16 Amy Scheinerman

a staple of Internet vocabulary, and a very telling term of the times. An Internet meme is any cultural idea(concerning fashion, technology, ideology, politics, art, for example) that is propagated through a web channel(hyperlink, video, website, hash tag) via social networks, blogs, email, news feeds, or twitter. Internet memes can spread astonishingly quickly. Among the best-remembered and innocuous memes are the Trojan Room coffee pot'’, Obama Girl", and Rick Rolling." Youtube has become the most powerful purveyor of memes. In the commercial world, memes are used to launch viral marketing, creating free“buzz” for products and services. Memes can launch new artists, musicians, actors, and comedians. For better or worse, that includes Justin Bieber . However, if memes carry false or inaccurate information, innuendos, or outright lies, they can reach a worldwide audience before anyone has the chance to vet them, by which time it is too late to positively influence many of those who have received them. Memes can launch myths, lies, and gossip, conveyed with stunning speed around the globe, and accepted as truth by countless numbers of people on the basis that“everyone knows” and“everyone heard” and“everyone received that email.” Examples include false equivalences, moral equivalences, and death panels.

The psychological phenomenon arises from a new sub-field of psychology called CyberPsychology that was spawned by the Internet. CyberPsychology explores a host of issues that arise in the ether of the relative anonymity, immediacy, asynchronicity'’, and lack of face-to-face feedback endemic to cyberspace. Chief among these issues is the“disinhibition effect” which may prove benign (such as the revelation of secret emotions, fears, and desires) or toxic (such as the unleashing of harsh criticism, anger, hatred, and threats). Sitting at a keyboard, many people feel both invisible and anonymous. Words they would normally never utter in public flows out of their fingertips on talk-backs, discussion boards, or by simply hitting“forward.” Professor of psychology John Suler'’ argues that some people go so far as to develop an alternative“self”— dissociated from their real self— on the Internet. Suler writes: