essay about memes

What Is a Meme? The History and Evolution Of Memes Explained

Over the past 25 years, memes have become one of the most dominant forms of not only comedy but communication online.

There's nothing you can't say with a meme, and they're used by everyone from Gen Alpha all the way to boomers , even becoming a tool for politicians and brands in the modern day. What used to be a niche internet phenomenon has now transcended, with knowledge of memes becoming absolutely necessary to successfully decipher the social media landscape.

The history of memes is long, complicated and difficult to summarize, but here's a very brief overview of how they've evolved over the past few decades, beginning with the meaning and origin behind the term itself.

What Is a Meme?

Defining a meme isn't as easy as you might think. On the most basic, structural level, some might define memes as anything that spreads virally online. This is true, but only covers the online aspect of meme culture. In reality, the term "meme" is far more broad, encompassing just about anything that spreads through human interaction whether online or not.

The term "meme," derived from the Greek word "mimema" meaning "something imitated," was coined by evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene , which focuses on the importance of self-replication in natural selection.

In the book, Dawkins postulated that not only does biological information undergo natural selection, but that anything capable of replicating itself would also be susceptible to selection pressures, like ideas and beliefs. This can cover anything from a theory to a slang term to a funny picture of a cat .

Memes go through a process of "memetic evolution" through which they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures. This process is arguably the most visible online, where we've seen memes evolve and mutate countless times. However, it's important to keep in mind that memes are not an online-only phenomenon, with some of the earliest memes far-predating the internet.

Even the word "meme" has gone through memetic evolution over the past few decades. Now, it's common to see it used as a verb with terms like " get memed on ," " well memed " and " memeing " becoming increasingly prevalent in online discourse.

People who make or share memes might consider themselves "memers" and those who have mastered the craft might call themselves " memelords ." We've even seen the rise of meme sub-categories and terms, like " dank memes ," " deep-fried memes, " "moldy memes" and " wholesome memes ."

This evolution of the term was not only essential as memes rose to prominence online but also necessary and unavoidable. It acts as a perfect example of how anything and everything can succumb to memetic evolution. So, what are some of the earliest examples of memes?

What Are Considered Some Of The Earliest Memes? (1920s—1990s)

Many consider Kilroy Was Here , a graffiti doodle drawn in various locations by U.S. soldiers during WWII , a prime example of a pre-internet meme that resembles what we see on social media today.

Through natural memetic evolution, soldiers saw and perhaps discussed the Kilroy drawing and chose to replicate it to spread its reach, turning it into a well-known symbol of WWII all these years later. As old as the meme is, it fits the mold of what makes a "modern internet meme" almost perfectly.

This same practice is done every day online: A meme page, community or creator sees a funny meme, they repost it, it gains visibility and this inevitably leads to further reposts and mutations.

Another interesting example is a 1921 comic strip comedically comparing someone's expectations after taking a photograph, to the reality of the photograph, as an early example of a meme format. This one's a little more debatable, though, as the image never gained significant spread until it was rediscovered by the internet.

In the same vein as Kilroy, the graffiti Frodo Lives similarly spread as a meme in the '60s following the paperback release of the Lord of the Rings novels. The phrase could be seen on bumper stickers, buttons, spray painted on walls, you name it.

"Frodo Lives" is largely considered a part of hippie counterculture, with Lord of the Rings being much less popular back then until the paperback was released. Kilroy and Frodo Lives are only two of many memes that have spread like this, with another prominent, more modern example being " The Manny Will Be Televised ."

Even with this knowledge of early memes and memetic evolution, it's extremely difficult to nail down the first true meme. With the internet being a more contained realm than the entirety of human history, you might think it's easier to find the first internet meme, but unfortunately, that's not the case.

While much of the early internet has been archived in some way or another, a much larger portion has been lost to time. Memes can start in the most unexpected of places, from niche forums to chat rooms to long-forgotten websites. We do, however, have a good idea of some of the earliest internet memes.

When it comes to the internet, there are two memes that are widely cited as the first-ever, but lots of people argue over this. The first is Godwin's Law , an adage positing that the longer a conversation goes online, the more probable it becomes that Hitler or Nazis will be brought into the discussion.

Originally, the law pertained to Usenet threads and first appeared in 1990, but it gained widespread notoriety throughout the mid-to-late 1990s.

ASCII art and emoticons might be considered another early internet meme. As a concept, ASCII art, the practice of making images out of letters and numbers, has existed since the late 1800s when people began making images using typewriters. In the '90s, this concept gained further memetic spread online, remaining a prevalent practice today.

The abbreviation " LOL " has purportedly existed in its current form (standing for "laugh out loud") since the mid-1980s, when it was coined on a bulletin board system, a primitive method of communicating online, in Alberta, Canada.

The '80s iteration was actually a memetic evolution from the days of letter writing when LOL stood for "lots of love" or "lots of luck." Since then it's gone through a similar memetic evolution as "meme," seeing use as a verb with terms like "I lol'd."

In 1996, the " Dancing Baby " became one of the first widespread, mainstream memes, based on a widely spread animation of a diaper-wearing baby twirling around. The meme spread through email chains and became so popular that it was even referenced in an episode of The Simpsons in 2000.

In 1998, All Your Base became one of the first widespread gaming memes, with the Hampster Dance becoming another dominant meme in 1999.

These memes were inarguably much simpler than the memes we see going viral in the 2020s, but they set the stage for what comedy and communication look like on the internet today. It was a time of experimentation and learning and many of the elements that made these memes prevalent online remain visible in today's most iconic formats.

How Have Memes Evolved In The 2000s?

Memes changed a lot in the first decade of the 2000s, which is when many people's ideas of the "internet meme" as a concept originated. Coming out of the '90s, we saw the language of the internet develop through acronyms like "ROFL" and "LOL" with trends like LOL ASCII spawning memes such as the ROFLcopter .

Celebrities and pop culture icons also started to become the subject of memes, from more absurd examples like Bert is Evil to legendary actors like Chuck Norris .

Viral videos also started to take over as some of the most dominant memes, especially after YouTube launched in December 2005, bringing us rapid-fire meme hits at a pace never seen before. Between 2004 and 2009, we were blessed with classic hits like Chocolate Rain, Numa Numa, Salad Fingers, Charlie Bit My Finger , Keyboard Cat and the still beloved trend of Rickrolling thanks to the increasing prevalence of videos on the internet.

During this era, memes started to seep outside of the internet to more mainstream audiences more than ever, particularly the ones born from viral videos. We even saw mainstream celebrities, including talk show hosts like Ellen Degeneres, reacting to memes on TV, displaying early signs of their growing importance in mainstream discourse.

Of course, image macro formats still had their place on sites like 4chan , with memes like LOLcats becoming incredibly prominent around 2005, but there was no escaping the hold that viral videos had on internet users during this time.

Then, in the late 2000s, Advice Animal and Rage Comic formats brought image macros to new heights of popularity, paving the way for some of the most influential meme formats of the next decade. We also saw the rise of memetic characters such as Slender Man , ushering in a new era of creepypastas .

Loss is also worth mentioning as one of the most continually powerful memes to this day. The meme is one of the earliest viral examples of a meme that became so ingrained in internet culture that just the vague shape of its panels became a recognizable meme in and of itself .

For the chronically online, the shape of Loss became the ultimate test of whether or not you got memes, leading the way for still far-off formats like " things that look like Among Us ."

By 2010, memes were solidified as one of the most popular forms of comedy and communication on the internet, at least for those who understood them. Doge, who remains one of the most legendary memes to this day, burst onto the scene in late 2010 and shook up the entire landscape, going on to inspire Doge comics and Dogelore as it became one of the most well-known icons on the web.

Rage Comics continued to dominate the online landscape early on during this era, bringing people comparably iconic images like the Trollface . Between 2010 and 2014, we notably saw memes like Bad Luck Brian and Scumbag Steve become online cultural icons, solidifying the idea (along with Rage Comics) that relatable=success when it comes to memes.

Then, sometime around 2013, memes started to take a dank , ironic and edgy turn.

