May
16
2009
The Top 5 “Play him off, keyboard cat” Videos
Keyboard cat waits for his cue during your existential crises.
The best of the best.
Marriage proposal:
Treadmill:
Kid converts to atheism, tells mother:
Haley Joel Osmont on “Walker, Texas Ranger”:
And my hand-picked favorite:
Two post-scripts:
- Experiments in memetic engineering seek to ascertain applications of particular memes. A large portion of successful memes utilize high level communication techniques found in psychology essays. The quality in “keyboard cat” is an obvious use of Milton Erickson’s reframing. The application is the initial forced induction— and thus learning— of reframing in the mind of the susceptible viewer. If the viewer would have never otherwise experienced the sensation through thought self-stimulation (which is as likely as the existence of pyschiatry), the pool will accept the meme. Thus, the meme is created instantly. It will propogate until it reaches critical gravity— that is, until the application of the meme can no longer be distended as it has been pushed beyond its own limit of culturally-significant intensity. (Another meme with reframing qualities juxtaposed Benny Hill’s theme song “Yakety Sax” onto tragic videos. The meme stopped dead upon the creation of a World Trade Center Yakety Sax video.) Therefore, a meme must be engineered to heighten just shy of the critical gravity point. Conversely, if a meme is to be deliberately buried, the engineer need only push it beyond its own limit. Until that point, in a system comprised of uncountable elements, it will stack itself indefinitely; and,
- With the size of the internet, it is possible for a meme to at once be expired and new. The keyboard cat meme is a couple months old and played out, yet most internet users have not experienced it. An interesting study on multiple (stacked) critical masses could be performed, even with this as the starting point.
