Memes Are Stupid

This Culture - I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Fads and sensations tend to grow rapidly on the Internet, because the instant communication facilitates word of mouth transmission. In the early days of the Internet, such content was primarily spread via email discussion communities. Messageboards and newsgroups were also popular because they allowed a simple method for people to share information or memes with a diverse population of internet users. They encourage communication between people, and thus between meme sets, that do not normally come in contact. Furthermore, they actively promote meme-sharing within the messageboard or newsgroup population by asking for feedback, comments, opinions, etc. 

Surprisingly, the meme didn’t start with the honey badger, the Ancient Alien guy or even “rage faces.” In fact, the meme’s birthplace wasn’t on the Internet at all, but in evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene.” The meme, which not coincidentally rhymes with “gene” and finds its roots in the ancient Greek “mimema,” is the application of evolutionary concepts to human ideas and culture.  Just as genes go through the all-too-rigorous process of natural selection, so do memes — some live long lives and others go extinct just as fast.

Since the new millennium has plunged us into an Internet culture, it is no surprise that this is where we find a majority of our memes these days and that their propagation is much faster than what could be accomplished by books, schools or word of mouth.

But, as we’re faced with the proliferation of the Internet memes outside of 4chan, Reddit and even past the boundaries of the Internet, we are also faced with their banalization, misuse and — I would argue — overuse.

As much as it makes cultural influence more available, it also stagnates our culture and devalues those who have painstakingly devoted their lives to moving forward our culture without the use of a “generator.” Why come up with anything original when you can express yourself by copying and pasting the same few faces that everyone else uses into a bunch of panels? Almost instantly, you have a “comic” you can call your own. People don’t even need to take the time to formulate arguments when they can just as easily point to the straw man memes such as “the college liberal” or “the ignorant American.” Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour isn’t only limited to our Internet culture. No, it seems some people have even lost the ability to express themselves in daily conversation without the crutch of Internet memes, to the point that they become clichéd. 

That said, I don’t want to demonize the meme. In no way am I saying that everything that anyone says should be 100 percent original. I’d be a hypocrite if I said such a thing. But we must be careful about how we use the new-found power the Internet meme bestows upon us and be wary of the trap of cultural stagnation.

If our culture is reduced to nothing but the same old pictures with the same old bold-faced text on them, then I, pardon my turn of phrase, don’t want to live on this planet anymore.