By Ahmad Salami
One of the defining factors of the 21st century is truly the culture of memes. Memes are the images of some popular culture reference with a caption that related the image subject to another more contemporary or relatable matter that interests a lot of people at the same time. Memes are especially dominant and liked by almost everyone around the world because of the new wave of globalization and the dominance of social media formulating a digital age, which relates popular issues with popular culture images. The power of memes stems from its relating ability which appeals naturally to a massive number of internet users, in addition to its sarcastic nature which can be a very powerful factor of delivering ideas around the world. Furthermore, memes were able to snatch their place on the international and global level to become a language of communication of its own, and it becomes more and more relevant as more prominent entities such as political figures, TV shows, movies, or any celebrity on any talk show speaks about memes and use them to appeal to the public (Sternely, 2020). The reasons for meme dominance are many, and the explanation of their impact is also lengthy, and that is due to the power that they have.
Memes are, primarily, an image of some popular culture reference, which might be a TV show scene, a movie scene, an image or part of a viral video, or just any photo that is widely used by the media. That is called the subject of the meme, and it is one of the most important elements of the meme because so much rides on how well known the subject is. For example, recently a meme has emerged that features a song by the famous singer Drake rejecting one thing and accepting another, which became a very viral meme template. It is important for the subject to be known because all people must engage with the meme and its subject in a way that can link the subject to the caption given. Another example is the image of a confused Jackie Chan painted in white and black, or the photo of the interested or intrigued Japanese dog, or just about any image featuring Donald Trump (Beskow et al, 2020). Because everyone around the world is familiar with the image, the perception of the subject is shared among all (Beskow et al, 2020). Thus the new subject, or the caption, can be linked to the original shared perception of the image, making up the shared understanding of the meme, which is one of the genius of the meme. Furthermore, this is also one of the reasons and the elements of the process of a meme going viral. Once an image is famous or known by a lot of people, it becomes much easier to be accepted and then reposted by many other people beyond the creator. Everyone knows the meme therefore everyone understands it and becomes inclined to share it with others to make them laugh, and here is the second element of the fame of the meme, or the element which contributed to it becoming viral. Memes are mainly attributed of being funny. Comedy has recently -and also historically but the focus is mainly on the contemporary aspect of the issue- become a vessel to cross the world. Some of the most famous and most revered and respected celebrities around the world are comics, which signifies the newly found power of comedy on the international level. Because meme are comic and are mostly found funny by almost everyone around the world, they set in and claimed a status that cannot be overthrown (Beskow et al, 2020). Furthermore, memes are also attributed with ways of being a way to vent or to express situations that relate to everyone. These situations might range from a college student expressing his or her disappointment with studying, or a person expressing their feelings or experience in which they felt happy or uncomfortable, or even expressing opinions about cultural or political issues which can be better understood using a comic approach. Their power remains, however, in their ability to become viral through people relating to them and their comic aspect, in addition to their ability to transcend languages and global borders to be understood by literally all people around the world. Memes are almost always created using the English language, the universal language of the human beings, and in a very easy level of linguistics which allows all people to understand it (Zannettou et al, 2018). They make people feel part of the cyber community and enhance bonds and relationships with online friends by sending them to each other. That is how memes can become viral, and that is why they are becoming more and more used and interesting.
Another aspect of memes that makes them some of the most promising and important part of the 21st century is their ability to cover cultural and political issues. After the continuing surge of globalization and the elimination of the world borders by means of social media and communication and transportation mechanisms that facilitate travelling thousands of kilometers in a matter of hours, a new phenomenon is on the rise, which the global culture, as well as global politics. A new shared cultural and political approach is now on the rise, which has become the very subject of memes. Memes provide a safe, comic space for expressing ideas concerning politics or culture. They address the cultural issues which are shared by almost everyone around the world, and they sarcastically cover political issues that are more difficult to discuss otherwise. The sarcastic aspect of memes allows political and cultural expression which would not create conflicts or feuds, because in the end, a meme is only a joke.
Memes begun taking their rightful place as the King of global communication ever since the early 2000s, which means it has begun with the beginning of the internet. Today, as the internet becomes more and more a significant part of the life of any human, memes are also expected to become more significant.
References:
Sterelny, K. (2020). Memes revisited. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
Zannettou, S., Caulfield, T., Blackburn, J., De Cristofaro, E., Sirivianos, M., Stringhini, G., & Suarez-Tangil, G. (2018, October). On the origins of memes by means of fringe web communities. In Proceedings of the Internet Measurement Conference 2018 (pp. 188-202).
Beskow, D. M., Kumar, S., & Carley, K. M. (2020). The evolution of political memes: Detecting and characterizing internet memes with multi-modal deep learning. Information Processing & Management, 57(2), 102170.
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