A meme (, rhyming with "cream"), a relatively newly-coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The name comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information.

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The word is a blend of "gene" and the Greek word μιμητισμός (mimetismos, ) for "something imitated".) Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.

The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.

Advocates of the meme idea say that memes may evolve by natural selection, in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. Memes do this through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influencing a meme's reproductive success.

Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes which replicate the most effectively spread best. Some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model. Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that scholarship can examine memes empirically. Some commentators question the idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units.

History

Origins

Historically, the notion of a unit of social evolution, and a similar term (from Greek mneme, “memory”), first appeared in 1904 in a work by the German Lamarckist biologist Richard Semon titled Die Mnemischen Empfindungen in ihren Beziehungen zu den Originalempfindungen (loosely translatable as “Memory-feelings in relation to original feelings”). According to the OED, the word mneme appears in English in 1921 in L. Simon's translation of Semon's book: The Mneme.

Laurent noted the use of the term mneme in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and has highlighted similarities to Dawkins' concept.

The word meme originated with Dawkins' 1976 book The Selfish Gene. To emphasize commonality with genes, Dawkins coined the term "meme" by shortening "mimeme", which derives from the Greek word mimema ("something imitated"). In contrast, the concept of genetics gained concrete evidence with the discovery of the biological functions of DNA. In the context of the natural or life sciences, memetics suffers in comparison because, unlike the idea of genes, memes do not necessarily have or need a concrete medium in order to transfer.

Transmission

Life-forms can transmit information both vertically (from parent to child, via replication of genes) and horizontally (through viruses and other means). Malcolm Gladwell wrote, "A meme is an idea that behaves like a virus--that moves through a population, taking hold in each person it infects." Memes can replicate vertically or horizontally within a single biological generation. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time. Memes spread by the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Imitation counts as an important characteristic in the propagation of memes. Imitation often involves the copying of an observed behaviour of another individual, but memes may transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as a book or a musical score. Researchers have observed memetic copying in just a few species on Earth, including hominids, dolphins and birds (which learn how to sing by imitating their parents or neighbors).

Some commentators have likened the transmission of memes to the spread of contagions. Social contagions such as fads, hysteria, copycat crime, and copycat suicide exemplify memes seen as the contagious imitation of ideas. Observers distinguish the contagious imitation of memes from instinctively contagious phenomena such as yawning and laughing, which they consider innate (rather than socially learned) behaviors.

# Quantity of parenthood: an idea which influences the number of children one has. Children respond particularly receptively to the ideas of their parents, and thus ideas which directly or indirectly encourage a higher birthrate will replicate themselves at a higher rate than those that discourage higher birthrates. # Efficiency of parenthood: an idea which increases the proportion of children who will adopt ideas of their parents. Cultural separatism exemplifies one practice in which one can expect a higher rate of meme-replication — because the meme for separation creates a barrier from exposure to competing ideas. # Proselytic: ideas generally passed to others beyond one's own children. Ideas that encourage the proselytism of a meme, as seen in many religious or political movements, can replicate memes horizontally through a given generation, spreading more rapidly than parent-to-child meme-transmissions do. #Preservational: ideas which influence those that hold them to continue to hold them for a long time. Ideas which encourage longevity in their hosts, or leave their hosts particularly resistant to abandoning or replacing these ideas, enhance the preservability of memes and afford protection from the competition or proselytism of other memes. #Adversative: ideas which influence those that hold them to attack or sabotage competing ideas and/or those that hold them. Adversative replication can give an advantage in meme transmission when the meme itself encourages aggression against other memes. #Cognitive: ideas perceived as cogent by most in the population who encounter them. Cognitively transmitted memes depend heavily on a cluster of other ideas and cognitive traits already widely held in the population, and thus usually spread more passively than other forms of meme transmission. Memes spread in cognitive transmission do not count as self-replicating. #Motivational: ideas that people adopt because they perceive some self-interest in adopting them. Strictly speaking, motivationally transmitted memes do not self-propagate, but this mode of transmission often occurs in association with memes self-replicated in the efficiency parental, proselytic and preservational modes.

