It is almost impossible to find a teenager that hasn’t heard about memes today. They are an inevitable part of our social media experiences, and that’s is why memes may be more influential than most people reckon. Finding their origins in the likes of puns and cartoons, internet slang, and geek forums, memes are sarcastic and have the ability to turn a message on its head. For example, think about a demotivator that mocks a motivational poster and says ‘Never give up! Never stop trying to exceed your limits. We need the entertainment.’ Memes mock their message and their format at the same time. So why are they so popular? Do memes change the way we communicate and think? So what’s their superpower?
Cover Various Mediums and Genres
As meme culture grows more pervasive, it also becomes more complex. Prior to the internet, memes developed from poems, catchphrases, and cartoons. Today, memes reference various parts of culture, and they come in many different mediums.
The first internet memes were shared in text or image form. One of the first internet memes was the Dancing Baby meme, which spread by email in the mid-nineties.
But images and texts are no longer the only options. Video memes have a particularly wide appeal. Remixed song memes, deep-fried images all the way to Fortnite dancing in public.
Everyday slang and folklore
Nowadays, people use memes to communicate on all topics. Think about ‘grumpy cat’ or ‘Keanu Reeves’ memes. They are used to express surprise, disappointment, excitement, skepticism. What distinguishes memes from other forms of image-based artifacts is the strong emotion embedded in them. There is always some kind of feeling that the meme directs you towards – like disgust or happiness. Memes are subjective.
Dark Humor Helps with Processing Stressful Situations
While most memes contain some degree of surreality, they frequently address real-life situations.
Relationship problems, parent-child conflicts, and poverty are popular meme themes. There are also memes that describe the stress of high school and academia, as well as memes about workplace exhaustion. Meme culture also takes on anxieties about the state of the world. They give people an easy way to talk about shocking events.
Memes can be an effective coping tool. They give us a way to express difficult thoughts. There is a community element as well. Sharing memes can give people the sense that they’re not alone in their struggles.
However, there is also another (“dark”) side of memes, as they are usually referred to as “Fast-food media”.
Due to their high visibility and humor, memes serve as fast-food media. They are like cheeseburgers – highly tempting in color, smell and texture, but low in nutritional value. They feed you up a bit (on the news agenda), but you really need a decent meal (or reading a respected newspaper) to nurture your body and mind.
Memes have this cozy quality of inside jokes and community chat; however, they cannot unite people into communities if other ties don’t exist. Memes do not age well – most of them evaporate within days, but the points they make can leave a lasting effect on society and politics. In countries with censorship, memes can obtain an even bigger value – as people throw them into public discourse to send resistant messages and oppose corruption. But what if sinister forces utilize memes too? These forces can use memes to manipulate people and promote ugly ideas. At what point does a cozy inside joke become a powerful political message? What is clear is that memes are an influential communication tool of our society and that they are here to stay.
https://medium.com/@VEMEapp/the-relationship-between-memes-and-social-change-dbf168520eb
I was waiting for someone to finally write something on this subject 🙂
It’s interesting to watch something that started as a bunch of silly jokes evolve into somewhat of a vessel of cultural statements.
actually memes are in some way the type of art, art reflects what’s going on in society, they do quite the same thing. Also, if you think about it, none of the art formes (pottery, engravings, portrayal and etc) has ever died. Art is quite irrational process ( do we have to paint to live? do we need memes to live?), but at the same type it’s enormously important aspect of our society, including memes.
Very nice article 🙂 I think memes are nice tools that help people survive hard times-covid pandemic is a good example: creating memes and watching them makes people a bit less stressed.