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Our final performance for the class consisted of asking individuals to randomly form three groups, after which they were instructed to copy down a sentence starter and fill in the blank. Each person in this group then had a chance to build off of what the previous person had written by rotating the papers around their group. And thus, a co-constructed story was the result. 

Our idea behind the activity was to represent the three types of evolution we have been discussing in class; biological, memetic, and literary evolution. We each took on a specific evolutionary form to discuss in terms of the activity. Mine was that of memetic evolution. I thought the co-constructed story did a great job in portraying an evolution of ideas as it passed from the hands of one individual to the next.

Memes raise the question of: is it possible for your brain to be influenced without your knowing it? We had discussed in class  an example of how pheromones attract men, who tend to see the same female as more attractive when she is fertile than when she is not fertile. In this case, men are unaware that pheromones are influencing their attraction. Thinking of memes of acting in this same way, would the name "Jamie" (which was assigned as the name of the character in the sentence starter) have had an influence over the way in which each of the stories evolved? Could notions of male and female have influenced whether Jamie was perceived as a he/she, without the individual recognizing it?

Through this activity, I also see the notion of memes as parasitic. Someone began their story with one idea and began taking it in one direction, does that then dictate the direction in which everyone else continues on with the story? Did the initial idea that one person had attach itself to others in the group? I think to a certain extent there is not much of an option in this aspect since most participants would attempt to make the story flow in a coherent manner rather than jumping from one idea to something completely unrelated, although these are also options for how each story could unravel. As in example number 4 listed above as one of the sample stories constructed, while there are some details that are unexpected and may not necessarily seem connected, the idea of the cowboy hat was carried out throughout until the end.