Memes as discrete units

Richard Dawkins initially defined meme as a noun which "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation". The meme as a unit provides a convenient means of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless if that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of a larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word first occurred. This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a single unit of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome.

While the identification of memes as "units" conveys their nature to replicate as discrete, indivisible entities, it does not imply that thoughts somehow become quantized or that "atomic" ideas exist which cannot be dissected into smaller pieces. A meme has no given size. Susan Blackmore writes that melodies from Beethoven's symphonies are commonly used to illustrate the difficulty involved in delimiting memes as discrete units. She notes that while the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony () form a meme widely replicated as an independent unit, one can regard the entire symphony as a single meme as well.

Evolutionary influences on memes

Richard Dawkins noted the three conditions which must exist for evolution to occur:

# variation, or the introduction of new change to existing elements # heredity or replication, or the capacity to create copies of elements # differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the environment than another

Dawkins emphasizes that the process of evolution naturally occurs whenever these conditions co-exist, and that evolution does not apply only to organic elements such as genes. He also regards memes as having the properties necessary for evolution, and thus sees meme evolution as not simply analogous to genetic evolution, but as a real phenomenon subject to the laws of natural selection. Dawkins noted that as various ideas pass from one generation to the next, they may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. For example, a certain culture may develop unique designs and methods of tool-making that give it a competitive advantage over another culture. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. In keeping with the thesis that in evolution one can regard organisms simply as suitable "hosts" for reproducing genes, Dawkins argues that one can view people as "hosts" for replicating memes. Consequently, a successful meme may or may not need to provide any benefit to its host. Susan Blackmore distinguishes the difference between the two modes of inheritance in the evolution of memes, characterizing the Darwinian mode as "copying the instructions" and the Lamarckian as "copying the product." Theistic memes discussed include the "prohibiton of aberrant sexual practices such as incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and religious prostitution", which may have increased vertical transmission of the parent religious memeplex. Similar memes are thereby included in the majority of religious memeplexes, and harden over time; they become an "inviolable canon" or set of dogmas, eventually finding their way into secular law. This could also be referred to as the propagation of a taboo.

Memetics

The discipline of memetics, which dates from the mid 1980s, provides an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the meme. Memeticists have proposed that just as memes function analogously to genes, memetics functions analogously to genetics. Memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas.

Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in other fields of cultural study, such as sociology, cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. Questions remain whether or not the meme concept counts as a validly disprovable scientific theory. This view regards memetics as a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors.

Criticism of meme theory

An objection to the study of the evolution of memes in genetic terms (although not to the existence of memes) involves a perceived gap in the gene/meme analogy: the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection-pressures neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation-rates. There seems no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes.

Luis Benitez-Bribiesca M.D., a critic of memetics, calls the theory a "pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution". As a factual criticism, Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a "code script" for memes (analogous to the DNA of genes), and to the excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism (that of an idea going from one brain to another), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation rate, rendering the evolutionary process chaotic.

Another critique comes from semiotic theorists such as Deacon and Kull This view regards the concept of "meme" as a primitivized concept of "sign". The meme is thus described in memetics as a sign lacking a triadic nature. Semioticians can regard a meme as a "degenerate" sign, which includes only its ability of being copied. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs.

Fracchia and Lewontin regard memetics as reductionist and inadequate.

Lack of philosophical foundation

In his chapter titled "Truth" published in the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Dieter Lohmar questions the memeticists' reduction of the highly complex body of ideas (such as religion, politics, war, justice, and science itself) to a putatively one-dimensional series of memes. He sees memes as an abstraction and such a reduction as failing to produce greater understanding of those ideas. The highly interconnected, multi-layering of ideas resists memetic simplification to an atomic or molecular form; as does the fact that each of our lives remains fully enmeshed and involved in such "memes". Lohmar argues that one cannot view memes through a microscope in the way one can detect genes. The leveling-off of all such interesting "memes" down to some neutralized molecular "substance" such as "meme-substance" introduces a bias toward scientism and abandons the very essence of what makes ideas interesting, richly available, and worth studying.

