A less commonly talked about “superpower” of the internet is the ability to make thousands, if not millions of people realize that in many ways we are actually a lot more alike than we might think. In fact, if you think about it, memes can only function if there is some shared understanding and frame of reference.
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Dawkins intended the word to represent thespread of ideas and conceptsin culture while using evolutionary principles as a metaphor. In many ways, he was perhaps more correct than he could have ever suspected, as now, for example, entire ideas can simply be conveyed with single frames from “The Office” or images of specific cats.
To maintain the idea of a gene, Dawkins argued that certain ideas, once observed, will be replicated. As any seasoned internet user knows, memes tend to follow certain patterns and templates, which are passed on from user to user, putting together the tapestry of what is current online content.
As with certain genes, memeslive or diethrough replication. If the meme isn’t funny or meaningful, it won’t be shared or recreated. And, very obviously, something needs to be somewhat relatable to be funny or meaningful. In this way, it’s actually easy to see just how much is shared throughout humanity, as seven different people on seven different continents can enjoy the same meme.
While internet memes have been around since the 1990s, their shape and form have changed significantly since then. Connoisseurs of older memes might remember the days when most meme imageswere a picture with some text. Some even followed the standard form of a motivational poster, with a black frame, the “demotivational post.”
In the modern day, every element of an image file is a brush in the hands of a meme creator. Compression effects, color saturation, strange fonts, photoshop, and bizarre combinations of media all culminate in a sort of content smoothie. What is amazing, is that most of the time, we can parse and understand what is going on.
As a child, you may have wondered how those Ancient Egyptians (or Sumerians, if you were really into history) understood all those pictograms and hieroglyphs. Memes give us some evidence that our brains are better at parsing meaning than we may have given them credit for.
At this point, many memes have surpassed being relatable and have entered a sort of absurdist state, for example, the “moth memes” which mostlyprofess a love of lamps. If you take a step back, you will realize that there are entire collections of memes created for moths (that will never see them) that humans can still relate to.
Moths aren’t the only subject with a whole category of memes, there are a lot of significantly more relatable options. So if you want to see more, do not fret,Bored Pandahas got you covered. Check out our collection of memes about what “my therapist says,” or from the legendary “Boss Meme Squad” Instagram page.
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Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Evelina Šiukšterytė
Gabija Palšytė
Funny
