly basis as well. That's built into my weekly routine is trying to make sure I'm not getting too predictable in one area or the other. That's all part of the process. But yeah, the bi-week gave us a little bit more time to do it. Offense has been. And do you foresee maybe making any changes? And I know you're always trying to think of creative things down there specifically. Yeah, it's been a little streaky. It's been a little streaky. And I think a few weeks back, we had a conversation out here about that and said, all it takes is a little bit momentum and I think we rattled off six or seven out of eight in the red zone in that stretch. And so hopefully we can get back to that kind of groove. We've played a couple of pretty talented red zone defenses as well and so that always plays a factor into it. But we set a high standard about the red zone around here and should. And I anticipate us getting back to more positive outcomes. Like for a particularly good red zone target, some guys just seem to excel in the red zone more than others. What's that difference? Yeah, I think just having that football IQ, understanding what they're trying to accomplish defensively, whether it be defeating man coverage, using picks and rubs, and getting open that way, or understanding where maybe a safety might be pushing because there's less vertical distance for him to cover and so he can freelance a little bit more horizontally. Guys that understand that have an innate ability are feeling a sense of timing of when to get open for the quarterback. So that ultimately falls on me as a teacher, right? Is to show them the big picture of things. But those guys that just tend to have that innate ability seem to excel and get a lot of red zone targets.