Opinion: next time you share a meme, remember that you are participating in something greater than a simple viral joke
By Constance de Saint Laurent, Maynooth University and Vlad Glăveanu, DCU
Memes are one of the hallmarks of Internet culture. Humorous images with captions, they often verge on the sarcastic or the cynical. And while they were once confined to niche areas of the Internet, they now spread like wildfires. The pandemic has only accelerated their rise: Stuck at home with only the Internet left to socialise, they offered comic relief and breathed life into busy group chats. Yet memes are more than just viral jokes. Here are 5 things you probably didn’t know and which can help you develop a new appreciation for them.
They were named after a (largely) discredited scientific theory
The name meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins, a prominent evolutionary biologist at Oxford. Simply put, memes are ideas. The name is meant to highlight how they are like genes or viruses: They spread from host to host, fight for survival and mutate along the way. His theory has largely been discredited since. One of the main reasons is that we voluntarily share and take on ideas, and we intentionally transform and improve them.
But the term did stick for Internet memes. For lack of a better term, and because they do spread in ways that can be reminiscent of a virus. Viral, indeed. But what are Internet memes, exactly? In their most basic form, they’re images with a caption that are meant to be shared online, although there is a debate (yes, actual scientific debate) about whether screenshots of tweets or gifs can count as memes.
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From BBC, A brief history of memes
We don’t know who makes them
Memes don’t mysteriously appear like crop circles did in the 90s. There are entire online communities devoted to the creation and trade of memes, which tend to be primarily populated by young males. Yet we know from the memes circulating online that memes makers are much more diverse than this – with mom memes, queer memes, or boomer memes becoming genres of their own.
There are no statistics on those who produces memes, and even less on who produces the successful ones. Most people share rather than make memes, and on the rare occasions they do create one, it usually doesn’t get more than a few shares. But it is almost impossible to know who exactly made the memes that have entered popular culture.
Read more: Russia's problem with social media memes
Users often claim ownership for memes made by others. And, more fundamentally, memes are collaborative: each meme builds on the previous ones, with small additions or modifications. In that sense, memes do not have an author, but are the result of our collective Internet culture.
They can tell complex stories
Memes are often seen as simple jokes to be shared, with shallow messages. But research has shown that they can tell complex stories with deeper messages – and they often do. During the pandemic, for instance, a lot of memes poked fun about how badly we were handling the lockdowns. But that is not all they did. Many memes carried critical messages about those flouting social distancing or how poorly the crisis was managed. Short, punchy messages could tell a whole story meant to criticise the medical system or those refusing the vaccines. This is because memes are deeply embedded in popular culture. They don’t need to tell the whole story for us to understand it, we know what it refers to.
It doesn’t mean that we can all decipher every meme we come across. Instead, they tend to function as a sort of private joke – you need a lot of contextual knowledge to get it. But if it is about something that concerns you, then you’re likely to understand it. Memes about video games are often lost on me, for instance, but memes about toddlers always crack me up.
They’ve been used to carry hidden political messages
Because of how memes tell stories, they are great to carry hidden messages and escape censorship. Memes about Winnie the Pooh, for instance, have been used to criticise Xi Jinping – something that led to the character being altogether banned in China. And some have been quick to crackdown on political memes, even when they look innocuous: in 2015, a man was jailed for posting a meme of the Egyptian dictator Al-Sisi with Mickey Mouse ears, even if it had no specific political message.
Memes have also been used to share racist and antisemitic messages that avoid moderation, using more or less hidden symbols. The message can sometimes be so veiled that even those who share the meme do not realise its racist undertones – or so they say.
They can be a powerful form of self-expression
Beyond their potential for political critique and hidden messages, memes have another deeper function: They can be a powerful form of self-expression. Most of the time, self-expression means creating something unique, something that reflects who you truly are. But memes are not about being original; instead, they offer variations on existing themes. Which is not to say they are not creative: Research has shown that memes are a form of collaborative art, where craftsmanship and humour are most valued.
What they allow us to express, in many cases, is our imperfections. Where a lot of social media culture encourages us to show our best selves – with carefully crafted selfies and flattering stories with just the right touch of humility – memes are often an invitation to stop taking ourselves so seriously. Because they are meant to be shared, they are also a reminder that we are far from alone in our struggles. So next time you share a meme, remember that you are participating into something greater than a simple viral joke.
Dr Constance de Saint Laurent is Assistant Professor of Sociotechnical Systems at the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University. Prof Vlad Glăveanu is Full Professor of psychology in the School of Psychology at Dublin City University, and Professor II at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology, University of Bergen.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