Applications

Opinions differ as to how best to apply the concept of memes within a "proper" disciplinary framework. One view sees memes as providing a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution. Proponents of this view (such as Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett) argue that considering cultural developments from a meme's-eye view—as if memes themselves respond to pressure to maximise their own replication and survival—can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Others such as Bruce Edmonds and Robert Aunger have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics to become a useful and respected scientific discipline. A third approach, described as "radical memetics", seeks to place memes at the centre of a materialistic theory of mind and of personal identity.

Prominent researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology, including Scott Atran, Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer, John Tooby and others, argue the possibility of incompatibility between modularity of mind and memetics. In their view, minds structure certain communicable aspects of the ideas produced, and these communicable aspects generally trigger or elicit ideas in other minds through inference (to relatively rich structures generated from often low-fidelity input) and not high-fidelity replication or imitation. Atran discusses communication involving religious beliefs as a case in point. In one set of experiments he asked religious people to write down on a piece of paper the meanings of the Ten Commandments. Despite the subjects' own expectations of consensus, interpretations of the commandments showed wide ranges of variation, with little evidence of consensus. In another experiment, normal subjects and autistic subjects interpreted ideological and religious sayings (for example, "Let a thousand flowers bloom" or "To everything there is a season"). Autistics showed a significant tendency to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (for example: "Don't cut flowers before they bloom"). Controls tended to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (for example: "Go with the flow" or "Everyone should have equal opportunity"). Only the autistic subjects—who lack the degree of inferential capacity normally associated with aspects of theory of mind—came close to functioning as "meme machines".

In his book The Robot's Rebellion, Stanovich uses the memes and memeplex concepts to describe a program of cognitive reform which he refers to as a "rebellion". Specifically, Stanovich argues that the use of memes as a descriptor for cultural units is beneficial because it serves to emphasize transmission and acquisition properties that parallel the study of epidemiology. These properties make salient the sometimes parasitic nature of acquired memes, and as a result individuals should be motivated to reflectively acquire memes using what he calls a "Neurathian bootstrap" process.

Religion

Although social scientists such as Max Weber sought to understand and explain religion in terms of a cultural attribute, Richard Dawkins called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow. He argued that the role of key replicator in cultural evolution belongs not to genes, but to memes replicating thought from person to person by means of imitation. These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival.

Internet culture

The term "Internet meme" refers to a catchphrase or concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet, largely through Internet-based email, blogs, forums, s, social networking sites and instant messaging.

Meme maps

One technique of meme mapping represents the evolution and transmission of a meme across time and space. Such a meme map uses a figure-8 diagram (an analemma) to map the gestation (in the lower loop), birth (at the choke point), and development (in the upper loop) of the selected meme. Such meme maps are non-scalar, with time mapped onto the y-axis and space onto the x-axis transect. One can read the temporal progress of the mapped meme from south to north on such a meme map. Paull has published a worked example using the "organics meme" (as in organic agriculture). used a second technique of meme mapping to create two-dimensional representations of the selves of eleven participants drawn from both individualist and collectivist cultures. Participant narratives were transcribed, segmented and coded using a method similar to grounded theory. Coded segments exhibiting referent, connotative, affective and behavioral dimensions were declared to be memes. Memes that shared connotative, affective or behavioral qualities were linked. All of the maps in Robertson's sample evidenced volition, constancy, uniqueness, production, intimacy, and social interest.

See also

Dual inheritance theory

Electronic Revolution

Know Your Meme

Memetic engineering

Psycholinguistics

Sociocultural evolution

Spiral Dynamics

Viral marketing

Viral phenomenon

Viral video

Notes

References

[trade paperback ISBN 0-9658817-8-4 (1999), ISBN 0-19-286212-X (2000)]

Henson, H. Keith: "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War."

Henson, H. Keith: "Sex, Drugs, and Cults. An evolutionary psychology perspective on why and how cult memes get a drug-like hold on people, and what might be done to mitigate the effects", The Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 343-355

Heylighen, Francis, (1992) : "Selfish Memes and the Evolution of Cooperation", Journal of Ideas vol. 2, no. 4, pp, 77–84.

