CHAPTER 4

Memes and Visual Online Languages

During the second 2012 presidential debate at Hofstra University, many engaged citizens were tuned in and watching how Governor Mitt Romney was faring against incumbent candidate President Barack Obama. Veronica DeSouza was one of the viewers of the debate and was especially proud because the event was taking place at her alma mater. Recently unemployed, Veronica took to social media to promote her personal brand and she decided to live tweet the debate to her followers. About an hour into the debate, moderator Candy Crowley asked Governor Romney about pay equity for women: Romney responded with a comment about qualified women candidates and then said his now infamous quote: “I went to a number of women’s groups and said: ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of women.”

Veronica reacted by going immediately to Tumblr to register the URL bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com. She made a crude Photoshopped image of a set of women in an open binder and posted it on her Tumblr.¹ Within the first hour, Veronica’s blog attracted 8,000 new followers and had over 1,800 submissions by the next day.² The meme was born, and several Twitter accounts appeared, as did a Facebook page, and even a political action campaign got in on the meme.³ Two weeks later, Veronica was employed at Digg, and her meme lives on as one of the memorable moments of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Figure 4.1

Binders full of women, by Veronica DeSouza.

WHAT’S A MEME?

When we asked a group of students what they thought a meme was, the majority responded with their favorite image macro—Bad Luck Brian, Most Interesting Man, Success Kid. What many didn’t realize is that they had used the term “meme” to describe just one small example of memes. This chapter will focus on a different type of media literacy and the theory of memes in visual culture that derive from a new and digital environment. Memes have been around for as long as there have been humans. It is derived from the Ancient Greek term mimeme, which means “imitated thing,” and Richard Dawkins updated the term in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins’s adaptation of the word “meme” is designed to be similar to “gene,” because a meme is defined as “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”⁴ and has a path of evolution and change.

Dawkins recognized that, in an age of visual culture, culture could be transmitted rapidly from person to person and mind to mind. The meme is the genetics of the “abstract kingdom” of the mind, and strands of that kingdom are ideas.⁵ The idea itself is a meme and can most easily be described as something abstract shared between a group of people who understand the idea and cause the idea to replicate, thereby causing it to evolve and mutate. Have you ever had an inside joke between a group of friends? That’s kind of like a meme. You can refer to the joke, and several people around you may understand the meaning, but those outside the idea are left without the information. The idea can morph into various forms of new and digital material, such as image macros, videos, GIFs, or messages on social media.

Dawkins continues to explain, in The Selfish Gene, that a meme has three properties that ensure its spread across the web and into culture: longevity, fecundity, and copy fidelity.⁶ In other words, it has to last long enough to merge into our thoughts, outside its original context; it needs to be replicated in a given amount of time; and it requires the audience to collectively agree on its accuracy and fidelity to the original. Although memes are created online and exist in a microenvironment, they have a macro effect on the way people think, behave, and act socially.⁷ Memes, like ideas, do not appear in a vacuum: They are part of a cultural process of interpretation, dissemination, revision, and agreement.

Memes compete for attention and they live by being referred to and continually used. After a meme has run its course, it may fall out of style or relegate itself to an older reference, no longer needed in popular culture. Take, for example, the term “jump the shark.” The term has come to mean the moment a television series takes a twist or new story path, alienating enough of the audience to cause a drop in viewership. In our streaming media present, the term is rarely used, as the audience is looking for more niche material (more on this in Chapter 6). The term “jump the shark” originated in the television series Happy Days in 1977, when The Fonz, dressed in his leather jacket, literally jumped the shark during a water-ski jump, in the episode “Hollywood: Part 3.” From that point forward, it was difficult to take the show seriously, and, simultaneously, the phrase “jump the shark” was coined. With its lack of use in today’s vernacular, the term is no longer widely employed or understood by a large group of people.

Memes have evolved and changed and mutated throughout all of history. The meme can travel without visual culture, as it can be transported with mimicry and imitation, but, in this chapter, we will focus on memes and language derived from a new and digital media visual culture. Images and visual media are stronger at delivering messages in a meme-like manner. As Susan Sontag explains in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), visuals have a more highly significant effect on an audience, because the visuals create a “synthesis” that connects the image to the actual event through reproduced representation.⁸ Memes such as “Binders Full of Women” have significant beginnings and endings (the debate through the presidential election), and some continue for years as part of the way the web’s community members communicate (doge, lolcats). Memes fight for survival in the hypermedia landscape of the web and are rarely mourned when they slowly move out of current popular culture. Our intention is to inform you of the various different types of meme used in the online space and the origins to some of the most popular visual memes.

