Early viral-web pioneers formed a scene crossing art, comedy, and network science

Evidence

It turned out he was not alone; there were others who shared his fascination with creating zany stuff that might, almost magically, erupt across the Internet. He got to know a man who called himself “Ze Frank,” a sort of self-styled web-jester. Ze Frank’s own road to Damascus had involved a web-based birthday invitation in which he featured, performing funny dance moves; it had earned millions of hits and won him a Webby Award. Peretti also met Cory Arcangel, a conceptual artist who, among other things, had made art that required him to hack Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers. Then there was a social scientist, Duncan Watts, who tried to understand media contagion with mathematical models. In these guys, Peretti found a posse. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 945

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A tiny 150-person community disproportionately created Silicon Valley’s early web culture — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 133; The early web’s amateur creators were a wildly heterogeneous cohort; Viral content spreads via concentrated network hubs, not person-to-person chains — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 188 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Viral content spreads via concentrated network hubs, not person-to-person chains #expands (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 188