Jan, Steven: The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)

Moritz, Elan. (1995): "Metasystems, Memes and Cybernetic Immortality," in: Heylighen F., Joslyn C. & Turchin V. (eds.), The Quantum of Evolution. Toward a theory of metasystem transitions, (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, New York) (special issue of World Futures: the journal of general evolution, vol. 45, p. 155-171).

External links

Dawkins' speech on the 30th anniversary of the publication of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins 2006

"Evolution and Memes: The human brain as a selective imitation device": article by Susan Blackmore.

Journal of Memetics, a peer-refereed journal of memetics published from 1997 until 2005

Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes", TED Talks February 2008

Category:Memes Category:Collective intelligence Category:Cultural anthropology Category:Evolutionary psychology Category:Futurology Category:Philosophy of mind Category:Units of morphological analysis Category:Units of information (cognitive processes) Category:Words coined in the 1970s

Name	Allison Harvard
Birthname	Allison Harvard
Nickname(s)	Creepy Chan
Birthdate	January 08, 1988
Birth place	New Orleans, Louisiana
Height
Haircolor	Brown
Eyecolor	Blue
Measurements	34"-24"-33"
Dress size	2 (US); 32 (EU)
Shoesize	9 (US); 41 (EU)

Allison Harvard (born January 8, 1988) is an American fashion model and internet celebrity. She is best known as the runner-up of the twelfth cycle of America's Next Top Model.

Early life

Harvard grew up in Houston, Texas, and currently resides in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In late 2005, Harvard gained notoriety as an internet meme on 4chan, where she became known as "Creepy-chan"

America's Next Top Model

Harvard successfully auditioned for Cycle 12 of America's Next Top Model. During the audition process, Harvard stated that she thought nose bleeds were pretty, and that she is fascinated by blood.

She was called first by Tyra Banks four times, in episodes two, ten, twelve and thirteen (the first part of the finale). Harvard was in the bottom two times. In episode three, she landed in the bottom two with contestant Nijah Harris because she was said to have over-analyzed her shoot. In episode six, she landed in the bottom two with contestant Tahlia Brookins because of her lackluster commercial and her one dimensional look, leading the judges to question her versatility.

During the finale episode of America's Next Top Model, Harvard gave a convincing Covergirl commercial and was hailed for her improvement from the previous commercial. In the final runway walk, Harvard was deemed the most improved, despite being deemed the worst walker out of the bunch at the beginning of the competition. Despite her improvements and strong look, Harvard lost the competition to Teyona Anderson, making Harvard the runner up.

Career

Allison has signed with Nous Models Management in Los Angeles. Since America's Next Top Model, Harvard has modeled for karmaloop.com. She has made an internet video with fourfour entitled "Fake Blood" and an "interview" with cat Winston. Her connection with 4chan and America's Next Top Model also made her the subject of her own Know Your Meme episode.

References

External links

Official website

The Artwork of Allison Harvard on Flickr

Category:Living people Category:Internet memes Category:American female models Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:American women artists Category:America's Next Top Model contestants Category:1988 births

Alt	Christian Bale in a black suit at a movie premiere.
Caption	Bale in June 2009
Birth name	Christian Charles Philip Bale
Birth date	January 30, 1974
Birth place	Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales, United Kingdom In addition to starring roles in big budget Hollywood films, he has long been heavily involved in films produced by independent producers and art houses.

In The Prestige, an adaptation of the Christopher Priest novel about a rivalry between two Victorian stage magicians, Bale was reunited with Batman Begins Michael Caine and director Christopher Nolan. The cast of The Prestige also included Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson, Piper Perabo, and David Bowie. I'm Not There, a film in which Bale again worked alongside Todd Haynes and Heath Ledger (who would go on to play The Joker in The Dark Knight), is an artistic reflection of the life of Bob Dylan. He starred opposite Russell Crowe in a commercially and critically successful Western film, .

