[Work in Progress]
h2. About

A forced meme is any "meme" that is artificially created and spread. Rather than spreading through word of mouth as a naturally created meme, a forced meme made with the intent of becoming a meme and aggressively promoted by its creator. Most forced memes quickly disappear; however, some have successfully become a part of Internet culture.

Most forced memes are small-scale efforts by an individual to create a meme, but occasionally a company will attempt to force a meme through viral marketing^[1] or astroturfing^[2] in order to promote their product, such as Circus Afro for the 2012 film Madagascar 3.

A TV Tropes article^[3] on forced memes was created in August 2010.

Spread

Milhouse

Simpsons character Milhouse was the subject of a series of spam threads on 4chan's /b/ board in 2004 and 2005. This flagrant forced meme attempt spurred /b/ users to spam "Milhouse is not a meme," causing this phrase to become a meme in itself while the Milhouse forced meme failed to get off the ground.

Although the Milhouse spam threads have long since vanished (bar the occasional troll thread), Millhouse has become forever synonymous with forced memes. To this day, many attempts to force memes are met with Millhouse and "Millhouse is not a meme" reaction images.

Fuck Yeah Seaking

"Fuck Yeah Seaking" originated on /b/ as a forced meme similar to Milhouse. Now, F* Yeah Seaking is popular not only on /b/ but many other websites, commonly seen interacting with other memes. People still note the fact that it is a forced meme, but that particular history has faded through use of the meme.

Common examples of forced memes can be found as "gets" on 4chan. There will be a time when a person posts a picture, followed by "(#) get and this is a meme." If the get is a fail, people are happy that they won't have to deal with the implications of the get had it been gotten.

External References

^[1] Wikipedia – Viral Marketing

^[2] Wikipedia – Astroturfing

^[3] TV Tropes – Forced Meme