The Search for Meming

I need to start a meme.

Everyone else has done one, and I feel left out. All of the people in my office have started one. Most of them are about unlikely cat activities or inaccurate grammar. A couple of people have spawned zeitgeisty acronyms, like JKLL (Just Kidding, Lyle Lovett).

They know I haven't got a meme. Sometimes I'll walk into a room, and everyone will go silent. I know that they've been gossipping about my meme-lack. I'm losing respect by the day.

One colleague, who I consider to be a friend, has started rolling her eyes when I speak. She knows that I haven't produced a catchy Youtube video. She has five of them. One is just eight minutes of ham. 12 million hits.

I don't want to be totally meme-focused. In my heart of hearts, I know that true happiness is not measured in internet fads, but in the original memes of kindness, good humour and catchphrases from adverts.

I don't want to just go along with the crowd. But it's difficult.

The other day, we had a meeting. Everyone was asked to bring their memes along. Most people had trouble narrowing their selection down. Jess brought in six. Ashton Kutcher had tweeted one of them. Another had appeared on the Guardian's live text feed of the Leveson Inquiry.

I went in empty-handed. I tried to improvise something about my pen lid. It fell on deaf ears.

I'm not going to lose my job. That would violate employment law. Employers are not able to discriminate based on memes, fads, meerkats or fashionable handshakes.

My job is safe. But as for my self-respect? I can't say that that's safe. It seems to be on very shaky ground.

So I've set myself the task of coming up with a meme. It doesn't need to earn me a book deal; I just want a few thousand Facebook likes and a talking birthday card.

I've had a few ideas, so thought I'd throw them out there to see if anything catches on. If you'd like to spread these around on your chosen social network or hip new linguistics magazine, I'd really appreciate it.

Idea 1: ANNE BOWLEYN

People could photoshop pictures of Anne Boleyn bowling. It would be incongruous. Maybe we could do something with the whole six fingers thing (extra holes in the ball?).

Idea 2: CRICKROLLING

Following from the success of the trick-people-into-watching-a-Rick-Astley-video phenomenon, Rickrolling, I've come up with an intellectual alternative. Give people an innocuous-looking link, and when they click on it, it will lead them to a video of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Francis Crick.

People will find it funny, because it will happen all the time. 40% of all links will lead to Crick. And like the Rick Astley thing, it will remind people of how ridiculous things looked in the old days.

Idea 3: BRACKEN

I'm not sure what this will be, but it will be something to do with bracken. Nobody really thinks about bracken very much, so it will be all weird. "That's so random!" people will say. There can be a hashtag and everything. #bracken

Idea 4: ROMAN NUMERALS

But ironically.

Idea 5: CATS THAT LOOK LIKE OTHER CATS

A Tumblr page full of hilarious cat lookalikes. Imagine how funny it would be to see a cat that looks like a different cat.

LOOK! This cat looks just like the cat Salem in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch TV show! JUST LIKE HIM!

It even looks like the animatronic version that they used when they needed the cat to talk or whatever!

LOOOOOLL!

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Do any of these take your fancy? I'm not sure which one I prefer. I think number IV has the least potential, but you never know. You can't tell what will catch fire. That's why the only symbols on extinguishers are a variety of shrugs.

I hope once my colleagues see this, I'll go up in their estimation. I'm still not going to put all my stock in memes. The man maketh the meme; the meme does not maketh the man. But at least I've maketh something.

I'm looking forward to our next meeting. I will be holding bracken and wearing a broad smile.

It might just catch on. It might just catch on fire.


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Oh, by the way, in a couple of weeks I'm running a bake sale for charity. If you'd like to donate here, it would be most appreciated.