Memeology: The Underlying Effects of Memes on Society

While I was in Scotland as a freshman just beginning my first semester ever at college, I experienced a whole new culture and a whole new environment. It was in another country that I began my adventure as a college student and jumped into a once in a lifetime opportunity. There were 13 of us who studied abroad in our first year, from the same university, so naturally, we clung together and became very close, very quickly. I lived with two other girls, again from the same university, but our flat became the one spot the other 10 would come to hang out. Well, while I was away, my friends and I did so many things and had so many laughs. I wanted to keep these memories forever, so what did I do? I made memes out of them. A natural response, I know. Memes and making memes became the cultural staple of our friend group as we spent our last few days in Scotland, suppose to be upset about going home, yet finding joy in creating memes about one another.

This is an example of one of them. This meme became the laughing stock of me and my friend group at the time as we recalled a moment on a train ride to Glasgow involving a shit ton of wine and a group of teenage American girls. Looking back at this meme brings back memories, yet some people might be confused at what this means. You can probably piece together the words and get a general idea of what happened but you don’t really understand the context of what this meme is referring to.

So, what is a meme exactly? Why do individuals get some form of happiness from an image with a few words on it? Some times there is no real context to a particular image yet we as a society can find it very amusing. Also, how do certain individuals understand memes yet others don’t?

There are two parts of a meme that people don’t consider but are definitely there. The first part is the image or phrase itself. A meme usually consists of an image that depicts the meme’s “essence” and may be followed by a word or a phrase that puts the image into a pop-cultural context. The second part is much more philosophical and that is the meaning and intention behind the meme. In order to truly understand what a meme is trying to portray, you must have a context that gives a background to it. A majority of people don’t understand the context of the meme above, therefore they don’t “truly understand” it. Well, maybe if I give context to the meme, let’s see if you can grasp it more.

One day, a Scottish friend of mine invited me and 7 of my other friends to a concert in Glasgow. We took the train there because that was the easiest mode of transportation available and my two friends, Erin and Shannon, brought a bottle of wine to share between the two of them. Erin went into the bathroom to stuff it in her bag without looking suspicious and the bathroom was structured very oddly. The door closed automatically by pushing a “Close door” button and once it closed completely, it locked until you press the “Open door” button. Well, the red emergency button was inconveniently placed right next to the Open/Close door button and in a series of unfortunate events, she pushed the emergency button before realizing what had happened. I’m going to use the “you should have been there” line but you should have SEEN the confusion on her face as we were yelling, “YOU PUSHED THE EMERGENCY BUTTON!! OPEN THE DOOR!! GET OUT OF THERE!!” and the sliding door, slowly continued closing until she was completely gone. She looked like a deer caught in headlights, frozen because she knew that this would be the death of her and she couldn’t do anything about it.

After the train conductor opened the door, turned off the emergency lights realizing that she had made a mistake and there wasn’t actually a real emergency, everyone just continued what they were doing, snickering to themselves for the rest of the train ride. HENCE THE MEME WAS BORN. Now if you look at the meme again, you understand the context and it makes the meme more enjoyable than before. That’s the great thing about memes, everyone and anyone can enjoy them but you still need to understand a context behind the meme in order to fully enjoy it.

The joy of the meme comes from understanding it and being “inside the joke.” When it comes to everyday references, the Atlantic discusses understanding certain gags by saying “they remind us of the good times when we first see the joke.” This magazine article uses the television show, Modern Family, as an example when the children in the show create a documentary featuring clips of various family members and gags from previous episodes. A callback to old moments reinforces the emotion that we felt when we first witnessed them. Rebecca Greenfield, the author of the article, says that she really feels included as she remembers the context of a certain joke, almost as if she is rewarded for sticking around for so long. When it comes to memes, with the example I posted above, the image brings me personal joy because it helps me go back to the time in which I lived through that moment.

However, there is another side to memes that isn’t considered too often. There is a certain group that understands memes.

Let me rephrase that.

There is a certain group that is ALLOWED to understand AND enjoy memes. In order to understand what a meme is implying, there is a certain mindset that is required. Speaking from personal experience, my boyfriend has Reddit, which is “an unsocial media site that is used for porn and memes”, and is continuously looking at posts every day. One day he will reference a meme that I have not seen and when I ask him to explain it, he brushes me off saying it is a “dank” meme and I wouldn’t understand it. Just for future reference, a “dank” meme refers to a meme that is not well known by a majority of people.

