Thursday, 19 March 2015

I crave that mineral: who are these goats?

I know this meme may be a little old now, it reached the internet in December 2014 and lasted about a week.


The origin:
I Crave That Mineral (Original Post)

A picture of multiple mountain goats climbing an almost 90 degree angle was posted on Tumblr with the caption:

"Alpine Ibexes climb nearly 90 degree angles to lick salt deposits of of mountainsides. They crave that mineral."

After this post gained popularity, people began making spin-off Tumblr posts; some good examples are:


The goat: you must be wondering "WHO IS THIS GOAT?" Don't fret, I shall tell you.

The Alpine ibex, is a type of goat that lives in the European Alps. After extensive research, I have concluded that the mountain goats in the original picture are on a dam in the Italian Alps.

Although the photo was taken in 2010 and has been featured on multiple social networking sites, the picture finally went viral 4 months ago when it was posted on Tumblr. I believe that it was the caption "They crave that mineral" that made the post so popular.

Here is a google chart for the popularity of the phrase "I crave that mineral":

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US#tz&q=I+crave+that+mineral&cmpt=q

Do you crave this mineral?

Memes: The origin of the phrase

The first use of the word 'Meme' was in 1976 when a man by the name of Richard Dawkins invented this word to use in his book 'The Selfish Gene'. He used this word to describe human behavior and how information spreads.


Richard Dawkins Cooper Union Shankbone.jpg
www.wikipedia.org



                                                     He sparked a revolution.





Dawkins was born in Kenya but later moved to England - where his parents are from. Despite being born in Kenya, he is a British citizen.

 Dawkins is aware that his word is used widely throughout the internet and recently defined the word to suit the term 'Internet Meme'. He said very simply that a meme is "a hijacking of the original idea".

What do we learn from all this? That the origin of the word Meme comes from Britain obviously. Richard Dawkins is a very smart guy who has influenced millions, even billions of lives all over the world. I he hadn't invented this word, this blog would probably be called something else - probably 'The Geography of Internet Trends'. Or this blog might not even exist, because there is something so catchy about the word 'meme' that I might not be interested enough in the subject to write a blog about it.

www.youtube.com
                                                       He was also on Doctor Who, so that's cool.

Friday, 27 February 2015

Intro ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪

Hi, I'm Deborah, and I am setting up this blog for a school project. This blog will mostly be related to memes and their relation to geography(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