Bale was originally cast to play George W. Bush in Oliver Stone's film W., but dropped out due to the prosthetics involved. Bale played John Connor in Terminator Salvation and FBI agent Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann's Public Enemies.

Terminator Salvation incident

In July 2008, Bale had an angry tirade on the sets of Terminator Salvation, while filming in New Mexico. In February 2009, the audio recording of the incident was released. The tirade was directed at Shane Hurlbut, director of photography for the film. According to Bale, Hurlbut had, for the second time, ruined his concentration by walking onto the set during a scene. The recording is of a highly agitated Bale directing profanities at Hurlbut, threatening and belittling him, and finally threatening to quit the film if Hurlbut repeated his offence without being fired for it. It was reported that Warner film executives sent the tape to the insurer of the film in case Bale decided to quit the movie. In an interview with E! Online, assistant director and producer of Terminator Salvation, Bruce Franklin, said it was an isolated incident. "If you are working in a very intense scene and someone takes you out of your groove ... It was the most emotional scene in the movie ... [A]nd for him to get stopped in the middle of it. He is very intensely involved in his character. He didn't walk around like that all day long. It was just a moment and it passed", Franklin said.

Actors Whoopi Goldberg and Terry Crews, directors Darren Aronofsky and Ron Howard, as well as Ain't It Cool News website creator Harry Knowles have also publicly defended Bale's actions, some of them citing the practice that crew members are to remain still while the camera is rolling. The incident also inspired experimental band The Mae Shi to write the song, "R U Professional", which features samples from the recording. Stephen Colbert parodied the incident on the 4 February 2009 episode of The Colbert Report, in which guest Steve Martin repeatedly walked in front of the camera and was berated by Colbert. The incident was re-enacted on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, with Inside the Actor's Studio host James Lipton giving performances of both Bale and the crewmember. An episode of the animated comedy series Family Guy also mixed in the voice of Peter Griffin interacting with Bale and reacting to Bale's comments as if they were directed at him to comedic effect.

After remaining silent for most of the week, Bale gave a public apology on 6 February 2009, to a Los Angeles radio station, KROQ. He stated that the outburst was "inexcusable" and that it was motivated by the day's shooting intensity. Bale said he "acted like a punk", and that he and Hurlbut talked after the incident and "resolved this completely". Bale acknowledged that the two worked together for several hours after the incident, and "at least a month after that... I've seen a rough cut of the movie and he has done a wonderful job. It looks fantastic".

Writer/director Joe Carnahan confirmed in November 2007 that Bale is also involved in the upcoming movie Killing Pablo in which he is to play Major Steve Jacoby. According to a Nuts magazine interview, Bale stated that he will be in the running to play the role of Solid Snake in a film adaptation of Metal Gear Solid. In early 2010, Bale was confirmed to be starring in a romantic love story that will be directed by Terrence Malick and will also star Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko. Niels Arden Oplev, director of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is to have Bale as lead in his current project The Last Photograph, which Oplev hopes to start filming early 2011.

Personal life

On 29 January 2000, Bale married Sandra "Sibi" Blažić (born 1970), former model, make-up artist and personal assistant to Winona Ryder; the couple have a daughter, Emmeline, who was born on 27 March 2005 in Santa Monica, California. Since 1992, Bale has resided in Los Angeles.

Bale has three elder sisters – Erin Bale, a musician; Sharon Bale, a computer professional; and Louise Bale, a theatre actress and director. The Bale family is deeply rooted in show business, especially theatre. Bale is a distant relative of British actress Lillie Langtry, while his uncle, Rex Bale, and maternal grandfather were actors as well. it was Steinem's first marriage (at the age of 66), and the couple were together until David Bale's death in 2003, aged 62.

Bale has stated that he is a big fan of late comedian Chris Farley and of Farley's film Beverly Hills Ninja.

