Forums / Discussion / General

TL;DR, Ben says lots of stuff.

I know I've answered lots of questions in other areas, but I thought I'd try to bring it all to one place. I will do my best to answer and tell you if I can't answer, or if I don't know.

My answers won't many everyone happy, but I would like to be up-front and honest and that's the best way to communicate with any community.

I'll start with some FAQs:

Why did you buy KYM?
I've mentioned this before to many, but we love communities. We believe that the future of media and entertainment is in communities who want to entertain and benefit each other. We felt that KYM had a great community that was really passionate about meme research and Internet culture, just like the rest of us at Cheezburger.

What do you intend to do with our community?
We'll invest time, resources, people, servers, and our attention. There are some fundamental technical infrastructure things that needs to get done, and we'll give James the tools he needs to get them done. Brad, Don and Olivia wanted more time to work on the site and we're working to provide that too. As I have said before, we bought KYM because we love what it does today, not because we want to turn it into something else.

Will you bring back the KYM video series?
I would love to. But we also want to make sure that it's sustainable. In other words, I don't want to just make you happy and produce a few videos and call it a day. If we're going to do videos, it will take some time to find a sustainable way to do it.

Who owns a meme?
Memes are owned by no one and everyone -- a meme by definition requires the participation of many parties. I believe that it's a gift to the Internets. We have not, do not, and will never exert a claim of ownership over a meme. I have been called the "inventor" or "creator" of lolcats or other memes many times (usually by journalists in a hurry), but I have always and consistently identified the creation of lolcats with 4chan, but many publications would rather not mention 4chan.

Why do you get to make money off it?
I get the exact same right as anyone else. Because memes are not ownable, anyone can do it. In fact, many people have made good money selling sites that feature specific memes to us. Rocketboom, a for-profit company created KYM and sold it to us, another for-profit company. I'd like to dispel any notion that KYM was some sort of a non-profit or charity before we purchased it.

What we're good at is making memes and Internet culture more accessible. We believe that Internet culture will one day become the dominant culture (over the pop culture of today). Memes and their central characters will become the rockstars of tomorrow (Double Rainbow Guy, Tay Zonday, and Rebecca Black, are just the beginning.) As we spend more time in the Intertubes and relegate TV to the background, we will take a more active role in entertaining ourselves and each other.

I also believe that companies like us are important to defending Internet culture from people who seek to suppress it. We have a vested interest in making sure memes stay free and remixable. Without that freedom, we can't exist.

We do frequently exert ownership over our trademarks (names and domains) such as I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, and many others. We don't want people going around pretending to be us or confusing our users.

What will happen when people from other Cheezburger sites come over?
I don't think you'll see a drastic change. There will be more people and there will be new faces. But KYM has been doing that and growing on its own for the last couple of years. KYM is on the verge of really taking off (traffic-wise) even without our involvement. Our resources means that you will deal with less outages when the traffic grows.

We run multiple communities and as much as we're associated with icanhascheezburger.com, the vast majority of our sites are non-lolspeak and not cat related. In fact, you'd be surprised to learn that a large portion of icanhascheezburger.com visitors also hang out at memebase.com. On the intertubes, people learn to adapt and change behaviors based on the expectations and standards of the community.

We've acquired many sites before and they have grown just fine without being overrun by people from other communities.

Thanks to the KYM community's work, traffic has grown and the servers running KYM are pretty maxed out. It will take some serious upgrades to handle future traffic. It's impressive what James has been able to do so far. But, we won't be sending over significant traffic from Cheezburger until some issues have been addressed.

Will you be adding more ads and do stuff like popups?
No. In fact, Cheezburger sites used to have far more ads (when I made the suggestion to buy Reddit, we were at our worst). I too am a user and consumer and at some point, I too felt that we had too many ads. We've been working over the past 6 months to remove the amount of ad space, as well as make them less intrusive.

Cheezburger does NOT allow: pop ups, pop-unders, ads that automatically play audio, and rapidly flashing ads. Sometimes, unethical or sloppy ad networks do sneak in auto-audio ads and flashing ads, but we have staff dedicated here to help weed them out.

Will KYM look like other Cheezburger sites?
I don't know. I think that there will be more similarities over the long-term as we know more about what works and what doesn't (in terms of features). I think it's more sensible to run sites that somewhat behave similarly to the end-user. But we also realize that unlike other sites in our network, KYM is very different. We want to respect that and make the difference a strong-suit.

Just so that you know, KYM is written and architected completely differently than other Cheezburger sites. Because its written so differently, we really don't gain much when we make them look exactly the same -- that reduces the incentives we have to make everything uniform.