We will focus on the proper meme grammar and linguistics of memes and how these rules are established and enforced. As a user of the web, your ability to read and create memes will make you an asset to the digital media environment and, as in Veronica’s case, can lead to a career possibility. Your ability to understand the web better will make you a better participant and a highly engaged user capable of creating original media.

I CAN HAZ MEMES?

We’re not sure what the fascination with cats is either, but, contrary to popular belief, using cats in visual culture didn’t start when the World Wide Web began. In the earliest days of photography, people dressed cats and photographed them. In 1905, photographer Harry Whittier Frees photographed cats for post-cards with witty and cute captions underneath them. Even earlier, Thomas Edison had several cats box each other on film in 1894.¹⁰ The fascination with cats obviously predates visual media (see Ancient Egypt) and it directly pervaded our modern media environment.

In 2006, a community member of the 4chan message boards posted a picture of a chubby grey cat smiling (yelling?) as an image macro, with the words “I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?” written across it in white Impact font with a black border (stroke). It began, not only a style of image macro involving cats, but also a meme language known as “lol speak” or “kitty pidgin,” and all it requires is a user to Photoshop some poor grammar and misspellings onto a picture of a cat. The thought process is that the text is actually coming from the inner monologue of a cat—and cats can’t spell or write well. Lev Grossman covered the meme in 2007 and explained that the meme became a “running gag that won’t stop running, but instead reproduces and mutates in the petri dish of the Net’s collective imagination.”¹¹

Figure 4.2

Harry Whittier Frees cat dinner postcard—1905.

Figure 4.3

A lolcat having an issue with focus.

Source: Wikimedia Commons—GNU

To participate in this meme requires an understanding of the linguistic nature of the meme itself. Not only do you have to imagine the cat speaking, but you also have to make the text apply appropriately to the image. If a cat is jumping, you can add the text INVISIBLE BIKE to add humor. Grossman also explains that it’s easier to show lolcats than explain it, so it’s in your best interest to simply Google lolcats in the image search. The search will return thousands of images with lolcats, and you will see a variety of image macros that have been made in this meme.

VISUAL LANGUAGE

We’ll start with image macros, because they are possibly the easiest entry point to our discussion on memes. An image macro is simply an image (usually agreed upon by the web community) with additional text added for humorous effect. Memes are part of the visual language, which means that explaining them in text will not offer a clean interpretation. The language of meme requires the viewer to participate in the understanding of the meme for it to continue to be used. The image macro was originally used on message boards and forums, where the image could be seen, altered, and customized to explain an emotion or a feeling.

Image macros condense long responses into a singular file that displays a mood or feeling regarding a response. For example, there’s a picture of a cat pushing away from someone’s hands trying to pet it, and the text simply says: “DO NOT WANT!” That image macro can then be used as a response to someone’s post, instead of text explaining a reason to not want something. Sound familiar? It should: You do the same thing with emojis and emoticons.

Emoticons and Emojis

One of the biggest downsides of digital culture is transmission loss of meaning and depth in text in short messages. For example, when you text someone, it is nearly impossible to express sarcasm without saying that your statement is meant to be sarcastic or ironic. Mood and meaning are lost without assistance. As we speak in the first person on text and on Twitter, we lack the narrator’s assistance in providing additional meaning. Today, we show our mood and meaning by using emoticons and emojis, small iconographic cartoon faces and icons that assist in our messages. As Scott McCloud says in Understanding Comics (1993): “We don’t just observe the cartoon, we become it.”¹²

Use of the emoticon began in 1982 at Carnegie Mellon University, to help distinguish funny posts on message boards from serious posts.¹³ To post funny information, you can use :-), and, for serious information, use :-(. In our present, software and operating systems convert our emoticons to “smileys” and more iconographic imagery. The emoji has a Japanese origin, meaning picture character, and they are created using ASCII code. Unlike emoticons, which can be created by using colons, semicolons, parentheses, letters, and brackets, the emoji is created with code to be translated by the operating system. This offers far more images and meanings than simple emoticons, and their growing variety has created meme-like qualities of imitation in real life and online.

Image Macros

The image macro isn’t just constrained to lolcats, and you can come across any number of image memes online, from Bad Luck Brian, who exemplifies a young man with the worst possible luck ever, to Condescending Willy Wonka, who is mean spirited and sarcastic. In the nature of memes, not everyone will know all the memes, but some will understand the ones they like—like an inside joke, or a “selfish gene.”

