About Memes!
Word limit: 1700.
One lazy evening I was
glued down to my sofa, owing to ennui induced out of nowhere, scrolling
endlessly through my news feed, switching back and forth through various
'social' media apps and saw this
then I realized that I have
been taking memes absolutely for granted till now and took up this unusual yet enjoyable task to write something about them. I bet that you would not need an
introduction to this guy,
or this great lady,( Yeah, she is great because she voiced her opinion fearlessly )
And I bet, you must have come across this dude
Strange thing, we are absolutely clueless about who these people really are and
yet we are quite familiar with them at the same time. Thanks to what some
people call ‘maymay'’ and others ‘meem’, even though this phonetic schism
has left us divided, we all enjoy the effect produced by them quite
unequivocally. Memes, who doesn't enjoy them? Scrolling down through feeds,
occasionally pausing at some image or video with a relatable caption, suddenly
exhaling through nose (and through mouth when you catch a cold)-Did you just try it?-Lol- and finally tagging or sharing it with relatable audience is a quotidian job we, Homo Sapiens,have evolved to do, Thanks to some dudes in silicon
valley.( Darwin would have been so proud of us!)
The etymology of the word meme is quite banal. Surprisingly, the word coined by evolutionary biologist, Mr.
Richard Dawkins in 1976 encompassed a much wider concept. Meme, derived from
Latin Mimeme, literally means repeating or imitating thing. It represents, or at least what Dawkins intended it to, an idea or a thought or a concept or a piece of literature or a media or a
shared social notion within particular group of people. Analogous to genes in
genetics, memes are a social phenomenon, studied in memetics (even though it is regarded as a pseudoscience), subjected to
natural selection, mutation and transmission within a certain populous both
vertically and horizontally. In recent times, most widely popular usage of this word has
confined its meaning to literal laughing stock, generated out of appropriating images or videos taken out of context. There are two important factors
which decide survival and virality of a meme: retention and transmission
(through internet, tabloid, comics etc.). More relatable a meme is, more is the
probability of its retention in its host (us). This relatability may vary
depending on position of the host within a certain culture, generation and individual
conditioning. And now thanks to the smartphone revolution, potent memes spread
like a wildfire throughout the digital sphere.
Like everything ever existed in this universe, each meme has a certain lifecycle, once retained, replicated, mutated and transmitted its place is ,eventually, taken by entirely fresh meme and the cycle continues. While foraging through multitudes of blogs and scholarly articles about memes, I came across this blog where I found almost accurate taxonomy of memes. It's primarily based on its maturity and audience base. After giving it a thought, I took the liberty to classify them based on its relatability and contents along with the above two factors. As the result, memes can be loosely classified in following sub genres:
First ones are Normies: These are the most common and benign of all, which have well exceeded their lifespans and once they were enjoyed by the first generation of Orkut and Facebook users. These are still pertinent today and currently being mainstream
and circulated by the generation of our parents, just with the newer templates , for example.
Secondly come Shitposts- these are
relatively newer in currency. These are devoid of any cultural symbol or sensible
expressions and they are often cringe-worthy. So, These are quintessentially
anti-memes. In recent times, shitposts have plagued the Indian sub-culture of
social media, thanks to the Jio revolution, which enabled guys like these
to misuse their freedom of
expression through various new social platforms eg. Musically, and becoming a
pathology to healthy meme culture (and sacrosanct in the shitpost culture). I am aware that It's 'their lives, their rules' but still shitposts are pernicious to the mental health, at least for me.
Third category is Dank memes. These are one of the best and most creative memes out there. They are fresh in content, creative and often multilayered invoking several notions simultaneously. Still, these memes aren't offensive in nature or can be understood by most of the populous. For example.
