The Economics of the Internet Meme

Write a blog about memes? Challenge accepted.

Sadly, I don't have the time to devote to exploring a truly profound topic - the democratization of entertainment by the internet. Memes definitely do that; I like Success Kid way better than most TV shows that corporations spend millions of dollars to produce. But nevermind that.

I want to dive into what determines quality of a meme. In case you aren't an internet junkie, an internet meme is a recurring, humorous joke that takes many different forms as it spreads virally across the internet. Examples include "lolcats" (cute pics of cats, with funny, grammatically hideous captions), "This is Sparta" jokes, "Sh*t ____ Say" videos, and most recently "What People Think I Do / How It Really Is."

But why do some take off, while others start to suck after just a few days? There is already widespread agreement that the “What People Think I Do” (WPTID) meme is tiresome and annoying. It was overdone. But why?

For a case study, take my favorite meme: rage comics. I LOVE this meme with all my heart. Here are some examples (warning, may be inappropriate for young'uns) - they consist of cut-and-pasted cartoon images that illustrate funny, awkward, and bizarre situations in in the context of everyday life. What makes them funny?

To answer that, we have to look at the producers who create the meme, and their internal decision process If you want to make a rage comic, you have to come up with a good idea, a little plot line, and some creative ways of pasting together little MS paint images. It’s not terribly hard I’m sure, but it’s going to require a good fifteen or twenty minutes to think something up.

For any meme you make, there is some effort or cost required. Maybe it’s shooting and editing video footage for “Sh*t ____ Say” or maybe it’s just thinking of a clever way for High Expectations Asian Father to demand more As. Let’s lump that wasted time, mental effort, etc. into a variable called marginal cost. Let’s also define “marginal benefit” as the amount of satisfaction you derive from having made something . In order to follow through with publishing your meme, your marginal cost has to be less than marginal benefit, (or, your reward must exceed your cost). That's called the "MB > MC" test.

It seems obvious (in other words, I assume) that marginal benefit is directly correlated, usually, with the comedic quality of the comic: the funnier it is, the more satisfaction you’ll get from having made it. But, as I’ll note in a second, the actual comedic value isn’t the only determinant of marginal benefit.

But what happens when the marginal cost gets substantially diminished? Suddenly, a much lower marginal benefit threshold must be crossed in order to motivate one to create a meme. That’s exactly what happened with the WPTID meme. Anyone can think of four or five stereotypes associated with their profession – this requires almost no effort or cleverness. The marginal cost (in time, mental effort, etc.) of making one of these memes is pathetically low. Thus, swathes or people with ideas that are only a tiny little bit funny, if at all, end up making and publishing them.

Moreover, the marginal benefit not as strongly correlated with the funniness of the meme! For any other meme, you will be satisfied with it if it is funny. But for WPTID, you’ll probably be really satisfied with it just because it applied to you and your little circle. When marginal benefit has such a pathetic correlation with funniness, then funniness is no longer a prerequisite for passing the “MB > MC” test. That’s one huge problem with WPTID… you make a meme because you relate to it, not because other people will. Sure, people relate their creations to their own experiences and personalities all the time, but not as narcissistically as they do in WPTID.

Now go waste your life browsing through awesome memes.