People have always latched onto anything deemed “cool.” For our generation, it’s Chipotle, Apple and "memes." The last thing isn’t specific to our generation, but it has thrived through the invention of social media. I used to think of memes as those “Bad luck Brian” pictures with a caption. Now, memes are anything that can go viral. According to Martin Shervington, who wrote on the psychology of memes, defines them as “an element of culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation." Once things that could be transmitted via email, memes are available on every social network and therefore have grown in presence and popularity.
“Andre the Giant Has a Posse” is one of the earliest memes but, unlike other memes, it hasn’t died yet. The 720-pound WWF wrestler is typically pictured with the caption “OBEY” beneath a stencil of his face. I had not known that this was also the face of the man who played Fezzik in "The Princess Bride," but I was familiar with the image. Regardless of the fact that I didn’t know the reference and I didn’t know the picture was considered a meme, the image is still on shirts, stickers and other objects that I frequently recognize. This is the nature of memes: something on the Internet that becomes popular among a group of people. These groups can be people with the same sense of humor, people born in the same decade or people who watch the same television shows.
Memes show the future of social media while still holding onto the past. I enjoy memes that make '90s kids remember what we used to think was cool. These memes, being specific to a time and group of people, often don’t stay popular for a while, but the transience of certain memes is the point of social media. The world is continually changing and thus social media content adapts to what’s “trending.” If you’ve been following the “Here Come Dat Boi” meme, then you know there are multiple images from different time periods of a similar frog on a unicycle. Memes like this can trigger past images of things we have seen even if we don’t remember seeing them. The subliminal familiarity of a meme contributes to their popularity.
The question of why memes are popular can be answered in the same way as a question of why anything gets popular. People want to relate to other people through emotions such as happiness or sadness, and social media allows those connections to happen on a larger scale. As social media expands to more platforms, the number of memes seems to increase due to the amount of available exposure. Social media does not spread them necessarily, but social media has aided in their development. Memes, when non-offensive or hateful, can be a great way to connect people from all over the world. If social media is a way to bring people together, then memes are just one tool in that process.
