Participatory media, memes and virues

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I guess all of you (?) have seen some of the numerous YouTube parodies of a key scene in the 2004 movie "The downfall" ("Der Untergang")? The movie treats Hitler's final days in the Berlin bunker and the parodies treat anything and everything through their customized fake subtitles.

My favorite is Hitler's "analysis" of the Internet and social media (can't be embedded); "This confirms ever stereotype about the Internet as just one self-referential circle jerk among poorly socialized losers."

These Downfall parodies have become a genre of its own (relating to a previous post about Internet memes here on the blog). The newspaper The Telegraph even put together a list of the 25 best parodies two years ago. I can't say I've watched them all, but another good one is Hitler raging about getting banned from playing computer games on Xbox Live (can't be embedded).

For a more academic exposition about Internet memes and viral content, please see this blog post. For those who are really interested, do note that it is liked further to an academic paper, "An anatomy of a YouTube meme" and the Internet-accessible pre-print version is here.

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