If you’ve ever come across a photo captioned by something either eerily relatable or so obscure that you have no choice but to laugh with confusion, you have stumbled upon a newer type of meme. Technically speaking, a meme is anything within culture that has gone viral via the internet, but most commonly the medium for memes is images with relatable captions. Memes are a large part of modern popular culture, as their widespread usage, popularity, and ability to be personalized to fit almost any identity. If brevity is the soul of wit (thank you, Hamlet), then memes are for you. These images have been around for years, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. They are most often a single image with most often than not, crudely dubbed captions that appeal to the audience in how relatable they are. The longer the meme, the less likely it is to be successful… but if that’s the case… is it a meme if it isn’t successful? The very definition includes the fact that it has been passed around from internet user to internet user becoming widespread in a short amount of time.
One example of this are memes that shed light on the human condition and the struggles that come with that. They can be very cathartic to some. Most memes seen scrolling through whatever social media platform you chose are self-deprecating. Although it is not healthy for ones self-confidence or sense of self worth, venting about your inner demons through the lens of humor is cheaper, and frankly more attainable than therapy. The interesting part about this though is that the audience connects with the meme, making the creator not alone in how they view about themselves or what they struggle with. This unity is depressing, sure, but nevertheless uniting. Some memes can be viewed to make light of tough subjects like mental health, but at the same time allow for conversations for such to begin, and allow for the audience to feel as if they are not alone in what they struggle with. Most importantly, though, it is funny as hell.
This is not to pigeonhole memes by any means- memes can range to extremely relatable to the point that it kind of hurts, to extremely obscure and funny due to how out-of-context and bizarre it is. These obscure memes are referred to as “Surreal Memes” (example pictured right). These are harder to break down in terms of relatability because, really, it’s not relatable. These kinds of memes are funny not because of their relatability, but because they fit into a niche of humor that has exhausted all other avenues of memes. For example, a photo
But the important thing to note here is that memes are popular culture because, we, as individuals, can identify with different memes. Whenever someone sends a meme to their friends, family members, coworkers, significant other, or whatever it may be, they are identifying (through relating with the content of the meme) the meme with someone or themselves. Commenting “same,” or “this is so me,” or “so you,” is attaching identity onto said meme.
To be a person who views and enjoys memes is to be a person who has access to the internet. It’s almost impossible to not stumble across a meme while on the internet, especially if you are using social media. Companies sometimes use memes (more often than not unsuccessfully) to appeal to audiences to claim that they are “hip with the times,” so-to-speak. Ultimately, memes are infinite in their range of content, but because of this, people are able to identify with different memes and relate in different ways, but in the end unite the audience with others who have also enjoyed a meme.
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