An Analysis of the Weird, Wonderful Internet Meme
As cultural artifacts, Internet memes are fascinating things. They are at once rich with meaning but when pressed to explain their humor, somehow suddenly mystifying. Their definition is difficult to put into words and anything but narrow. Simply put, Internet memes are just ideas memorialized. They exist in the form of images hijacked from television shows, from the unlucky (or lucky?) social media profiles of completely random people on the Internet, and even from medieval paintings.
Sometimes the memes are digitally altered, papered over with other images in a kind of rudimentary children’s activity of cut-and-paste. The unsophistication of it is perfectly intentional, however, a testament to the early Internet as unrefined and amateur. But memes don’t just show up in static image form: They also thrive in video format as well as plain text — for example, as tweets that gain a cult following and subsequently proliferate.
Internet memes have proved to be a trailblazing form of communication in the 21st century and are poised to continue growing in clout and quantity. But there’s a lot to make sense of. Does their popularity follow a particular logic? What makes a certain meme ‘cool’ and another one not? How is the modern meme different from the ways people used to interact in the past? And, most fascinating of all, what does this…