Did you get them? As the name implies these are dark in content and are designed to take a dig at the most controversial and taboo subjects. To understand a dark meme, a well informed mind, in terms of current socio-political issues, is an important prerequisite. Out of the above examples of the dark memes, former exploits sexism and the latter marginalisation and violence against african-americans (trying my best here to be politically correct). These facilitates an outlet to the social anathema surrounding the topics using humor as an instrument. These exploits cover the darkest aspects of, our society such as racism, sexism, bigotry, slavery, discrimination on the
basis of religion, ethnicity, genocides, racial or ethnic stereotypes (like african-americans steal, Indians shit on the streets and ask for bobs and vegans,
all Asians look the same, muslims are terrorists, american kids shoot
in the school etc I can go on..) and human nature such as pedophilia,
necrophilia, homosexuality etc. The ability of these memes to make us laugh at
our very own darkest facets in turn makes us at least acknowledge the problems if not offer a solution.
For example,
This meme insinuates towards the multiple recent events of mass shooting in schools in the USA. Well, darkness in these
memes is just the tip of the iceberg, the actual problem it makes fun of. New audience may find these memes
outright immoral and incendiary in nature but morality was never the forte of
it, it's exactly the opposite wrapped in form of humor, may be to cope with the issues and its inflictions. Since morality itself is
a mercurial and contended concept, what was immoral in last century is deemed
moral now eg. Homosexuality and what was supposed moral in last century is considered
immoral now eg. slavery, so why should we burden ourselves with the weight of
this quite an esoteric notion? Of course, when we laugh at these memes, we don't mean offense to the people who might have suffered because of these issues, but we can turn our moral compass off and acknowledge
the genius of these memes, classic paradox in Morality, sighs!!. (You are free to feel guilty about laughing at them
afterwards, like I do every single time :)
But how are these memes created? To understand this process in reverse, try to explain any meme to your grandparents. You will realize that unlike normal humor, involving processing and analysis of a text or an oral narration and then imagining the situation within our headspace, in case of memes we first grasp the caption and imagine the situation related to it and simultaneously, compare it with the image or the video used in the meme, relatability between them produces the humor. So while creating a meme, it's essential to have a clearly defined objective in mind eg, An annoying or funny situation most of us have been through at least once in our lives or about which at least have an idea, and second crucial part is choosing a congenial illustration, either image or a video. For example,
I suppose, we all have been through
this situation at least once in our childhoods. Once a meme goes viral, it's
bound to mutate and replicate through other common experiences. Eg. in recent
months, this 'Am I a Joke to you?' meme template has been popping up in my feeds regularly,
This trend has got so
mainstream that once a meme is viraled, it is used until its lifespan is
exhausted and in turn achieving itself a place in the meme calendar if it had enough impact, representing that particular time in the internet age.
Lastly, the question remains, why are these memes important or are they important at all? The fact that the northwestern University in Illinois has been offering a course on the meme studies since 2011 might help answer the posed question affirmatively that memes are now a significant phenomenon in the wake of the internet revolution. Numerous studies have suggested that memes have changed the way we all communicate in the contemporary times. Some argue that thoughts and expressions are slowly being replaced by a video or an image taken out of its context with a one liner on the top, while others defend that memes are totally new coping mechanism which vents out pressure of socio-political problems via creative expressions. Most of us find it easier to socialize with those who share out taste in memes along with the factors such as taste in food, music, movies etc. where memes serve as icebreakers and at the same time few believe that memes might widen the schism between distinct groups by keeping on conforming to their prejudiced social biases. It's believed that memes were important tool employed during president election campaign by Trump to influence and sway the opinions of young voters in his favor. Hillary Clinton, who couldn't cope with this trend, couldn’t understand the language they spoke and responded to, failed at relating to young masses on social media. Apart from this, in more au courant trends, even businesses are using memes as a tool for digital marketing to reach out to their most relevant customer and making a dent on the wall of their minds. For example,
Whichever the case is, in very apparent manner, memes are shaping the course of language, culture and beliefs, with its
virtues and vices, just like any other tool whose ultimate effects are the ramification of
our own choice. In the end, I couldn't find more apt meme to wrap this post up than Arron Paul saying his favorite B-word from one of my all time favorite
TV show, Breaking Bad.
- The.Lazy.Philosopher
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