Malcolm Gladwell: What Makes A Meme Successful?

1187 Words5 Pages
We all copy that singer’s clothing style, no matter how it looks on us or how much that item coast. Humans tend to do that, because we want to be part of that is a new trend. As a result, that trend starts to spread everywhere in the world. In the same way meme theories from the article “The Meme Machine” by Susan Blackmore supports examples from “small change” by Malcolm Gladwell. Personal ambition and communication are vehicles that make a meme successful. Personal goal for something to happen, makes a spreading meme successful. In downtown greensboro, North Carolina, four black college students sat down at the lunch table and the waitress said “we don’t serve Negroes here.” Even after hearing all that, those student sat there until the…show more content…
Communication between humans from different corners of the world made a difference in a person’s life with the help of technology. Jennifer Aaker, one of the person mentioned in the article “Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted” tells a story about sameer Bhatia, a young silicon valley entrepreneur who has acute myelogenous leukemia. Therefore, Malcolm Gladwell states “Bhatia needed a bone marrow transplants, but he could not find a match among his relatives and friends...so Bhatia’s business partner send out an email explaining Bhatia’s plight to more than four hundred of their personal contacts...and Bathia found a match(137-138).The only reason Bhatia was able to find a match for a bone marrow transplant was because with the help of social media like Facebook and Twitter helped. Human being were able to connect from various corners of the world and were able to spread awareness about Bhatia's condition. As more and more people came to know about Bhatia and him needing an urgent bone marrow transplant, the number of people who registered for bone marrow database drastically increases, causing the awareness to become a meme. Susan blackmore the author of Strange Creatures says that meme are “jumping from brain to brain, likened them to parasites infecting a host, treated them as physically realized living structure and showed how mutually assigning memes will gang up in groups as genes do”(36). The awareness of Bhatia’s need of urgent bone marrow transplant jumped from one brain to another and on it’s way “infecting” each person’s mind and causing them to spread the words around. When those “infected” minds came together and gang up they were able to succeed because at the end Bhatia found a match. Not only that “...more than four hundred of their acquaintances, who forwarded the e-mail to their personal contacts; Facebook and YouTube were devoted to the Help Sameer campaign. Eventually
Show More
Related

  • History Of Innovation: Innovation, Creativity, And Innovation

    2133 Words  | 9 Pages

    positioned them to benefit from these dynamic communal, technical and traditional shifts. Cultural Fluidity It’s the era of digitalization. Creative ideas travel across borders, languages and cultures seamlessly. Every article written, photo uploaded, ‘meme’ generated is circulated worldwide. A prime example in recent times has been the ‘ALS Ice-Bucket challenge’. A simple idea that has reached almost every corner of the world. This depicts that the creativity within human perception which is mobilized

    Read More

More about Malcolm Gladwell: What Makes A Meme Successful?

Open Document