Fairy tales have been around for centuries, existing for hundreds of years as nothing more than an oral story, being passed around through word of mouth. What about these tales give them such sticking power? And why do completely different cultures have versions of the same tale? The story of Cinderella exists in different variations in a multitude of cultures. What about this story makes it so resilient?

Furthermore, fairy tales have had a recent resurrection, in that the film and television industries have started focusing a bulk of their attention on reinventing these classic tales.

Consider Once Upon a Time and Grimm, both new TV shows this season. Or Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror, new films adaptations of Snow White coming to theatres soon. Or how is it that Disney tales are quite so popular?

 Why did this song go viral? From a musical standpoint, this song is terrible. Yet within hours of hitting YouTube, it was exploding all over the internet. This viral video has interesting implications for the culture of popular music, and says a lot about what people find entertaining. There are lots of terrible music videos on YouTube, but this one in particular went viral. In addition, the way in which this video went viral is an interesting study of social media use.

 A father put a wire on his autistic son who, according to school reports, had been acting out and hitting teachers.  He discovered that his son was being bullied, mocked, and mistreated by his teachers and aides.  

Instead of seeking legal action against the teachers on the recording, this dad decided to take his story to the Internet, hoping that by sharing it with others he would get justice and hopefully help someone else.  Chances are a story like this isn't an isolated incident. 

This is an interesting example of how nowadays the Internet and social media are used in place of existing law systems.  Making your story go viral can sometimes be more powerful than simply bringing a case to court. 

Today, for myself and most of my my peers, Facebook is the primary vehicle for making social plans, finding out about what events are happening on campus, and knowing the dates of my friends and peers' birthdays. Facebook "events" and calendars are so pervasive that it's easy to miss out on opportunities for true personal interaction when you're not linked into this virtual interaction social network.

 Caine's Arcade is an example of this new phenomenon where the Internet is used as a mechanism to garner support for a specific cause - for example, we saw this attempt with the 2012 Kony campaign. Caine's Arcade is a touching example of how the Internet can be put to good use and to unite residents of a certain community to make one boy's dreams come true. 

Discuss the popularity of internet memes and their connection to memetics in regards to human cultural evolution. Relate these concepts to their origins in Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" as well as their modern-day applicability and previous historical representations in human culture. 

Related purposes: Analyze memes as symbolic of status and trends relative to specific periods in human culture. How do they both represent, comment, as well as propel human culture and society? 

 Has the online community and online movement, such as the "who needs femeinism?" movement started at Duke, altered or reworked the spiraling relationship between power and knowledge at work in a discourse, if at all? Has gaining agency been adjusted or made more readily available?

http://whoneedsfeminism.tumblr.com/

This tumblr page provides video content to describe and illustrate common experiences that people have. The content is easy to read, easy to reproduce, and easy to understand.