In the Meme Time

The word “meme” was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins to explain the transmission of ideas and cultural phenomena. A meme evolves by natural selection. Through that process, it mutates as it spreads in a way that is similar to biological evolution.

Memes on the Internet are an idea, image or video that spread at a rapid rate. People find something amusing, silly or impossibly cute and forward it to their friends. Popular Internet memes have been LOL Cats, All you Base Belong to Us, and Rickrolling, to name few.

The examination of memonics can provide a structure for looking at the way people use the Internet.

A variation on the Internet meme is an image that is appropriated and recontextualized. Facilitating the manipulation of images is the widespread use of Photoshop. An early example of recontextualization would be the use of an image of Chuck Norris in a wide variety of situations.

The evolution and spread of a photo-manipulated meme on the Internet can involve millions of users all playing their part. While many are simply forwarding or posting images on blogs, others are actively involved in creating fresh images. At the base level this creation, which sometimes occurs within a group setting, is a discussion group taking the form of a “Photoshop Battle.”

The fitness for the spread of a manipulated image depends on a certain level of popularity of the original image. That original image is likely to already have a track record of viral activity on the Internet. Some popular subjects are: Justin Bieber, K-Pop stars, Keanu Reeves, Lady Gaga and Adam Lambert.

A recent explosion of meme activity has been using a series of paparazzi photos of Keanu Reeves and placing him into an infinite variety of settings, called “Sad Keanu.”
A few that I created are here.
In an interview, Reeves was asked about the phenomenon and thought it “sounds conceptually funny.”

To test the success of creating these memes, I created one of my own. Using a photo of a little girl blowing a Vuvuzela, I placed it into photos that already have a track record of becoming viral. Let’s see if my hypothesis works, maybe mine will go viral too.