Everybody loves memes, from kids to middle-aged people to even some of the older people, and why wouldn’t they? Memes bring us joy in the form of laughter and for years have helped to shape our sense of humour. They allow us to interact with our favourite films, TV shows, songs or even speeches, as a sub-form of fan art. But, due to the light-hearted nature of meme culture, many people have turned a blind eye to the negative impact it can have on our mental health and general way of thinking.
As we advanced into the internet age, memes became predominantly digital resulting in a worldwide influx of them. As much as the world of social media is filled with fun and positive things, it is also the home to extremist ideas, propaganda, hate speech, and racism, all of which we can be exposed to in the form of a meme. Today, anyone, anywhere in the world can make a meme, with the intention to spread them virally, therefore, they are extremely difficult to control or regulate.
The University College in London conducted a research study based on 100 million image-based memes and found that a large majority of the memes that we see on mainstream social media platforms, like Twitter and Instagram, originate on the more niche and dark parts of the internet. These include the subreddit forums and 4Chan, a Japanese online forum. Through the use of perceptual hashing, the researchers were able to determine the thumbprint of each meme and determine the original location of the meme and its context. Unsurprisingly, they found that people like ourselves have for years been sharing memes that were made to be distributed across the most toxic communities.
The word meme originated back to Ancient Greek times, which may come as a surprise to those of you that are convinced everything started with the internet, it was then monetised in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The Selfish Gene'. Dawkins defined memes as any cultural artifact spread by imitation and compared how memes are passed down to that of our genes.
Meme culture has been consolidated into our everyday lives, if you’re not using them, you’re seeing them. Julia Enthoven is a CEO of an online meme maker website, ‘Kapwing’, and has claimed that users on their site make just under 2000 memes a day, and that is just one website. We as humans are fond of memes due to their simplicity, this basic form of humour provides us with simple answers to complicated questions. Boyfriend breaking up with you over text? No worries just send a meme of Pepe the Frog with spaghetti spilling out of his pocket. Don’t know how to spark up a conversation? I’m sure any cat meme will do just fine.
Unfortunately, the human race is well-known for our ability to destroy all things good. And that is what we are slowly doing to memes. See a meme itself is harmless unless made to hurt someone, it comes down to how we interact with them. We have become so dependant on memes as a form of communication that many of us have subconsciously substituted genuine human expression for pictures and 6-second videos. While some of us use memes when speaking to friends or loved ones, others create dark humour memes to showcase their true emotions. Dark humour has and always will be an effective coping mechanism.
Not only do they halt the communication process with those around us but also with the rest of the world. Whenever we hear news of any sort, whether it's good or bad, we immediately make memes regarding that topic. Something so harmless, yet when the news received is regarding a devastating tragedy and our initial reaction is to turn it into a comical internet sensation, that is when we should begin to notice that we are using memes to hide from the harsh reality of the world. We are so determined of turning a negative into a positive that we completely ignore the very important issues at hand.
Take this recent WW3 trend across all social media platforms, where thousands of users shared hundreds of memes regarding a potential WW3 after the death of Iranian General Soleimani. I’m not going to pretend like I wasn’t hysterically laughing at the memes and posting them on my socials, but I can honestly say that I did that to hide my fear. To hide the fact that I am shit scared of how likely it is that a war could break out. This is where the simplicity and effortlessness of memes save the day because rather than having to come to terms with what is happening around the world I can post a photo of a woman shouting at a frowning cat from across the dinner table and everything will be ok.
If that isn’t bad enough then let us not forget about the fact that politicians have also taken it upon themselves to use memes to help their publicity. In January of 2017, following the American election, Donald Trump was mentioned in 100,000 different memes, most of which his team made. Sadly, almost all cultural movements are hijacked for advertising or… Yes, you guessed it, propaganda. See, memes are made with the agenda of spreading a viral message, and that's exactly why politicians and business owners should not use memes to spread their message.
This kind of use of memes takes away from their innocence, and to make matters worse, children love memes and roaming the internet. Their minds are still young and developing, which automatically makes them vulnerable to the exposure of propaganda or extremist ideologies. By using a meme, you are speaking their language, meaning you can pretty much manipulate them into thinking or doing anything you want. When you take into consideration the fact that our children and youth are our future, polluting their minds with propaganda poses a high risk for what’s to come. Rinkesh Gorasia, said, “The currency of the social world is influence. Influence being our ability to drive others to take action and a powerful tool to drive action is a meme.”
Young people are not only susceptible to brainwashing, but also online bullying as a result of memes. Although, many of us appreciate the sense of community that memes provide us with, their ability to form online cliques can prove to be quite damaging. For every meme created, there are a small fraction of people who are alienated from the majority by the meme or offended. However, the simplicity of memes diminishes the harm it may cause. Memes can help to further hate speech, and result in the unintentional harassment of the more niche internet societies.
There is no stopping memes. They’ve become so advanced that trying to destroy meme culture would be like trying to sellotape water to a tree…impossible. Just to put matters into perspective, Google trends reported that the word, 'meme' is now more commonly searched than 'Jesus.' And in actuality, I can’t imagine our world without memes, as they have propelled the modern-day sense of humour. However, we must be cautious of how we engage with memes, to ensure we’re maintaining healthy human connections and not relying on a single internet image to convey our feelings. Essentially, we must control memes, rather than letting them control us.
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