What is a meme?

Introduction:

Memes are a cultural shorthand that, like all forms of communication, evolve with those who use them. Nobody can claim to know or understand every single meme that exists. There are simply too many, and they can often be too personal to the individuals creating and sharing them. Still, there are some common elements that can help you understand them.

What makes a meme a meme?

Even if memes seem impossible to understand, chances are you’ve come across at least one over the years that’s made sense to you. Whether you partook in the Ice Bucket Challenge, have a “Keep Calm” mug on your desk at work, or have ever used the words “Fail” or “Winning,” ironically or not, then you’ve participated in a meme. You found out about it through word of mouth, you understood it, you changed its context, and you appropriated it for your own usage. And these are the key components of what makes a meme a meme. While an outright definition of a meme is hard to nail down, the term is most often associated with an image or video that portrays a particular concept or idea that is then usually spread through online social platforms. That idea goes on to proliferate through social media, forums, instant messaging apps, and even news sites. The images and videos that convey the message are often altered and built upon during this process, which often results in the evolution of the original idea into something else entirely, or are simply posted with a new caption to portray an altered form of it.

From dancing babies to the Momo Challenge:

Some researchers have traced the idea of a meme back hundreds of years, but its modern interpretation is considered by most to have been coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He described the idea of a meme in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene as a cultural entity or idea that replicates, evolves, and is passed from person to person. He couldn’t know it at the time, but that term would later be used to describe an infinite number of permutations of different phrases, images, sounds, and videos, all spread via the internet in an effort to share ideas and thoughts quickly and succinctly. Most would consider the first internet meme to be the dancing baby. Sometimes referred to as “Baby Cha-Cha,” the short GIF of an animated baby dancing became a viral hit in 1996. It was shared widely through email chains and showed up in popular TV shows like.

How to understand a meme

Some memes are easier to understand than others. The easiest ones are known as “image macro” memes, which usually involve some sort of expressive image and some block text. They’re emphatic and designed to help convey an emotional state in a manner that’s simple to understand. They acknowledge a shared experience between the creator and the viewer. Others can be a little harder to nail down.

Slender Man

Slender Man  can seem scary or dangerous. Others might be bizarrely obscure, referencing a particular episode of a TV show or movie that aired decades ago. Often the origins of such memes can be buried in context so deep that understanding their origins requires dedicated research. How important that is depends on why you want to understand the meme. If you simply want to use it yourself, picking up the rough idea of what it means from the latest usage of it is often enough to create your own and be in on the joke. If you want to discover more about what it means so that you can determine if it’s something you want your children, students, or dependents associating with, the best people to ask for more information is them. Helpful resources like 

PEACE

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