Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hi there, everyone, and welcome to Boards Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says, now
Speaker 1: it's all right, It's okay, and you may look the
Speaker 1: other way. We can try to understand the New York
Speaker 1: Times effect on man. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren voc Obama,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, Joe, Yeah, why are there
Speaker 1: so many lol cats on the Internet? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Why are there so many lol cats? L Lauren, you
Speaker 1: do social media, you do the stuff. Where do all
Speaker 1: the loll cats come from? Whom? Well, Joe? When when
Speaker 1: an internet and an Internet user love each other very much? Um,
Speaker 1: lol cats happens, happen apparently, so so whole letters of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Then we're using low cats as an example of something
Speaker 1: that that many people refer to as a meme. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of a very basic idea, a germ of
Speaker 1: an idea that can evolve and transform over time. It
Speaker 1: gets spread around kind of like uh, you know, really
Speaker 1: bad flum in many ways. In fact, it's also very
Speaker 1: similar to the concept of going viral. To continue with
Speaker 1: the illness theme, but the idea of things things spreading
Speaker 1: across the internet. This is one example of something that
Speaker 1: we want to talk about today called emergence. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: if you look at an individual meme like a low cat,
Speaker 1: a low cat is part of what we might call
Speaker 1: a meme plex, which is a complex system that displays
Speaker 1: what we would term emergent behavior. Okay, so what exactly
Speaker 1: is emergent behavior? Emergent behavior is a really interesting way
Speaker 1: of describing how complexity or rises in systems. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so think about it like this, Um, imagine a flock
Speaker 1: of birds. You've probably seen birds flocking before, like when
Speaker 1: they go into a big spiral, you know, and they're
Speaker 1: all moving and you see the cloud of birds undulating
Speaker 1: in the sky. So we're talking about like a flock
Speaker 1: of sparrows as opposed to like the v formation of geese. Right,
Speaker 1: all right, how does that flock of birds decide how
Speaker 1: to move? That's an excellent question. Obviously they have a
Speaker 1: foreman r Right. You seem to think, well, maybe there's
Speaker 1: like one bird that moves first, and the other birds
Speaker 1: follow that bird and the general bird. Yeah, the birds
Speaker 1: don't have a leader the way we would describe how
Speaker 1: these birds flock and create these beautiful complex patterns is
Speaker 1: the concept of emergence, and what that means is that
Speaker 1: it's a complex pattern that's unpredictable, that's created by individual
Speaker 1: agents following local rules. So the way birds create a
Speaker 1: flocking pattern like that is that each one individually has
Speaker 1: no idea that it's flocking, and it has no idea
Speaker 1: of how to create a flock. It just knows that.
Speaker 1: Well when the person, when the bird flying next to
Speaker 1: me gets x number of inches close, I move in
Speaker 1: the other direction, and I follow the bird in front
Speaker 1: of me, and to say, if there is a predator
Speaker 1: approaching or some other stimulus, we shift in in this direction.
Speaker 1: And surprisingly enough, if you just get enough individuals acting
Speaker 1: on those rules, these crazy patterns emerged. Right. So the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing is true in schools of fish
Speaker 1: exactly where you'll see an enormous school of fish all
Speaker 1: moving as if it's one body, and it's not that
Speaker 1: there is Just like with the birds, there's not a
Speaker 1: leader fish that every other fish is taking its cues
Speaker 1: off of. It's all behaving this this what if you
Speaker 1: were to boil it way down, if you were able
Speaker 1: to strip away the complexity, you would see that there
Speaker 1: are these basic rules that underlie the system. It's just
Speaker 1: that when you get all those different individuals together and
Speaker 1: you have the actual environment playing a part, those those
Speaker 1: usually fairly simple rules lead to this huge amount of complexity.