Pepe the Frog , who had been around mostly as the " Feels Bad Man " format since 2009, started to become a widely used meme to convey more abstract ideas, with celebrities like Nicki Minaj , Katy Perry and even Donald Trump using it in the mid-2010s. Pepe also saw his fair share of controversy, getting embroiled in meme warfare with accusations of being a tool of the far-right.

Memes in the latter half of the 2010s became more absurd, relying on shock value along with nonsensical imagery and elements for humor.

Nostalgic animated films like Shrek and Bee Movie were turned into meme legends, Doge became a comic star, the most common elements of MLG edits became ironic meme fodder and, in 2016, Harambe the Gorilla was killed, leaving a permanent scar on social media.

It wasn't long after Harambe's death that Donald Trump became the President, coinciding with an increase in anti-SJW memes, cringe compilations and Karen content. There were a lot more memes and meme formats going viral faster and harder than ever before, and fewer and fewer of them made any real sense to those outside of the know.

This all led to what many consider the " surreal era " of memes between 2017 and 2020, denoted by formats like Lord Marquaad E, Ugandan Knuckles , the B emoji and deep-fried memes .

Around this timeframe, many meme lovers seemingly abandoned all sense and strived to create the most outlandish formats possible, perhaps in an effort to reclaim the "inside joke" feeling of early memes.

Some consider the early 2020s to be the " post-ironic " meme era. Many of the most well-known memes from the past four or five years, whether it's Wojak Comics, Trollface Incidents or Chad vs. Virgins , have a more cynical and reflective tone to them.

They borrow from tried-and-true meme tactics, such as relatability, recognizable iconography and even absurdity, but many have abandoned surrealism to focus more on cultural criticism as online culture wars have become increasingly popularized.

Depression has been a topic of memes throughout the 2010s, but it's never been so outwardly present in memes as it is in the 2020s. More often than ever, memes are being used to make legitimate cultural critiques in a humorous or inflammatory way. Of course, surreal and absurd memes still exist in their own circles, they're just not as desirable as those that take a stance among many these days.

One of the most notable formats of the 2020s was Among Us . The game was released in 2020 and became a smash hit thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic , reaching a level of oversaturation so mighty that it became one of the biggest post-ironic memes of all time. The memes were absurd and far-reaching, used to both make fun of those addicted to the game while also helping keep the game relevant.

This trend repeated itself with films like Morbius , which memers wouldn't let rest as a simply bad movie, instead turning it into more of a meme than a film. The popularity of social media and memes in general allowed both criticism and rampant embracement of these properties to reach new heights for better and for worse.

Conversely, beloved shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos became ironic meme hits as ways to celebrate them long after their finales.

Now, we're seeing the rise of artificial intelligence and what that does to the meme landscape.

Largely, people are revolting against it as it gets better every single month. Still, AI has resulted in some of the biggest memes of the 2020s and has become one of the most widely used tools to create memes as of late.

We're also really starting to see Gen Z and Gen Alpha's take on meme culture thanks to sites like TikTok becoming increasingly dominant in the digital landscape, which has made the rate at which memes come and go faster than ever before.

Memes are more varied than ever in the 2020s, and no matter what fandom you're in or what meme genre you're into, you can find exactly what you're looking for with just a little digging.

There's no telling what the next decade might bring in terms of memes, but one thing seems sure — memes will remain the primary form of online discourse for a long time to come.

For the full history of memes, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.

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Student Editorial Contest Winner

To Meme or Not to Meme

We are honoring the Top 11 winners of our Student Editorial Contest by publishing their essays. This one is by Kate-Yeonjae Jeong, age 17.

By The Learning Network

Image from related guest essay

This essay, by Kate-Yeonjae Jeong , age 17, from Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s Ninth Annual Student Editorial Contest , for which we received 16,664 entries.

We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.

Sometime in late February, I go about my usual routine: homework, short respite on TikTok, repeat. As I mindlessly swipe past dance trends and makeup tutorials, the unexpected catches my eye: shaky footage showing solemn soldiers marching, weapons drawn.

Immediately, I open the comment section to find users just as dumbstruck as I am. One proclaims, “I can’t believe I found out about a war on this app,” and thousands “like” the comment in agreement.

With that, most teenagers, including myself, first became aware of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the social media platform TikTok.

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ESSAY: What Does It All Meme?

This essay was written as part of a pretty dry structure writing class in advanced expository writing for classification and division. i was a student teacher at u-32 this past fall in the class when this was written. nate morris chose the subject of memes. if you don’t use the internet, particularly social media, or are older than i am, you may have no idea what he is talking about. i know just enough about technology to think this is very witty, but not enough to really ‘get’ it all the way., carla occaso, managing editor., by nate morris.

T he internet is an incredible place. It has altered the landscape of business, allowed us to reconnect with childhood friends and given us common (though not necessarily neutral) platforms to discuss our opinions with millions of other users. On a less serious note, the internet has developed its own subculture with its own tropes and its own humor. The staple source of laughs come in the form of what is called an internet meme. On the surface they can seem like simple puns or jokes when in fact they mean so much more to the people posting them or the audience it’s intended for. Memes have distinct audiences, historic icons, mechanics such as the “meme economy,” and oftentimes second meanings that put it in a very different light.

A meme is a concept, catchphrase or piece of media that spreads from person to person, gaining an audience, and with the endless stream of information thrown at you on the internet, memes have become widely accessible by all audiences. Examples such as “grumpy cat” or “rickrolling” have been adapted by all kinds of people, and thanks the the straightforward format of the original image macros, anything can be made into a meme. Everyone is able to use or create a meme, but due to how broad its spectrum has become, not everyone will understand a joke or even the fact that there was a joke. Ironically, in a medium meant to connect everyone, memes can be more divisive than they are connective.

Some internet users go past the base definition of memes, and assimilate with what is called “meme culture.” They dedicate time to studying memes to understand all aspects and corners of the meme spectrum. They see the term meme as the broadest descriptor of one of these pieces of entertainment. In reality, memes can go much deeper than what you see viewing it for the first time. There are subcultures of memes and subcultures within those subcultures.

To get an idea of how deep a meme can go, the perfect example is the rise and fall of “Pepe The Frog.” Over the course of its lifetime, Pepe has been reiterated the most out of any meme, changing appearance and meaning to the point where it has no core message or joke. Pepe became the apex meme because it encompassed broad portions of the humor spectrum. However, every meme that exists will eventually cease to do so, and Pepe went down in flames.

Pepe The Frog originated in a comic called Boy’s Club by Matt Furie, depicting Pepe as a laidback dude enjoying life. A specific panel in the comic shows Pepe saying “feels good man” when asked about why he goes to the bathroom with his pants all the way down. This panel was used as a reaction image on the internet when it started to gain popularity. Users took a liking to the friendly amphibian and began producing their own pictures of Pepe, building their own character over years of reiteration. For the majority of Pepe’s lifetime, he was depicted as a smug, racy frog with heavy depression. From this base, users changed Pepe’s appearance, keeping his general look while altering things such as his color, shape and clothing while making sure it could be identified as Pepe. These are called “Rare Pepes,” they’re referred to by that name because they are posted on obscure sites or forums. Pepe thrived and during this period was referred to as the best meme or the king of memes, until it kicked the curb hard when it intermingled with hate groups. The KKK and Neo Nazis adopted Pepe as a mascot and used iterations of him in uniform for propaganda. Around this time Donald Turnip also began posting pictures of Pepe in his image on twitter. Pepe was marked as a hate symbol because of his adoption by these hate groups and he tanked. The landscape of Pepe memes became barren as no morally-sound person would use them after what happened, and as a result the true Pepe fans got what they wanted. Pepe is considered obscure now and that’s exactly what Rare Pepe creators desire, allowing them to create Rare Pepes in peace.

All memes collect and converge in what has been dubbed the meme economy, a metaphor for how the lifetime of a meme works and its popularity. Similarly to how a new stock acts, a new meme is under the radar at first, and then it begins to gain recognition. It picks up steam and then spikes in usage. Then it plateaus before gradually losing footing before it stops being used completely. Some memes stick around longer than others due to when and how long it takes them to plateau, too fast and people will lose interest quickly. Too slow and its apex will be lackluster. The parallels to the stock market are strikingly close.