Why do you add watermarks to images you didn't create?
We started adding watermarks to images that were created through our lol builder -- an accepted practice. Then, in our early days when money was tight, we ran into a big problem: hotlinked images. Hotlinked images are images that are served from our servers, but appear on other people's pages. In other words, they cost us money when we didn't have any while bringing us no benefit. We had a choice: 1) don't allow hotlinking and prevent people from enjoying the lulz, or 2) find a way to benefit in some way so that we can continue to afford what we do.

More than three years have passed since our humble and broke beginnings and I think it's time we changed this policy. Right now, we're planning on overhauling our watermarking system so that only images that go through a builder, or images whose rights are owned by us retain the watermark. Many people in the company actually disagree with each other on this issue. It'll be an interesting debate.

Will you be changing article to highlight Cheezburger sites?
Absolutely not. Editorial integrity is important to me. I actually have a degree in journalism (from Medill at Northwestern University) and actually do have some journalism experience and training in media ethics. If we compromise on editorial integrity, that's a slippery slope to losing all that's credible about KYM. In fact, I think there are currently some glaring loopholes and the system as stands is highly susceptible to gaming the system. I think we can learn a lot from Wikipedia on how to prevent this. KYM has been a magnet for spammers for this and other reasons.

We will see if there are systemic ways to make adding images or videos from other Cheezburger sites easier as we do play a large role in popularizing memes.

Will you try to clean up foul language?
In meme entries, yes, to some extent. I think that credible research also means being more professional. We are going to be sensitive to warranted and contextually important uses. Once again, I would look to Wikipedia for guidelines.

What do you want from us?
1) Give us the benefit of the doubt. There will be hiccups and as KYM grows, there will be changes. Just because something bad has happened doesn't mean that we're being evil, or trying to make a quick buck, or conspiring. People fall in and out of love with communities for reason that are beyond our control. For example: It's sometimes amusing for me to read emails from users who say things like "I hate the new XYZ you've added" when we haven't actually changed anything in months. It just turns out that people notice things for the first time and it appears to be a change when it's always been there. (I've seen comments on KYM like "are the ads new?") There's nothing I can do, but do what I think is best for the community. We're always listening, even if we don't agree.

2) Also, please give your fellow users the benefit of the doubt. The communities that fracture and die the fastest are ones that stay stagnant. Staying with a changing community is also no easy task, but it's better than getting stale. What you have here is beautiful, let's see if we can make it beautiful for more people.

Who are you?
This is a sneak peek into my life:
http://www.benhuh.com/2010/11/03/i-waited-32-years-to-vote-and-i-almost-didnt-make-it/
http://www.benhuh.com/2010/04/27/my-life-goals-explained/
http://www.benhuh.com/2010/03/05/living-small-is-the-new-living-large/

And here are my faves on Cheezburger.com:
http://cheezburger.com/i-can-has-cheezburger

I started Cheezburger (the company) in September of 2007 by buying I Can Has Cheezburger? (the site) from its founders. I had actually never been to 4chan before i started helping with ICHC. Once I learned the origins of lolcats, I got a crash course in memes and Internet culture and I have loved it ever since.

Much has been written about me in the 3+ years I have been running Cheezburger. Most are good, a few are not. It seems that the larger you get, the moar haters gonna haet. Not all good things are true, and also not all bad things are true. I also understand that the good and the bad comes with the territory. I've also learned that when I talk honestly with people, I realize that their anger is not directed at me, but usually stem from an issue that I can listen to, or sometimes, solve.

What's it like at Cheezburger?
It's an awesome place -- a company of 58 (and growing) who are passionate about Internet culture and our mission to make everyone in the world happy for 5-minutes a day. Very few people get the chance to shape an entire company after their ideals and I find myself in that fortunate few. I'm creating a company where I want to come to work everyday and a culture that puts users and our mission above everything else. And it's really hard to do that. It takes all my energy and concentration, but I love it. We come from very diverse backgrounds: pizza delivery, journalism, daycare, Wall Street, just to name a few. But we come together to do what we believe makes us, and others happy.

We sit in crappy chairs, dress like crap, eat too much candy, play horrible songs from Youtube too loudly, and often burst out in laughter at our desks. We have many warts (which growing company doesn't?), but we believe that the best way to solve them is to be open, honest and put ourselves in each others' shoes.

Also, we're hiring: http://jobs.cheezburger.com (mostly in Cheezburger West, which is in Seattle).

So, how many cats do you have?
None. I'm allergic to cats.

If I have not answered your questions already, ask away. I'll check back in a few hours.

I noticed in Emily's sales pitch on KCPQ Q13 Fox News that you're making a book based on one of your sites. Are you planning to make a KYM book and sell it?

No, that actually hadn't crosse my mind until you mentioned it. But it might be cool if the community got behind it. I actually have no plans for a meme-pedia book.