Speaker 1: The other thing about how emergent systems behave um is
Speaker 1: that one tends to say that they're greater than the
Speaker 1: some of their parts. And what that means, like how
Speaker 1: I just affirmed, yeah, doctor, yeah, they're greater than the
Speaker 1: some of their parts. So what that means is that
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of birds, they're not following rules.
Speaker 1: Just like every bird move forward six inches, that would
Speaker 1: not be an emergent system. That would be a totally
Speaker 1: predictable system, right, And the movement of the birds would
Speaker 1: be something that we could understand is simple addition of
Speaker 1: all of the steps if if this than that. Right.
Speaker 1: But the way birds actually flock is they interact with
Speaker 1: each other, and this creates massively unpredictable patterns unless you
Speaker 1: have like a very powerful computer model that is simulating
Speaker 1: each individual bird. Right. And we can see this not
Speaker 1: just in organic behavior. It comes up in all sorts
Speaker 1: of systems. That have uh, layers of complexity to them. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might even say, so, how about a termite mound
Speaker 1: or an ant hill. The mound itself is not living,
Speaker 1: but the mound is an example of emergence because no
Speaker 1: single termite knows how to create a mound. There's no
Speaker 1: leader termite telling the other termites what to do. They're
Speaker 1: all just following a rule like put a piece of
Speaker 1: dirt where something is wet or something like that. And
Speaker 1: then you end up with these eight foot tall monstrosities
Speaker 1: that look like something from a sci fi film and
Speaker 1: you look at and you think, man, that looks like
Speaker 1: it was built by somebody. You know, it has this
Speaker 1: illusion of design. Humans can flock the same way. If
Speaker 1: you've ever been in a large crowd of people on
Speaker 1: a sidewalk and haven't you know, run smack into anyone
Speaker 1: unless you were looking at your smartphone. It's the same
Speaker 1: kind of behavior. And uh, and that is not the
Speaker 1: only way that humans use emergence, As it turns out,
Speaker 1: What's what's all this stuff about thought? Thought processes? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well there are actually so and this is controversial, right,
Speaker 1: we don't know this, but there are plenty of people
Speaker 1: who are consciousness theorists who think that the very idea
Speaker 1: of human consciousness is an emergent property of the brain,
Speaker 1: meaning that so the brain is constructed of neurons, has
Speaker 1: lots of little neurons, and no single neuron knows how
Speaker 1: to create a brain. What it is is that each
Speaker 1: one is following extremely simple local rules, but with enough
Speaker 1: interconnection and feedback and interactivity, they create this aminon that
Speaker 1: we would think of as a mind or consciousness. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so even emergent behavior on an individual basis, showing again
Speaker 1: that systems are When we talk about systems, we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about a collection of people or animals. We
Speaker 1: could be talking about a system as in and just
Speaker 1: a single person. And it's funny to think about how
Speaker 1: there are levels of this. Right. So within a cell
Speaker 1: there is emergent behavior, right because it's individual proteins following
Speaker 1: simple rules of chemistry that interact together to form this
Speaker 1: mass pattern known as a cell. And then you group
Speaker 1: all those cells together, and if you buy into the
Speaker 1: emergence theory of consciousness, they can in a brain make consciousness.
Speaker 1: And then you get enough people with consciousness together acting
Speaker 1: individually to follow local rules, and they can create mass patterns.
Speaker 1: Like One example I found that's interesting is um the
Speaker 1: idea of mosh pits as emergent behavior. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: he's controlling the mosh pit. They're just simple rules. I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding. How many mash bits you been in this week? Hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: I went to college in the nineties. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: no I was trying to get out of the pit. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, you're the whimp. I'm the guy. I'm the
Speaker 1: guy who I'm the guy who appreciated it when I
Speaker 1: didn't have an elbow thrust into my temple. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's fair. That's a fair point, I think. But I'm
Speaker 1: also a guy who loves punk rock. You did head
Speaker 1: banger hair, didn't you? I did back then? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I had hair, and second of all
Speaker 1: it was headbanger hair. This is true, his headbanger hair
Speaker 1: and emergent behavior. I think it might be a meme.
