Memes are amazing. In these times of strife what is better than getting on social media and seeing a funny picture paired with a too relatable comment. What’s not like to about this ironic form of modern art that has attached itself to the Millennial generation? While memes are fun, they are also very interesting to think about and analyze. How can a silly photo or caption on the internet be so relatable to so many people? What is it about these memes that have us so interested?
The best memes (Kermit the frog, Arthur, Spongebob, etc.) have one key component in common. They are all simple. None of them are over the top, none of them are too hard to understand, and none of them try to be something that they are not. In other words, these memes are amazing and have lasted so long because they are easy to understand. Why do people let ourselves be entertained by something so foolish? Even further why do people want to be taken so seriously yet laugh at something so blatantly stupid? Last time I checked that would make most people, myself included, hypocrites.
Research has shown that people enjoy stories. Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time. This is another prime component that makes us love memes so much, in the fraction of a second memes tell stories. For example:
This meme tells a story from start to finish. The setting is a college class. The characters are students and the cruel professor. The conflict is the fact that on the first day of school they are already moving from the syllabus to chapter one. All of this is conveyed in a fraction of a second. Every good meme knows how to tell a captivating story that will keep us lauging and entertained for months and possibly years.
Memes are inside jokes that everyone on the internet can be a part of. However, there are a few that have fallen through proving that not every meme is powerful. A prime example is the “Damn Daniel,” that took over the internet for a brief period in 2016. The reason that meme went out of style so quickly was because it wasn’t relatable to the rest of us. That joke was clearly between Daniel and the camera man. For us to have understood, we would have had to be there to witness the white Vans for ourselves.
Memes can be discussed way more in depth than I went today, but I think it is important to realize where the power truly comes from. The internet is the birthing place for all memes. Taking it a step further the people who decide if a meme is going to be cool or be a flop is us. Everyone who uses the internet is in a position of power, we decide what is trendy, funny, or lame. With that being said, how do we let something we created have so much weight over us, or was that the goal in the first place?
