What is a Meme?

What is a meme?

Hey, do you know any funny inside jokes? Of course you do! Inside jokes are a great way to laugh together with your friends, drawing you all closer together as a group and probably bringing back some happy memories. Sure, someone who doesn’t know the joke might wonder why you’re laughing so hard at a corgi wearing a hat or the phrase “peanut butter.” But if they knew why it was so funny? They would probably be laughing too! If you can remember understanding an inside joke, maybe even a particularly obscure one, then you know how internet users feel about memes.

Memes (pronounced “meems”) are basically the internet’s version of inside jokes, only they’re shared between entire online communities rather than small groups of friends. When a member of a gardening community posts a picture of a wilted flower and another poster draws a frowny face on it, that image might become a meme! If a news anchor humorously mixes up two words on live TV and someone posts the video to YouTube, the flub could give birth to a meme if enough internet users find it hilarious. Even things that are just plain silly or random can become memes, like pictures of cats with funny captions!

(They’re called “Lolcats,” and they’re one of my favorite memes. You can see one at the top of this article!)

A lot of memes fit that description, a silly joke or pop culture reference. But some memes aren’t silly at all! They’re just reflections of an online community’s culture, or even a reflection of the internet’s culture as a whole.  One meme, called “Reaction Images,” is just the practice of replying to another user’s post with an image rather than with words. So if someone online was being rude, someone else might post a “reaction image” of a TV character shaking their head in annoyance. No joke! But all of them spread in basically the same way, from user to user, growing more widespread in usage as they rise in popularity. Sometimes they even show up in real life! What starts as a silly joke on the internet might end up appearing on CNN, or being reenacted live as part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. How crazy is that?

One of the most popular memes of all time is called “Rickrolling,” where you trick someone into watching the music video for Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It began as an internet prank in the early 2000’s, and by 2008? Astley himself Rickrolled all of America on national TV! Click on this link to watch the video for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL-hNMJvcyI

To sum it all up, internet memes are a little like the web’s inside jokes. Most of them are funny, some of them can be strange, and all of them are a reflection of the vast, interesting world of internet culture. So the next time you see someone laughing like crazy at a stick figure comic strip, the name of NES cartridge, or a magic lawnmower flying off into the sunset, you can take comfort in the fact that they haven’t gone off the deep end. They’re just knowledgeable about internet culture! And who knows? After reading some of the future posts in this blog, you might find yourself laughing along with them.