In yesterday's 5pm class, the concept of a "meme" was covered off - a cultural concept devised by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe cultural ideas, symbols or practices (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme) which spread and evolve.

More recently, the concept of meme has become more well known in one of its many forms: the internet meme which in its basic form is internet phenomena.

One sub-type of an internet meme is parody and I came across a great example this morning: Surprised Kitty homages at the SXSW Interactive event happening at the moment in Texas. Surprised Kitty is one of the most popular videos on Youtube with 21 million views so far.

One of the TED panels encouraged SXSW attendees to make a Surprised Kitty homag and these are the results.

Here is the original video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

Here's the vid of the audience in the TED panel taking part: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5beta4AKZhg

And here is a link to the various homages: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Surprisedsxsw&aq=f