Speaker 1: I can tell you this. It's not emerging anymore. That
Speaker 1: ship has sailed. I'm getting back, getting back to actual,
Speaker 1: the actual discussion yet. So you might be wondering, how
Speaker 1: does this tie into what we were talking about, which
Speaker 1: was social media and part of that was the discussion
Speaker 1: about how is social media affecting us as society, how's
Speaker 1: it affecting us on individual basis? Is it actually rewiring us?
Speaker 1: If you've listened to our previous podcast, you heard us
Speaker 1: talk all about that theory or that hypothesis I really
Speaker 1: should say, and that uh, and the disagreement that exists
Speaker 1: around that or at least around the the rigorous, rigorous
Speaker 1: scientific evidence that doesn't seem to be there for either side.
Speaker 1: At the moment um, we wanted to talk more about,
Speaker 1: well maybe all of that, Uh, all of those concerns
Speaker 1: are ultimately moot. For one thing, this is the world
Speaker 1: we live in now, right, I mean that's It's not
Speaker 1: like I don't expect us to turn back from right right.
Speaker 1: We're never going to put down Facebook and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're bored of this now, no more of that.
Speaker 1: But but but something else, I think I think something
Speaker 1: else would come along to fill that void or to
Speaker 1: make a new you know, something that we can't even
Speaker 1: think of right now. But it would be the new
Speaker 1: thing that would connectivity. Yeah, it would be like if
Speaker 1: they decided to take away television in the nineteen sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So right. So in one in one sense, the whole
Speaker 1: discussion about emergence is really about how it's very possible
Speaker 1: that the way that we use social media and social
Speaker 1: networking sites uh and the way that it plays a
Speaker 1: role in our lives, UH, that we've only scratched the surface. No.
Speaker 1: I was going to say that the concept of the
Speaker 1: meme comes back to six before social media sites existed. UH.
Speaker 1: Fellow named Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The Selfish
Speaker 1: Gene and this this was an entire concept that was
Speaker 1: linking um the evolution of culture and pop culture specifically
Speaker 1: to to natural selection in biology. So it was saying
Speaker 1: that the way that genes are selected um and and
Speaker 1: processed over the course of evolution is the same way
Speaker 1: that that ideas are selected within culture. Right, Because ideas,
Speaker 1: just like genes, are self replicating and they can change. Right,
Speaker 1: Like an idea makes a copy of itself when you
Speaker 1: share it with somebody else, But it can also mutate
Speaker 1: due to uh, either either misunderstanding or the person who
Speaker 1: receives that idea gene um, you know, changes it in
Speaker 1: some way before they pass it on. Yeah. So in
Speaker 1: a weird way, ideas follow the same mechanics as as
Speaker 1: our genes do. Um. And so when you get enough
Speaker 1: ideas churning about in a complex system, you might generate
Speaker 1: something that's known as a meme. Plex got it that
Speaker 1: it's all these memes interacting. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: gene pool. And uh and what do you know? That
Speaker 1: idea has been taken to a slightly uh narrow. I
Speaker 1: mean you could say everything on the Internet is a meme,
Speaker 1: because it's all it's full of ideas. But on the
Speaker 1: Internet a meme has come to mean something a little
Speaker 1: more specific. Um, it's a what is it? It's a
Speaker 1: It's a visual or aesthetic or or literally share able
Speaker 1: share able note of some kinds, usually usually a pretty
Speaker 1: small unit of information. Um. I would say colloquial speaking
Speaker 1: that that we when we say meme, we mean you know, um, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, it's a trend. It's a trend, and
Speaker 1: it's a small amount of information. The format of that
Speaker 1: small amount of information doesn't matter. It could be a video,
Speaker 1: it could be an image, it could be text. On
Speaker 1: on Twitter, for example, I would argue that hashtags are
Speaker 1: really just a meme enabler. Right. There are people who
Speaker 1: will come up with some sort of clever joke or
Speaker 1: some maybe it's not even a joke, it might be
Speaker 1: something very serious, and they do a hashtag to kind
Speaker 1: of separate that out from other from from the noise,
Speaker 1: if you will, of Twitter, and other people may or
Speaker 1: may not pick up on it. And if they do
Speaker 1: pick up on it, then it really becomes a meme
Speaker 1: where other people are taking that, adding to it, changing it,
Speaker 1: transforming it in some way, and passing it on into
Speaker 1: a greater network of folks. Yeah. Cool story bro um.
