by Briana Leong
Everybody loves an Internet meme. I mean, why wouldn’t they? Memes pleasantly come into our lives, they generously entertain us and all of our friends; they’re conveniently free and accessible. But nowadays, internet memes are a lot more than just a free and easy form of entertainment, they’re viruses of the mind, and we’re unconsciously spreading them. So guess what? We’re all infected by internet memes! The word meme comes from the Greek word “to imitate” and was first described in 1976 by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins as “a self-replicating unit of culture.” Dawkins argued that “cultural ideas can be copied between people, just like genes.” An internet meme then, is an idea or a cultural phenomenon, usually a joke that is spread via the web. There is a specific kind of internet meme known as the image macro. An image macro is defined by Wikipedia as an image superimposed with text for humorous effects. Its caption often consists of intentionally bad grammar or misspelled words as an exaggerated form of humor. Now we’ve all seen image macros before, from the Forever Alone Guy to the Annoying Facebook Girl to faces of Yao Ming and Obama. Our world has been taken up by images of cats, babies, and awkward penguins. Most of us have even shared these images via social networks such as Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook. And why not? They make us laugh, they help us survive the mundane daily routines of our ordinary lives. When boredom sets in in class or at work, scroll, click, click, scroll - and an hour or two have passed. But have you seriously thought about the unique characteristics of image macros as well as the effects they have on us? Marshall McLuhan, regarded as one of the founders of media theory, pointed out in the 1960s that the media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the substance of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. Nicholas Carr, in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, has expressed that his mind now “expects [him] to take in information the way the Internet distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.” This is understandable as readers worldwide are now struggling to read. We seem to have lost all sense of concentration and focus, we are now unable to read a piece longer than four paragraphs. Our minds are in a state of staccato, we jump from word to word and skim through a long piece of writing. We almost never finish what we’re reading because we won’t return once we exit through a link in the middle of an essay. As Carr puts it, “once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” The image macro is perhaps the most representative form of such a swiftly moving stream of particles. Their most addictive character? They’re quick to read and easy to understand. The picture of an image macro serves as a template and together with the superimposed captions, they form millions of ideas that don’t require any form of explanation. One can say that in this way image macros are productively creative and fun. But others feel that they might be dangerous to our minds because they could be easily exploited. An Internet meme has to fulfill two criteria in order to spread and “go viral.” The first is that it must be easily copied; second, it has to be appreciated by a vast audience of Internet users on multiple levels. Image macros are highly volatile, and the picture that serves as the template can be found everywhere. As for the caption, you can write anything you want. But in order to gain popularity and attract sharers, the content has to be appealing to everyone. This is precisely why most image macros deal with stereotypes. Ben Huh, CEO of the Cheezburger Network, has said that memes “usually take pieces of content from popular culture and take them out of context for their own amusement.” But what happens when these ignorant stereotypes allow such misconceptions to sink into the depths of our brains? Sometimes, the information presented can be inaccurate, the truths can be untrue, and the opinions lopsided and unfair. The bite-size information of image macros has decreased our ability to think critically, to make fair judgments and form substantial opinions. People are becoming a lot more boring and unoriginal. We now have blogs that say nothing aside from image macros, Facebook pages that reveal nothing but a collage of likes and dislikes. Young teens have also expressed that they dislike the collective impact of memes. People are no longer living and creating but turning into ghosts in a world of machines. Image macros have taken over our lives and their popularity is snowballing every day, clogging email inboxes and Facebook newsfeeds. Brad Kim, editor of the famous website, Know Your Meme, remarked that “once limited to an underground subculture of ‘Internet-crazy users,’ image macros now reach anyone with an Internet connection — people young and old, male and female.” Image macros are like highly contagious viruses, transmitting from one person to another. Memes have gone viral and we’re all infected. The future seems pretty gloomy. a
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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