Here is a meme that I came across titled “Is this loss?” My boyfriend calls this a “normie” meme because everyone knows what this meme is and there have been so many different renditions of it that circulated social media for quite some time.

In a Tumblr post featuring this exact version of “Is this loss?”, a Sociology student described her experience when her professor explained how language has become so specified that individuals who do not speak the language will not understand it. This image sparked much debate in class as the Tumblr user was the only one who understood the meaning behind its “code”. Memes are a language used to communicate the same way that nationalities have a dialect that they use with one another. Smithsonian Magazine defines a meme as an idea and language rather than just images and objects. The number 3 isn’t a meme; the color blue isn’t a meme. Memes are complex ideas that hold a certain power to them. Now you’re probably thinking that I am spewing bullshit and what is the point? I know a ton of Reddit users will criticize me for “being too PC” in the way I address memes but I wanted to enforce that memes are more complex than just words or images that people look at every day. They mean something and they hold more value than that.

Here is another rendition of the “Is this loss?” meme yet it is more inconspicuous. In this image that I pulled from Tumblr, we see someone who doesn’t understand the reference to the original meme. We also see that there is a community that ridicules those for not understanding the gag. Now, it is harmless to poke fun at those who don’t understand the joke, and it may be even more hilarious when the person still does not get it after it has been explained. But it doesn’t feel good to be outside of the “in” group.

There is a theory knows as “resolution of incongruity” that says laughter comes when a person links an unexpected solution to an apparent absurdity.” The joy of cracking a meme comes when you link the context of the meme to its message but once someone breaks or interferes with that process, the joke dies. E.B. White says that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog, you understand it better but the frog dies in the process. Explaining a meme can be tedious and no one wants to be “that guy” that doesn’t understand the joke in the first place. Again, I am not saying that this is the case with EVERY meme. I know millennials have to explain most of these images to their parents and adults practically all the time but it can get exhausting after a while. There are even people out there who try to keep the “sanctity” of memes for themselves like the Reddit and 4chan users who have an elite set of them that only they can enjoy.

Think of this situation like high school. You walk into the cafeteria and there are distinct groups that like to sit together every lunch period. I am generalizing a bit but you have your jocks and athletes that sit in one corner; you have the lacrosse girls sitting at a table adjacent to the jocks; then you have your theatre kids, the band geeks, the advanced placement students; and that table that is always doing homework. You might even call these groups, cliques. Well according to TeensHealth, people cling to these cliques because they feel like they have a place where they are supported and where they can be themselves. Again, I am generalizing but some of these cliques use their power to hurt others on purpose, maybe by excluding them to hang out or throwing insults their way in order to belittle them. Society frowns upon these petty cliques because they foster bullying and insecurities in vulnerable teenagers. Yet, could you argue that memes have the capability of doing the same thing?

MITTechReview has researched and found that several online communities focus on creating and spreading memes with the goal of making an idea viral. This process is called “attention hacking” or more extremely called, “weaponizing.” When you look into websites such as Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter, there are subcommunities underneath the broad social media site that each have their own formats to share their areas of interest. Doesn’t this sound a lot like cliques in high school who spread rumors with the goal of having an entire population put all their focus on one story?

In a society where individuals naturally group themselves with others who share the same interest, it is no different to follow and support individuals on social media who have the same ideologies as you do. TeensHealth also says that cliques are tight groups that usually have strict code and their eliteness is the appeal for membership. This is why there are memes that are basic and are circulated all over social media for anyone to participate in and then there are “elite” memes that only a few know about. If you look back to the meme I showed you about the button on the train, this was only a joke between the 8 of us who witnessed the event. You did not witness the events first hand and in a way, I was excluding you from understanding the inside joke at first.

When it comes to references between “dank” and “normie” memes unearthed all over social media, there is a divide between both of them. Each one has a specific culture and one side does not let the other in, even though memes should be shared with everyone. Now again, one might argue that there are always inside jokes between communities that an outsider might not understand it. That community is entitled to keep that “sacred idea” for themselves. But if we think back to over a century ago when Plessy v Ferguson put into place the “separate but equal” doctrine, this ruling designated two groups that were separated and each was entitled to their own specific facilities that were supposed to keep them “equal”. I am not implying that memes are enforcing segregation and that they ultimately decide laws that keep African Americans away from experiencing memes but there is the idea that the “in” group has access to certain language and privilege while the “out” group just wants to understand the “elite” memes. Nowadays, we look at this Supreme Court case and call it for its bullshit, yet no one is seeing memes in the same light.

