Meme Culture Influence on Popular Culture

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Meme Culture Influence on Popular Culture

In this research proposal, I want to delve into understanding a culture that has become a major part of our live and has experienced bans in some countries- meme culture. Meme culture is a growing culture created by memes. When it first started, memes were an aspect of the internet that people stumble upon, find themselves amused, and share the amusement with someone else (London, 2019). However, memes are now a common part of people’s social media lives.

The word memes originated from biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976. It is a combination of the Greek work mimeme, which means imitated thing, and gene (Truszkowski et al., 2020). According to Dawkins, memes refer to the spread and imitation of ideas across society through the internet and the developing sense of humor. Today, memes thrive in black comedy. They use a language particular to Generation Z and millennials. Further, this generation use meme culture to escape harsh realities of life. This generation uses technology to lighten the weight of the absurd future. For example, when a Gen Z remarks “yikes” to irreversible environmental changes to escape existential dread (Habib, 2020). Thus, memes involve a movement defiant to past ways of thinking and defined by humor.

The meme theory will be part of the research on this culture. This theory provides people transfer skills, ideas, or behaviors through the imitation process (Hurren, 2019). The growth of memes in modern culture has been largely influenced by social media. People share ideas and create social movements through the internet. For example, the MeToo movement blew up in 2017 after the tweet with the #MeToo allowing people to voice their opinions on the movement. Other movements include environmental movements like plastic bag man. Therefore, meme culture has led to positive cultural changes and the meme theory explains further.

I will discuss the generation and ages for memes. For millennials and Generation Z, the social networking sites are not foreign to them because they are aware of how to navigate this space. Also, they know that the older generations have also started embracing the spread of memes, for example, one can identify the use of memes by older generations on platforms like Facebook (London, 2019). The spread of memes has grown because anyone can make one, which makes it easier to reach people of all ages.

I will also consider the public opinion about memes. The public has different opinions about memes. Some argue that most people receive memes positively, for example, the growth of meme pages and app like 9GAG that is a platform purely meant for sharing memes worldwide. These apps and pages have massive following and are very successful. Further, some of these platforms have become the primary or secondary source of income for administrators through promotions and advertisements (London, 2019). However, some people are for the opinion that some memes have dark humor and can be offensive to certain audiences. In addition, there has been scientific controversial surrounding memes. Overall, the meme culture has become a major part of internet culture even when some people dislike this culture.

Reference

Habib, A. (2020, Mar 20). The Philosophy of Meme Culture. Retrieved February 16, 2021 from: NUVO. https://nuvomagazine.com/magazine/spring-2020/the-philosophy-of-meme-culture

Hurren, M. (2019, Mar 31). The Meme Theory. The Public Ear. Retrieved February 16, 2021 from: https://medium.com/the-public-ear/the-meme-theory-85c961654e14

London, M. (2019, Mar 20). Meme Culture: What Is It? Retrieved February 16, 2021 from: https://www.thestudentview.org/meme-culture-what-is-it/#:~:text=Meme%20culture%20is%20the%20evolving,someone%20else%20for%20their%20enjoyment.

Truszkowski, W., Rouff, C., Akhavannik, M., & Tunstel, E. (2020). Memes, culture, the Internet, and intelligence. In Robot Memetics (pp. 15-29). Springer, Cham.