World Refugee Day

Sumaiyyah (20) fled Myanmar with her family in August of 1995 at the age of just three months.

One of over a hundred-and-fifty-thousand refugees from Myanmar (Burma) inside of Malaysia, Sumaiyyah is confined by tight laws restricting her ability to work, attend public school or move freely around the country.

She said she yearns to travel but has lived her entire life stateless with no country willing to accept her as a citizen.

Education is extremely important to Sumaiyyah. She has achieved the equivalent of a secondary school education provided by a local non-profit and helps to engage her three younger siblings similarly.

Her father, Said Alam (40), is the family’s only wage earner. Employed as an undocumented manual laborer in a furniture shop, Said earns $280 USD per month, $128 of which goes towards rent. Sumaiyyah said she worries about her father’s untreated health concerns and is especially worried about her mother, Shariah (35), who is expecting, but has no access to healthcare.

Beyond mere subsistence, and beyond the desire for health, education and travel, another one of Sumaiyyah’s greatest desires is a bicycle for her sister, Nor Azizah (6). Nor Azizah has wanted a bicycle for a “very, very long time”.

https://www.humanwire.org/cause/sumaiyyah/

Moureba’s Family: https://www.humanwire.org/cause/moureba/

Beqaa Valley, Lebanon https://www.humanwire.org

https://www.humanwire.org/newcauses/

The State of Ello

The State of Ello

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From The Creator: On The History of Comic Sans

I wrote a post for Tubefilter about the online video economy today. In the article I argue that YouTube has demolished the video CPM to become little more than a social media content platform, and it's not the right stage for other types of content, like Breaking Bad for example.

What if Breaking Bad – a TV original – was released on YouTube? Do you think it would have become as impactful and influential to mainstream culture, or as big of a monetary success story? I don’t. Not at all. Check out the article to read more, it's been getting great reviews: Click here to Read.

George Bush on 9/11 Video

Being in NYC, on most years, Rocketboom has done something to commemorate the 9/11 attacks. On September 11th, 2007, we uploaded a video of George Bush being told that a second plane had hit the second World Trade Center tower.

You might of seen a segment before, there is slow-mo version that is typically shown. In time, this one has gone on to gain over 700,000 views and is notable for the amount of comments it has received, over 4000. Almost every day, we receive a comment on this video. Personally, this video has become a big part of my consciousness for I receive an email in real time for every comment on every video we have ever posted to YouTube and thus get to hear people's ongoing remarks about this daily. Now twelve years later, and six years after uploading it, I decided to present an overview of what I think people are saying about it. I think it is interesting from several perspectives, but mostly from the perspective of psychology and how humans deal with large scale challenges like this. From the standpoint of an entrepreneur who is forging new ground to someone who is running a city or even one of the most powerful countries in the world, you have to wonder, as we do, is this person right for the job? I grabbed up the comments and put them through various text analysis tools and here's what I came up with. I'm not sure there is any revelation here, or answers in particular. It is simply an interesting topic to consider, maybe a good question for someone who you are interviewing for a position. "What would you have done in that situation?" CONTEXT Bush was visiting young children in a school at the time. At one minute into the video, you can see the moment where an agent enters in, whispers into Bush's ear that a second plane had hit the second tower, and then the following 4 minutes of raw, unedited footage giving you a chance to consider his reaction to the news. THE REACTION The undisputed #1 question here is, what WAS Bush thinking? I know what I was thinking. I happened to be tuned into the live news with a friend that day from Austin, Texas, and we watched live as the second plane crashed into the second tower. It only took me about 2 seconds to realize that this was defiantly not an accident anymore.