I am a bit shocked that the KYM community has not gotten more angry, personally I don't really mind KYM being bought.

I am more mad at the previous owners for getting rid of it.

Thanks for funding the site, thanks for bringing more people in, and I am glad you addressed the community too.

Terms of service has been fixed, which is nice, but privacy is 404'ed.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/privacy-policy/

Thanks. We'll get it fixed. It should point to: http://corp.cheezburger.com/legal/privacy-policy (the one in this footer works).

Thank you for finding that link.

Ben
I herd u liek mudkips.
What's your favorite meme?

Furst, mudkips.
Second, I have to admit, my first love is lolcats, and will probably always be lolcats… although there are some crushes that do come and go. EG: Tenso, but that was not meant to last. Also, I do love me some brushie.

OK, time for bed. I'll answer more/post more tomorrow.

So, are you partnered up with Photobucket?

I noticed you only have a gold Membership.
You own it u can has da Big Cheez

What made you think that buying up KYM was a good idea?
It's a nice place to visit, but I doubt I would wanna live here!

hi Ben,

are you planning on merging KYM with other Cheezburger content? for example, on Memebase, having a link to KYM (or use KYM's API) explaining the meme, etc?

Are you going to help make new KYM episodes?

Hi Ben. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

I, for one, welcome our new Cheezburger overlords.

I'm a little apprehensive about the whole thing, but excited to see how KYM will grow after this. :)
/me slaps Ben Huh with high fives

I have a few questions…

Will you change the rules for moderators?

Also, please tell me that there won't be any cheez currency integration with Know Your Meme.

Will it take too long for Cheezburger and KYM accounts merge? Is that in your plans?

Also, for some non-KYM related questions.

What's the process images made in the editor go through? I notice they all get watermarked with ICHC even if it's meant to be, idk, a Memebase pic. Do moderators just see it's not about cute kitties talking in lolspeak but of animals in front of stripes saying something witty and send it to the Memebase team/voting page? Is the mod team the same for every site?

Will you ever give the editor a dropbox or something for people to choose what site it's for and get it watermarked as such?

Do images submitted that are considerated innapropiate get sent directly to After Dark?

Will FAILBlog collectibles ever exist? Oh, If accounts do get merged, would KYM get Memebase collectibles, their own collectibles or no collectibles?

Did you ever consider making a Cheezburger Forum? I think that would be neat.

Are all submissions made on weekends dealt with on Monday?

Sorry for asking so many questions.

We have no relationship with Photobucket. Why do you ask?

I'll consider some creative titles. :)

Hey DTK, I answered it in my FAQ above:

Why did you buy KYM?
I’ve mentioned this before to many, but we love communities. We believe that the future of media and entertainment is in communities who want to entertain and benefit each other. We felt that KYM had a great community that was really passionate about meme research and Internet culture, just like the rest of us at Cheezburger.

Yes. We are going to promote KYM entries from other Cheezburger sites to help people understand the context and origin. We won't be merging the actual sites as KYM is very different than our other sites.

We may also pull in tagged content from Cheezburger sites (like the Magma video integration that was here before).

Also, see FAQ:
Will you bring back the KYM video series?
I would love to. But we also want to make sure that it’s sustainable. In other words, I don’t want to just make you happy and produce a few videos and call it a day. If we’re going to do videos, it will take some time to find a sustainable way to do it.

Do you intend to place more strict control (i.e, censorship, user bans, etc.) in this site? There are many NSFW (and some Really NSFW) entries that would seriously enrage people if they were to be deleted/edited.

Of course, we do not want an Encyclopedia Drammatica, but hopefully we can still keep a decent amount of freedom of speech.

On a side note: the new CEO has a Gold Membership. LOL.

Over 9000.

/me complains about the strength of high five, walk away awkwardly to the corner holding my hand in pain.

1) Moderator rules? I have no idea what they are right now. I don't know. But there will be an all-Cheezburger conclave here in the next couple of weeks and the Cheezburger East (KYM) team and all of us will discuss.

2) No. Nothing in the plans for that for the foreseeable future.

Do you like Ponies?

Q) Will it take too long for Cheezburger and KYM accounts merge? Is that in your plans?
A) KYM and Cheezburger accounts: Not in the plans yet. At some point, we will have to tackle it, but even discussions about it are more than 6 months out.

Q) What’s the process images made in the editor go through? I notice they all get watermarked with ICHC even if it’s meant to be, idk, a Memebase pic. Do moderators just see it’s not about cute kitties talking in lolspeak but of animals in front of stripes saying something witty and send it to the Memebase team/voting page?
A) Editor process: It's so complicated now. It sucks that it does that, but it's driven by the system. We really need to make it simpler.

Q) Is the mod team the same for every site?
A) Mod teams are different per site. They do pass content from one site to another.