Film and television credits

Other awards and nominations

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! Year ! Award ! Award category ! Title of work ! Result |- | 2009 | West Point Cadet Choice Awards | Best Exemplification of Leadership | | Won |}

References

External links

Category:1974 births Category:Alumni of Bournemouth School Category:English child actors Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English film actors Category:Living people Category:People from Haverfordwest Category:People from Bournemouth Category:People from the Greater Los Angeles Area

Name	Kevin Antoine Dodson
Birth date
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Nationality	American
Known for	"Bed Intruder Song"
Website

Kevin Antoine Dodson is a former resident of the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama, whose interview on local television became an Internet sensation and resulted in an Auto-Tuned song with The Gregory Brothers that "has sold thousands of copies on iTunes and appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 list". The interview that propelled Dodson into fame was prompted by the report of a house intrusion and attempted rape of his sister, Kelly Dodson.

The interview

Dodson was interviewed on July 28,2010, by NBC affiliate WAFF-48 News after the attempted rape of his sister Kelly Dodson by an intruder in her bedroom, in the projects of Lincoln Park.

conducted with Antoine.]]

The video of the interview caught attention because of the passionate and flamboyant style of his delivery, speaking directly to the camera, in which he directly addressed the people of his neighborhood as well as the would-be rapist, and his use of street vernacular. The reactions were mixed. Some local viewers phoned the TV station to complain that interviews with people such as Dodson reflected poorly on the community,

that contains an image of Dodson with the "Hide yo kids, hide yo wife" line from the viral video interview.]]

"Bed Intruder Song" and Rise to fame

The video of Dodson's television interview went viral and then inspired several musical remixes, including a video by musical group The Gregory Brothers, known as the "Bed Intruder Song". The song was a huge success and eventually reached number 89 on Billboard's Hot 100 list.

Dodson was interviewed for the Today Show on NBC on 26 August 2010 about his new found "Web superstardom". On the program, Dodson's YouTube video was called "one of the most watched online videos ever," with the hosts noting it had already been viewed more than 16 million times as of that date. (See Auto-Tune the News for a more up-to-date view count.) Dodson has done radio shows in Australia, has fans in London and is now widely recognized in his hometown of Huntsville.

Dodson launched a website in which he asks for donations to assist his family in moving "out of the hood". The money, as well as money from sales of "Bed Intruder" on iTunes and merchandise such as T-shirts, will go to helping his family buy a new home and setting up a foundation for juvenile diabetes, a disease that has afflicted both his sister and his mother. one month later, Us Weekly reported that Dodson had made enough money from the song to move his family out of the projects to a better house. In September 2010, the Gregory Brothers reported that they had sold more than 100,000 copies of The Bed Intruder Song on iTunes.

In October 2010, Dodson gave a live performance of "Bed Intruder Song" with Michael Gregory of The Gregory Brothers at the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards.

Excluding major label music videos, Dodson's song was the most viewed YouTube video of 2010. It was chosen as the "Meme of the Year" in the 2010 Urlies – both as the People's Choice and the Editors' Choice – while the original video of Dodson's television interview was the "Video of the Year" – People's Choice.

He was also featured in a segment on Lopez Tonight singing a "Chimney Intruder" song about Santa Claus.

Business ventures

Dodson has capitalized on the success of "Bed Intruder Song". His first venture was a line of t-shirts and merchandise featuring the original album art from the iTunes release sold through zazzle.com, after a licensing dispute between the artist, photographer, and his manager, he launched a storefront through districtlines.com with an unrelated line of merchandise. Since then he has authorized the creation and sale of a "Bed Intruder Costume" for Halloween 2010 and endorsed a "Sex Offender Tracker" smartphone application for the iPhone and Android platforms. In late December 2010, Dodson was featured in a commercial advertising the new Tosh.0 season.

Personal life

Dodson grew up in Chicago, and moved to Huntsville in 2004, where he attends Virginia College, working on an associate degree in business administration.

Discography

Singles

(2010) Bed Intruder Song with The Gregory Brothers featuring Kelly Dodson

{| class="wikitable sortable" !Chart (2010) !Peakposition |- | US Billboard Hot 100 |align="center"| 89 |- |}

References

External links

Official website

Original official website

Category:Living people Category:People from Huntsville, Alabama Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Internet memes Category:LGBT musicians from the United States Category:1986 births Category:Musicians from Alabama