30 Rock and graduate students

30 Rock makes fun of graduate students

While the truth of this clip's assertion that "graduate students are the worst people in the world" remains open to debate, the real point of including this clip here is to highlight the ways in which media samples like this become part of the viral marketing of TV shows and movies. We can assume that the writers of 30 Rock are fully aware of the potentials of having their materials recirculated among fan communities and, in this case, by graduate students. A brief survey of online forums displaying the clip reveals a surprising number of commenters claiming to be graduate students who purport to be grateful for the public recognition of their existence. Whether or not this strategy is explicitly related to marketing the show, clips like this that live on past the show's original broadcast date are rarely subjected to takedown notices by the copyright holders. It would be useful to do a more thorough study of the ways that such viral distribution channels function as part of explicit and implicit marketing strategies.