A Meme is a comic, really. Pictures and words put together to get some kind of point across.
It's a fascinating phenomenon. I'm tempted to try to explain what they are, but the meme up top has reminded me not to attempt that.
Seeing them, whether I understand them or not, is a reminder that the cultural conversation moves at a blistering pace these days and I'm on the crest of the hill, about to be completely left behind, pop culture-wise. Or maybe it's already passed me by. Enh, I'm okay with that I guess.
Mostly.
I guess memes are sort of a mashed up hybrid of single-panel political cartoons and fumetti, which adds new dialogue to existing images (see rawdale's TRUMPED for an excellent example right here on the Duck). I was a big fan of fumetti back in the day, when it showed up in comedy magazines like MAD or Cracked.
They can make a political or philosophical point, or a comedic observation, or connect several popular culture items together…
Or they can be just plain silly, like the meme about Italian soldiers' bodies being made of pasta.
Are you down with the memes? Do you make them yourself? What's your opinion on them?
Memes
Banes at 12:00AM, March 16, 2017
3 likes!
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Tantz_Aerine at 10:41AM, March 16, 2017
Great article!
Tantz_Aerine at 10:41AM, March 16, 2017
I don't make them myself but I often chuckle at them. Or cringe.
Ozoneocean at 6:18AM, March 16, 2017
Thinking of them as a single panel comic makes a lot of sense! The funniest and cleverest memes work this way. The most boring ones are the obvious ones, or the ones endlessly recycled, the way the Dawkins' style are.
KimLuster at 6:16AM, March 16, 2017
Very nice article! Ah... Memetics - Evolution by Natural Selection meets Pop Culture!! :D I like dancing around the theory... On page 207 of the Godstrain, Dr. Trager was about to suggest that the Godstrain itself gets passed liked a Meme (maybe it's a Meme that has totally taken on a life if its own)!! It is a neat hypothesis, with lots of explanatory power, but like all incorporeal concepts (super-egos, observer effects, mind-body dualism, spirits, god...) I think it's fundamentally impossible to prove, or know the true nature of!! But that's why those concepts are such useful story fodder - you can do whatevah you want with them!! :D
bravo1102 at 5:28AM, March 16, 2017
Oh, that kind of meme. For a minute I thought you were going to expound on Richard Dawkins. Hmmm, take an image and add a blatantly obvious remark in the Impact font. Pop culture for people with no attention span and no subtlety. I still say Kellyanne Conway looks just like the Wicked Witch of the West.
MOrgan at 3:26AM, March 16, 2017
Oh... I thought it was a singer warming up their voice. Me me me me me... ;-)