Sometimes, memes can have a darker meaning behind the initial joke for reasons other than ironic or black humor. A study showed that the admins running popular internet meme pages on facebook actually use memes as a coping method for crippling depression. Some memes would have double meanings that only dedicated fans would perceive, hinting that they are unhappy; others would straight up be ironic jokes about suicide or self harm. Many Pepe memes alluded to this and became a popular outlet for expressing these feelings.

Groups involved in the the “Rare Pepes” or the “distorted hood memes” take the basics of these memes and further its definition to the point where only those involved after weeks of following the way it changes will understand the humor it has to offer. The most prominent subculture is by far ironic memeing. It takes any meme and uses its first meaning as a mask for a new joke. The original meme will experience either subtle tweaks or a complete overhaul, rewriting the joke while making sure it still identifies with the original meaning. These people create ironic memes as a way to set themselves apart from the regular Joes of the internet, referring to them as “normies” who steal memes and don’t give proper credit to it’s maker, therefore classifying memes as art in a strange turn of events.

When you take a step back, memes really are just a way to express humor or opinions in a variety of ways. The people viewing or creating them all want the same thing whether they claim to be unique or not. “Normie” or “memelord” we all want to laugh, and memes do a great job with that, no matter how many layers of irony it’s on.

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Chapter 6: 21st-century media and issues

6.4.4 Messages through memes (research essay)

Alexander Caldwell

English 102, April 2021

The simple fact is that humans are social animals. With that in mind, anything social should be studied and learned about to ensure that humanity has an understanding of itself. Memes, without question, play a role in modern society and will likely do so for some time to come. While it is difficult trying to turn a topic that is not serious at all into an academic study, I find it most rewarding to know more about those short and humorous texts or videos. Memes make many people, I included, share a laugh and can be enjoyed by almost everyone.

Understanding A Meme

To get a closer look at memes, I decided to conduct a survey. The survey asked three questions. The first question, “What is your favorite meme?” Each respondent had a different favorite meme. Some of the memes were more popular, like doge memes, others were lesser-known. In theory, this question was not needed. Memes are memes regardless of how one likes or dislikes them. The real purpose of this question was to give clarity to the respondent. This question allowed the respondent to think more specifically about one meme. This is important for the next question that was asked. The next question intended to find out why memes are funny but asking that question directly would be too vague. By adding the previous question about what meme they favored, the participants could go into detail and have context for what meme they favor and would like to describe. That brings the next question where the survey asked, “What do you think makes this meme funny to you?” This question was what I was truly trying to get at. This question helps the understanding of why people enjoy memes in the first place. Many results came for this question, all interesting none the least. One of the respondents replied, “It’s straight to the point and the text catches you off guard” in reference to the “Mom I threw up” meme. This shows that the respondent enjoys the element of surprise and the simplicity of the meme. This respondent was not the only one who likes memes due to surprise. Others also answered in a similar fashion stating, “The randomness of it.” Another respondent answered this question in a different manner. Their meme is related to a popular figure, like Burnie Sander memes or Kermit the Frog memes. These responses followed the lines of liking the meme because they like the image or the entity that was in the meme. The final noticeable response was related to dark humor. The respondent answered, “It makes fun of something damn near cringeworthy out of people who like being “Positive” … in a way which is dank… It hits a lot of the checkmarks all in one package.” This type of response shows that dark humor reaches the viewer by making fun of ordinary objects in life and turns them into something that contradicts the original object. This information says that while people enjoy memes for different reasons, memes are successful at humor because of their relatability and their unexpected nature. The last question I asked was how people share or find memes. These responses were to be expected, many find them online and through social media. Popular platforms include Discord, Instagram, Twitter, through text messaging. With that in mind, memes appear to have a part in modern-day social life as they are a part of humor, social media, and texting.

While a survey is an adequate way of getting close to the understanding of what a meme is, a rhetorical analysis of a meme might also help introduce some perspective on what a meme is. The meme I choose for the analysis is one selected from one of the respondents’ responses and can be seen as posted on Reddit . This meme appears to have first been posted on Reddit in 2019, under the community of “me_irl,” which means ‘me in real life.’ The meme is by no means formal writing and was posted on Reddit to share a piece of humor created by the author. Therefore, the audience of the meme is others online, in particular, people on Reddit. The author appears to relate to the audience by stating that they were up late and wanted something to eat. It uses a sort of shadow-demon to relate to what would normally just be a human eating a late-night snack. This invokes humor because it creates emotion for an unexpected connection between the shadow demons and the consumption of beans. What makes the image even funnier is the blur and the laser-red eyes. This adds humor because it makes the image look as if it is out of a horror film. Yet, the topic at hand is only about eating beans contradicting the horror-movie-like setup. This analysis lightly suggests there are more to memes than one might initially think. It is clear that the creators of memes can relate to their audience and can invoke emotions by using memes. This leads to the need to understand what memes can be used for outside the limits of just entertainment.

One final aspect that is important to observe memes is finding out where memes come from. As the survey suggests, memes appear to be shared throughout social networks quite a bit. This still leaves the answer of where they originate from unknown. Luckily, an organization by the name of Emerging Technology, from arXiv, is capable of answering this question in their article “This Is Where Internet Memes Come From.” The study found out that a large sum of memes is being actively created in 4chan communities. The study suggests that these communities are mass-producing memes, many of which are politically charged. This goal was accomplished by sifting through millions of memes and tracking their origins (Emerging Technology). Knowing where the majority of memes come from can be handy. To elaborate, in my survey, not a single person mentioned that they used 4chan as a meme source. While it is possible that people withheld information, I do not think it is likely. Rather, it could suggest that if 4chan is in fact a major meme producer, social media plays as a powerful tool for disseminating memes. Furthermore, it could be implying that the typical meme off of a social media other than 4chan has been copied over from one platform to another.

Memes Used in the Real World

In the world at large, memes are beginning to be realized as an affluent force in human society. With that said, it is not hard to realize that memes are being used for different purposes, one of the areas in specific is advertising and marketing. In the article “We “Meme” Business: Exploring Malaysian Youths’ Interpretation of Internet Memes In Social Media Marketing” authors Kee-Man Chuah et. al. surveyed with the intent to help the marketing world. The survey was composed of fifty Malaysian youths. The goal of the survey was to get an understanding of what the youths would understand and consider funny. The results showed that memes with shorter text and text more related to the image of the meme were more understood. Chuah describes this relationship between the meme and the individual’s understanding as “iconicity” (932-941). Iconicity plays an important role in marketing as the more iconicity a meme has, the better off the meme will be at achieving the business’s goal for product awareness. The next step then would be to find out if memes can actually be used for marketing. Fortunately, in Harshit Sharma’s “Memes in Digital Culture and Their Role in Marketing and Communication: A Study in India” the answer is found. Sharma looks at a few examples. One example is where a business generates a meme for their products, and another is where the public generates memes on their own which gives the product publicity. Sharma first alludes to an old spice commercial. The commercial involved a short, quick-pasted, humorous scene with football celebrity Isaiah Mustafa. This commercial acted as a meme and was even spread like a meme, going through a multitude of social media. In short, Old Spice’s commercial meme was a success, boosting sales to 207 percent (305). It goes without saying that the meme generated by Old Spice must have had a high iconicity, which explains its success. The other use of memes the article goes over is public-generated memes. This example examines the two Indian drink brands that are complements to each other, Thumbs Up, a cola, and Old Monk, a rum. The situation proceeded when the inventor of Old Monk died. An image of a glass half empty started to circulate on social media with the text “This glass is half empty” (Sharma 312). An example of this image can be seen here . This publicly generated meme offered both products free advertising and publicity that undoubtedly helped the companies in the long run. From here, I must allude to the fact that marketing is nothing but the effective and clever use of communication to convince a consumer to buy a product. This hints at a greater picture of what memes are.

