Watch It for the Meme

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
I see them shiver with antici... pation!

Just as Tropes Are Not Bad, neither are Memes, per se. True, they get old by the 9001st time they're played, but there's a reason they get played a thousand times and more. Who hasn't ever had some lulz with them?

There's the fanbase that has been ever since the beginning of the show, and there's the second wave that watches the show/plays the game/reads the book after exposure to the meme. It's not (most of the times) Viral Marketing, since it's fans rather than marketroids behind them. Think What's uuuup! vs All Your Base Are Belong to Us.

This is right before people endlessly repeating them makes it annoying and, ironically, may make you want to avoid it as much as possible. Related to I Read It for the Articles, Just Here for Godzilla, Come for the X, Stay for the Y. Spoiler marks are used in order to keep you from unneeded exposure.

Compare Bile Fascination, where people watch/play/listen to it for the crap quality.

Examples of Watch It for the Meme include:

Anime and Manga

  • Watching Bleach or getting a Vocaloid for the Leek Spin; also looking for more music by Loituma.
    • Misao's dialogues set to Ievan Polkka have surely added to the fanbase of Lucky Star. Too bad there's not so much of Misao in the anime.
  • Speaking of Lucky Star, most people watch it for Konata (after hearing her Gourmet Race).
    • Or her Haruhi impressions, or the other Gourmet Races.
    • Timotei!
  • School Days: A lot of people watched it only after hearing that they went for the bad ending. Also, Nice Boat.
  • Watching Rozen Maiden for the Desu of it. Especially funny since a lot of other characters, and in fact real people speak that way.
    • But not to the level Suiseiseki does it.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Viral, The Dragon.
    • Now that's Viral Marketing.
    • WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK THEY ARE?!
    • There's' also people that watch it for the Cool Shades, drills, Kamina's manliness, and the Lensman Arms Race which leads to mecha that use galaxies as shuriken.
      • Let's be fair. Anybody who isn't watching it for at least one of the above reasons picked it up by accident.
  • Pokémon: So I herd u liek Mudkips (sic) macros, as well as Fuck yeah, Seaking!, let me show u my pokemans and endless memes involving Slowpoke.
    • Speaking of Pokémon, the Team Rocket motto just never gets old. Ever. Neither does Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again....*PING!*
    • Deviant ART, in a misguided attempt at an April Fools' Day prank, changed every avatar on the site to a Mudkip with the legendary "So I Herd U Liek Mudkips" phrase going across the top on April 1, 2008. Reactions ranged from panic to rage to "That's not funny! Stop sucking!"
      • One of the "Why Am I Here" choices you can set for your profile is "To view pretty, pretty Mudkips."
  • Azumanga Daioh has piles of image macros and references which keep drawing new fans in. Two very well known are Bananaphone and Chiyo dressed as a penguin.
    • Osaka's "bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep" in AMV Hell...and Osaka in general.
    • And Norio Wakamoto's cameo as a cat...thing.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Film

"You remind me of the babe." "What babe?" "The babe with the power." "What power?" "The power of Hoodoo." "Hoodoo?" "You do." "Do what?" "Remind me of the babe." "What babe?" And so on...
No, I said "'allo", but that's close enough."
Hey, lady! Where you goin' with a head like that!
And, of course, David Bowie's crotch.

Live-Action TV

Music

  • After watching Caramelldansen, you look for Popotan (game or anime) and want a Vocaloid. The last one because of YouTube's related videos feature.
  • Listening to Nightwish's Ghost Love Score because of the Epic Maneuver meme.
  • Watching the video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" just because people keep trying to make you.
  • Going to a Dragonforce concert because of the one song of theirs in Guitar Hero. These days this seems to be a considerable portion of their listeners, or at least people who talk about them publicly.
  • Listening to Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" for "mmm whatcha say". Made mainstream by by its use in The OC episode "The Dearly Beloved", the SNL parody "The Shooting" thereof, and the "Dear Sister" recursive parodies on video sharing sites. Then made old meme by Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say" that samples mainly the memetastic bits.
  • Benny Hill chasing (or being chased by) women to the tune of "Yakety Sax".
  • Listening to the song Chased Through the Woods by Waking the Cadaver for the "SHREDDED WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAT!"
  • Watching the music video for Stick Stickly by Attack Attack! to see the guitarist's "Crabcore" stance.
  • Getting Erasure's greatest hits because you played Robot Unicorn Attack and—Always I wanna be with you and make believe with you and live in harmony harmony OH LOVE~
  • Listening to Lost Horizon's "Highlander" to belt that "Face Melter".
  • Listening to "In The Air Tonight" for the drum part. So you can turn the volume way up seconds before.
  • Listening to any song used in a "Dew Army" page on YTMND.
  • Buying Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" in case you ever need to channel John Cusack in Say Anything.
  • Watching the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 for Moldova's Epic Sax Guy.
  • Weird Al's A Complicated Song, y'know, in the bathroom.
  • Insane Clown Posse wonders how fuckin magnets work.

New Media

Tabletop Games

Theatre

"Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations." -- Orson Welles

Video Games

"WHAT IS A MAN?! [glass shatters] A miserable little pile of secrets!"

Western Animation

Step 1: Watch the episode "Gnomes" to understand this meme.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!