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How to Make an Original Meme

Step 1: Create an image using software or a camera yourself.
Step 2: Put words on the image yourself.

Example:
His name is spot.jpg

Simple!

So why not just do it the honest way?

What good are those rewards when you get sued by those assholes who work for the big media corporations?


Just adding this bit in:

I checked the dmania tag under the 'new' tab. As of this writing, based on the past two hours... clearly, not many are interested in these meme posts. Maybe some are, but I'm only seeing 1 or 2 votes on majority of those posts and a lot of $0's. Two hours worth of dmania posts. Hardly any views or votes. I think that says a lot about the true value.

Hmmmm, https://reddit.com/r/dankmemes

It may be something accepted by the whole of society, but it doesn't make it right. However, it's not something that can be demanded of every memer, since memes were born from unattributed modification and usage.

They were also being passed around for free. Nobody was getting paid. I recently read how the owner of the grumpy cat photos was rewarded nearly 1 million dollars in a lawsuit of sorts. That money has to come from somewhere. Since money is now involved here, it's a slippery slope. Since some of us use pseudonyms and can't be easily tracked down, those lawyers who make a living looking for ways to sue people would just go straight to Dmania. If you're running a business, it's only common sense to have all of your ducks in a row.

It's not a business.

It's an Entertainment, it's an Education, it's Community Forums and more than anything it's a Co-Op.

Copyright infringement doesn't have to be profitable for it to be copyright infringement. Money needn't be involved at all. You're right that people often don't take interest until money is involved, but it's still copyright infringment to steal Grumpy Cat's likeness whether you're getting 10 SBD from it or whether you're getting 100 karma on reddit.

You don't steal the Intangible, it's reproducible without any effort on your part, when you Make up a Dance and then claim that others owe you credit, however small or it's "copyright infringement" they can roll their eyes knowing that monopolizing ideas is counter to freedom of expression and let you try to extort them for expressing an idea.

I agree philosophically, but that's not how law in the USA works. You and I might roll our eyes to see posting unlicensed Grumpy Cat memes be considered a form of "stealing", but that's how intellectual property law works.

I don't think the law says "stealing". Copyright laws have words that make more sense for the topic, such as unauthorised copying, reproduction, unlicensed distribution, etc.

Yeah, that's why you have to keep it PLAIN because Unauthorized copying means Stealing. Or when the judge calls you up you ask him to his face if he could clarify what unauthorized copying means, because it's clearly Stealing of Work. Licenses by definition are there to allow people to do what otherwise is ILLEGAL AND UNLAWFUL (both).

Tell that to @grumpycat LOL

So what do I care, those are PRIVATE LAWS. Read the fine print, you think Citizen and Sovereign could ever describe the same thing?

USA be damned!! Another faceless corporation

Check artopium's response below for a lawyer's view on the image plagiarism issue.

I still believe original content producers should be rewarded while the plagiarists get nothing. There's enough bad press about anything cryptocurrency related. Some people still think it's a dark web tool to purchase guns and drugs. We don't need to follow the same road as napster when we already know the outcome. That's the part I think @artopium is missing. Lawyers step in, the media steps in, the place gets a bad name, all of these investors lose. It's simple stuff and we've already seen what happens in the past.

I agree with your view. It would suck for that to happen to Steem and to the blockchain in general. But today we're in the age of uncensorship, whistleblowers, freedom of information, insurgent journalism. This is just the logical consequence and it is bound, regardless of our choices today, to keep growing in that direction.

And it will be accepted by the hivemind because it will theoretically allow journalists to publish undeletable work, uncensorable words. Imagine a perfect Wikileaks or a clearnet Tor. I think that's where Steem leads no matter the efforts toward cleansing the improper content.

I myself am working on a search tool for the blockchain. It's not advanced at all, but it would allow to get low rep and high rep results equally. Votes would not matter much in the end if this succeeds.

Those journalists would be publishing original content. I fully support having freedoms and the benefits that come along with a free and open society. History shows us those who abuse freedoms are the ones who typically ruin it for everyone else. People can protest, but as soon as someone starts smashing windows, they all get the pepper spray. That's an abuse of freedom. Just because the windows are there and just because they can be smashed, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to smash them. Embrace freedom, enjoy it, there's no need to abuse it.

Well, then memers may demonetize their work if them want to meme. Posts in the steem blockchain are monetized.

I have to agree here. Memes in essence are pretty much stolen photos/images that the creators (of the memes) have no rights to. These then spread all over the internet and it seems as if no one cares about the origins of the contents. Posting to Steemit however is different straight away, as everything here is monetised.