One recent commenter (and one responder) to the video had this to say:

It's an interesting psychological question. Psychology is a pretty muddy study, but this question of what would you do under pressure if you were the leader of a country is the kind of question people want answered when interviewing you for the job of running a country. What would you do if your country or business was attacked? Can you handle the stress? Can you organize and take action? Can you lead? First off, here is a word cloud of all of the comments:

Notice anything patterns? You can break this down in other more interesting ways. Here is a tree layout:

I followed several lines, for example, 'Bush was in shock':

Here is a Phase Net cloud:

Granted this is one set of comments, on video, on YouTube, on Rocketboom's account so the sample is not the best for general purposes. Here is an overview of just the last 30 days:

Essentially there are two primary directions people wanted to go with this: 1. A large number of people used this as evidence to support the possible idea that Bush 'knew' and had something to do with it. To clarify, these people are suggesting Bush didn't react because he anticipated the news and that the whisper in his ear was just a confirmation in his mind that everything happened according to plan. It is a pretty tired theory but appears to remain alive and active, somewhat like the JFK conspiracies remain alive today. 2. While some suggested he was just shocked, an even larger number suggested that he did not react in order to be kind to the children and not cause alarm, and that this was the extent of it. Though as many commentators to the video countered, Bush could have politely and calmly left the room without the need to explain why, thus rushing off to lead a crisis while not alarming the children. Fewer comments suggested other theories: He did not understand the implications; he was waiting for instructions from someone because he didnt know what to do; he was in fact thinking about what to do and used the opportunity to think about his plans in the background. You have to admit, it is odd that he sat for so many critical minutes just thinking. What would the other presidents have done?

Reblog of a Google+ post with a Facebook embed of a YouTube video.

via via

The History of Know Your Meme

I thought I would do a little history of Know Your Meme because there isn't a good one out there. I had written one up before on the Know Your Meme website, but it got deleted.

In the Fall of 2007, Know Your Meme started one day in a moment.

At the time, Joanne Colan was the anchor of Rocketboom, I was selecting the content, writing the scripts and producing the show (and running the business) Joe Bonacci was editing, Kenyatta Cheese was organizing company operations (the editing department in particular), Jamie Wilkinson was the lead dev and Elspeth Rountree was my administrative assistant. It was an awesome time because we all loved what we were doing and everyone was sincere. 

Not that it matters probably to anyone except me, for a bit of context, I was the only “Founder” of Rocketboom and the only “Founder” of Know Your Meme and in complete control of all creative and business decisions as I had hired everyone, Rocketboom was 100% my investment and business (everyone else was paid an excellent salary with benefits), and there were never any board members. There was also never a single person involved in Rocketboom or Know Your Meme who accepted any risk, or would care enough to work on it without getting paid a large amount (except for Joanne who really stands out as the person who was always there because she believed in our mission), or who would stick with it and help keep it afloat through times of trial. This would never change until I sold 100% of my share to Cheezburger outright last year. Having created and founded the site, and then after working so hard to a enable it and make it popular, I had already moved on mentally to working on other things I felt were also important to establish.

Anyway! One day in early August 2007, Kenyatta and I were deeply involved in discussing Rocketboom's video content. It was a formal meeting with just the two of us and we were discussing creative ideas for topics and writing. With the exception of Joanne at times, no one else at the company discussed production concepts. I wrote all the scripts at home myself without consulting with anyone at the office so whenever I could tap people for ideas, I would do it. After Joanne, Kenyatta was a regular go-to when looking for extra script ideas.

Having noticed that some of the "segments" I had been doing were working, I wanted to find some more segments to do inside of the Rocketboom show. A segment happens in the middle of a news episode where it suddenly breaks into a reoccurring theme that is predictable and formulaic, but then breaks out and back into the normal episode. From a writing standpoint, it's a crutch to lean on when time is running out and you need to deliver a script. From the audience perspective, it's a welcome return to something familiar. From a business standpoint, it's a great way to spin off a new show.

Since pretty much every other word out of our mouths those days was "meme", Kenyatta turned to me and blurted out "Know Your Meme!", and then proceeded to provide context for the history of "Know Your _[fill in the blank]____", especially with regards to World War II propaganda. When I heard it, my mind raced in a million directions and I knew within moments that this was the trigger I was looking for - it was a perfect “brand” mechanism to explicate memes. As we were developing the idea further, Kenyatta also brought up the idea of the white lab coat and by this point, boom, I added it to my list of script segment ideas I would develop.

On September 4th, I sat down to write the very first Know Your Meme segment into a Rocketboom episode. Joanne was wearing a white lab coat, I directed and shot, and Joe edited. At the time, Kenyatta was focused on shaping up the editing department as our operating officer and took over the edit from Joe at the end of the night to help polish it up, and then I directed Kenyatta’s edits to completion.

