Meme time!

This came up in the Catch23 coaching session today, so I thought I'd post about it here. Now, a meme is an idea that spreads like a virus does. A blog meme is something, like a quiz or a small set of instructions to post something, that spreads via people's blogs: readers see it, do it for themselves, and post the results in their blogs, and their readers do the same, and it spreads that way.

A few example memes. You may have seen some of these sent round via email.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 19 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I'm not posting my results from the What Book Are You? quiz, as the book cover is very large and would make you scroll a lot. (But I'll tell you that I'm The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.)

There's also What Punctuation Mark Are You? (I'm a semicolon).

My blog is worth $25,968.84.
How much is your blog worth?

Here's an example of a meme that's a set of instructions:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I
know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

'I must tell you,' said Tripitaka, 'that I was admitted to the Order almost as soon as I left my mother's womb, and have never in my life indulged in meats of this kind.' The hunter thought for a while. 'My family,' he said at last, 'has on the contrary for generations past been accustomed to eat meat.' - From Arthur Whaley's translation of Journey to the West, titled Monkey.

(Any of you who wants to do the above meme, consider yourself tagged!)


And a meme to find out Your Spammer Name. (I'm Salutation J. Rivalry)