So, we're going to take a minute to talk about memes.

We love our social media community on Kartpulse. We use memes, in order to increase engagement on our social media. We like to ask you questions, and get your thoughts by using images that you like to look at.

Most of the time, we do our best to create our own memes. When we do, we place the KartPulse watermark on them, or label them with the #keepkartingfun hashtag. However, we’re noticing a growing trend of other Facebook pages coming in and cropping off our watermarks, and claiming them as their own thoughts.

Memes are a funny thing. Inherently, they are modified images that people take and place jokes and sayings on them, in order to get attention. It’s true that a large amount of the time, we don’t take the images that we use in our memes with our own cameras. Very few sites do, and memes are everywhere. However, on KartPulse, we try to follow some simple rules with our social media:

1. If we find a meme or image that we like that’s on someone else’s social media page, share it. It helps grow more attention to the sport of karting, which is really what we want to do.

2. If we know who took the photo, make sure to credit them in a caption

3. If someone wants us to take a photo down, we do. No questions asked.

So, when I see a site that’s just cropping our memes and posting them as there own, I’m not claiming theft, but I am saying that it’s “not cool”. At least, “not internet-cool.”



Basically, by cropping off a watermark, you are taking someone’s idea as your own. At the very least, you're taking the work that someone did to create the meme and claiming it as your own by photochopping. We'd love to have you take our memes and just upload them to your photo galleries. It's actually less work to just save and reupload, than it is to cut, crop and reupload. (Sometimes, very badly.) That’s plagerism. 

Now, I know that someone people may be concerned about a double standard. “How can you be concerned about people cropping watermarks off photos that you’re not even taking?” We’ve been talking about this amongst the KartPulse team. We want to make sure that we respect the photographers that we're using thier content to have fun with. It's a fine line, and we recognize that there isn't just a universal 'right standard'.

In the coming months, we are working to create a network of photographers, who we have the open rights to modify their photos for social media use. We don’t make a single dime of profit off of them, and we want to make sure that their hard work is recognized.

We’re trying, but we’re not perfect. We’re trying to make KartPulse a community space, where everyone who is passionate about the sport of karting can get together. We want you to like the Facebook page. We want you to like other sites' Facebook pages, We want you like the beta site (and thank you for being patient while we’re building it.) We want to see you enjoying yourselves!

Kartpulse likes to have fun with our social media, but we want to make sure that we're being fair with it too. All we want you to do is enjoy the sport of karting, and know that we’re trying to get people to have as much fun as possible. #keepkartingfun

Davin Sturdivant