Paper: https://t.co/L2pcZyw2uS
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) March 17, 2025
Gemini with image creation, turn this paper into a meme: pic.twitter.com/igbATVaHfV
H/t Tyler Cowen.
Shareability
I find it interesting that “sharability” is one of the criteria used to rate the effectiveness of memes. Back when I was discussing culture with the late Mary Douglas we spoke of shareability is a desirable characteristic of cultural objects. Thus the paper says:
Evaluating creative outputs, such as memes, involves assessing aspects like creativity, humor, and shareability [48, 55]. Memes are unique cultural artifacts that blend visual and textual elements to convey messages resonating with diverse audiences [10]. The shareability of a meme reflects its potential to be widely circulated, influenced by factors like humor, relatability, and relevance to current cultural topics [34, 40].
A bit later:
In the second phase of our experiments, we had a group of people rate the memes according to three criteria: how funny they thought they were, how creative they considered them, and how likely it was that they would share them.
OK, so that’s how they assessed shareability. But they don’t seem to have attempted for find out what features made a neme shareable. That’s what I want to know.
Finally:
The funniest memes were mainly created by humans, while those rated highest for creativity and shareability were the result of human-AI collaborations.