The twentysomething founder of 4chan.org won Time’s title of “World’s Most Influential Person” despite accusations that the meme site’s fans hacked the online poll.
The founder, Christopher Poole, also known as “moot,” received 16.8 million votes.
On YouTube, we’re in a bunker, and the enemies are always, always closing in. The ceilings are low. The air is stifling. A disheveled leader is delusional. This is the premise of more than 100 videos on the Web–the work of satirists who for years have been snatching video and audio from “Downfall,” the 2004 German movie of Hitler’s demise, and doctoring it to tell a range of stories about personal travails and world politics.
Creating viral videos and concepts has become a keystone for many businesses marketing online.
Such Web phenomena are known by technophiles as “memes.” Coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene,” a meme is a unit of cultural information–an idea, a practice, a phrase, or an online video–that’s passed on virally.
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