Susanna Speier, “Facebook Profile Pictures Taken Over by Giraffes: Behind the Invasion” (The Daily Beast, Nov. 1, 2013)
“As folklorists have long recognized, riddles make excellent memes,” says Ben Zimmer, executive producer of Vocabulary.com and language columnist for The Wall Street Journal. “Their textual compactness allows them to spread quickly and efficiently, and their question-and-answer format encourages the receiver of the riddle to change roles and become the transmitter.”
Ambiguity is what makes this particular riddle so interesting, he adds. …
“Since linguistic memes often ‘mutate’ as they travel, the phrasing of the question can change in transmission, which can in turn affect the ‘catch’ of the riddle in various ways,” says Zimmer.
Read the rest here.