What is a ‘meme’?
The definition of a meme has evolved over centuries as different generations have found different meanings to memes, one of the broadest definition is: ‘an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning.’
A meme is a unit of cultural information spread by imitation. The word ‘meme’ originated from Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book: The Selfish Gene. Dawkins’ likened a meme to a gene in terms of it being a self-replicating unit with potential to represent human behaviour and cultural evolution. The cultural significance and evolutionary attribute of a meme marks its basics.
What is an Internet Meme?
Fast Forward to modern day, with the advent of the internet, a meme became a concept spread rapidly from person-to-person via the internet. Early in the internet’s history, memes were spread via email or UseNet discussion groups. Traditionally memes were represented by image macros–a digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, superimposed with some form of text. As the internet evolved, so did memes which became popular in the mid-1990s, as at this point, memes where mostly short clips, but with the emergence of YouTube in 2005, video memes became quite popular as well.
What is Meme Culture?
Meme culture is the evolving culture created by memes. Memes were initially used to convey an idea represented in different forms such as catchphrases, paintings, image macros, short clips and so on, with these,the meme culture was calling others attention to it and replicating. Amusing memes stumbled upon were sent to others for their enjoyment, but with the rise of the millenials and Gen Zs, memes became a part of popular culture. It became such a part of social media that memes found their way into conversations outside of the internet.
Memes and Communication
With the emergence of youtube, instagram, facebook, snapchat, twitter and other social media platforms, memes became an essential part of communication. Memes are fun no doubt, they give life to conversations and provide a medium of expression. GIFs for one is a critical feature of any social media application: social media users love visual content. Memes are able to carry a common meaning to a broad audience and provide visual understanding during communication, apart from the fact that they are quite fun to use during communication on the internet, they provide a visual means of expression and understanding that texts lack.
Memes and Trending Topics
On popular social media applications like Twitter and Instagram, cultural happenings are discussed with humor via memes, almost every trendy topic has a meme to it. Memes increase the rate at which topics go viral due to how fast they spread across the internet. Topics move across social media platforms(e.g Twitter to Facebook) through memes. So many viral memes are replicated across the internet, with each replication expressing how creative and relatable individuals are.
Memes and Marketing
Meme marketing is a subset of viral marketing which is a practice of using mediums like word of mouth and social media to fulfil marketing goals. Memes have become very integral in marketing due to the fact that they provide instant humour, are relatable, viral and long lasting. Good marketers take note of trends and use them to their advantages. Meme marketing provides benefits such as more impressions, awareness, website visits and so on. A viral meme is a viral brand.
Memes and Politics
Memes are a new means of political communication, they usually express an inside joke about a political figure or a political issue and trigger an emotional response. Political memes can easily spread rapidly into popular culture and express the creator’s stance on an issue as well as trigger an emotional response from others. Mostly, political memes use humor to criticize the government and express an individual’s opinion on certain issues, these opinions evolve into popular opinion as memes spread across the internet. Politicians have also tried to use memes to further their personal interests, but this has always been a dangerous game has no one knows how the internet may react to such memes.
