There are only two truly effective and universal strategies for dealing with blog memes: one can ignore them, or one can throw oneself into completing the task required with such vigour and aplomb that spectators cannot but admire one. As we shall see, there are other routes to success in dealing with these pesky fauna of the internet ecology, but their effectiveness tends to rest on certain powers not available to we mere mortals.

A meme—at least as the term is generally employed in the ‘blogosphere’ (oh, how I revile this term)—is a viral unit of cultural transmission, usually taking the form of “Complete this task (which provides some trivial information about oneself) and then infect some further number of authors.” For example, “List five songs that you are currently digging … Then tag five other people to see what they’re listening to.”

The truly horrible thing about these entities is their rampant destruction of a blog’s aesthetics. An interesting and contentful column suddenly becomes a pustulent datapoint in a vector of infection. The author writes not because they truly have something to say, but because they have been told to. Such is our desire for participation, for conversation—even where this conversation is entirely illusory—that we willingly subjugate ourselves, and become hosts for this cultural parasite. No one is immune; all one can do is try to pursue a strategy that minimises the damage.

One unhappy compromise between the strategies outlined above is to include the meme in an “odds and ends” post of notes, miscellaneous links and announcements. It tends to appear at the end, like an unwanted relative whom one cannot bring oneself not to invite to the party. It sits strangely, out of place, its metronomic power drawing the eye away from the other flotsam and jetsam accumulated in the post; a declaration that the author, in their timidity and embarassment, has tried to file it away somewhere they hope people simply won’t notice it.

One can, of course, be kitsch and simply reply to it in approved LJ style: “these really are the ten songs that played when I shuffled my music library” (they never are, of course—we all manipulate the truth in order to create a certain impression of ourselves). Such bravura, however, is only effective for those authors who post reams of worthwhile content several times a day, and these are rare beings indeed. In such a context, the meme appears merely as what it ought to be: a personal aside, an admirable letting down of the author’s guard, giving us an insight into them as a human being, rather than merely a columnist.