Q) Will you ever give the editor a dropbox or something for people to choose what site it’s for and get it watermarked as such?
A) When we re-do the watermarking system, we will expect to give the user choices in submitting to diff. sites.

Q) Do images submitted that are considerated innapropiate get sent directly to After Dark?
A) Depends on the level of inappropriateness. If it violates our terms of service, we remove it entirely. If it's just doesn't fit the editorial guidelines, we consider it for AfterDark sites.

Q) Will FAILBlog collectibles ever exist?
A) We're working on FAIL Blog collectibles from what I understand.

Q) Oh, If accounts do get merged, would KYM get Memebase collectibles, their own collectibles or no collectibles?
A) We have no current plans for a KYM collectible.

Q) Did you ever consider making a Cheezburger Forum? I think that would be neat.
A) We're working on making the Cheezburger accounts more powerful so you can build your own groups and such. We'd like to build more ways for people to connect and communicate with each other.

Q) Are all submissions made on weekends dealt with on Monday?
A) Yes.

Q) Sorry for asking so many questions.
A) No, don't be sorry! That's what we're here for.

I freaking love ponies of this type:

BAMF! http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/

We want to make sure people don't see what they didn't expect to see (EG: Blue Waffle. OMFG!). We can do that easily by making the image hide behind a simple (Graphic image – Click to see) button. After all, there are many kids who love memes too.

We will have to conform to the more accepted standards of research, but that doesn't mean necessarily censorship, just being more careful and considerate of an audience eating cereal while Interneting.

I don't know much about how user bans work here, so I'm going to get a primer from the team.

We don't host images that are actually NSFW. This is what we use for Goatse.

On the subject of bans, there are a few official reasons to ban: Raiding, advertising, and being inflammatory. I think it would be best to ask Chris Menning, he took care of that stuff for a while.

ED said Cheezburger had became a partner with Photobucket, which is owned by Fox.

Usually I don't take ED as a reliable source, but they give me the worst of the worst expectations, and sometimes there is a bit of truth to the joke.

It seems pretty mild compared to the big deal they made about KYM, which started troll raids, etc.

I Googled it, nothing came up, but I was still interested to see if there was any truth to it, so I asked.

But than again I should slap myself for even considering ED as a bit serious.

On the other hand I found out Fox owns Photobucket, to my surprise.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9723934-7.html

LOL. Once upon a time (before I bought ICHC) they hosted images on Photobucket (like any other user). And they got banned by them. We do partner with lots of companies, I'm sure some of them are partly or wholly owned buy FOX. "Partner" in business terms can mean a LOT of different things. ED is actually quite useful and entertaining. There are some really good writers there.

Okay, well that clears that up.

I have acouple of important questions, Ben (or do you prefer Mr. Huh?)

Back in 2008, one of my GraphJams was used in an interview with the New Yorker. (I'm Brucker, in case you didn't figure it out).

First, I've always wondered if there's a way to link various lols made before I had a Cheezburger account to my account that I now have. Is it just out of the question?

Second, and most importantly, I've been waiting by the mailbox for over two years now: when can I expect my cut of that memetic Jewgold ED assures me you and Rocketboom have been bringing in by the truckload over the last few years?

Rocketboom never made a profit from KYM itself.

Q) Back in 2008, one of my GraphJams was used in an interview with the New Yorker. (I’m Brucker, in case you didn’t figure it out).
First, I’ve always wondered if there’s a way to link various lols made before I had a Cheezburger account to my account that I now have. Is it just out of the question?
A) That's awesom! You can add it to your current Cheezburger account and request a credit on the page via customer service (contactus@cheezburger.com)

Q) Second, and most importantly, I’ve been waiting by the mailbox for over two years now: when can I expect my cut of that memetic Jewgold ED assures me you and Rocketboom have been bringing in by the truckload over the last few years?
A) Let me check the truck… :)

I have one question.

I made an old Cheezburger account and never used it. However, it's under the same email address as my KYM account. Will these two accounts be merged or can I keep them separate?

They will stay separate. If we ever decide to merge them, we will let you know well in advance and you will hopefully have to do nothing.

Hey Mr. Huh. I just wanted to say that I'm applying to several colleges this summer, and I plan to write about you as someone who has inspired me and that I look up to. :)

It's awesome that y'all are buying KYM, and I'm sure that the purchase will benefit both it and ICHC.

I think Ben is a pretty cool guy. eh maeks memes aksesibul and doesn’t afraid of anything…

Now that you own KYM will we see ya posting on the boards casually, or will it be just to make announcements?

Thanks! Good luck with your applications.

I won't be posting that often. I normally don't post on our other sites either. I do make a very fashionable lurker, so I am here a lot.