Jelou Galang writes in an article titled, “Memes are fun, but when is the right time to laugh?” about the dangers of memes and the messages that they can promote. Anything has the potential to be a meme, just like any idea or statement can become a nasty rumor. Galang is trying to warn us that some memes have dark origins even if they do try to promote laughter and happiness. Again, obviously not all memes do this, but some times you need to be wary of their contexts and what message they are trying to convey. Reddit and 4chan users are not the only ones doing this either. “Weaponizing” memes have become so mainstream that some communities profit off of them for political gain.

DigiDay, an online trade magazine, features a statement from a woman named Rachel who created a Facebook group used to promote political candidates through memes. She says, “Social media plays a huge role in political discourse and this is a way to create and distribute lighter content to help people get to know candidates and feel connected to their message. Memeing across generations is a way that we can bridge the gaps in culture and understanding.” Thinking back to the 2016 election and even before, meme warfare was used as an opportunity for individuals to seize control of the media from a corporate perspective. Memes were a medium that can easily go viral and allowed individuals to compete for attention. There was always a competition for who can get the most publicity between Trump and Clinton. Douglas Haddow recalls in his article effective memes that have been created to question Clinton’s health and her capabilities as president. If you look up “Zombie Hillary” or “Hillary Short Circuit”, there will be images of robots and bloody parts to discourage you to support her.

Another more recent example of this is in an article written by Jennifer L.W. Fink that uses the coronavirus as a popular topic for memes. She says “While public health officials worldwide are scrambling to determine how to best treat and contain the virus that has killed hundreds, the meme plays on the name of the beer brand Corona and suggests there’s no real need to worry.” She would try to explain to her son how this is a global pandemic and that it should be taken more seriously than it is but coming from someone who understands the teenage mind, there is absolutely no way that a topic will be taken seriously if there is a meme about it. In this situation, memes have begun desensitizing individuals to serious news. We are slowly turning our heads away from the original objective of news media, spreading information about events, and have turned it all into one big joke. There is even a SubReddit that is dedicated to making memes out of news articles.

The Conversation writes that memes will continue evolving but one thing that remains is the human desire to stay connected with one another and create a shared culture. While memes have created a new culture that allows people to share and relish in other people’s creativity and happiness, we should also be wary of the future of memes and how they might continue to evolve. In this generation, where media has become so mainstream and so easily accessible, it is getting harder and harder to stay away from it. Memes have also been on the uprise in their influence and purpose on social media as they are used to circulate publicity for corporations. Jennifer Fink mentions in her article how there is a generational gap between how she learns and perceives news as compared to her teenage son. Mimicking that idea, Nicole Daniels in an article titled “Do Memes Make the Internet a Better Place?” reaches out to the younger audience and asks whether adolescents get their news from memes. I am not saying we should stop creating memes or even use them in a more “PC” way because the joy of looking at memes comes from the humor behind it. There are even a ton of communities out there that circulate memes to bring people joy and happiness. At the end of the day, memes are more complicated than just images and words and should not be taken for granted in any capacity.

As the Internet evolves every single day, we slowly move towards an age where all communities have convenient access to memes. What happens when memes start influencing our choice in presidents like it did in the 2016 election? What happens when everything becomes a meme and you don’t understand what is right and wrong anymore as the media is influencing what you think is right and wrong? Are we raising our children in a “meme” influenced society where everything is a joke and nothing is taken seriously? We should be aware of how the media has begun using memes in order to desensitize our morals.

There were so many memes made out of Donald Trump and how he would never win the election, yet he is the president of the United States. The media is evolving every day and what we don’t realize is that we are becoming desensitized to certain content because “it is just a meme” and it shouldn’t be taken seriously. Memes that are inherently racist and make fun of minority groups are the ones that are getting the most attention but no one is talking about racist memes in media because they’re “suppose to be a joke”. If we think racism can be a joke, then there is no telling what could become desensitized to next. Again, I’m not saying we should ban all memes that have some form of influence on the younger generation but I am saying we should be wary of how memes are being used and what they are doing to society. The Guardian says:

“Never in our most ironic dreams did we think that the spirit of our tired, lager-fueled piss takes would end up leading to a resurgence of white nationalism and make the prospect of a fascist America faintly realistic.

But the internet is weird like that. It takes things and twists them.”

Meme warfare has become more and more prominent in society yet we are too busy focusing on the humor of the meme rather than the context and the intention in which the meme was created.