Another, even more, noticeable than ever, use of memes is in politics. It is quite obvious that memes are a part of modern politics, but it still begs the question of how memes are used in politics and what memes mean to the realm of political engagement. As it turns out, Vera Zakem’s et. al. article “Exploring the utility of memes for US government influence campaigns” has a few comments to share on the matter. Zakem writes that politicians have three primary uses for memes, to inoculate, to infect, and to treat. Inoculate refers to the action of sharing memes that try to convince the audience to have a lighter judgment on an issue that negatively affects a politician. Infect is the spreading of memes that support a politician’s ideas. Treat is the category that describes memes that try to rebuttal any negative information that is against a politician (15-16). While appearing to relate to a disease, the actual relationship memes seem to have is a tie to communicating to the audience. Politicians can use memes to advance or defend what they stand for. Zakem then provides an example of infection and treatment via memes as seen in figure 3. The article goes over a situation where a United States ambassador in Russia was accused, falsely, of attending a political movement that would negatively impact the ambassador. This was the infection. The embassy responded with a meme that inoculated the situation, thereby treating it. The meme used the same image the accuser used, and re-photodoped the ambassador in different places, including the moon (4-5). The situation itself is humorous, but it only goes to show the power memes hold. For the ambassador’s case, memes proved to be a useful tool for publicly defending his reputation. See this website for examples of the memes.

Continuing with the relationship between memes and politics, it is quite obvious that younger generations are taking part in political memes. Emma Axelrod agrees with this statement in her article “The Role of Memes in Politics.” Axelrod then adds that people are starting to view politics more like sports teams. These teams are then influenced by memes. The example that she brings up, among others, is the meme about Ted Cruz being the zodiac killer (Axelrod). Despite the fact that Cruz was not actually a zodiac killer of any kind, a negative demagogue formed around him. During this time, circa the 2016 election, even I noticed the zodiac killer memes and could not help but connect Cruz to those memes. Denying the power memes have over politics is futile. However, this is all the more reason to study political memes and their effects on people. Fortunately, the insight needed for looking deeper into political memes is provided by Heidi E. Huntington’s “Affect and effect of Internet memes: assessing perceptions and influence of online user-generated political discourse as media.” The article by Huntington follows a study on how political and non-political memes influence an individual. The political memes were generally found to be easily identifiable by the subject. The subjects viewed these memes as a vehicle for political stances rather than simple jokes. In response to this, if the meme did not follow their political ideology, it was contested by the viewer. In other words, the memes that were identified as political fail to bring in understanding, rather they brought adversity from the viewers (Huntington 186-187). This statement implies heavily that political memes share a message, a message that will be rejected by viewers of a different opinion. The study also talks about what happens to non-political memes as well. As it turns out, memes that appear to be non-political have an easier time persuading the viewer. This is in spite of the fact that people only saw these memes as jokes and not actual arguments (Huntington iii). Huntington’s research hints that people are able to interpret and respond to a meme. The implications here are that while political memes do not always achieve their goal, they are still able to elicit a response. Interestingly enough, non-political memes seem to hold a coinciding power, only in the case of non-political memes, people do not reject the message being sent.

Memes’ Meaning to Human Communication

It is clear now that memes have many different purposes. Memes play a role in politics, business, and general entertainment. A linking trait between all three topics is that memes seem to serve as a sort of medium for communication. One might even be so bold as to conclude that memes and communication have direct relevance to one another. Think about it, memes are capable of sending a variety of messages for their viewers, whether it’s to advocate a politician, products, or simply to share a laugh. For these reasons, I believe it is safe to say that memes play a role in human communication.

To understand what memes have to do with communication, it is crucial to understand the original definition of a meme. As it turns out, the term “meme” did not start as a reference to internet jokes and humorous comments. In James Gleick’s “What Defines a Meme?” the term meme was crafted by a man named Richard Dawkins in the year 1986. Dawkin’s definition of a meme was an idea, behavior, or culture and its ability to spread through people. These memes are comparable to genetics and can even evolve. Dawkin’s memes also have the ability to latch on to physical items as well. An example that Gleick uses is the hula hoop. In the late fifties, the hula hoop became popular. While the hula hoop was not a meme itself, it was an object that was used by the meme. Therefore, a meme’s survival is dependent on the success of the object the meme is associated with (Gleick). With that in mind, Dawkin’s memes are not really all that different from the modern understanding of a meme. It is logical to conclude that modern memes fall under Dawkin’s definition of meme. This makes sense since internet memes are humorous ideas and messages that get spread throughout the wide web. Internet memes also evolve and change with current events. As funny as it sounds, memes can be considered to be one of Dawkin’s memes. A final note on Dawkin’s meme can be found in “Memes as Speech Acts,” by L. Grundlingh. The term for Dawkin’s meme comes from the Greek word “mīmēma” which translated to “something imitated” (Grundlingh 147). This can, again, be tied into memes as memes are shared, copied, and remade all the time. Grundlingh continues by then adding the idea of semiotics. Semiotics is defined in Grundlingh’s article by T. A. Sebeok “Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics” as being an apparent link between nonverbal and verbal communication (qtd. 148). Memes share verbal and nonverbal pieces of the semiotic definition. This is noteworthy because semiotics describes or categorizes how memes communicate. Grundlingh even presses so far as to say that memes are a speech act, the communication, and understanding between two people (148). This makes sense knowing full-well that memes can advocate politicians, advertise products, and share humor with other people. Another approach to tying memes in with communication is the notion that memes are basically a language of their own. Patrick Davison wrote about this idea in his article “The Language of Internet Memes.” Memes, like any language, follow a set of formulas and branch out similar to how a language has accents and slang. The overarching meme is what is called an image macro. Variants and remakes of this meme are then called submemes (Davison 127). Anyone that has indulged themself with memes before can understand the comparisons that are being made. Davison’s comparison was ideal for introducing the concept that memes supplement as a language of their own. In the article by Opspe titled “Memetic Communication” the author explains how memes can be used in place of verbal communication. The writer elaborates with the idea that people send each other gifs, images, or videos. The content is usually considered a meme by nature and can be understood by the recipient of the meme. The author refers to these texts as reaction images (Opspe). This makes sense, I personally, have also used memes to express my thoughts and feelings. An example of this is the “sector is clear” meme as shown in figure 4.

This meme came from a Star War video game and implied that everything is calm, for the moment. This meme also implies another message. It also implies that this calm might be very temporary as the next text plane usually continues with the clone trooper say “not clear, not clear” with sparks flying in the background. I have no doubt that others have also shared a meme in place of text or verbal words. Going back to the article, the author also makes reference to words, mainly slang, that have their origin thanks to memes. The author references 4chan and other meme-based social media as a source of many slang terms like “lol” “derp” and “yolo.” These slang terms were created due to their close relationship with memes (Opspe). It is quite clear that memes are a part of communication and in some cases even play as a medium of communication.

Personal Experience With Memes

Memes are an item produced by the public and for the public, mostly that is. I have seen many opinions shared through my experience through memes. I have even gone to lengths to make my own opinion through the use of memes once or twice. I, like many others my age, became something of a meme connoisseur. The effect I believe memes had on me was that I slowly became more apathetic to politics. The issue that I noticed with political memes was that they created something of a demagogue. They seem to create a mentality of “my political candidate is pure, and the other candidate is literally Hitler or a witch.” I came to this conclusion on my own years before reading about how Axelrod’s finding in “The Role of Memes in Politics” which basically described a similar scenario. For that reason, I nowadays only try to use memes for general entertainment. Another purpose that I personally use memes for is to keep up to date with current events. While trying to abstain from the political realm, I find that memes can be quite enlightening for current events in science, economics, and society as a whole. My favorite example of this is the black hole memes that were produced in light of the first live image of a black hole. Another, more recent, example is the Suez Canal memes. Regardless of where memes venture to talk about, I will continue to enjoy them.

Concluding Statements

It is a matter of fact that memes are a part of communication at large. With that said noting how humanity uses memes should be important. The power in memes can be seen in a multitude of areas including and not limited to politics, advertising, and general entertainment. Memes can be used against people and can harm just as easily as they can be used to share a laugh. For that reason, when one shares a meme, they should be conscious of what they are actually communicating by posting the meme. Some will be eager to judge other’s memes, and some turn a blind eye to ill-willed memes. I say, for the best or worse, let memes be memes. In the end, humans are social animals and memes are just another form of human communication.

