Meme Pool

January 21, 2012 7:46 PM

Meme Pool
Meme Pool is a Tumblr blog that "evolves" new posts. Genotypes are post tags, phenotypes are Creative Commons images from Flickr, and mutations are introduced by the blog's followers. I wrote it in Python. Here's a more detailed description.

Role: Programmer, Benevolent Divine Watchmaker

posted by ecmendenhall (8 comments total)

I understand your logic and the meanings behind the name of your project, but some of us internet oldtimers remember the original Memepool as a group blog that challenged Metefilter way back in the day... (but dead since '08, so it would only be an issue to us 'internet oldtimers')
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:09 PM on January 21 [4 favorites]

Sounds really cool, looking forward to seeing what happens.
posted by threeants at 11:24 PM on January 21

Oh no! That sound you hear is Internet history whooshing over my head.
posted by ecmendenhall at 1:50 AM on January 22 [3 favorites]

Trivia: Memepool was created by Metafilter's own joshu, which inspired the personal bookmarking site Muxway, which turned into Del.icio.us.
posted by waxpancake at 7:45 AM on January 22 [4 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the phrase "meme pool" is an obvious enough invention I wouldn't sweat Joshu's dear, departed, loved site.

I like the idea, but so far the page is a bit spare. One thing I like about these artificial selection systems is having a lot of variety, like 16 images a day to choose from instead of just 2. May not work well with your intent, dunno, just my reaction.
posted by Nelson at 10:40 AM on January 22

Thanks, Nelson. I chose two per day to keep it simple at first, but there's no reason I can't change the pace in the future. I ran a couple extra generations today to make the page a little more interesting.
posted by ecmendenhall at 1:22 PM on January 22

Came for the memepool spit-take, stayed for the delight at the actual premise of the blog! This is really great.

The images-per-day thing is tricky with you using the tumblr-followers mechanic and likes/reblogs of individual posts as the fitness metric, because, yeah, it'd be more interesting in some ways to have more images showing up but you also risk flooding your followers if you're putting out a larger population every day. A higher-volume or faster-paced 2.0 version might work better just done up in a different framework entirely.
posted by cortex at 9:34 AM on February 1

Wow, this is kind of brilliant, in a getting-followers kind of way. I like the idea, and there are some nice images in there.
posted by malapropist at 2:33 AM on February 21