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OK, the purpose of this exercise isn’t really to show you this meme, which you’ve probably seen anyway: Sleeveface.

What I’m pondering here, for my own reasons is, why do some memes work and others do not? With about 1300 entries (a lot of them from the same people), I’d hardly say Sleeveface was a runaway success, but, it’s still respectable. A lot more so than Fridgets – which was promoted on the Flickr blog at the time Flickr video was launched, so passed before the eyes of a very large audience – and yet has only received 51 entries.

The obvious answer is that the amount of trouble one needs to go to in order to contribute to the meme will impact on its success. But it’s clearly not the only factor, nor a deal breaker: look at Post Secret.

The last obvious answer I’ll put forward is “it needs to be amusing or engaging in some way”. But I’m going to call that a non-answer to the question. I believe there’s some sort of particular fashion in which something needs to be amusing or engaging, or some sort of reward that people get out of contributing, for a meme to be successful. Can I work out what that is?

Please don’t tell me to go and read this, I already have…