If you’ve been living a rock since 2005, you may not know what a “meme” is. Also, hi! Trump is now our president. Yeah. That actually happened…
A “meme”, defined by Google’s Dictionary is…
…or in other words, everything you see on Facebook and Instagram nowadays. (You have not been on the internet if you have not seen one of these).
In 2017, memes have become more popular than ever, from the wholesome to the downright offensive. There isn’t a day in your life where you haven’t opened up your social media, and seen one of your friends sharing images of some photo which they though was funny. You may laugh, you may cringe, or you may pretend to laugh when in your heart you are really thinking, “My god is that awful, how could anyone laugh at that?” Regardless, you, inexplicably, have faced a meme (and if your reaction to your friends memes is the third one, you may also need new friends…)
According to various Reddit threads, there are approximately infinite memes circulating around the interwebs since its alleged conception in 2000 (may or may not be scientifically accurate). Ranging from the human legend of Chuck Norris, to plethora of “Cash me outside” memes circumventing around Facebook today. The meme has become so popular that there are ACTUAL UNIVERISTY STUDENTS AT STANFORD WHO HAVE WRITTEN PAPERS ON THIS. I’m not joking.
Onkar Dalal, Deepa Mahajan, Ilana Segall and Meghana Vishvanath of Stanford University took the liberty of using various pieces of data found on MemeTracker.com to explore and examine the relative lifetime relevance of a meme across the interwebs. The real purpose of this analysis (besides enjoying many memes) was to discover how news propagates across media platforms, using memes as a springboard for this investigation. Unfortunately, according to their results, the data was far too scattered to accurately pinpoint an average or average range for meme survival. From their conclusion, the researchers have stated that they hope to “examine more memes” for future research. If I ever found a field that I’m truly interested in, this is it: Memeology.
But wait! There’s more! BBC did a 40 minute study into what makes a great meme, using the classic Kermit as an example:
…their conclusion? The more notable the content of the meme is, the more popular it becomes. And it’s true! Almost every popular meme comes from a massive origin story, some foundation which the audience basis its enjoyment from. It’s not interesting if your neighbour Doug takes a picture of himself and puts some Comic Sans, but it’s hilarious when you put an image of Donald Trump saying “I will improve the economy” and then putting a BBC article of Donald Trump disbanding all of his economic councils yesterday. (No seriously, all his economic councils were cut off. Oh did you know? Donald Trump is the USA’s president). This is what make memes funny, the “inside” joke that only a certain demographic can relate to. What memes actually do is they trigger a part of your brain, your short-term, long-term, or retentive memory, which supplement the meme with the meaning. Without cognitive knowledge, a meme makes no sense at all, and often leaves some really awkward moments…
And you thought memes were just jokes; they are the pinnacle of science. Educate yourself.