Speaker 1: So if you just take uh cats for example, that
Speaker 1: probably the internet's favorite meme, right, They're they're big, They're big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hear they're big um cats on the internet. What
Speaker 1: is the cat meme plex? Who's controlling it? Cheeseburger? It's
Speaker 1: probably cheeseburgers. Yeah, But but there is no one in
Speaker 1: charge of the of the cat meme plex. I mean
Speaker 1: that's probably meme plex probably isn't the right word there,
Speaker 1: but the but there's a living, breathing organism of you know,
Speaker 1: kind of a cat, isn't it. No? No, I mean
Speaker 1: bigger than a cat, like a like like a Kira style,
Speaker 1: like if you've glued a whole bunch of cats together
Speaker 1: like that, kind of which reminds me of slime molds. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, slime molds totally go for it. Slime molds
Speaker 1: being a five starum polycephalum um. And these are these
Speaker 1: are single celled organisms. It's almost like I've talked about
Speaker 1: slime it's before in front of say a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy children this one time. Um. But that's a story
Speaker 1: for another time. Uh uh. Julian Robert over it stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind, have a really cool podcast episode
Speaker 1: about this. But in in brief, these are single celled,
Speaker 1: brainless amiba that can that form these colonies, these moving
Speaker 1: thinking colonies that um that divert resources to uh to
Speaker 1: policing to get bacteria out of there. That will you know,
Speaker 1: if if they run out of food in the immediate area,
Speaker 1: they will form a little slug like creature and move
Speaker 1: to another location. Um. They also spread out very long
Speaker 1: ten drils to discover where food might be. And if
Speaker 1: they encounter evidence of a pathway that they've already crossed,
Speaker 1: then instead of expelling more or expending more energy, I
Speaker 1: should say, instead of expending more energy in order to
Speaker 1: trace that same path again, it won't. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: brain there, kind of like lol cats. Lol cats, I
Speaker 1: don't know that we can say they don't have a brain.
Speaker 1: The interesting interesting thing to me the low cats. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing to me is that that one you had
Speaker 1: this original kind of whatever, The original idea was of
Speaker 1: the cute kitty cat picture with the funny caption going
Speaker 1: on the internet and people thinking it was amusing and
Speaker 1: and then sharing it. Then someone said, oh, I should, Uh,
Speaker 1: this would be really funny if I changed the caption
Speaker 1: to this, And then they go in and they change
Speaker 1: the caption so it says something else, and then they
Speaker 1: share it, and then someone else says, oh wait, what
Speaker 1: if I took a picture of a totally different cat
Speaker 1: and either put the same caption on or to a
Speaker 1: new caption on and it took such a life that
Speaker 1: now everyone knows what lol cats are. That if you
Speaker 1: say low cats, everyone who is on the internet for
Speaker 1: any length of time is going to be able to
Speaker 1: think of an example that meets that that word. And
Speaker 1: what's really fun hold them how to make one right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's emergent behavior in that sense. So and but we
Speaker 1: see this in lots of different ways. On the Internet.
