What do you meme?
Read in Indonesian
If you have been scrolling social media in the past couple of days, chances are you are familiar with the controversy caused by Kristen Gray, an American ‘digital nomad’ living in Bali who posted a Twitter thread (and published an e-book) about moving to Bali in the midst of a global pandemic by cheating the system and health protocols. That, as well as the social media wars that followed, was disappointing, especially since race and colonialism were somehow brought into the conversation for no valid reason. However, the memes that came out of the situation never disappoint.
Indonesian netizens fought back in a way only they can. From recommending ‘famous’ spots such as Alas Purwo and Parangtritis Beach to creating imagined situations in which Indonesians get their revenge by moving to America, these posts spread rapidly and stayed viral for days. These posts are examples of internet memes.
We hear this term all the time, but do we even know what a meme is?
Internet memes (pronounced “meems” not “may-mays”) can be conceptualised as Internet-based entertainment content principally propagated through social networking and micro-blogging sites which come in varied forms like pictures and written texts, written texts that may or may not be conversational in nature, videos, animations and GIFs (Joshua, 2020). As far as modern memes go, the ‘dancing baby’ that came out in 1996 is widely accepted as the first digital meme.
Yet, internet meme is not the only type of meme. The origin of memes began long before the Internet was invented. The term ‘meme’ itself is derived from the Greek word ‘mimeme’ or ‘imitated’. The term dates to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene’. In Dawkins' conception, a meme is "a unit of cultural transmission" or the cultural equivalent of a gene.
Dawkins conceived of memes as the cultural parallel to biological genes and considered them, in a manner similar to ‘selfish’ genes, as being in control of their own reproduction and thus serving their own ends. What ‘selfish’ means in Internet memes’ case, according to psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore, is that memes will get copied however and whenever they can, given the opportunity. For example, the ‘distracted boyfriend’ meme has been used by different ‘participants’ or creators for different purposes, in different languages, to touch on different issues all over the world.
According to Dawkins, examples of memes are “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” In an MIT Press publication, scholar Limor Shifman argues that memes encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular.
Indeed, internet memes are very participatory in nature. An example would be the LOLcat memes that can be traced back to 2006. At the time, users of 4chan held a tradition of posting image macros of cats every Saturday, also known as Caturday.
Then, in 2007 the site I Can Haz Cheezburger (ICHCB) was created and featured user-submitted content in a style popularised by 4chan’s Caturday. It hosted ‘the LOL Builder’ or an image macro creation tool. This site is the flagship site of the Cheezburger Network that also includes FAIL Blog and Know Your Meme.
Memes have now gone from a niche, somewhat underground form of casual humour to an everyday part of social interaction. While they still serve mainly as comedic devices, they have also become such a recognised communication method to spread ideas, opinions and information.
The humour utilised in memes is of a particular kind. The kind that is laden with irony, sarcasm and self-defeating values. This brand of humour seems to strike a chord with millennials and Gen Z who find it relevant.
A research by Taecharungroj and Nueangjamnong (2015) tested the effect of various styles and types of humour on the virality of memes. The types of humour are comparison, personification, exaggeration, pun, sarcasm, silliness and surprise. It turns out, self-defeating is the most effective style of humour although it is not the most frequently used. By applying the typology used in the context of broadcast and print media, this study also shows that although sarcasm and silliness are the two most prevalent types of humour used in Internet memes, no obvious differences can be observed in the effects of seven types of humour on virality.
We interviewed Gen Z respondents to get their takes on memes and their popularity. The most popular attribute a meme has to possess to be considered ‘good,’ according to our respondents, is relatability. It has to resonate with the readers’ experience, otherwise memes will never catch on. The respondents use memes for different purposes, including stress relief, entertainment, flirting, ‘shading,’ ice-breaking and expressing emotions when words cannot.
One of the respondents, Shanika Cita, believes that a good meme is one that is able to make the readers feel a sense of belonging to a particular group – or an Internet collective. According to Dr Anastasia Denisova from the University of Westminster, memes allow people to express feelings, including disdain, disappointment, or lack of trust in something and are a universal language, thus memes are able to bring people to be part of the Internet collective. “You feel that a certain community gets you, or maybe you’re getting a certain community,“ she explains.
In 2020, five anonymous individuals decided to create a meme account focusing mainly on the lives and struggle of tech and e-commerce workers in Indonesia (with the occasional international flavours) on Instagram; they named the account @ecommurz. Their tone is candid, sarcastic and irreverent. There are now six people behind the account that has gained 20,000 followers in just 90 days, and we had a chance to chat with one of them, the one who identifies themselves as ‘Admin X.’
More than anything, the people behind @ecommurz seem to understand how vital relatibility is. “We make fun of our daily struggle in the form of memes, it makes our struggles slightly more bearable,” they told The Finery Report. “It's madness and we never expected this to happen, but apparently our memes, jokes and sarcastic posts resonate well among the tech workers community. They loved our content because it makes them feel less lonely when they are struggling,” they continued.
Beyond that, they also make a point to understand their Gen Z audience – or ‘swipe generation’ as they call it –, “Content creators need to capture their attention quickly and constantly with amusing pictures/videos/captions/sexy pictures. Normal ones will just be ignored (or swiped). Three seconds staring at your content should be the new KPI,” they concluded.
Image: Grumpy cat meme
For some, memes’ popularity means big business, and no one has done a better job than the people behind the Grumpy Cat brand. Grumpy Cat or Tardar Sauce (2012–2019) was an Internet celebrity cat whose photograph was first posted in September 2012 on Reddit. Since then, she has launched countless memes in which humorously negative, cynical images were made from photographs of her. Now, unlike many other popular cats, Grumpy Cat had a manager.
The manager, Ben Lashes, who calls himself a ‘meme manager’ also manages Keyboard Cat, Nyan Cat, Mike Tyson’s face tattoo and ‘Ridiculously Photogenic Guy.’ Under his management, Grumpy Cat had scored appearance on shows like American Idol, movie deals, book deals, a coffee line, a merchandise line and commercial deals.
Memes have gone from being semi-underground to mainstream, strictly for fun to lucrative businesses, and honestly the sky is the limit when it comes to their growth potential. There is also the contextual side of memes, in which different situations and locations may find different types of memes amusing. Memes have been an advertising tool, a political vehicle and an ice-breaking agent; we should all keep out eyes open to see what else memes can accomplish.