There are some good incentives here to create original memes (such as competitions), but they are overwhelmed by the amount of non-original/stolen memes. I have always disliked memes, but DMania is a new level since everything there is automatically monetised.

I think people view it as an easy way to make money. Posting memes (and those daily quotes which have just been taken off the internet...) is about the easiest thing you can do to attempt to make money here.

They could, but they probably won't. Rules are such a fickle thing in the face of social acceptance.

I agree @cryptosharon. Pointing figures as to who stole what image first is in and of itself a slippery slope. And to settle the debate: because I've personally dealt with lawyers involving copy rights as well as unauthorized publication, no lawyer will take any case to court unless damages can be proven. The prosecuting party must show how they explicitly, and monetarily suffered from the direct actions of the offending publisher. In other words, stealing an image and making a few dollars on it is not enough to go to court, even if it does technically violate a statute. The original owners have to demonstrate in court how this negatively impacted their own finances.

If Copying is Stealing.

of course no , copying is copy , and stealing is steal , good luck

and your comment doesn't say anything

I didn't say 'stealing', I said 'unattributed modification and usage'. I could have added digital reproduction, but that's obvious since we're talking about memes.

Therefore Unattributed Modification and Usage is in the context of Stealing Ideas, it cannot escape being in that context, or it resolves to be the UTMOST pettiness that can be demonstrated: To WANT attribution and Notice if someone changes your idea, as if you thinking of something makes it EXCLUSIVELY yours, regardless if it's a recipe, a dance or an illustrative representation.

The usual usage of that "notice" is not to tell the author that their idea has been reused but to ask the author for permission to use the idea. It is petty, but humans are self-centred and self-interested. I surely am.

as if you thinking of something makes it EXCLUSIVELY yours

Going back to research, Let's say I spend a decade working on thousands of monkeys, secluded in a laboratory in dangerous conditions, trying to identify the gene that causes early-onset Alzheimer's. Let's say I get a satisfactory result and write my words in a Word document in my computer. But there is someone in the building to whom I've trusted my thoughts and well, he thinks that he would probably get a nice monetary reward if he published my words first.

So he hacks into my computer, extracts the document, sends it to an editor, then to the Nature magazine, and here I am sitting in my lab, having used all my life for what I wanted, but I get no attribution for my work. I will spend my years in solitude while my friend spends his life in conferences and luxurious hotel rooms describing to scientists my experiences as I told them to him.

It's not a dance or a recipe, it's work that requires time to create. It's an investment that is easily devalued by the indifference of others toward the expected compromise of exclusivity.

The usual usage of that "notice" is not to tell the author that their idea has been reused but to ask the author for permission to use the idea. It is petty, but humans are self-centred and self-interested. I surely am.

THen you deserve the war, famine and hate that the world is filled with, reap it.

Going back to research, Let's say I spend a decade working on thousands of monkeys, secluded in a laboratory in dangerous conditions, trying to identify the gene that causes early-onset Alzheimer's. Let's say I get a satisfactory result and write my words in a Word document in my computer. But there is someone in the building to whom I've trusted my thoughts and well, he thinks that he would probably get a nice monetary reward if he published my words first.

Then make better friends.

So he hacks into my computer, extracts the document, sends it to an editor, then to the Nature magazine, and here I am sitting in my lab, having used all my life for what I wanted, but I get no attribution for my work. I will spend my years in solitude while my friend spends his life in conferences and luxurious hotel rooms describing to scientists my experiences as I told them to him.

Then make better security protocols.

It's not a dance or a recipe, it's work that requires time to create. It's an investment that is easily devalued by the indifference of others toward the expected compromise of exclusivity.

Why did you want to do all that research? To get compensated, get famous? can he ever STEAL the idea, do you go without ideas once he takes it? Can you not continue that research? It's not ok to go into MEDICINE, SCIENCE with the ultimate motive to make BANK from your fame, and discovery. Go chocke on a microphone to a pop beat, that would be much more lucrative, and let the people who invest their own talents into researching cures for Alzheimers do it simply to find the cure, and any compensation afterwards would be the icing on the cake.

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Asiide from plagarism why would i waste my time posting whe @dtube takes such a huge reward chunk. One cpuld just post the meme directly to steemit.

It's DMANIA Bruh,,,

Honestly if a meme of a video doesn't go viral then its not a meme. Its just a funny picture with words.

meme
mēm/Submit
noun
an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

everyone on this site is delusional anyway smh.