Speaker 1: And the whole point about the social networking uh episode
Speaker 1: was that this is something that's happening right now with
Speaker 1: the way we use social networks, and that we can't
Speaker 1: predict how that's going to play a part in our
Speaker 1: lives in the future. We just know it'll be a
Speaker 1: big part, right, I mean, this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that makes the future of the Internet so exciting
Speaker 1: is because it has it has their nodes everywhere. There's
Speaker 1: no top down control, nobody's in charge of the Internet,
Speaker 1: and the Internet itself and the Web are emergent, right,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? They are themselves examples of
Speaker 1: emergence that are full of smaller examples of emergence. One
Speaker 1: great thing that I I don't think I ever would
Speaker 1: have predicted, but in retrospect it seems so obvious is
Speaker 1: the emergence of wikis. I mean, but I mean, put
Speaker 1: me in nineteen seventy and say, I'm I'm working on
Speaker 1: our bonnet and you know, we're predicting something like the Web.
Speaker 1: How could I possibly have imagined wikis? I mean, it
Speaker 1: seems so obvious now, Like I said, but well, and
Speaker 1: these are emergent behaviors because they're created by users. Nobody's
Speaker 1: really in charge, or I guess you can have some editors,
Speaker 1: but that depends on each one. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: perfectly emergent, right and they do have they do have
Speaker 1: their own sets of rules in the sense of wikis.
Speaker 1: It may be in this and whatever the rules of
Speaker 1: what's permissible to post it may be, or it may
Speaker 1: just be even more simple than that. It may just
Speaker 1: be the actual mechanics of the wiki itself, and that
Speaker 1: you know, the complexity arises as more and more people
Speaker 1: join and contribute and consume this. Uh. One I think
Speaker 1: is interesting is that with the Internet it's even more
Speaker 1: difficult to predict any sort of emergent behaviors than it
Speaker 1: would be in in other systems, because in other system
Speaker 1: presumably you would be able to at least determine what
Speaker 1: the basic rules are for each individual element that's in
Speaker 1: that system. Right now, we've already established that just because
Speaker 1: you even know all the rules, you can't really know
Speaker 1: what the complexity will be of the overall system, because
Speaker 1: the sum the whole is greater than the sum of
Speaker 1: its parts. Right And you also on the Internet have
Speaker 1: a have a little bit of doubt about who the
Speaker 1: actual participants are going to be because it's it's such
Speaker 1: a huge it's such a huge complex system that you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like a flock of birds where you say, oh,
Speaker 1: well there's fifteen birds got it well and and there
Speaker 1: there's not the established rules, like we don't have a
Speaker 1: set of rules that everyone follows. There are rules within
Speaker 1: different groups that are on the Internet that follow you know,
Speaker 1: they're mostly you know, things that are they may not
Speaker 1: even be uh vocalized or written down in any way,
Speaker 1: but people just come to understand, oh, you don't do
Speaker 1: such and such, even though that's not stay in a
Speaker 1: rule anywhere. That's just it's kind of bad protocol or
Speaker 1: it's bad form. For example, like I see this in
Speaker 1: in communities all the time, where someone will post something
Speaker 1: completely innocently or at least seemingly innocently, and then the
Speaker 1: response immediately comes back saying, no, you don't do that here.
Speaker 1: That's not that's not okay, even though that's not explicitly
Speaker 1: said anywhere. This sort of has evolved over time as
Speaker 1: the system has become more complex. Knowing that this is
Speaker 1: not something that we want happening here. It happens all
Speaker 1: the time in games in particular, But we don't have
Speaker 1: an actual uh coda for for rules of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I mean there there are a lot of joke ones
Speaker 1: discuss here. Don't feed the trouble well, you know, but
Speaker 1: but there you see them often in groups that are
Speaker 1: for better or worse. The people who who often think
Speaker 1: of themselves as owners of the Internet, like uh forge
Speaker 1: Chan and Anonymous are two good examples. They have their
Speaker 1: own sets of rules, most of which are jokes, not
Speaker 1: all of which are, but most of them are. And
Speaker 1: uh in a way, the rules themselves have become a
Speaker 1: meme and the whole ideas it's fun to continuously add
Speaker 1: and tweak and change them. Um usually it's just adding.
Speaker 1: A lot of them don't like it when you change
Speaker 1: one of the rules, and they pay a lot of
Speaker 1: attention to that. But uh, you know, they're they're not
Speaker 1: particularly they're not the rules that you're speaking from experience.
Speaker 1: Are you one who has tried to nail some precepts
Speaker 1: to the door of the anonymous Cathedral? Not so much that,
Speaker 1: But I've seen, I've seen what happens if someone posts
Speaker 1: like the rules to the Internet, but they either didn't
Speaker 1: copy and paste it, or they copied and pasted it,
Speaker 1: copied it from someplace that had the rules quote unquote wrong.
Speaker 1: And then I've seen what they Oh yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I I look. I I write about this stuff and
Speaker 1: I blog about it, podcast about so I've I've been
Speaker 1: in these communities. I feel like a sociologist who's hung
Speaker 1: out with the Hell's Angels or something. But I've been
Speaker 1: in these communities in the mist, cats in the miss
Speaker 1: But it's they definitely, they definitely take their largely unspoken
Speaker 1: rules very seriously. Um and uh, or maybe it's not
Speaker 1: seriously at all, And that's the problem. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to say when they certainly react with enthusiasm if
Speaker 1: you were to break one of their rules. Well, here's
Speaker 1: something I'm interested in asking, what are some of the
Speaker 1: most interesting emergent behaviors you've observed on the Internet and
Speaker 1: in social networking. Well, I mean, I can start off
Speaker 1: with one of my own, but sure, go ahead. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one of the most interesting things
Speaker 1: is um again, the unpredictable way that especially Twitter, but
Speaker 1: social media in general has been used to spread news
Speaker 1: and information um like breaking news or like when there's
Speaker 1: a disaster when things break on Twitter before the news
Speaker 1: stations pick them up. Yeah, and it's so interesting to
Speaker 1: watch the way that the message proceeds through the Twitter spheres, say,
Speaker 1: and and the way I think it's really interesting is that, Um,
Speaker 1: so it's not just I would say it is emergent,
Speaker 1: because it's not just a straightforward passing along of information
Speaker 1: like copy paste pass it along. I mean that that
Speaker 1: would be fairly predictable. What it tends to be I
Speaker 1: think is that there is some of that, but then
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of passing of information by way
Speaker 1: of commentary on the information, and then there's a kind
Speaker 1: of cannibalistic message creation where the new message that's being
Speaker 1: shared becomes mainly the commentary from Twitter on the original
Speaker 1: piece of information. Yeah, I will frequently, I mean, because
Speaker 1: because you know, I check into Twitter maybe once every
Speaker 1: thirty minutes, which sounds really a lot now that I
Speaker 1: say that outline. That's great, um but but but you know, so,
Speaker 1: so I'll check in and I'll suddenly see half of
Speaker 1: my Twitter feed exploding about something, and It'll be Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of this oblique commentary or snarky commentary more more
Speaker 1: likely about some other thing that's happened, and I go
Speaker 1: in Google whatever the key word is to figure out
Speaker 1: what the actual news story is. Because from from those
Speaker 1: initial posts, I'm like, well, people are upset, but this
Speaker 1: must be a Tuesday. And it's like the story becomes
Speaker 1: the conversation about the story, like that's what the story is. Well,
Speaker 1: and that became really evident during the Arab Spring. I
Speaker 1: mean that was the story was how social media allowed
Speaker 1: people to have a channel of communication not only to
Speaker 1: each other, but to the rest of the world during
Speaker 1: what would normally be an event where unless you had
Speaker 1: embedded journalists inside the country, you the rest of the
Speaker 1: world might not be aware of what was going on,
Speaker 1: and even then it would only be the world that's
Speaker 1: paying attention to a particular outlet. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: since you ask the question and you want to know
Speaker 1: what kind of emergent behaviors you found interesting, I find
Speaker 1: viral videos fascinating. And the reason why I find it
Speaker 1: fascinating is that the things that make a video go
Speaker 1: viral Essentially, it's just that a lot of people share it, right,
Speaker 1: But sharing does not mean that the video was of
Speaker 1: a particular quality or that it had a particular kind
Speaker 1: of humor to it or subject matter. It's it's completely
Speaker 1: independent of all that. There's no formula for making a
Speaker 1: viral video, right You can try and you know, and
Speaker 1: see if you can hit into the zeitgeist, but that
Speaker 1: hardly ever works. It's funny to watch people in marketing
Speaker 1: like try to create viral videos. It's both funny and tragic,
Speaker 1: like when a clown dies. But yeah, it's like you know,
Speaker 1: when you when you have seventy two hours or more
Speaker 1: a video uploaded every minute on YouTube, how is it
Speaker 1: that some videos get worldwide acceptance or are being shared
Speaker 1: like crazy and other videos that might be quote unquote
Speaker 1: better don't. For example, if you had seen Gandham Style
Speaker 1: before it exploded, if you if you were one of
Speaker 1: the first people who watched it when it was uploaded,
Speaker 1: you might think that's kind of entertaining, But there's a
Speaker 1: there are thousand other videos from Asia that are equally
Speaker 1: weird and tongue in cheek and catchy, and because it
Speaker 1: really was, it was made to be this sort of cheeky, goofy,
Speaker 1: silly song. But there are lots of of songs in
Speaker 1: that particular kind of genre that are coming out of
Speaker 1: well not just Asia but all parts of the world.
Speaker 1: Like old people get mad because they can't understand it.
Speaker 1: But see, to me, what it's not that I don't
Speaker 1: understand it so much as I don't understand why that
Speaker 1: one got shared versus all the millions of others. See,
Speaker 1: that's the thing that's fascinating to me. That's what I
Speaker 1: find fascinating about viral videos is that you can't predict
Speaker 1: which one is gonna go viral. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where someone saw it, they shared it.
Speaker 1: All the people or a significant significant number of people
Speaker 1: who who saw it from the person who shared it
Speaker 1: then went on to share it, and then it just exploded.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that video until it was probably right
Speaker 1: at when it was peaking, or maybe just before it peaked.
Speaker 1: It was definitely before the radio started playing it. But
Speaker 1: but that was to me that was interesting. I watched
Speaker 1: I thought, this is it's entertaining, it's a funny video.
Speaker 1: It's there's I don't have any criticism against it. It's
Speaker 1: just interesting to me that that one goes viral like
Speaker 1: there's some When you watch it go viral, you can
Speaker 1: sort of figure out why because there's also this amazing
Speaker 1: sense of shout in freuda across the Internet. So, for example,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Black's Friday video, because a lot of that was
Speaker 1: people poking fun at this young girl who she wanted
Speaker 1: to make a music video that was her birthday present,
Speaker 1: and like, if I were thirteen and I were living
Speaker 1: in this world now, that might be what I want
Speaker 1: to do too. I mean, that would be awesome. She was,
Speaker 1: you know, and she I think handled it way better
Speaker 1: than I ever would have considering the reaction to that
Speaker 1: video and how it went viral. I mean, when Stephen
Speaker 1: Colbert shows up on Jimmy Fallon and is singing your song,
Speaker 1: that's kind of weird, right, so um, but at any
Speaker 1: rate like that, you can when you see a video
Speaker 1: like that, you think, all right, I can, I can
Speaker 1: see the elements here that would make this go viral
Speaker 1: and sort of a it will definitely a snarky, nasty,
Speaker 1: mean spirited way. But I have an interesting question. Sure,
Speaker 1: have you ever been um unknowingly caught in the crest
Speaker 1: of a viral video wave, meaning like, did you share
Speaker 1: a video thinking it was something obscure um not realizing
Speaker 1: that it was in the process of blowing up or
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? I like you in
Speaker 1: that unconscious person with it, you know, having no idea
Speaker 1: that you're contributing to a mass phenomenon. I've definitely shared
Speaker 1: stuff where I thought it was really interesting and I
Speaker 1: thought other people would I like to see it, without
Speaker 1: realizing how big it was going to get later. That
Speaker 1: has happened, but more frequently than not, I'm actually on
Speaker 1: the other end of the crest, like it's very usually
Speaker 1: late to the game, I am too, but it's been
Speaker 1: weird the few times where it's like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I saw some YouTube video I was like, Oh, this
Speaker 1: is funny, and I share it, and then like in
Speaker 1: a day or two, like everybody is huge, and I
Speaker 1: didn't realize, like, oh, I'm I was part of the
Speaker 1: wave that brought this. Yeah, I think, I think I'm.
