Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Amazing Blog Post

In his book Rewriting, Joseph Harris coins the term "forwarding."  He defines it as taking a work, and rewriting it for a new audience.  At the beginning of the chapter, he quotes Kenneth Burke talking about a conversation that continuously gains new people in the middle and compares it to academic writing.  My first thought when I read this was that it sounded a lot like myths.  The old "classic" tales get retold over and over again until the original story almost disappears into it.

When thinking about forwarding, only one thing really came to mind.  I realized a good modern example of forwarding is the entire concept of a meme.  For example, the YouTuber known as saraj00n forwarded two pieces of work by Chris Torres and Daniwell-P when he created the video we know today as Nyan Cat [cite].  The idea of a meme directly relate to forwarding.  When someone likes something, and then does something with it, such as reposting, covering, parodying, revamping, adding/changing audio, remixing, or even just recaptioning (as is the case with advice animals), they are forwarding it to their own audience.  When a lot of people forward a piece (and the people who saw the forwarding forwards and so forth), it becomes a part of the culture (or in other words, a meme).  

Random fact of the day: the word "meme" comes from the Ancient Greek word "mimeme" meaning "something imitated."  Maybe an argument to make is that imitation is a form of forwarding.

Another random fact: the word "nya" (the word nyan comes from) is japanese for the onomonopia "meow"