Common Sense and Sneaky Mom

In class we have been discussing various memes and we have looked at a variety of different memes that have become immensely popular on the internet for a variety of different reasons. We have also been looking at how individuals and their ideas have gone viral, for example, Martin Luther and his 95 Theses.

Thomas Paine was responsible for one of the most influential publications called Common Sense that went viral and spread to many different places very quickly. Common Sense went viral as a result of being passed from hand to hand and being shared with friends and family and neighbours (Standage 141). Paine allowed more printers to publish Common Sense (Standage 143) and through this, shops and taverns and coffeehouses were discussing and reading it. From its wide distribution and circulation, most Americans read Common Sense because of how it was distributed, which is very different from how something goes viral and becomes distributed today.

Kevin Alloca says that in order for something to go viral, it must contain three elements which include tastemakers, community of participation and unexpectedness. The meme I’m about to discuss contains all of these elements that Alloca is talking about: Jimmy Kimmel’s “I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy,” from 2011. There is one particular part of the video that I will be focusing on, which was the last scene of the video in which the child says “You Sneaky Mom!” and instantly became highly talked about. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQpbzQ6gzs

Jimmy Kimmel, as we discussed in class and mentioned in Kevin Alloca’s TED talk, is a tastemaker. Kimmel earned his position as a tastemaker because he is a broadcast television host and therefore he has the power to act as a gatekeeper in the media. Jimmy Kimmel introduced us to the video and it became seriously popular and people were continuously sharing the video through a variety of media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter and through this, users become a part of the phenomenon by sharing and participating. Some users decided to try the video out on their own children by telling them that they ate all of their Halloween candy and recording their reactions. This video and this meme featured virality because of how fast it was spread within social networks, leading to a large group of people being exposed to it.

The first articulation is about creation and production, distribution and circulation, and consumption and reception. Creation and production are not the same thing and Paine created Common Sense but he gave other people the power to produce it in order for it to go viral. Same with the Sneaky Mom video because Jimmy Kimmel did not create the video. He made a compilation of all of the individual videos, but he is more so responsible for the production of the video. Both Common Sense and Sneaky Mom were distributed and circulated through different ways, one through the passing from an individual to another individual, and one through social media and social platforms and they both were consumed by many which lead to the process of reception.

The second articulation is concerned with the mode of communication, the mode of affect, and the mode of accumulation. The mode of affect is about emotion and Paine’s Common Sense definitely stirred emotions in readers and as viewers, we see how the mode of affect is apparent in the “Sneaky Mom” meme because we get a feeling of cuteness from seeing it.

As we can see with Paine’s Common Sense and “Sneaky Mom,” the virality of social media in the 18th century was very different from the virality of social media now, but they still have some elements in common.