Below is a section of the script I wrote from that day along with direction for a graphic intro, the first ever mention of "Know Your Meme":

As I mentioned, for me, Know Your Meme was all about explicating memes and establishing a vocabulary. You can see that even in the first segment, there was an air of presumption that this was not actually the first segment, in the way it assumes the audience already knows the vocabulary and the scene.

Something else had occurred to me as well. Rocketboom needed a place to aggregate these explicated memes and our audience might contribute. While there were a number of other comprehensive sites that would collect the source videos for memes, there wasn't a good site out there for documenting the whys and wherefores. And a lot of memes were not video based. To me, this was always the most exciting aspect of Know Your Meme. Once you understand how content goes viral, by studying IRL case examples, that knowledge becomes powerful and valuable. So that night while the episode was being edited, I decided to install a Know Your Meme wiki onto rocketboom.com envisioning a 'wikipedia for memes', so to speak, but one that our audience at Rocketboom would understand enough to kick into gear. One that cited sources that Wikipedia would not consider authoritative. One that was completely and utterly free and open. I used to write on my blog and speak at conferences a lot about the power of collaborating with wikis. I then put up a few meme terms on the wiki and wrote up a few pages for starters and linked to the wiki from that day's episode on Rocketboom.

The segment felt right, the wiki got a bit of action and so I decided to write another one. On September 16th, I wrote a Leave Britney Spears Alone reaction video segment and Joe edited. Bonus cameo by Steve Garfield that day.

Having now established a name, a style, costumes and props, a theme, intro graphics, a wiki site, produced segments, a plan for ten episodes and a purchased domain name, you could say Kenyatta and myself were the co-creators of the Know Your Meme show and that I was the creator of the meme database.

And then Christmas was coming on. Kenyatta and I had several meetings to discuss content for the upcoming Christmas holiday. I was *completely* exhausted because I had not had a single vacation for literally 3 full years so the plan was to pre-program two weeks of content and have everyone take a break at once. Since I knew in order to accomplish this I would need to write 10 scripts, I went right to my crutch when the idea dawned on me that the Know Your Meme segments are ready for the next step, to become full-blown episodes and that it would be relatively easy (and a lot of fun) to do and so that's what I decided I would do.

So Kenyatta spoke to Joanne to get her up to speed about it and on November 21st, Kenyatta informed the rest of the crew of what we were doing in order to seek input on which memes to cover because we knew everyone at the office would have big opinions on this. Ellie's first contribution to Know Your Meme suggested we look at other videos of people talking about the year in memes to get some ideas. Jamie sent us all a link to a playlist of videos he had been collecting on YouTube.

I took everyone's suggestions for which memes to cover, decided on the list and started cracking on the writing. 

At the end of November, when it started to look like Joanne might be out sick during the critical shoot period, Kenyatta suggested Ellie and Jamie be on camera. I thought that was a good idea and suggested Kenyatta be on camera too. I was nagged to be on as well and even got my own embroidered lab coat but I've never wanted to be on camera [protip: There is one KYM episode I am in but no one outside of our group has discovered it yet] 

As I mentioned, though Jamie and Ellie had not been involved in any way in the production process at Rocketboom before, it was an obviously good idea to try having them as on-camera "meme experts" or "scientists" to fill in for Joanne and everyone agreed to lend a hand, despite the crunch we were all under to get our other work done.

After I realized it would be impossible to get all of the scripts done alone, especially while continuing to write scripts for the daily show and acting as CEO, etc. etc., Kenyatta got Ellie and Jamie to pitch in with some script writing. This is the initial list of memes I decided on.

I wrote the first full length script to help act as a guide for the others. The first ever episode of Know Your Meme then was about Tay Zonday (as a musician myself I was a big fan), starring Joanne:

And on December 15th, I took everyone's submissions and began to revamp the complete lot of scripts. I sent them to Kenyatta and Joe that day to get started on the edits (Michael Clays was also editing). From my email:

The next day I sent the updated notes and the episodes turned out to be a great success and everyone got a nice break. 

