Memes are broadly defined as culturally transmitted information or ideas and beliefs that can be spread from one organism, or group of organisms, to another. The word was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene shown below. The book focused on the importance of self-replication in evolution and pointed to the gene as the unit of biological information that is subject to selection pressures. The word "meme" was used to label this type of self-replicating cultural information, and it was derived from the Greek word mimema , which translates to "something imitated".
With the commercialization of the internet in , [6] modern memes gradually became more strongly associated with internet memes. Internet memes are associated with media, catchphrases , and more general trends that spread throughout various outlets on the World Wide Web like chat clients, blogs, social networking sites, email, forums and image boards.
They're often used to point out how trends online evolve and change over time, creating various new derivatives. The primary causes of the disagreement centered on accusations that LeafyIsHere cyberbullyied young and disabled vloggers and that Klein was hypocritical and preached sanctimonious views. Know Your Meme [3] is a database style website run by the Cheezburger Network. Although the site has a small support team, the site is largely dependent on crowdsourcing for the documentation of memes as they develop and for the submission of viral media as it spreads.
Encyclopedia Dramatica [4] or ED is a satirical internet-culture based wiki similar to wikipedia created in late dedicated to documenting and categorizing internet memes and other cultural phenomenon. It is famous for having NSFW content that is largely uncensored. Originally hosted at encyclopediadramatica. Most of the articles were salvaged from the website and are available for download, and a new wiki EncyclopediaDramatica. Use of the Internet in the West expanded rapidly throughout the s, growing over x within two decades.
The Internet is the source of internet memes and is naturally the subject of numerous memes. A fandom is a social group based around a particular interest and comprised of individuals who share that interest. On the internet, the term is typically used to refer to the fans of media franchises. It is often associated with fanfiction , as well as fan-made art and music. Fandoms are known for spawning large varieties of memes and in-jokes. Meme Elitisim is an online ideology rooted in the opposition to the popularization of memes among non-underground communities and the mainstream media.
While elitism has been a staple element of online communities since the days of Usenet newsgroups, such disdain for the promulgation of meme culture can be seen as a countermovement to the growing influence of social media in the Internet culture which began in the late s.
Those who pertain to this belief tend to have ties with online communities that thrived before the arrival of Web 2. Ironics Memes is a subculture surrounding memes that are used satirically, usually by being deliberately humorless, crude, or overused, as a way to both criticize meme or meme elitism cultures, which has been considered by some to have become overused and unfunny with time, usually due to The Family Guy Effect , as well as to catch those with less Internet experience off guard.
Various meta memes exist that make use of the word meme or memes within their own memes. Meme Lord is an internet slang term used to refer to someone who shows a strong passion for memes. Leslie — Go Go Meme Master! Memeing is an internet slang verb that means to create or spread a meme. Can it be good if it needs the bad things to make sense?
The elephant in the room during every conversation about meme culture in is, of course, the election — when the grossest monsters of 4chan and Reddit came out from under the bed and baffled the public — and Gamergate , the harassment campaign that preceded it. Major platforms have spent the last several years trying to figure out how to battle neo-Nazi political action, which is something that sounds surreal no matter how many times you write it down. Associate editor Matt Schimkowitz remembers hunting down the origins of a recent meme that shows a car veering off an exit ramp on three wheels, a seemingly innocuous image that blew up quickly because you can caption it with basically anything.
Turns out, it started on a white nationalist website as an anti-immigration joke. But meme culture is uniquely scary in some contexts. He compares memes to postmodernist art, a movement with the underlying mission to critique society and politics. We hate doing it, but we have to do it. Kim readily admits that Know Your Meme can facilitate the amorality of meme culture, and the spread of ideas that he might not personally want to see flourish.
Where, a decade ago, you would have had to comb 4chan yourself to find some seedy new meme and probably would not have bothered , now, you can find it in a clean, searchable database and understand it within minutes — and perpetuate it, too, if you want.
Schimkowitz, who eventually wants to devote his career to combating racism and sexism on the internet and helping the public understand the real-world consequences of letting these environments stew, defends the approach of the site. Reactions to memes are a big part of what makes them popular or controversial.
So ignoring them would be disingenuous. Okay, sure. Is that enough? Does laying out the history of a meme in a linear timeline actually help people understand why a meme happened? The theme Kim comes back to over and over is the objectivity of journalism, but even the most pedantically disciplined journalists have to make choices about the facts they select and the context in which they present them — sticky questions to contend with in a media environment where traffic drives coverage, and the moral or cultural impact of everything from execution to framing to promotion often comes second.
In excavating the online alt-right last year, for example, the media often fell into a trap of making the vicious fringe look cool, edgy, weird, and alluring. Spectacular things have happened here! People live here. Kids are taking care of each other and putting hexes on the president.
I mean, almost any Vine compilation makes me cry. In trying to be a largely impartial reflection of meme culture, Know Your Meme has avoided accountability for as long as the rest of the internet has: until now. Kim says that the staff also plans to do more blogging and reporting with opinion and analysis that can give readers more in-depth context on memes. Memes are terrible; they facilitate the spread of information torn from its source and relieved of its obligation to even seem credible.
Know Your Meme is a crucial living document that we absolutely need, and the story it tells us about the internet is endlessly self-conflicting. Luckily, they know it. Meme Goat-tan. Meme KYM-tan. Meme Super Robo Jesus. Meme Don. Event MemeX. Meme I need blood. Meme Lucina "Ah, so cute". Meme This Cheeto. Person Don Caldwell. Event Operation Stop Their Scheme.
Event April 1, Event The Internet Meme Exchange. View All Sub-entries. Recent Videos Add a Video. Add an image. View More Editors. Add a Comment. View More Comments. The latest from KYM. Photo The Chad 8 Year Old. It's not about the bing bong… It's about the Knicks baby, let's go Knicks get a slam dunk.
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