(Four Things) Meme

Yesterday I was tagged by Angela in this "Four Things Meme". I must confess I didn't know to begin with what a meme is. But that's me, amazingly unknowing at some points. My excuse then is that if I don't know, I do my best to educate myself. Dictionary.com is a good place to start, and here I found a rather short and handy explanation. Further, more substantial reading, was found on Wikipedia. Excellent!

Now that I had regained my belief in not beeing totally unaware and ignorant, I started to trace this meme backwards, to see what I would find. I must say, if this had arrived in it's original form, and without me reading Angelas inspiring ponderings about the online meme-phenomenon I would probably not have been doing anything about it. Because this meme thing is, to quote Bruce Lawson some seven steps back, "just geekspeak for “Chain Letter”", and I don't do them. (Stopped doing chain-letters when a "foolproof" one came around which should have provided me with lots and lots of nice wine. I delivered my bottle personally and went home, eagerly waiting for the followers to execute their part. Needless to say, but no bottles ended up on my doorstep.)

Only two steps back from me I found "The Ramblings Of Linden Langdon", and it's about now I once again realize why I don't read too many blogs on a regular basis. For the same reason I try to stay away from some new TV-shows and Smith's Crisps - They're too good!, I get so easily hooked and then I just have to continue. (reading, watching, eating...) But I think Lindens blog will be added to my daily sitevisits, much thanks to the artistic perspective. Very impressive! (and Langdon senior is a ceramist, what can I say?)

I followed the memetrace even further and 14 steps and only 4 days earlier Michele Finotto in Italy was tagged. A couple of days later he made this statement which I in a way can relate to.

It soon became evident that it would be quite impossible to find the source of the meme, not to mention absolutely pointless, so from here I instead tried to find out how many chose to continue the chain. That turned out, not surprisingly, to be a rather tedious task as well, but I think my conclusion is that not too many can be bothered. So we're kind of back with Angelas thoughts again, because even if we perhaps don't like these kind of memes, we'll still need them around if we're going to elaborate around the actual concept. Trapped once more!

I think I've mentioned it before, but I really don't like lists. I'm always afraid that some misconceptions could be read between the lines, and that might validate the reasoning of "favourites as identity markers", as Angela and Linden suggested. Very much in my own line of thinking, and certainly worthwhile pursuing sometime. Perhaps the fact I'm not going to write a list of likes and dislikes, is telling just as much about my personality and identity as if I had?

Somewhere else in the line I followed, I found this handsome young man. He seemed to be quite enthusiastic about this meme, but it might have to do with his young age, in time he will most likely be as cynical as the rest of us... He's even sticking to the "rules"! I'm not! Another trait of mine, beeing unruly (but yet conscientious - what a contradiction).

So my deepest apologies, Angela, for not following through, but hopefully it wasn't a total waste of time. I enjoyed it, even if this particular track stops here. Perhaps I'm just too lazy?