muninnhuginn | The Interview Meme (Reply)

(It really needs a good name, or we'll have to call it Fred.)

We're becoming increasingly tempted to map it, tho' the rate at which it seems to be spreading that really could be some task. It's fascinating us in a way that neither the subject nor the evolution and spread of any other meme has.

Why?

Transactional nature. Most memes tend to be served up by one person, let's call her Alice, then be picked up by the next person, Bob, who propagates it by plonking it in his own journal. If Bob's polite, he'll mention where he caught it from. But, within the meme itself, there's no need for any additional interaction between Alice and Bob: Alice may never know she vectored the meme to Bob; Bob might or might not choose to comment on Alice's original entry. In the case of Fred here, there's an additional stage. Alice, either as a whim or as a result of having answered questions herself, creates the opening. Bob must respond by posting a comment with the request. Alice then provides the specifics for Bob, and possibly Bob alone. Bob goes ahead and answers in his journal and then in turn creates an opening for others to join in. There is a necessary exchange. Also there's a greater chance of mapping the spread of the meme.
Variation as a means of surviving. The fact that there is an opportunity for every set of questions to be unique allows for much more possibility of spread. We can more easily, if we so desire, each participate again and again. I'm sure there are repetitions of individual questions ore even sets of questions, but variation seems to be the order of the day. This one could run and run, even if it loops back on itself.
Obligation. Having offered to pose questions, if someone requested some, it would seem churlish to refuse to provide them. Having asked someone to provide questions, it would seem impolite not to answer them. This seems crucial and, so long as we're all polite people who appreciate the reciprocal nature of this meme, could contribute to its spread and survival.
Risk. But, it could all fall apart. We're part of a very strange community, disparate in many uncountable and unaccountable ways. It's a community where we can create a list of friends--and be listed on lists created by others--that encompasses people with whom we have close relationships and almost complete strangers, a range from those with whom we share intimate body fluids to those with whom we've maybe exchanged only a handful of bytes of data. And here we all are, playing a variety of truth or dare. LJ can be a risky environment. It's certainly a territory whose rules we're still mapping. What's more dangerous asking one of those near strangers, or a random LJ user you've just stumbled upon, to provide you with five questions for you to answer or to ask someone nearer to you to do the same, but in a public forum (it seems like cheating to post the answers as friends only if the questions were posed in a public entry)? What happens if the questions are embarrassing, painful, disturbing? (If they were abusive or obscene, there'd be the potential for involving LJ abuse.) One could politely refuse to answer and that would potentially halt one strain. I guess that we're probably as a group fairly aware of that: some of us might be supersensitive in both what we choose to ask and how we react to questions that we are given, whilst others might be less aware. Probably the careful outweigh the uncaring. The meme relies on this. Without good nature and a certain level of tact it would go splat. Presumably, there are already instances, were we to look for them, where it has, with all the usual hurt feelings, recriminations, and so on. (As an aside we've seen very few flip questions and answers, tho' presumably somewhere it's become silly--1. What time do you make it? 2. How do you part your hair?--and that might threaten the meme's existence, but the potential for variation probably acts against that as a stultifying factor.)

It seems that, as a test of how savvy we all are about judging appropriate behaviours in this strange personal/impersonal world, Fred's a doosie. The potential for variation is the key to its continuance, both because it allows for much more likelihood of reinfection and because the degree of personalization that is possible is a big hook. It's flattering to be asked one's own questions. Those questions have the potential to be more finely tuned to your interests than otherwise. Instead of seeing a meme on something you loathe and simply moving on with the result that you do not carry its payload into your journal and create another node from which it can spread, you see something so open that even were the questions to be outside of your interests or even your ken, there's a possibility, almost a requirement, and an opening to say so in one's own journal, thereby creating the node and the possibility of further transmission.

Hell, we've not only been sucked into a meme, but into the activity of analysing the damned thing. So which one of those is the big flea feeding off the other?