One Meme to Rule Them All: Meme Team Picks Fave

(Sept. 5) -- The process by which a video goes from simply viral to full-blown meme is somewhere between accidental and inevitable. There's no formula. But increasingly there is a key ingredient: the Gregory Brothers.

The musical group (which is actually three brothers and one of their wives) has exploded over the last two months as it's swooped in early on the summer's two biggest viral videos -- Double Rainbow guy and Antoine Dodson -- and "songified" them in their own unique brand of Auto-Tuned melodies, and set them on the path to being the meme-of-the-moment.

The Brothers started building an audience last year with their Auto-Tune the News series on YouTube, where they remixed clips from C-SPAN, political pundits and Katie Couric (their favorite), ran them through Auto-Tune software and turned them into what they call "unintentional singers."

"We try to find the accidental hit single that needs to be harvested," said Andrew Gregory, who says he saw the now-famous video of Paul Vasquez getting all stoner gushy over a double rainbow in early July when it had fewer than 2,000 hits (it now has more than 12 million), and got the band in action. "When something speaks to me musically, I want to get to it right away." The "Double Rainbow Song" became a phenomenon in its own right, with more than 8 million hits and counting.

At the end of July, the Gregory Brothers struck again, even bigger this time, with the "Bed Intruder Song," a remix of Antoine Dodson's hilarious news interview following the attempted rape of his sister. With Dodson as a 50/50 financial partner, the Brothers released the song on iTunes, where it has been a consistent presence in the top 50 for weeks, and has been seen more than 14 million times on YouTube.

This week the Brothers, who are working on another Auto-Tune the News and developing a television show for Comedy Central (details are being kept cryptic), join Dodson and Vasquez as inductees into the AOL News Meme Team. Here Andrew and Michael reveal their online favorites, make the case for how the Internet has ruined the dinner party and confess to a deep-seated terror of a certain style of haircut.

What's the best thing about the Internet?
Andrew: Instant access to information.
Michael: Easier access to lolcat pictures. Otherwise, I'd have to make them myself.

What's the worst thing about the Internet?
Andrew: I will again answer instant access to information. How many good dinner arguments have been killed before their time by Wikipedia?
Michael: The ruining of awkward silences. Those are things to be relished and they're going extinct.

What's your favorite meme?
Michael: Trololo. I don't even have to think about it.
Andrew: I don't really have one. I will say I saw that when I saw "Double Rainbow," it was immediately my favorite video on YouTube.

If you could take a road trip with any three people, living or dead, who would you take, where would you go and what car would you drive?
Andrew: I would do a great American road trip with Bob Dylan when he was the age he was when he did "Blood on the Tracks"; Malcolm X, because he's one of my heroes; and who better to go on a great American road trip with than John Steinbeck, who wrote about it in one of my favorite books, "Travels With Charley." And we'd take the Rocinante, which is the truck Steinbeck commissioned for his trip. It's named after Don Quixote's horse.
Michael: My people would be Amadeus Mozart, Groucho Marx and then a translator to understand what Mozart was saying. It'd be fun to hang out in Europe where Mozart would go in Italy and Austria. And I think we'd just ride bikes that look like Pee-wee Herman's. If Gandhi spoke German, I'd take him instead of the translator.

If you had to enter a competitive eating contest, what would you want the food to be?
Andrew: Scallops.
Michael: Strawberry shortcake.

If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?
Andrew: Teleportation. I wouldn't have had to just fly to L.A. and back.
Michael: Andrew just put forth such a convincing argument. I'm going to have to go with that. What would you do with super strength? Just throw cars around? And you're a jerk and a showoff if you're just flying around constantly.

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How do you draw the line on who gets to be your "friend" on Facebook?
Andrew: I just recently caved. I'd only been accepting people I knew, but three weeks ago I caved and accepted everybody.
Michael: Facebook is not an important temple for me.

Do you have a recurring dream?
Andrew: No.
Michael: Sometimes in my dreams when I was little there was a really mean lady with a bowl cut and she would act really nice and chase me with a knife and try to kill me. That makes me afraid of bowl cuts.