Works Cited

Axelrod, Emma. “The Role of Memes in Politics.” Brown Political Review, 20 Mar. 2016, brownpoliticalreview.org/2016/03/role-memes-politics/.

Caldwell, Alexander W. “Meme Survey for College Writing.” Google Forms, Mar. 2021, https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1xU3q6dkuZWweZAr7LT-pUA-v8-lqpvQMJv7vzt-to8E/edit#question=2144072070&field=1932620711.

Chuah, Kee-Man, Yumni Musfirah Kahar, and Looi-Chin Ch’ng. “We “Meme” Business: Exploring Malaysian Youths’interpretation Of Internet Memes In Social Media Marketing.” International Journal of Business and Society , Vol. 21 No. 2, 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kee-Man-Chuah/publication/343098924_We_meme_business_Exploring_Malaysian_Youths%27_Interpretation_of_Internet_Memes_in_Social_Media_Marketing/links/5f16abec92851cd5fa39b280/We-meme-business-Exploring-Malaysian-Youths-Interpretation-of-Internet-Memes-in-Social-Media-Marketing.pdf.

Davison, Patrick. “The Language of Internet Memes.” The Social Media Reader , edited by Michael Mandiberg, New York University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central , https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.ulib.csuohio.edu/lib/clevelandstate-ebooks/detail.action?docID=865738.

EA Star Wars. “Star Wars Battlefront II: Official Gameplay Trailer” YouTube, 10 Jun. 2017. https://youtu.be/_q51LZ2HpbE

Emerging Technology from the arXiv. “This Is Where Internet Memes Come From.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 11 June 2018, www.technologyreview.com/2018/06/11/142394/this-is-where-internet-memes-come-from/.

Gleick, James. “What Defines a Meme?.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, May 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/.

Grundlingh, L. “Memes as Speech Acts.” Social Semiotics , vol. 28, no. 2, Apr. 2018, pp. 147–168. EBSCOhost , doi:10.1080/10350330.2017.1303020.

Huntington, Heidi E. “Affect and effect of Internet memes: assessing perceptions and influence of online user-generated political discourse as media,” Colorado State University, 2017.https://mountainscholar.org/bitstream/handle/10217/183936/Huntington_colostate_0053A_14303.pdf.

Opspe. “Memetic Communication.” Know Your Meme, 5 March 2013, knowyourmeme.com/memes/memetic-communication.

Sharma, Harshit. “Memes in Digital Culture and Their Role in Marketing and Communication: A Study in India.” Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture , vol. 9, no. 3, Nov. 2018, pp. 303–318. EBSCOhost , doi:10.1386/iscc.9.3.303_1.

Srivastawa, Vandana “Twitter User Pays Fitting Tribute Through Picture to Kapil Mohan, the Creator of Old Monk, Takes Jibe at Thums Up.” 10 Jan. 2018. https://www.india.com/viral/twitter-user-pays-fitting-tribute-through-picture-to-kapil-mohan-the-creator-of-old-monk-takes-jibe-at-thums-up-2837691/.

Zakem, Vera, Megan K. McBride, and Kate Hammerberg. “Exploring the utility of memes for US government influence campaigns.” Center for Naval Analyses Arlington United States, 2018. https://www.cna.org/cna_files/pdf/DRM-2018-U-017433-Final.pdf.

ZestfulHydra. “me irl.” Reddit, Apr. 2019. https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/bgjrj8/me_irl/.

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Alexander Caldwell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Philosophy of Meme Culture

Life’s a joke..

• Writer Ayesha Habib
• Illustrator Miguel Porlan

“OK Boomer.”

Last fall, when 25-year-old Chlöe Swarbrick retorted to heckling about her age in a New Zealand parliamentary session on climate change with these two words, the phrase commandeered news headlines. She brought into public discourse the meme that had been seeping across the Internet for the past year, a dismissive cyber eye roll by Generation Z (born 1997–) towards Baby Boomers (born 1946–1965). The polarizing effect of the meme is nothing new; intergenerational clashes always have, and always will, exist. But “OK Boomer” highlights the vitality of memes as a cultural currency. What can memes tell us about Gen Z, the most socially conscious and digitally connected generation?

Though Internet memes were first created by millennials (born 1981–1996), the word  meme  originated with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976, combining the Greek word  mimeme —translated to “imitated thing”—and  gene . By Dawkins’ definition, memes are cultural ideas that spread and repeat themselves across society. Add the Internet and an evolving sense of humour, and you have the Internet meme: a vessel of communication, a signifier of the comedic zeitgeist, and a device for channelling the inherent anxieties of youth.

In a 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center, 70 per cent of American teens reported depression and anxiety as a “major problem”. And it’s easy to see why. Gen Z, arguably more than any other generation, faces an uncertain future: climate change, wage stagnation, political polarization, and mass shootings only scrape the surface. While inequalities in power might play a larger role than age, boomers have come to represent everything wrong with the system for Gen Z. And Internet memes, with their signature eccentricity—for example, the text, “I may look fly, but I want to die” over the image of a person giving a thumbs up—have become the new generations’ method of coping. To the uninitiated, meme humour is nihilistic and outlandish, but the sense of self-awareness translated through memes shares striking similarities to philosopher Albert Camus’ notion of absurdism.

In 1942, Camus published the essay  The Myth of Sisyphus , which examined the Greek myth of a man destined for eternity to roll a rock up a hill only for it to fall back down each time. The tale encapsulated humanity’s futile existence and the existential torment it permitted; Sisyphus—whom Camus compared to society as a whole—goes through the same continual cycle with no discernable purpose. The very act of living is absurd, Camus found, if there were no meaning to life at all. Yet, he argued, if Sisyphus were to embrace this absurdity, rather than wallow in existential dread or give in to illusory distractions, he could be content, perhaps even happy. This is the same sentiment Gen Z has adopted: embracing the absurdity of the times by making memes about it.

Memes of today drip with Internet-trademarked black comedy. They’re embellished with a vernacular particular to Internet-moulded youth, making them fascinating and frustrating to older generations. When Gen Z memes remark “oof” or “yikes” to the irreversibility of the Earth’s environmental damage, or express the urge to “yeet into the void” to escape the harsh realities of our times, the blasé responses can be hilarious. But they also contain a blunt and powerful kind of honesty.

Perhaps the poignancy of meme humour lies in that Gen Z has no other choice but to embrace the absurdity of the future. Or deal with the environmental consequences of generations before them. But they aren’t carrying this burden with existential dread. They are using the tool they know best—technology—to lighten the weight with a little levity. Memes carry forward a movement defined by both humour and a defiance of past ways of thinking. Because if you can’t laugh in the face of your existential dread, what else can you do?

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Home — Essay Samples — Science — Mems — The Concept of Modern “Meme”

The Concept of Modern "Meme"

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Published: Oct 2, 2018

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Applications, internet culture, criticism of meme theory, memetic explanations of racism, architectural “memes”, "meme" maps.

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More From Forbes

2020: a meme essay.

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2020 was...well it happened. We don’t need to talk about it. But is it too soon to laugh about it? In the spirit of the internet and the unique way that memes can unite us in relatable camaraderie, here is a rundown of this historically garbage year, told in memes, TikToks, tweets and other mindless content.

Caveat: Some news events have been intentionally left out of this roundup because they’re just too raw to make fun of. This year in review is meant to be comic relief, not an invalidation of the seriousness of these world events.

None of the memes expressed in this article reflect the chortles or giggles of Forbes.com.

It quickly became clear that 2020 would not be anybody’s year .

JohnMaley24

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Thursday, August 22

Oprah endorses kamala harris at dnc: her political history—and rare endorsements—explained, bayesian yacht: bodies of entrepreneur michael lynch and morgan stanley chief recovered in italy.

It seems like ages ago that the U.S. killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in a Baghdad airstrike , and everyone thought World War III and a draft of American citizens into the army was imminent.