They need to bring actual meme lords here instead of trying to do it themselves, this appeals to no one.

maybe not everyone, but the vast majority definitely. I can count the ones I have met that aren't on one hand.

if I don't include the ones i brought myself ofc

Can confirm, am delusional.

Astute Observation.

Wow you busted out the caps?!? Trying to figure out is this is sarcasm or you really want to give a nobel commenting prize

The later of course.

Cool do just an asahst. Good to know. I so like your addition to the discussion "memes are meh"

So glad you came here to clear that up!

How glad?

Yep you are true. However people who post on Instagram or the like .. most of them do it for fun not waiting any financial return.

  • the lack here is the popularity !

Memes are Meh.

i like this anime

The thing about them being plagiarized is not true . Why ??! Because Copyrights and Patents Act clearly states that it is not a breach if the content is used for purposes of humour . Dmania is all about humour and having fun which relates to what I just said . It is not a plagiarism if is used for this sole purpose . I do agree that it might be better to give credits to those who made it .

It's a waste of resources having ONE meme spammed countless times on this blockchain. We don't allow others to copy posts from the trending page to their blog in an attempt to earn. You wouldn't be impressed if you wrote a blog post and someone copied it and ended up earning more than you. Here, we're given the opportunity to create, publish and get paid for our efforts. People can create memes for free and pass them around or they can come here, create a meme, get paid for being original if people enjoy it, then pass it around on other social media. This place can be used as a tool, not a dumping ground for people looking to make money from another's efforts. It is considered plagiarism to take someone else's creation and attempt to earn money here. Like I said, just do it the honest way. It's not hard and you get paid more than you would if you created the meme anywhere else. Why people are arguing this common sense is beyond me.

Yeah , I know what you mean . Memes are constantly being spammed . Most of these are not worth more than $0.01 but some do get constant $2 or more which is quite disturbing . I am trying to learn on how to properly create content but it's actually hard with no specific guidelines . I do see some people trying to give such valuable information but it is still quite insufficient . The other side is that people are way too lazy.

The same thing happens everywhere on steem. Don't blame the tools, blame those who will not flag and the bad actors.

I like dmania.

Blame those who won't waste their voting power (earning potential) to consistently flag trash that is upvoted by one service mainly supported by the CEO of Steemit? Sure.

I like dmaina. I'm staking them because I think they have a pretty good strategy on rewards distribution. It can't be done perfectly and I get it when there are examples of rewards going to people who didn't create the original content.

I'm curious, have you read their faq?

https://dmania.lol/faq

You get it that they're taking advantage of the community, earning rewards, by upvoting and rewarding stolen content?

A useful service would be one that takes the time to reward users and content that have been verified as original, especially when those users are earning $40+ for a single image, with @dmania taking a decent cut of each of those.

I have not read their FAQ, nor is there any way for them to try to explain their way around laziness and dishonesty.

Well, it's about scalability. They can't manually look at each piece of content. They had 1,500 posts to look at today, almost 1,700 yesterday. If their automation has a few bad hits, I see that as an acceptable trade for competing with the other free services.

Are you looking for a perfect record or is there an acceptable level you'd be able to overlook?

Rewarding $2 to someone who stole an image...sure, I can live with that. But, rewarding someone $40+ for that is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

There are VERY FEW memes that deserve anything near $40, if I had the time to do a reverse image search on all of them to pull numbers I would, but I've seen enough to know it's a problem.

Well, I think that's fair. I'm sure they could stand to tighten up their requirements more than they already have.

Or, not give out ridiculous rewards to unverified content. Especially when an original meme takes about 1 minute to create.

I buy the angle you are coming from especially with them possibly taking a big chunk of the earnings. It's pure daylight robbery and worst, no credit at least is given to the creator. I'll also add incompetence to laziness and dishonesty.

How is it any better or worse than what is happening on Trending?

We can all watch the same 12 people (accounts change sometimes) get all of the rewards. Or we can watch some people who are "Undeserving" in some way get the rewards. I don't like it and I can get triggered by it, but I guess if those are my options I would lean towards distribution.

I poke you sometimes and disagree with you, but I never doubt that you are investing time and thought into Steem. Thanks for that... Even when you disagree with me! lol.

It's not any better or worse, it's just another form of abuse that needs some attention. You know I've touched on the Trending page in the past and will likely go there again.

Okay, that is fair.

Here are a few positives for them.
They are upvoting a variety of people.
They are trying to address self-upvoting
They are doing a better job of spreading the Steem around.

I agree some shitty stuff makes it through their process.

I agreed .

seconded!

If you do it, I hope you publish the results.

