One of those If You Liked X, You’ll Love Y links on KahluaJ’s Painfully Cute post earlier in the week led to the video a few lines down the page with the cutsie wootsie soundtrack infectiously reminiscent of Hamster Dance or Magical Trevor. Raised by a family of highly educated higher educators, I was all set to rant about the contributions the Internet — or, more specifically, of people with lazy and/or slow typing skills conversing in real time by keyboard or numerical keypad — to the English language. Perhaps I’d even try to dig up the origins of the urban legend about the kids who turned in a term paper written entirely in chat (I suspect it began in Japan and bastardized on its way into the American frame of reference). But, no. It’s a holiday weekend and, all things being equal, I’d rather be out grilling meat. So instead I’m going to shift the focus to musical memes: just where do these infectious little songs come from? Luckily the source is labeled: parrygripp.com. In this case, what we have is a professional, independently labeled musician’s labor-intensive attempts at self promotion. Which I, for one, find enormously reassuring; I’d hate to think that something somebody just half heartedly bumbled upon managed to rack up 1.2 million views. Parry, it seems, has been building up an audience over the course of 2+ years, with some early efforts drawing in fewer than 20,000 views, and his/her more recent efforts, including catchy ditties about a chimpanzee riding on a Segway and a cat flushing a toilet attracting more than 1.5 million pairs of eyeballs each. So what we have in the case of Parry Gripp is someone investing the time in developing a set of skills, then investing further time and hard work in producing content, then investing further time and effort in promoting that content before sitting back and waiting for the clicks to start pouring in. Is that the case with other such purveyors of memes? Now I’m wishing I’d had this idea with enough runway to do some actual research and interviewing. Stupid publishing deadlines are cramping my style. Still, let’s see what we can glean from circumstantial evidence. Weebl’s Stuff has been cranking out fun vids with catchy tunes since Badger in 2003. Weebl (aka, Jonti Picking), would seem to be putting a fair amount of time and effort into his craft: while weebls-stuff.com was originally just an outlet for Weebl’s stuff, it has since grown into a portal through which not only the 7-member Weebl team post new animations, but which you, too can submit content including animations, games, articles and more. So while Badgers may have been a lucky hit, the slew of danceable hits that followed would seem to be the result of dedication and perseverance. Next on the list, Homestar Runner. An early breakthrough meme from the Internet to pop culture, Homestar Runner earned a reference to relatively minor character Trogdar the Burninator in the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, at a time when the beauty of cross-pollenating geek references was still new territory. A few years ago, I remember trying to figure out how The Brothers Chaps actually derive income from their media property and came up empty. Who knows, perhaps their independently wealthy. I for one say good for them: if Jim Henson taught us anything, it’s that there’s no limit to how far you can go entertaining kids with a talking sock. So then, what about ALL YOUR BASE? Here we have a sequence of funny-if-not-terribly-well-designed graphics orchestrated to a fairly catchy original score. In wide circulation since 2000, I don’t recall ever see or hearing anyone actually take credit for the phenomenon: it’s been largely credited to a group of message board contributors on Something Awful. From everything I can tell, this was indeed a chance occurrence with little or no formal organization. Wikipedia cites the soundtrack to computer programmer and part time DJ Jeffrey Ray Roberts, mixing a techno dance track out of game music and voiceover dialog from the game Zero Wing. But no one appears to have taken credit for the animation itself, referred on overclocked.org as “The ZeroWing Dub project.” . Says allyourbase.planettribes.gamespy.com:

8. The Flash movie/video is released with images from the threads and music taken from the origional game someone had added the phrase “all your base” to.

So, while clearly a great deal of effort went into creating and promoting the content of the ALL YOUR BASE phenomenon, it appears to be the result of a benevolent anarchy rather than a concerted and directed effort. I’m sure there’s a lesson about infinite monkeys in there somewhere, but I don’t care to cast aspersions at the folks who contributed to a meme that’s lived well beyond its shelf life. Koods to you all.