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began in the Senate on January 16. The internet, understanding that these proceedings were purely performative, did it’s thing, meme-ifying Nancy Pelosi and taking digs at Trump’s notes, written in Sharpie, that he used to talk to reporters.

We first really started hearing about coronavirus in January, and it’s almost cute to look back and ponder our naivety as we worried about slow shipping of our goods from China.

Australia was well and truly on fire , but Aussies still found time to take the piss out of ScoMo’s (Prime Minister Scott Morrison) handling of the fires and decision to take a Hawaiian holiday in the middle of the crisis.

Trump gave his State of the Union speech on February 4, which Nancy Pelosi promptly ripped up, calling it “a manifesto of mistruths .” Trump was acquitted of two impeachment charges the next day.

You already know...Rona really came for us all in March. But damn if we didn’t find a way to cut through that icy tension with some high quality memes about hand sanitizer, toilet paper, quarantine and Zoom calls.

Coronavirus meme featuring Kanye West, created by meme account @MasiPopal

Remember when we were all united against that cringey video of celebs butchering John Lennon’s “Imagine”???

Oh, and Tiger King ! The perfect slice of Americana to distract us all from the nightmare before us.

Shut Up and Take My Money

Quarantine continues, bread baking commences. April was the month where we’d spend one day being grateful for having time to regrow our scallions (FINALLY), the next alternating between sobs and laughter at our own depression, the next rejoicing at the clearest skies in our lifetime and the next wondering if Trump thinks we think $1200 is a lot of money . But regardless of how you spent your time, you never knew what time it was.

r/TrumpVirus

The first murder hornets were spotted in the U.S. in May . This is around the time most people started to prepare for an inevitable alien invasion or just close their eyes to the horrors of the world...

MurderHornetMemes via Facebook

...That is, until all our eyes were opened when George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis . The collective anger of watching a cop kneeling on the neck of an unarmed man for nearly nine minutes, of a pandemic that took jobs and lives disproportionately among black Americans, led to protests and riots in Minneapolis that spilled out into a demand for justice and racial equity across the country and around the world.

Freelance designer Shirien Damra’s tribute to George Floyd has more than 3.4 million likes on ... [+] Instagram

Black Lives Matter protests took off as protesters cried out to defund the police and demanded justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and a number of other black citizens killed by the police. Even amidst a movement as pure as Civil Rights, cynicism found a home in meme culture as people all over Instagram posted black squares and companies filled our inboxes with dubious pledges to support black lives.

StareCat.com

July brought with it a series of maelstroms as BLM protests continued alongside anti-mask protests. Misinformation about wearing masks abounded, often propagated by the Trump family (as seen below). Social media influencers gathered for irresponsible parties and Mary Trump gave the public juicy goss about what Donnie was like as a child-demon. Companies took their ads off Facebook to protest the social network’s lackluster handling of hate speech, but unfortunately did not put a dent in Zuck’s net worth.

Screenshot of a post from Donald Trump Jr that seems to insinuate wearing a mask doesn't help to ... [+] stop the spread of coronavirus, a belief that has been normalized in the White House. As of October, at least three dozen people in Trump's orbit are known to have contracted the virus.

Posted by u/NotAVirus_dot_exe

With that summer heat came the most fire song of 2020: W.A.P., by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion . Some (I) might say this song, from the music video to the lyrics to the conversation surrounding it, was the most 2020 song of 2020. It was culturally on par with the late stage capitalism vibe of Tiger King , but far more contentious. Depending on who you asked, W.A.P. is either a sex-positive, feminist anthem or a degeneration of polite society. And if you asked right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro about the soaking subject of this ballad, you might be given a gynecological diagnosis. The best he could do with his limited experience .

In the same month, Axios political correspondent Jonathan Swan interviewed Trump about his handling of the coronavirus and the upcoming election, wherein Swan refused to entertain Trump’s lies. The conversation was as entertaining as it was shocking, even by today’s standards of sensationalism, and made for many a good meme, such as the cross-referential jibe below.

As if we didn’t burn enough of the planet with the Australia fires, “smoke generating from a pyrotechnic device” at a gender reveal party in California (the burniest state in America) caused massive wildfires that have scorched 4 million acres of land as of the time of this writing. The internet responded accordingly.

September 18 marked the tragic death of Notorious RBG , Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, reminding us all that this year could indeed get worse.

The first presidential debate capped off the month, an event that many of us watched in horror through our fingers when those fingers weren’t furiously live-tweeting about the degradation of structured debate, the inability of moderator Chris Wallace to keep a lid on Trump and the displeasing sound of old white men talking over each other.

In short, memes were the only good thing to come out of that debate .

Many of us awoke on October 2 to news alerts that President Trump tested positive for Covid-19 . Was this karma for Trump’s consistent claims that coronavirus was a hoax and mask-wearing was unnecessary or a long game bamboozle that Trump would walk away from alive in an attempt to discredit the seriousness of the virus? Still unclear, but Occam’s Razor tells us to look for the simplest answer, which is that he probably did contract the virus but had all the medical backing that most Americans can’t afford to see him through.

The Vice Presidential Debate between VP Mike Pence and VP-elect Kamala Harris took place on October 7. The event was characterized by Pence’s frequent interruptions of Harris and Harris’s barely contained cynicism. But the real star of the show was the fly that landed and remained on Pence’s white hair for a couple of minutes while the two debated racism and policing.

After much tightening of sphincters in angst as election results took days to come in, many across the nation breathed a sigh of relief when Joe Biden won . And he won again and again as Trump refused to accept defeat, demanding recounts in key battleground states and falsely claiming fraud.

Things were really looking up in November when just days after Biden’s victory, Pfizer announced that its vaccine, created with German biotech company BioNTech, was over 90% effective.

The United Kingdom became the first country to approve the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine , prompting a wave of celebratory memes.

But then a new strain of coronavirus was detected in the U.K., prompting many countries to ban incoming flights in an effort to stem the tide.

To add insult to injury, at the time of this writing, it’s also looking fairly likely that the U.K. will leave the European Union at the end of the year without a deal.

Meanwhile in America, Mike Pence became the highest ranking member of the Trump administration to receive the vaccine, and on live TV no less, prompting anger among essential workers at the irony of Pence being vaccinated before them, and confusion among anti-vaxxers who looked up to Pence as a symbol of many of the conspiracy theories they hold dear.

2020, the worst year in modern history?

Obviously not. (See: 1918, The Spanish Flu; 1940-41, The Blitz; 1941-1945, The Holocaust; 1945, The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; etc.)

Nonetheless, we’re glad it’s over. Here’s hoping 2021 is actually our year.

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• LiveAbout - Why Would You Ever Create an Internet Meme?
• Lifewire - What is a Meme?
• The New York Times - The Meaning and History of Memes
• Psychology Today - Memes

What is a meme?

A meme is a unit of cultural information spread by imitation.

What is the origin of the term meme ?

The term meme was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins . He conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them as being in control of their own reproduction.

How are memes made?

The process of meme transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication, ranging from books and conversation to television, e-mail, and the Internet.

How have memes affected society?

Internet memes have been shown to wield immense cultural and social power due to their ubiquity. For example, the successful Dogecoin cryptocurrency was originally created as a joke based on the “Doge” meme .

meme , unit of cultural information spread by imitation . The term meme (from the Greek mimema , meaning “imitated”) was introduced in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his work The Selfish Gene .

Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to “selfish” genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. Understood in those terms, memes carry information, are replicated, and are transmitted from one person to another, and they have the ability to evolve, mutating at random and undergoing natural selection , with or without impacts on human fitness (reproduction and survival). The concept of the meme, however, remains largely theoretical. It is also controversial, given the notion of selfishness and the application of the concept to the evolution of cultures , which formed the basis for the field of memetics .

Within a culture , memes can take a variety of forms, such as an idea , a skill, a behaviour, a phrase, or a particular fashion. The replication and transmission of a meme occurs when one person copies a unit of cultural information comprising a meme from another person. The process of transmission is carried out primarily by means of verbal, visual, or electronic communication , ranging from books and conversation to television , e-mail , or the Internet . Those memes that are most successful in being copied and transmitted become the most prevalent within a culture .

