Stop! the Memes

The success of these memes I believe spawn from one, they are visual, and we are all visual learners, secondly, the repetition is crucial for their success as viral mainstream crap. People see them over and over and start to like them more and more.

 

It’s not that I don't find memes funny. It's just that memes never seem to run their course and gracefully die out. Instead, they hang around and overstay their welcome, much like a visiting relative or a silent-but-deadly fart on a crowded school bus. Whenever I come across a newly-born meme, I feel conflicted. On one hand, I like the fact that it's new and fresh and that it has provided me with some entertainment. However, on the other hand, I feel troubled because I know for a fact that it's going to be regurgitated and beaten into the ground for the next couple of years. You know that feeling you get when somebody tells an old joke that you heard years ago? Well, that's the exact same feeling I get when I see an old meme being paraded around as if it's new and shiny. Before you know it, the meme is being covered by bloggers and tech news websites. It's also beginning to seep onto YouTube and Facebook. YouTube channels are using the meme in their videos and Facebook fan pages are being setup in order to worship it. Twitter accounts dedicated to the meme are born and they amass a large amount of followers.

The meme has now become a part of mainstream Internet culture. It might have taken months or even years, but in the end, it got there, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it. Whenever a person became tired of the meme, he or she was replaced by three or four more people who were willing to carry the torch and help it spread. Throughout the months and years, those who had witnessed the meme in its early stages had to watch on in horror as this "joke" was repeated time and time again, with growing intensity.

Memes

     Memes are the newest way to communicate ideas around the world.  I believe them to be so popular because of their simplicity.  They are easy and quick to read and because of their humorous nature they are very attractive.  The best memes are the ones that connect people.  The greatest thing about memes is that they have the ability to connect people on opposite sides of the world through a simple idea, phrase and picture.  My favorite memes are the ones that make me realize that I am not the only one that has a particular opinion or thought.  I found this meme from the movie Bruce Almighty and I thought it was the funniest thing because it related to me.  After seeing this movie every time I go to spell the word "beautiful" I think of how he says it as B-E-A-Utiful! And because of this movie I will never spell that world wrong again.

     Memes are set to address a certain demographic of people.  This one is set to anyone that has seen that particular movie.  But memes can be set to address a broad demographic like this or have the ability to relate to a much smaller audience.  This one here is meant for MRU students.  It addresses the subject that Mount Royal has the hottest women of any school around.  Anyone that doesn't go to MRU or have a relation to the school wouldn't understand the joke.  But that is the best part about memes, they don't have to be targeted at everyone.  They just need to be put in a place that the target audience will see it.   

Memes

I think memes are mainly used for entertainment and that they are a good part of any Internet community. From bad luck Brian, to grumpy cat memes bring humor and entertainment to people’s day and I think that is an important part of my time spent on the Internet. Using the Internet mainly for entertainment I find that memes make me laugh and are interesting, but I do not use the Internet to look for them. Whether they are popping up on my Facebook or on schoolwork they are a good addition to the Internet, and are very entertaining. 

After reading the articles I saw that memes have a large impact on many Internet communities and that memes have a large background. I also saw that memes have many more formats than what I had previously thought and that they are very dynamic.

Funny Junk

After seeing this I still do think that memes are used mainly for entertainment, because many of them cover issues that are very irrelevant. Even though many memes cover issues that are not very important people are still brought together by using them and it creates a very diverse community. With memes covering so many different topics and with so many different memes being created the meme community is always evolving which I think is pretty cool. 

Purpose of Memes

Memes are invading the internet across social media sites especially. I almost find it humorous that people in the articles have gone through the effort of "studying" these memes to determine what they say about our culture. I have seen meme's on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and only recently found out that they are actually a phenomenon, not just someone editing some random image they find online. I usually only repost memes if I find them funny or if I can relate to the message; i'll be honest though, I do not really get a lot of the references.

I agree with the points brought  up in  "Why are memes popular?" in that memes are a way for people to connect and bond over common thoughts and also be able to share these  thoughts. The ability to easily comprehend memes has led to their success, it only takes you a few seconds to read and understand a meme if you know a little about the subject matter. Memes need get people to relate otherwise its just a random picture with random words.

As far as usefulness, I do not believe memes are anything more than entertaining. I would never use a meme to try to get a serious point across. Perhaps if the nature of memes changes to include academic or more serious images, then it would be easier to attach serious or academic text.

The Purpose Of Memes

From the first blog title Ive read about why memes are popular, it would seem that memes have really high accessibility, and are probably one of the fastest things to spread around the Internet. It states that troll face and rage face are the most popular, and now that i think about it, that's how i was first introduced to memes. Troll faces were generally used on videos and pictures of people being trolled or tricked in some way that makes them look foolish. In the blog, it says that there are now more types of memes such as the single panel comics which generally have a funny, popular picture with some text over it, and 4-panel comics which illustrate a scenario with the 4th panel generally being a reaction. In one of the last sections, it talks about how memes used to be popular in paragraph form and without pictures but nowadays there has been a major shift since the pictures with little writing do their jobs, and there is no longer a need for putting in all that effort as a reader and as a poster. From my personal experience I can relate to this, there are some days when a person can be really bored or really upset, and if they see a simple meme with a funny or cute picture which has a joke or belief attached to it, their day can improve a lot, and it will at least give them something to smile about. I personally like the Philip.J.Fry memes from Futurama because i feel that I can relate to most of them.

There are other types of memes growing as well, such as the viral memes and Lolcat memes, as shown is the article of the Atlantic times. i think it's good that pages like this can manage to bring people together, and can separate them into 3 main groups too. Viral memes and memes in general can be funny and entertaining to an extent, You have to keep in mind where the line is between funny and rude. The video on the woman nearly being raped was not being taken as seriously as it should have due to the guy's accent, and they probably thought that he was uneducated or just joking around, but they missed the main point of the news report and instead of showing sympathy, they put it into a comical context. It states in the article that the guy is quite content with his accidental fame, and that he laughs along with everybody else, which means he got over it but you never know if his sister felt the same way. I believe that while Nobody should be rude or disrespectful to others that they know nothing about, it will never be possible for everyone to share the same belief or the same support, and memes are mainly meant to be a joke. Overall i feel that memes are a form of entertainment and they can not appeal to every person every time so pick and choose which ones make you laugh and ignore the ones that don't.

Importance of Memes

Society now in days is high strung and very easily stressed, a meme is a good way in which people are able to take a break and have a good laugh. Often they are about subjects that wouldn’t be joked about such as sexuality race or social class yet in the form of a meme people are able to relax. However as the article states sometimes memes can be taken too far. In the Case of Dodson the idea of laughing over something related to rape is wrong. Yet who is to draw there of what is appropriate vs. inappropriate in society today. Currently the Harlem shake is a very popular video from all the videos I have seen they are in appropriate. Many videos include young people humping random objects which seems inappropriate to me. Yet memes can provide a entrance to talk about subjects that would not have been originally brought up. In the case of the Harlem shake parents may be able to connect it to talking about relationship with their kids.

Recently on Facebook and through email memes have been popping up everywhere. I personally quiet enjoy them it is a nice break from whatever it is that I am doing. Memes are a way to captures the reader’s attention in a short amount of time. They don’t require long paragraphs or explanations but simply requires a colorful image with a witty statement. In the end I think that memes serve a purpose and can bring people together over a common interest. In the meme that I have posted it is addressing the common stereotypes about the life of college life. This is funny in my opinion because it has some truth which usually memes do. You would need to have a back ground knowledge of the subject to understand why it is funny.

Meme Creator