Bait breakdown

Douglas Hofstadter proposed that memes use "bait" as an incentive to get people to adopt them. He did this in the chapter entitled: On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures in his 1985 book Metamagical Themas. That chapter included an anatomical breakdown of memes - which included the concepts of "bait" and "hook".

The idea of "bait" seems as though it can be usefully broken down further, as follows:

• Attract attention;
  
• Hold attention while pitch is delivered;
  
• Pitch;
  

There are two main ideas here:

• Attracting attention is a ubiquitous component of memes. Visual memes use sharp edges, bright colours, motion and sometimes reflective elements that sparkle to attract people's attention.
  
• Delivering a pitch often takes time, and memes often need to hold people's attention, while it is being delivered.
  

Search magnet

"Search magnet" is a conventional term in internet marketing. It refers to a co-meme which is effective at attracting the attention of those searching.

If using Hofstadter's terminology, a "search magnet" is a co-meme that attracts the attention of searchers to the scheme's bait. On the internet most searches are textual searches - so search magnets are often textual. Sometimes searches have a visual component - for example, where multiple items are presented to the user and they select one. So, we also have:

• Text search magnets - uses commonly-searched-for keywords;

• Image search magnets - looks visually interesting;

• Audio search magnets - sounds interesting;

Usually the prime function of the search magnet co-meme is to attract attention. However, it can do double duty - and be combined with the bait, or other co-memes.

Case studies

• Will it Blend is a classic use of search magnets.

  Blendtec's Will It Blend? viral videos combined many popular consumer electronics products with the Blendtec Total Blender in a novel way - by "blending" them. The show features the Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson, attempting to blend unusual items to help him show off the power of his blender.

  The full story is here - but for our purposes note that the result was a large number of short videos with names featuring popular consumer-electronics products.

  Dickson says that the campaign has been a great success for Blendtec:

  The videos were placed on the internet in early November. Within just a few short days, we had millions of views. The campaign took off almost instantly. We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products.

• Another example of the use of search magnets is Ray William Johnson - an internet comedian who is best known for his stratgey of memetic hitchhiking on viral videos. His YouTube channel has details. Here is a sample video:

Missed opportunities

By contrast, the OldSpice YouTube channel is probably a failed example of a search magnet campaign. The campaign may have succeeded in other ways - but they made hundreds of videos, and did a really weak job of sprinking search-friendly keywords into the video titles.

Payloads and penetration

Following up on my description of Hofstadter's reduction of memeplexes into co-memes, I think we can identify some more useful co-memes.

To recap, Hofstadter proposed an interesting meme classification scheme, involving groups of memes known as schemes - which contain cooperating memes, which are now commonly called co-memes.

The common types of co-memes are usually considered to be:

• bait - attractive incentive to adopt the meme;
  
• hook - promoting replication - being "hooked" is all about passing it on;
  
• threat - of punishment, to assist hook execution;
  
• vaccime - innoculation to protect against rival memes.

I think this list can be usefully expanded upon.

Payload

Memetic hitchhiking notes that some kinds of content can be divided into two parts - a delivery mechanism, and a payload. The delivery mechanism contains all the elements designed to do the propagation, while the payload is the deliverable cargo - part whose transmission is the true purpose of the message. It is usually some form of advertising.

Penetration

In organic biology, pathogens often contain mechanisms designed to bypass host immune defenses. The malaria parasite uses a mosquito's hypodermic penetration equipment to get inside its host. Many other pathogens rely on being eaten by their hosts - since the body's defenses in the digestive tract are weaker. They work rather like Trojan horses. For example many flukes get past their host's defenses in this way.

In the domain of culture, schemes may contain elements designed to lower host memetic immunity before infection takes place.

"Trust us" is a simple example. "I'm on your side" and "let me help" work similarly.

Sometimes a one-two punch technique is used - first the host is softened up with emotional imagery, and then the target message is delivered. So, many religions have a history of using young ladies to make their converts. "Booth babes" are a more modern example of a similar technique.

Reducing host immunity seems to be a concept which is mostly distinct from Hofstadter's concept of bait.

Immunosuppression is the most common technical term for reduction in the effectiveness of the host's immune system. Immune evasion is the most common technical term for pathogens evading the host's immune system. I want an umbrella term that includes both types of technique. Immune penetration - or just penetration for short - seems to be the most suitable term to me.

Junk

Schemes may also contain free-riding memes and memetic junk.

Agner Fog in Cultural selection

Another classification scheme has been proposed by Agner Fog in Cultural selection (1999):

• Bait
• Hook
• Indoctrination
• Protection against rival meme complexes
• Reward and punishment
• Taxation

Douglas Hofstadter's contribution to memetics

Douglas Hofstadter had a nice section about memes in his 1985 book Metamagical Themas - the book which arose from his Scientific American column of the same name - in the chapter entitled: On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures.

There, Hofstadter develops an interesting "anatomical breakdown" of the meme - involving memes, schemes, co-memes, bait and hooks. It has subsequently been extended to include threats and vaccimes.

Essentially a scheme is a collection of cooperating memes, called co-memes.

The common types of co-memes are now considered to be:

• bait - attractive incentive to adopt the meme;
  
• hook - promoting replication - being "hooked" is all about passing it on;
  
• threat - of punishment, to assist hook execution;
  
• vaccime - innoculation to protect against rival memes.

Hofstadter only really promoted bait and hook in his 1983 article. He gave some examples of these:

• Hook: “It is your duty to convince others that this sentence is true”;
  
• Bait: “The villain is wronging the victim.”
  
• Bait and subtle hook: “The whales are in danger of extinction”.

Readers of the January 1983 Scientific American column replied, with more examples of bait and hooks. Hofstadter attributes the "bait" and "hook" terminology to one of his correspondents, Donald R. Going.

Hofstadter's analysis stands up pretty well, in my opinion.

Bait and threats represent the carrot and the stick, which are needed to provide the motivation for action on the part of the host. The hook contains the component of the metabolic content of the meme that helps it to reproduce, and the vaccime helps the meme fend off competitors.

An exaample of a threat would be: “If you do not believe then you will burn in hell”. An example of a vaccime would be: "thou shalt have no other gods before me". This helps resident religious memeplexes to fend off boarding parties from other religions.

What else is there to say?

I discuss some ways of extending schemes to include more co-memes in my post on payloads and penetration.

Ways of sub-dividing the concept of bait further are covered in my bait-breakdown article.

Incidentally, the whole "On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures" chapter seems to be currently available on Google Books.

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