Speaker 1: I think the last one that I remember doing that
Speaker 1: with was Carmen's look At Me Now video, the cover
Speaker 1: of the Chris Brown song sung by the cute little
Speaker 1: rockabilly chick and her her adorable Jewish fiance. I don't
Speaker 1: think I know that it's adorable. It is so cool.
Speaker 1: I think the last one for me was walk Off
Speaker 1: the Earth's cover of someone I used to know the
Speaker 1: got Your song because that was the five people playing
Speaker 1: the one guitar, which when I saw it, and I
Speaker 1: saw it right when they uploaded it, because I had
Speaker 1: heard of walk Off the Earth already and I when
Speaker 1: I saw that, I just thought, how creative to have
Speaker 1: this be your your music video that five people playing
Speaker 1: one guitar all at the same time and singing this song,
Speaker 1: and uh, and I shared it and then shortly thereafter
Speaker 1: it I don't claim credit. I was just part of
Speaker 1: that that early group and then and then it couldn't
Speaker 1: claim credit made it or like, well, I mean if
Speaker 1: you are the who's to say who's the person who
Speaker 1: was the the domino that caused all the other ones
Speaker 1: to fall? Right? But probably most of those dominoes don't
Speaker 1: know who that person is, That's what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you can't know, not really, I mean unless
Speaker 1: you're just unless you're just one of those people who
Speaker 1: has millions of followers and there was like no one
Speaker 1: had heard of whatever the means. Yeah, when when someone
Speaker 1: like like George de Kay or Will Wheaton or you
Speaker 1: know these other these other gods of our Internet um
Speaker 1: step up in and reblogs. I'm just waiting for them
Speaker 1: to rename Facebook George d ka book because that's what
Speaker 1: mine has turned into. It's true, yea, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: my My favorite is always and this is a little
Speaker 1: bit get off my lawn of me. But um, you
Speaker 1: know when when George d Kay posts something that I
Speaker 1: saw like four years ago on the internet and then
Speaker 1: all of my friends start reposting it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: they never saw that thing or were they not on
Speaker 1: We'll see, Lauren, if you had shared it, then the
Speaker 1: meme would have already run its course. But really we're
Speaker 1: blaming you. When did we fear off into such weird
Speaker 1: territory or emergin behaving eminhking about the mechanics then when
Speaker 1: you like the video, that's the mechanics of going no no,
Speaker 1: I believe you right. Well, that wraps up this discussion
Speaker 1: about emergence. I hope you guys found it interesting. If
Speaker 1: you have any topics you would like to have us
Speaker 1: address in future episodes of Forward Thinking, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you get in touch with us, because that way we
Speaker 1: know about it. You can email us our addresses FW
Speaker 1: thinking at discovery dot com or drop us a line
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Speaker 1: also interact with us there. We really look forward to
Speaker 1: it and having to be part of this conversation about
Speaker 1: the future and how amazing it's going to do. Wisten
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon for more on this
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