Alongside the selfie, the Internet meme is a symbol of the present
The meme, however, is more than just a conveyor of emotion. It can become a symbol of the democratisation of self expression in the digital age
Did you see the one with Ned Stark that says “Brace Yourself. Game of Thrones memes are coming”? It’s been doing the rounds for a few years now, surfacing each year around the time the next season of the show is about to start. It’s happening again now (perhaps for the last time). That’s essentially what memes are, according to Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist who coined the term in his bestselling book, The Selfish Gene. A meme is a form of cultural expression that transmits from person to person through writing, speech, gestures and other imitable phenomenon, that can even survive for centuries. Like the gene that replicates physical characteristics, the meme is a carrier of cultural character. On the internet, memes have greater traction than the real world, because everything spreads quickly (or dies) with minimum alteration. Dawkins himself agrees that this new definition of the word meme on the internet is not that different from the one he intended. Anything that goes viral is sort of a meme, he agrees.
As selfies become the norm and digital natives take over the connected world, the meme has become almost a universal currency of expression. Its form is easy to replicate and in a visual-first online universe, it is extremely easy to spread. Two lines — one set up and one punchline placed over an image is its most basic form. It can take other forms too: videos, gifs, text-on-image, anything, really. In the early days of the internet, message boards, groups, and email were carriers of mostly image-based memes; and they spread quite fast (for those pre-broadband times). But now with social media amplification becoming almost instantaneous, any kind of meme can go from a lame joke to breaking the internet in the blink of an eye.
In 2017, American President Donald Trump tweeted an altered video of himself in a wrestling arena viciously attacking a man with a CNN logo for a head. At the time, the tweet had become President Trump’s most shared tweet; and created a storm around his opinion of mainstream media.
The meme, however, is more than just a conveyor of emotion. It can become a symbol of the democratisation of self expression in the digital age. Just like the much derided selfie, the meme is a way for those without the ability to make highbrow art to express themselves. The immediacy, the usually snarky tone, the potential for virality, and its ability to extract at least a humorous snort from purveyors make it almost liberating. Alongside the selfie and binge watching TV shows, the internet meme is an essential symbol of the present.