I lol’d pretty hard at this.

I think this is meme worthy.

yer my fav. you crack me up.

thirded!!

Here are all the original memes I've made that haven't caught much traction. Thanks for inspiring me to make another one. I just shared the one I just made to my wall. Here are the rest.

25pe5u.jpg
cat.png
dankmemes.png

I actually hadn't shared that top one yet. Hopefully it gets some upvotes here :)

Thats weird because ive seen it before...

Unless someone else had the same idea, I kinda doubt it. I've not shared it yet and my wife watched me make it so I have a witness lol

All of my memes are original, any likenesses are because I'm a stoner and probably forgot I saw it before...

Yeah, how come NOBODY ever makes a fuss over this issue? It's very blatant and in your face it's disgusting. The circle-jerkers know it and we know it, yet we put our heads in the sand. There should be a variety of content on TRENDING, not the same Self-Voters and Circle-Jerkers.

Sheer waste of delegated SP which can go to a better project like Utopian. Dtube is going to have trouble too because people are copy-pasting videos.

But some grops/communities/curation efforts specifically unvote/unreward and flag posts that we find to be plagiarism.

Manual curation efforts (like steemstem which is unsupported by @ned and steemit.inc) work to prevent plagiarized work on steemit (and we report a lot of posts to steemcleaners along with throwing flags of our own) and yet dmania, something supported to hell and high water, doesn't seem to do anything about its plagiarism problem. If people want steemit to succeed then it will take more than just whales expecting minnows to flag plagiarized posts that were voted by whale accounts... And the tools should take the due-diligence and unvote content when it is made aware of plagiarism.

Ned is pushing too much for wide usage of steem token. But the fundamentals weren't well managed. We are still stuck with the ancient UI to write a fucking post. How hard is it to introduce a great tool to write a freaking post? Is this even a place to blog? who the fuck still type html syntax just to make your image pull right or left. This is absurd. And you're trying to push for a bigger market. @ned please stick to the core of steemit! A freaking blogging site! Get your fundamentals right and people will come naturally. Do support all those curators who help you to maintain this platform!

I agree manual curation would be the best.
I am still happy steem is using their stake to promote distribution.
Curation also allows for downvoting.

I don't think the success or failure of steem has much to do with Plagiarism at all. It is just an opinion though.

Whales prefer rich, ass kissers and whores, Just like the elites and banksters of the "Central Banking System"

That seems kind of harsh.

Lol, but I do get what he is saying. It's really hard to get some whale attention, let alone upvotes! And most of the time the ass kissers and "whores" get the upvotes... Really!

true, i just got flagged for speaking the truth.. now you know what happens? its just like the real world here..

What world did you expect to be in?

Blockchain especially steemit was created for like minded people who are against the govts. i guess one can never change the human nature of the majority..

I thought all those like-minded people and those who are the "majority" all lived in the same real world.

I'm just messing with you.

Delegations create subsidies, subsidies are not always a good thing. Delegations appear to continue to be allocated in a very hands-off manner, and steemit inc does not seem to have changed their stance on never writing up a written contract for anyone receiving a delegation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe there are actually hard requirements for any of the delegated parties to submit anything remotely resembling transparency reports of what they're doing with the delegations and how they go about doing things, other than voluntarily releases of information on their administrative activities.

That's problematic because so many of the issues revolving around the delegations in the past and present could have been prevented in the first place if they were to have gone the contract route. I'm guessing it's a carry-over mentality of avoiding contracts and anything that smells ICO or securities/IPO-related so they don't get hit by any regulations, considering they're based in the US.

Are you suddenly expecting Ned to be the controller of what is successful on the entire blockchain?

I don't want Ned to decide what is worthy. And... I find him to be very bland. I want him to delegate to lots of people/projects for diversity reasons. I want them all to try different things.

It is an experiment.

I agree :) We don't need to be the bitcoin community worshipping the grounds of the white paper and Nakamoto, respect them but please do not use then as evidence they are made by humans.

@dan is Nakamoto of steem, @ned is the Roger Ver of steem :D whatsup @whatsup

So whos adam black ;)

hey @whatsup... noramlly I would agree with you however dmania doesn´t really give one any chance of stating where one has gotten the picture/ content from, hence it isn´t always the user trouble shooting.

If one would like to state where having gotten it from the only possiblity right now is to edit the post after creation in steemit... I dont think that it should actuall work this way.

While you make a good point, it is okay for a platform on Steem to make it's own rules, and you don't have to agree with them. The rules are clear and published on a site that works as defined.