The exploration of relationships between cultural evolution , cultural transmission, and imitation has led to intriguing theories about memes. For example, various ideas have emerged about the nature of memes, such as whether they are beneficial , neutral, or harmful. Memes may be interpreted as being inherently harmful, since, according to some scholars, memes are parasites or viruses of the mind ; once assimilated into the human mind, their chief purpose becomes their own replication, with humans having little or no control over them. Some memes, however, are benign or beneficial but can become dangerous because, after they have been seeded in the human mind, they lend themselves to being misused or abused. For example, although memes associated with religious or political ideas may benefit the people who carry them, those same memes, when imposed on people whose religious or political memes are different, may cause harm, such as through the loss of religious traditions or social or political stability. Memes associated with religious or political ideas may also be abused, as in the case of religious cults or extremist groups, which can result in the death of individuals. Beneficial memes, on the other hand, could include those that promote human health and survival, such as memes associated with hygiene .

In the early 21st century, Internet memes, or memes that emerge within the culture of the Internet , gained popularity, bringing renewed interest to the meme concept. Internet memes spread from person to person through imitation, typically by e-mail, social media , and various types of Web sites . They often take the form of pictures, videos, or other media containing cultural information that, rather than mutating randomly, have been deliberately altered by individuals. Their deliberate alteration, however, violates Dawkins’s original conception of memes, and, for that reason , despite their fundamental similarity to other types of memes, Internet memes are considered by Dawkins and certain other scholars to be a different representation of the meme concept.

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Taking Internet Memes Seriously - A Literature Review

This paper aims to discuss the growing and dominant online phenomenon – internet meme by doing a bibliographic review of related theoretical and empirical research. This paper presents the review of recent literature (2005-2017) from various journals, magazine articles, and book sections. It also argues for meme literacy to be included in the limited traditional digital literacy definition and considered as an essential locus for cultural, civic and political participation for children and youth.

Related Papers

Global Media Journal Turkish Edition

çağrı yılmaz

(ÖZ) Dijital ortamlarda bireylerin ve/veya toplulukların, " kendini ifade etme " nin mizahi bir biçimi olarak ürettiği " internet mem " leri, son yıllarda akademisyenler arasında dünya çapında ilgi uyandırmıştır. Sayısı günden güne artmakta olan mem çalışmaları, dijital bir kültür nesnesi olarak memlerin, internet-ortamlı iletişimde oynadığı etkin rolü gözler önüne sermektedir. Bu çalışma, içinde bulunduğumuz yeni medya çağında bir internet fenomeni olarak ortaya çıkmış olan, kullanıcılar tarafından oluşturulmuş içerikler olarak internet memlerine ilişkin alanyazına odaklanmayı amaçlamıştır. Bu bağlamda, internet mem tanımları, özellikleri ve memlerle ilişkili olarak tartışılagelen diğer konular ele alınmıştır. Türkiye'de mem çalışmalarına ilişkin var olan olanaklara da değinen çalışmanın, Türkiye'deki internet-ortamlı mem çalışmalarına katkı sağlayacağı umulmaktadır. (Abstract) Internet memes, generated as a humorous mode of " self-expression " by individuals and communities in digital spheres, have received scholarly attention across the globe in recent years. An increasing number of studies on Internet memes show that memes as digital cultural artifacts play a significant role in Internet-mediated communication. This study aims to focus on the international literature on Internet memes as user-generated content that has emerged as an Internet phenomenon in the age of new media. In this regard, the definitions and attributes of Internet memes and other related discussions are addressed. The study also searches for potentialities of meme studies in Turkey, with the anticipation of contributing to the aforementioned studies.

First Monday

Dandara Magalhães

This paper aims to discuss preliminary results of a comprehensive research on the uses and appropriations of political-electoral memes. Our main goal at this stage is to develop, following former propositions from other scholars, a taxonomical matrix able to assist researchers interested in dealing with online political memes with greater objectivity. Therefore, we tried to perform a content analysis of memes that circulated on Twitter during Brazilian 2014 presidential elections.

In September 2010, a video titled " It Gets Better " was uploaded to YouTube, responding to suicides of gay teens who had suffered from homophobic bullying. Before long, thousands of Internet users added their own versions of the clip, creating a mass appeal to young people while simultaneously negotiating the norms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) collective identity. Conceptualizing this body of videos as an Internet meme, we examine the extent to which participants imitate or alter textual components presented in previous videos. A combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of 200 clips shows that in an arena ostensibly free of formal gatekeepers, participants tend to police themselves, toeing the line with conformist norms. We also identify domains of potential subversion, related not only to the content of the videos but mainly to the forms facilitated by digital media.

INTERNATIONAL PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH

Caps phenomenon has made its mark on Turkish digital spheres in the last decade. We encounter caps, simply an amalgam of visual and textual components pieced together mostly for fun and humour, anytime we are online: They are anonymously, or with a nickname, generated and propagated across several websites ranging from social networking sites, blogs, forums to online web sites of daily Turkish newspapers, and so on. However, caps seem to be overlooked and understudied in Turkey: On official website of Thesis Center of Council of Higher Education , no thesis upon caps phenomenon was found, and in search of articles, only one (Karataş and Binark, 2016: 426-488) partly related to it was identified on Dergi Park Akademik, and another on International Peer-Reviewed Journal of Communication and Humanities Research (Bozkuş, 2016: 540-565). In this paper, I aim to discuss photo-based caps trend in Turkey in pursuit of probabilities of why they have been popularized in our digital age. First of all, I will introduce the international literature. Secondly, I will fix my attention to incicaps.com, the founding father of caps in Turkey even though various digital platforms and apps provided by smart gadgets enable users to generate caps today. Finally, I will put what primary attributes caps, known as ‘Internet memes’ across the globe, as user-generated contents mediated in process of communication possess.

Kenneth M Mick-Evans

The meme is an idea, element of culture or behavior passed down from one person to another through imitation. A more specific form of meme is the internet meme, which involves images, videos, text, or other content rapidly spread, and often modified, over the internet, and sometimes transcending the mere digital into the material world. Internet memes are often global and therefore help establish commonality between people across cultures, oceans, and national boundaries. They also can help further knit together particular communities already bonded through digital interaction. Yet, despite the cultural impact and pervasiveness of these virtual memes and artifacts in the late-20th and early-21st century, the heritage field has only just begun to recognize the importance and impact of online sub-cultures and viral phenomenon, and the future heritage value that these sub-cultures and phenomenon will hold. Meme historians are few and meme museums even more scarce. Because internet memes and cultures evolve so rapidly, and website links often move or expire, many, probably most, of these virtual objects and intangible heritages, are in danger of being forgotten and lost over the long term. Compounding this difficulty is the sheer volume of memes and artifacts to curate and sift through for selective preservation. This thesis explores the research question of how to select internet memes for preservation as virtual tangible and intangible heritage, and postulates that participatory, community-based efforts could prove invaluable to developing and implementing selection strategies.

limor shifman , Elad Segev

Kate M . Miltner

Internet memes are an increasingly widespread form of vernacular communication. This paper uses LOLCats, one of the most popular and enduring Internet memes, as a case study for exploring some of the social and cultural forces that contribute to memes’ popularity, both individually and as a whole. A qualitative audience study of 36 LOLCat enthusiasts indicates that individual memes can be used by multiple (and vastly different) groups for identity work as well as in–group boundary establishment and policing. This study also shows that as memes travel from subculture to the mainstream, they can be sites of contestation and conflict amongst different stakeholders looking to legitimize their claim to the canonical form.

Visual Communication Quarterly

Natalia Mielczarek

Within hours of its publication online, the “pepper-spraying cop” image from the Occupy Wall Street movement at the University of California–Davis became an Internet meme.The outraged public manipulated key signifiers of the famous picture, creating hundreds of digital derivatives that offered new takes on what happened. With the use of iconographic tracking and visual rhetorical analysis, the study argues that Internet memes are more than silly jokes or social commentary.Through rhetorical transfigurations, they can deliver social justice and launch public shaming campaigns, serving as online instruments to respond to an off-line event.

