That is something I'm wondering, and considering to make an entry on, since I learned a little more about the slenderman entry.
I won't lie: That slenderman thing that became an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with the Marble Hornet videos is, to me, interesting. Well, I find all those mysteries and speculations about what the climax will be entertaining.
That's when I stumbled accross the definition of an ARG and something struck me:
An alternate reality game (ARG), is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.
The form is defined by intense player involvement with a story that takes place in real-time and evolves according to participants' responses, and characters that are actively controlled by the game's designers, as opposed to being controlled by artificial intelligence as in a computer or console video game. Players interact directly with characters in the game, solve plot-based challenges and puzzles, and often work together with a community to analyze the story and coordinate real-life and online activities. ARGs generally use multimedia, such as telephones, email and mail but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium.
That theme was already mentionned by Chris in that topic when talking about "This is my Milwaukee".
From what I saw, this gaming system got increasingly popular since its debuts around 1996 and there have been many groups playing that game throughout the world.
So, does a gaming system that relies on internet to influence what will be going further on in real life qualify as an internet meme ?
Can a genre be a meme too ?