They continute to tweek the bot as needed. Cut them some slack while they work on it,

Exactly. I fully welcome people to flag anything they deem unworthy of payment.

Arent you da chosen one on dmania bro?!

Not everyone have enough power to flag. And they may retaliate

I was going to say - this seems like a Steem issue more than anything. Is there even really a system to stop somebody from just copying and pasting articles from one user to their own account? What about on DTube? Is there even a system to stop somebody from just reuploading somebody's YouTube videos? I feel like this is something that is difficult to address with Steemit in its current form. Although flagging and giving people negative reputation help a little bit, I don't think that will stop it all.

Absolutely nothing. Could we create a repository of Tube-video hashes in order to have a resource for detection of the event?

Big issue with that is that some YouTubers have come to this site and are reuploading their own videos. You could have people who do so identify themselves, but that kinda hurts the anonymity aspect.

Even if you're creating content anonymously, you can link accounts by validating from one to the other. Suppose some big Youtuber puts up a video here and then from YouTube says that this Steemit account really does belong to him, then we know. It would be good to have some kind of standard machine readable format. That way Bernie's bot army doesn't flag an author who posts in both Steemit and somewhere else

Exactly, i agree with you.

and not only on Steemit in general. Pretty much on every social network site or community.

What is steemit can you tell me?

Dmania itself is a Joke when it comes to voting distribution.I can understand they can't view and vote every post manually, but they should have applied voling algorithm like busy? that way every meme(whether copied or not) has chances to get at least some votes/rewards, fair enough?

In my opinion, the bot should vote every post in an equal/ or rational manner, for something like meme it's completely fair distribution.And this can encourage more users too. But right now as I said Dmania itself is a joke, there are many better projects to fund with that huge amount of SP when it hasn't used in right way.

Typing in bold for a whole paragraph is a joke. Saying something is a joke doesn't make it so.

opiniona6.jpg

I hope you got your satisfaction. Cheers!

dmania is the least of steem's problems.. Crap like this hurts steemit worse. A new person finds steemit gets stoked post their introduction to only have it spammed by a bot with out even an upvote.. and then the spam comment gets a better payout than the new person post.. Yeah that's the first impression I would have wanted..

Proof

Capture.JPG

at this point do you have any hope of getting ned to actually help the platform?

After 2.5 years and absolutely nothing to show for it other than a more jacked up site than when it was released? Nope.

He hasn't even posted here in over 2 weeks... What kind of CEO doesn't use the product he's allegedly trying to improve? (Hint: One who got what he wants ($$) and doesn't give a shit.)

in that case I think convincing him to step down as the leader may be the best option, although I have no idea how we can get that to happen.

(Maybe allow him to keep his stake, so he ends up making more money without effort?)

Sounds like @ned's totally got the "shitcoin dev" mentality: just here for the cash grab; then, peace out.

It's sometimes worse than 9gag itself but sometimes it's good. I think it would be great if there weren't so many stolen memes though...

From Steemit blockchain, everyone tries to pull rewards as much as possible, and dMania is no exception. I would not blame it; it's human nature to earn easy money. It happens everywhere and anyone WILL do it if get a chance.

Do someone differ reposts from plagiarizm here?

Okay.
I'll try.

All this and to say nothing of the fact that hundreds of users post content to that service and never get an upvote from the "bot" while a circle of regulars are constantly making those $40 rewards on stupid memes, and the dev makes sure to upvote everything he puts out with 100% vote too.

These "services" are all just skimming as much of the pie as they can while voting for their buddies to get more rewards. It is steeminc condoned circle jerking.

Things are unfair in Dmania. Things are unfair in Steem. Things are unfair in the world. Things are unfair in your life.

Deal with it.

the best way to deal with it is to destroy the system that forces it on us.

You are a true anarchist.

I like that. Let order arise from chaos. Demolish every structure and let's all be truly free, right?

we must only destroy the unjustified hierarchy that arises from the state. That will destroy all of the capitalism around us and leave us with less chaos and far more freedom than before.

Hmm, weird to find such voices on a platform built by a dude that thinks that free market solutions are an end-goal.

Do you really think that destroying capitalism leads to less chaos??

It turns out, when you live in a system where literally everything around you is a market you have to use the fucking market. Anyways, it turns out stealing resources from others is easier than producing them yourself, so one of the few ways to actually get a foothold against this system is to join it. That is the nature of capital.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works

Everytime the state falls, the result is less chaos. It turns out people plan things better without the complete chaos of markets

There's nothing wrong with circlejerking if you admit it, but don't go defending seriousness afterward or you won't look good :3