The problem I find with it is that it's such a monoculture. Everyone is copying everyone else.
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.
Obviously meme formats from when I was younger (images and text) are fine, but meme formats that are newer (video and text) and brainrot. Or maybe it's just the same thing every generation does where they think the generations before them were hopelessly out of touch but the kids nowadays have no taste...
My impression is that it's a lack of remixing. I don't think recreating the exact same joke with different people in the video is particularly novel. It seems less like meme/remix culture and more like how you find a slightly different version of the same item (or literally a repackaged item from the same factory) for sale on Amazon from fifty different "brands" that have random ass names.
The meme could be good. The mixes could be good. But...is that what is actually happening? Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
I'm not convinced this is specific to the format (or the platform). Whenever I try to search for a specific meme or gif on google, I find huge numbers of basically identical copies that come from separate sources. I've seen complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution.
Out of curiosity, I asked my wife about this trend specifically, and while she was familiar with the joke, she has yet to see any instance of it on her page. I have to wonder if people who are experiencing stuff like this are mostly just getting stuck in a bubble and not pushing through to other content. There's an argument that learning how to interact with the app to make the algorithm work for you isn't a great experience, but there's a large volume of people who use and enjoy the app without complaining about this issue. I'm not particularly convinced that all of these people have gone numb to brainrot to the point that they enjoy seeing the same joke 20 times in a row compared to them just having a better experience from seeing a wider variety of content.
I liked seeing the same meme because it was fun seeing the same thing be done by different people. Not everyone likes that type of novelty I guess.
> complaints on humor subreddits about how people repeatedly post copies of the same jokes, often without attribution
This feels like a reflection of what the person feels posting on the internet signifies. Are you publishing something, and thus you should attribute sources etc, or are you just having a conversation?
You would never attribute sources when making a joke in real life. I guess you could but it would be a pretty dorky thing to do.
Good points. This basically circles back to my parent comment; it seems like it's just a matter of personal taste, and there's nothing inherently more "brainrot"-y about this format than any others.
> Or is someone hoping to create their own version that gets view in competition with the original so they can squeeze out some monetization from a trend and hoping the algorithm lotto smiles upon them?
Exactlym that's the feeling I get with it.
I noticed a lot of "creators" are constantly repeating the same skit over and over and over too. With different backgrounds etc. Clearly a way to try and get noticed by the algorithm. But also a great way to get them blocked by me of course.
I used TikTok and also never came across a meme like that. Or maybe I did once or twice, I just quickly swiped away (or if something I’m not interested in is shown repeatedly I click not interested and it’s gone at least for a long time). If you’re shown the same meme from 20 different people chances are you just kept watching them, maybe with disapproval, but your device can’t read your brainwaves yet so the service just thinks you’re super interested.
And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
>And YouTube also had those stupid challenges with everyone doing the same stupid shit before TikTok even existed.
And before the transistor, we had flagpole sitters[0] and dance marathons[1] and dozens of other memes, just in the 20th century.
This kind of thing is nothing new, and has been going on for as long we've been us. Now this is accessible to a larger and more varied audience, not just those who are nearby.
It’s a culture thing I guess. Overlay videos of other videos and the memeing videos has been in TikTok since the beginning. Youtube would probably ban the former under a copyright strike or something.
Most memes and most application of memes were not that funny. Scrolling reddit 10 years ago is not that different from TikTok just with pictures instead of videos.
Eh. They really weren't. "I'm firin' mah lazer" wasn't funny and yet for a while it was ubiquitous. I'd wager in fact that most memes weren't inherently funny: their purpose is in-group signalling for the most part.
As an example: there's this stupid skit going around. Someone asks a waiter "Could I ask you about the menu please?". The waiter comes really close and goes like "The men I please is none of your business".
It's an ok joke but I've seen literally 20 different people doing the same skit in the last two weeks and it gets so damn annoying. And it's not just this one. There's always one that is viral and everyone copies it.