When I think of a meme, I immediately envision 9Gag’s glory days, when stick figure characters such as Me Gusta, Like a Boss and Poker Face were literally popping everywhere online. And even though I don’t visit 9Gag quite as often, memes are still a big part of our virtual communication. By definition a “meme” is a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition and replication in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. The word itself comes from Greek “mimeme – that which is replicated”. Outside the scientific realm, the word meme is used to describe the replication of words, phrases, and ideas on the internet. In this context it refers to the item that “goes viral.” Memes are easy to go viral for multiple reasons – they are almost always funny, familiar, relatable and often treat the audience as part of the “inside joke”. In my opinion, precisely the familiarity with other media is what defines which memes stick with audience and which die out quite soon. Directly said – any property can be put in a context and transform to a meme: videos, pictures, quotes, songs, etc. Not surprising at all, it contradicts with copyright laws and intellectual ownership.
(if you don’t know this is from The Lord of the Rings, please leave)
But as I mentioned in my previous post, copyright laws don’t have a legitimate application online. Primarily because the web in particular allows users to create their own media and control the flow of information they encounter” (Helmond A. 2015) In the virtual world, where everyone has the ability to create, borrow or remake content, it’s impossible to sue thousands of people for creating new media by playing with trademarked materials.
To demonstrate how easy it is to create a meme, I made a small experiment. The headline of this blog post is based on a quote from The Maze Runner, a dystopian novel and movie series, and refer to WICKED (World In Catastrophe: Killzone Experiment Department) – the antagonistic organization in the series. I watched the movie in 2013 and message “WICKED is good” stuck with me and now I used it in a completely different concept, mimicking it, changing it, yet keeping the familiar connection with the original idea.
In my personal opinion, memes can be e a great method for online advertising. Since majority of memes are created from and for users, they can convey various messages, without stamping the term “ad” on them. Memes do have common similarities with native ads, as both are targeted at social media sites and both can feature funny and interesting content. The enormous difference is that while memes are designed by users, primarily for fun, native ads are posted as “fun content” yet can “misdirect users by disguising the source and intentions of the message” (Oberholzer-Gee, F. 2014).
The “viral” capacities of good memes ensure instant message flow and bigger final impact. Drake’s last music video “Hotline Bling” gained tones of buzz, due to his bizarre dancing moves and thanks to the countless memes, which appeared instantly in the form of vines, parodies and gifs. Currently the song has 97 million views for the three weeks it’s been out, already almost half of the views Drake’s most popular single “Started form the Bottom” has gained for the past 2 years (207 million). Although all memes are making fun of the rapper, they generate hype and interest in online users, urging them to check the original video on YouTube, therefore the memes contributed to the marketing strategy and increase the profit.
But to say memes are all good will be a lie. Because everything on the internet is practically off limits nowadays, some viral content may turn out to be hurtful to some. Mariah Pringle, a 2 year old girl, was turned into a meme and mocked for her appearance. It was fun for people to call a little girl a monster, a demon and a leprechaun, without even considering she has a rare disease called Two Chromosome Duplication Syndrome, which impairs her mental and motor skill development. The concept of memes loses all of its funny, charming appeal when it’s used for insensitive activities such as offending a small child and can easily be described as wicked.
While writing this post I realized that I used the word “WICKED” in my headline for more than an example of how to construct a meme. I used it to describe the duality of memes – they can be “cool, urban, great”, yet it doesn’t take much to transform them into something “vile, unpleasant or evil”. The whole idea of mimicking content works great for spreading information and leading back to the source, but as everything else in our society – it can have a dark side.
Readings:
Helmond A. 2015. “The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready” In Social Media & Society
Oberholzer-Gee, F. 2014. “Buzzfeed – The Promise of Native Advertising” In Harvard Business School.
Denis Maznev 