By the end of the holiday, however, the wiki at http://knowyourmeme.com had turned into a real battlefield. I dreamed of a wiki that could remain open and had left the registration settings such that anyone could come in anonymously to create new meme entries and update old ones. I thought somehow removing the barrier to entry would work, like the Open Constitution Wiki, but it didn't. Every time I turned around, someone would deface the wiki just to have fun and mess it up. I constantly had to go in and revert content and then soon, I added a login feature. As you can imagine, that was a weak fence. 

Though Jamie began to appear in some more episodes, his best contribution IMO was eventually building out a new Know Your Meme wiki styled database from scratch. We continued to use my wiki for about a year until we finally released the new Know Your Meme site. Greg Leuch was also critical to the buildout. As the lead designer of the site, Greg should get a lot more credit than he has ever gotten in the press for his input and his ability to design in code.

As the site began to take shape on the backend, Chris Menning who also never gets enough credit was in charge of populating articles. I had hired Chris as my first assistant writer for Rocketboom and assigned him to help write entries for the database. Aside from Chris and myself, no one else at Rocketboom paid any attention to the wiki until after it was a pretty big hit. In order to get it there, Chris and I endured a tumultuous relationship because I was so controlling and demanding over the writing but we grew and grew together and Chris continues to do a great service to internet culture. 

Establishing the right academic voice for the meme entries was crucial. Not too long ago there was some confusion over who wrote the "first database entries". Though Jamie's name is stamped on them, it's because he was the one who set up the database and thus was the first user that everything went under when he imported entries from the year-old wiki. Chris was actually the one that wrote the bulk of the first articles based on what we could salvage from the best entries we had written on the wiki, and anew. The voice of the articles was critical because this is what would guide others when creating their own articles. I insisted it be extra academic along the lines of the episodes while Chris injected many crucial style elements as well.

Over the next year, Kenyatta would slowly take over the production of the Know Your Meme show and the others would slowly begin to collaborate more on scripts. I still maintained control over the topics and would write many scripts, taking them all in to finalize, along with signing-off on each edit, but saw Kenyatta as my way out and on to running Magma. I'll never forget the day (over a year later) I announced to the team that I was handing over creative control of the Know Your Meme video production to Kenyatta. That meant Kenyatta would no longer need my sign-off on anything from ideas to publishing. This had never happened at Rocketboom before with any department.

Eventually, I decided I would name Kenyatta CEO of Know Your Meme but he abandoned it short of that time. Since I had mostly handed off Know Your Meme by the end of 2010, it left me with quite a load on my shoulders suddenly, along with Rocketboom. After fixing the operations and training a new team, so that it remained tuned for just a fraction of the cost, I was solicited by Cheezburger and sold last year.

Though I no longer participate much there, I still love Know Your Meme and I'm glad it's able to keep doing its thing. The current staff of KYM which I hired, organized and negotiated employment for at Cheezburger has my heart for pulling together and stepping up to the plate to help keep Know Your Meme alive and looking good. That includes especially Brad and Don.

When I was in the process of selling and trying to assess it's long term value, I wondered if it would one day fade. Of course Cheezburger or future owners could affect it in any way they want, but IMO, all things being equal, it will continue to remain an important resource for years to come, perhaps following a steady and enduring upward path, much like the incline seen over the past decade for the wonderful Urban Dictionary.

From everything I've learned, the best advice I can give to anyone at this point is simply to study how memes happen. Once you do, your voice will become empowered.

* Image Credits: Top: Know Your Meme; A picture of an IRL cut-out diorama made by Brad Kim. Bottom: Urlesque; Myself with the Know Your Meme team from the first ever Hollowmeme party put on by Rocketboom & AOL, October 2009.

What Feedback on YouTube Can Do

You know, one of the most energizing and motivating parts of publishing video on YouTube is the instant feedback. It's a special kind of feedback that goes beyond what you typically experience on other platforms.

On those occasions when you know you did your best work, and then notice the positive energy and feedback around your work increases, it drives you to keep doing what you do best.

And when the world gets in your way and in your own mind your work is not the very best, and the feedback comes with criticism, it drives you to do your best.

Consequently, between the positive affirmation for the things you think you did well and the criticism for the things you were unaware of, growth and fulfillment happens.