Heidi E. Huntington

Social media are increasingly important in protest movements for communication and organization. As such, scholars should consider these ephemeral messages as a tool for understanding such movements’ rhetoric. This article draws on Kjeldsen’s method for the critique of visual political rhetoric and adds consideration of intertextuality, synecdoche, and metaphor to demonstrate a method for the rhetorical analysis and a critique of Internet memes as visual, political rhetoric. The Pepper Spray Cop meme arising from Occupy Wall Street is presented as a case-study example. The article considers the centrality of the intertextual nature of memes as a unique form of visual rhetoric in activist contexts and contributes to the literature on user-generated and activist rhetoric.

limor shifman , Elad Segev , Asaf Nissenbaum

This study employs a large-scale quantitative analysis to reveal structural patterns of internet memes, focusing on 2 forces that bind them together: the quiddities of each meme family and the generic attributes of the broader memetic sphere. Using content and network analysis of 1013 meme instances (including videos, images, and text), we explore memes' prevalent quiddity types and generic features, and the ways in which they relate to each other. Our findings show that (a) higher cohesiveness of meme families is associated with a greater uniqueness of their generic attributes; and (b) the concrete-ness of meme quiddities is associated with cohesiveness and uniqueness. We discuss the implications of these findings to the understanding of internet memes and participatory culture.

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Hypermedia Pedagogy

Frequently Asked Questions

Submit a project or essay.

Hypermedia Pedagogy: A Festival of Educational Memeology is accepting proposals for essays and projects about memes. The “festival” seeks to be an educational experience for novice meme researchers exploring the fields of memeology/memetics, media- and cyberculture studies through a semi-formal, blog-based format. The project has a meta-focus on educational meme communities and the pedagogical potential of memes as loci of informal learning on the web.

If you are interested in being a mentor to a younger researcher, or helping proofread and edit submissions, please let us know! We’ll definitely find you something to do!

Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

• Cultural histories of academic meme communities
• Participant perspectives on educational memes
• Meme page/group admin perspectives on academic memes
• Histories of particular meme formats/narratives (especially those relevant to educational memes)
• Reflections on memes as a form of digital pedagogy
• Memes and informal learning through shitposting
• Group dynamics of educational meme communities
• Essays on the relationship between memes and dissemination of knowledge in the public sphere
• Philosophical essays on memes + education
• Memes and academic/university life
• Quantitative research on educational memes

Additional Topics

While we encourage a focus on educational memes, we will also accept papers on other meme-related topics, provided that they are thoughtful and informative.

(Have you ever written about memes in a paper for college? Polish it up and submit it!)

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be 250-300 words. They must include a brief overview of your topic, scope, and ideas. If your paper involves quantitative analysis, please outline your proposed methods and process. All submissions should also include a short bio about your educational background/interests.

Publication Format

All accepted essays will have their own page in the projects section. You have the right to remove your essay from publication if you wish at any time.

The structure of the essay can vary and should be tailored to promote the most informative and engaging presentation of your thoughts. Please include citations and references to any secondary materials in an appropriate manner, as well as links to any net-locales mentioned. During the editing process, you may be asked to include additional parts and edit or remove other parts.

You may include images, graphs, and other supplementary materials in your essay. You may also include interactive data visualizations if they can be embedded/included as scripts.

Since the essays are presented in a web page format, feel free to take full advantage of the potentials of html/css/js/etc, your essay need not look like a pdf (keep in mind size restictions though). If you do not have the technical skills but you have a clear and easily-executed idea in mind, please reach out and we may be able to help you implement it.

Projects are accepted on a rolling basis.

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16 Writing Memes That Perfectly Depict the Writer’s Life

by Holly Riddle

If you’ve been writing for a while, then you know a few things.

One: the writer life is, in reality, not at all like the glamorous perception you’ll see in movies and on TV.

Two: your friends, unless they’re writers too, just aren’t going to understand challenges like your writer’s block, procrastination when it comes to actually getting something on the page, or how much you can hate writing and find it fun at the same time.

Three: sometimes, the best thing to do about your writers woes is to just laugh about them—and that’s where these funny writer memes can come in handy.

Here are some of our 16 favorite funny writing memes that perfectly encapsulate the highs, lows, and humor of the writer’s life, from the struggles with a first draft to the constant story ideas to the way your characters just live in your head rent-free (even if your novel doesn’t technically exist yet).

1. Oh, you thought you were actually going to finish that novel?

Think again! Time for procrastination to set in. Writers do whatever they can to not finish that WIP (Work In Progress), until something kicks their butt into gear, whether it be National Novel Writing Month, a challenge with a writer friend, etc.

Source: Writers Write

2. Unfortunately, a writer only has themself to blame

Alas, even though you try to blame everything else in the world for your procrastination—the dog needed walking, the laundry needed doing!—you just can’t at the end of the day. Get that idea down on paper!

Source: September C Fawkes

3. Some days the new ideas just keep flowing… other days, not so much

You know how it goes. Once you get into your writing flow, the shiny new ideas begin—until they dry up completely and you have a bad case of writer’s block.

Source: Writing About Writing on Facebook

But guess what? We have a super helpful article on dealing with this very problem .

4. Don’t worry, though…

Daydreaming about writing and writing are actually the same thing… right?

Totally. Definitely. We relate.

Source: Aela Writes

5. You started? Great! Now, where’s the plot?

Once you get started on that novel, though, inevitably there’s going to be a time that you sit back, look at what you wrote, and really start to question whether or not your words actually form a cohesive plot. That’s where, of course, a writing schedule that incorporates a little beta reading can come in handy.

Your writer friends are the best folks to give insight into whether or not you truly have a story.

And! You can also swing by our article on finding the perfect plot .

6. Sometimes, you just gotta plow forward

Occasionally, though, you have to just keep writing, plot or no plot.

Source: Daddies Drarryy

7. Writing is just rewriting

Eventually, you’ll have to go back and address those rambling sentences. Newbie writers may not recognize it yet, but the old pros will. Sometimes, being a writer is just rewriting, rewriting, and rewriting some more—especially those pesky opening pages.

Source: Liz Lawson on Twitter

8. That said, perfection isn’t everything

Not everyone is going to love what you write and, frankly, that’s okay.

Source: Aye Write

9. Your biggest fan is you

Because, after all, you won’t be happy unless you write things you actually want to read. Don’t aim to please readers or other writers when you’re the first audience you’ll ever have.

Source: Writeous Writing

10. But maybe try to keep the tenses straight?

Past tense, future tense, present tense—it’s hard enough just deciding which one you want to use on a new project, let alone sticking to it while you write.

Source: Macademmia

To help you through this troubling time, check out our post on narrative tenses .

11. You and your characters are best friends forever

Oh, don’t mind me. I’m not talking to myself; I’m talking to my novel characters.

Don’t get us wrong—we love a good cast of heroes and villains .

12. Being a writer isn’t as easy as it looks

Yes, we all love writing (we hope you you do, anyway, since you’re here). Unfortunately, when many of us say we like writing, we like having written more than the actual getting the words on the page.

Source: The Darklings

13. No one understands

But no matter how easy or hard friends and family think your writing is, chances are they have no real clue what you really do.

Your parents call your writing “cute.” Friends think you lay around. You think you’re a big shot. You’re really just drinking coffee at your desk and creating stories from the looping picture in your head.

Source: Jenni Merritt

14. An editor will not make your life easier

Editors are amazing. They make your book better. If you have a publishing deal with a big publisher, they vouch for your book and make your writing dreams a reality. They don’t make your life easier, though.

That first edit letter? Ouch.

Source: The Mom Who Runs

15. So just enjoy the ride!

It’s not always easy to enjoy the ride that is the writing life, but at least try to. And stop feeling guilty about not keeping to your writing goals for the day/week/etc.!

Source: Memes for Writers on Instagram

16. And whatever you do…

Source: UniversityStudent.org

We believe in you! And if you ever need to step back from the pain and existential angst of being a writer, you’ll always have these writing memes here to help you have fun on your creative journey.

Get feedback on your writing today!

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