The Role of the Meme in Contemporary Society

 

Temple University

Fall, 2018

 

MSP 3421 (002) Technology and Culture

Steve Schwartz

September 27th, 2018

 

In today’s society, memes are one of the most popular forms of communication. As the internet has grown, the presence and spread of memes has grown with it. Memes are typically thought of as pictures of anything from cats to US presidents with a joke caption. However, the cultural presence of memes goes far beyond funny pictures on the internet. Memes have been around for a very long time, predating the internet by millennia. Like most things, memes are not just what they seem; there is much more depth to them than meets the eye.

To truly understand memes, it is important to define and provide a history about them. The term ‘meme’ was first conceptualized by anthropologist Richard Dawkins, taken from the Greek ‘mimeme,’ which means imitate. Dawkins defined the meme as “a unit of cultural transmission.” (Brennan, 245, 2015). Essentially, a meme can be anything that transmits any item of culture. In another Media Studies and Production class, Media and Society, Professor Barry Vacker incorporates the meme into the foundation of his class. He enlists the knowledge of Susan Blackmore, an English professor. Blackmore expands on Dawkins’ definition by saying “memes can be located both internally…and externally, in any of the many recordable versions” (Abel, 101, 2014). With these definitions in mind, it is easier to see that memes are not just a product of the internet, but a longstanding part of humanity. Take for instance some of the earliest bits of human culture, cave paintings. The reason why cave paintings are not contained to only one cave is because the idea spread to other humans, thus making cave paintings one the earliest memes in history.

In contemporary society, memes have become primarily digital and are generally thought of in this frame. Internet memes started to become more prominent with the creation LOLCats, a meme style that combined pictures of cats with overlaid text, termed lolspeak, that was written as if the cat pictured was thinking/saying it. Since then, internet memes have branched out into nearly every territory imaginable; internet memes now draw upon music, movies, television shows, along with many other facets of pop culture. As internet memes have grown in popularity, they have become more accessible to the average internet user; there are many websites that allow anyone with an internet connection to create and share memes. The growth of memes is comparable to a runaway train: they became more and more popular without any signs of slowing down

While they have more or less found their home within the realm of pop culture, memes have found a very important place in the world of politics. A common cry about the relation of social media to political discourse is that people tend to stay within an ‘echo chamber,’ only hearing opinions and arguments that they agree with and not hearing or listening to anything from the other side of the aisle. By only listening to one argument, people become close-minded. A result of this is that it has become very difficult to start political discourse just by bringing up an issue; people will stay fiercely loyal to their beliefs and opinions.

In 2012, a protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street began. What was different about this movement is that it involved and incorporated memes into the message it was trying to send, that corporate greed had gotten way out of hand. What these memes did was generate counter memes from different viewpoints, generating discourse. As these memes made their rounds on the internet, traditional media networks were also reporting on the protest, providing criticism about the main goals and objectives about the protests. The use of memes in the Occupy Wall Street protest was the subject of an article written by Ryan Milner, who stated “all these critiques were in line with complaints posted across traditional media outlets, suggesting a deep interconnection between the arguments occurring on meme sites and the broader discourses occurring during these protests” (Milner, 2370, 2013). What this shows is that in terms of generating political discourse, the use of memes is as if not more effective than simply starting a conversation in real life/on social media.

 

In an increasingly digital age, memes are becoming a dominant form of communicating with one another. While memes have been around since the dawn of humanity, they have only gained mainstream popularity in recent years. The rate at which internet memes have become popular is truly staggering, as other advances in technology and pop culture have moved much more slowly. By being a medium that is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, memes are revolutionizing the way people communicate with each other and generate discourse. There are even groups of people (my primary group of friends) that are able to communicate with each other solely through the use of memes. As for the future of memes, their popularity and uses in society will only increase, as society becomes ever more digitally advanced.

 

 

Reference List

A lolcat image using the “im in ur…” format. Retrieved

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat#/media/File:Lolcat_in_folder.jpg

Annoying College Kid-Occupy Wall Street. Retrieved

from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/189413-annoying-college-kid-occupy-wall-

street

Case Study: #OccupyWallStreet. Retrieved

from https://www.micahmwhite.com/occupywallstreet/

Abel, C. (2014). Architecture, memes and minds. Manchester University Press. Retrieved

from https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1mf717q.13

Brennan, K. (2015). MemeLife. University of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt14jxw02.21

Milner, R. (2013). Pop Polyvocality: Internet Memes, Public Participation, and the Occupy

Wall Street Movement. International Journal of Communication, 7(2013), 2357-2390.

Miltner, K. (2014). There’s no place for lulz on LOLCats”:The role of genre, gender, and

group identity in the interpretation and enjoyment of an Internet. First Monday, 19(8).

Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5391/4103

wavywebsurf. (2016, December 12). The Evolutionary History of Memes [Video file].

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf_MXH0sUwE.

 

Here is a link to a video that I think does a good job of explaining the evolution of Internet memes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf_MXH0sUwE