Creation, Distribution and Understanding of memes.
1- A meme. What is a meme? By dictionary definition it is “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.”For me? A reaction. A way to express yourself. But where did the term meme come from? A man called Richard Dawkins. The root of the word meme comes from the Greek word “mimeme” which means to replicate things. Memes are constantly replicated and modified so that it becomes an advantage to the person who is using it and the audience it is intended for. It becomes evolved.
2- But how do you create your own meme? In most instances the creation of a meme is purely accidental. For example, the dancing baby meme. It is literally that. A dancing baby. It was originally created in 1996 using character studio. One of the workers that worked in the company that created this test found the dancing baby to be humorous and then emailed the dancing baby to other colleagues which was then spread even further and even out the office.
3- The dancing baby was then edited and modified to include music. The most popular song that was edited onto the meme is “Hooked on a feeling” by Blue Swede you know the one that goes OOGA CHAKA OOGA OOGA OOGA CHAKA…yeah let me stop there. Then it was once again spread further and further. The editing process of the meme itself can be considered creating the meme. When a meme is created, it is created with the purpose of it becoming viral. If your meme hasn’t been spread, then it isn’t a meme. That is the cycle of a meme.
Distribution & Understanding:
4- Now moving on to the circulation of memes. What’s interesting about this is the way a meme tends to now be used. In the last few years, it has become a sort of coping mechanism for the younger generation. When a video goes viral or a dire situation, the internet takes that and creates multiple memes for it. A recent example of this being from the film Avengers: infinity wars, okay massive spoiler warning ahead, a specific scene towards the end of the film where spiderman disappears which was heartbreaking if I do say so myself, was created into multiple different memes HOWEVER it could only be understood if you had watched the film. A key thing to understand and remember is that a meme is not always understood. You have to directly understand the context of the situation to understand the meme that follows it.
5- As a graphic designer why is this topic important to me? Easy. Because of the communication memes create. Memes have started to take a place in vocabulary. It is constantly being used as a way to show our emotions almost as if no words can describe what you’re feeling or thinking. But the problem lies in being able to understand the meme being presented. As I touched upon earlier, not everyone understands the reference of a meme. But can you expect everyone to always understand every meme? No of course not. There’s many factors that stop someone from getting a meme and it can be something as simple as a generation gap. I mean you probably won’t expect your mum to understand a meme related to the latest internet trend, would you?
Memes are unique but also recycled. The lifespan of a meme isn’t very long. It’s easy for it to go popular and then just as …disappear.
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