The Genealogy of a Facebook Meme

If you’ve logged on to Facebook this week, you may have noticed the influx of profile pictures switched from folk’s normal visages to those of celebrities.  Well, it’s Celebrity Doppelganger Week! And like most social networking memes, finding the originator proves to be quite difficult.

Some joker is inevitably going to come out with some story about how he came up with the meme at his office when someone told him he looked just like Mike “The Situation” and he changed his profile picture to reflect that and inevitably sparked a revolution.

But I have it on good record that in January of 2009 (MLK Day), I attempted to trigger this exact meme in order to combat the influx of invites to eat at KFC. Yup, just check the Jeff Goldblum photo that I originally posted on January 19, 2009. You can even search and see my friends who followed suit with their Eva Angelina, Lou Diamond Phillips and Julianne Moore photos.

Of course, I’m not taking credit since my attempt was an epic fail, there’s no real glory in creating a meme, and this meme is so simple that Mike “The Situation” could have come up with it. Memes take time to go viral at the exponential rate. Since I designated it only as one day and was not patient enough to let it develop like this week had. I deserve no credit (except that of a civil rights activist. I mean, I did create it to combat racism on MLK day and the day before Barack Obama’s inauguration.)

Regardless of motives, the meme is all in good fun, and at the worst, it taught people the word doppelganger.

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