What’s nice about memes and image macros is that any user can participate in the creation process. When lolcats appeared in the mid 2000s, they were a participatory, inside joke. Aaron Rutkoff wrote in the Wall Street Journal (2007) that lolcats are appealing because they are simultaneously obscure and accessible. Lolcats didn’t just start the image macro trend: They changed the language on the visual web. Technologist and entrepreneur Anil Dash explained to Rutkoff that, “an in-joke used to be constrained by geography and who you knew socially,” but lolcats are a “very large in-joke” that blurs the lines between the geeks and the passive users.¹⁴

There’s nearly an image macro for every reason, and, if there isn’t, it will soon be there. Image macros take very little skill to create—you can use Photoshop and Impact font or you can use a meme generator online. The difficulty of image macro memes is the proper grammar. You can’t just write anything on an image macro. In most cases, the image macro is built like a haiku in format: text/image/text. The text at the top is the set-up, and the image relates to the text punch line at the bottom. For example, if you’d like to ponder something irreverently philosophical, you can use the “Philosoraptor” image macro to ask the question. Philosoraptor is one of the “advice animals” image macros, which range from “Advice Dog” to “Courage Wolf.” Philosoraptor allows the user to ask a question such as, “If the opposite of pro is con/Is the opposite of progress congress?” or “Why do people say the sky’s the limit/When there are footprints on the moon?”

The skill in image macros lies in the appropriate pace and delivery of the joke. They have a grammar that behaves like a comedian’s punch-line set-up but requires the image to support the joke. Therefore, if you are using “Success Kid,” you have to make sure your message is related to success, such as, “Plugged in USB in the dark/Went in on the first try.” The word success is never said, because the image of the young boy fist-pumping complements the message. There is a grammar to each and every image macro meme that requires the user to study the technique before posting. If you happen to do it wrong, you will most definitely find out your mistake right away, from web commenters or trolling users.

Figure 4.4

Philosoraptor considering pronunciation.

Source: Creative Commons

THE LANGUAGE

Humans are born with language capability as a part of their survival and communication. Web and social technologies have their own specific languages as a result of their limitations and creative misuse. Text messages, or the Short Message Service (SMS) feature, on your mobile device may be new to the technology, but short-form language dates back to the telegraph, when users had to pay by the character. The same applies to text messaging that limits the character count to 160 characters. This caused the impetus to shorten text to allow for more information to be contained in any given message.

The shortened language of “txtspk” is condensed wording. The language is a community-agreed-upon short form that abbreviates and creates terminology for speaking. Everyone knows LOL for “laugh out loud” and BRB for “be right back”, but there are hundreds of other acronyms and condensed words.¹⁵ JK denotes “just kidding,” NAGI is “not a good idea,” and NSFW means “not safe for work”; if it gets bad enough, there’s even NSFL—”not safe for life”! Many users are accustomed to using this language nearly instinctually, because it’s become part of the common style of communication.

Lolspeak

One of the earliest image macros appeared when a user uploaded a picture of a wide-eyed owl with one simple line of text “O RLY?” and it joined the language and growth of the meme language of lolcats. Lolcat language was designed to be coming directly from the cat’s mind. In lolspeak, the language could be used on any image or meme.¹⁶ If you find similar faces to the shocked owl’s, you can place the “O RLY?” text on it, and it will work. Then, it entered common vernacular when people started using lolspeak in common language. Instead of saying “Hello,” you could mimic the cat and say “Oh Hai!”, and it wouldn’t confuse the user if they were aware of the original meme. Eventually, lolspeak was used so often that it didn’t require knowledge of the original meme and could be used on text messages and emails during normal friendly conversation.

Lolspeak is its own language and is separate from earlier geek languages or hacker slang such as L337 (“leet” or elite) speak. Lolspeak is a community-organized language and, through the act of the meme, it has created its own remixable products. The most extensive of these is the Lolcat Bible, a collaborative wiki organized by Martin Grondin in 2007 that translated the Old and New Testaments into lolspeak. Using lolcat characters in place of biblical figures, the web community created one of the strangest alterations of the English language ever produced. Lolspeak even has academic discourse, and, according to a paper by Lauren Gawne and Jill Vaughan (2012):

LOLspeak reflects the asynchronous style used in the local discourse context of LOL-based Internet sites. The original image macros and the LOLcat Bible are both non-dyadic communicative styles—along with the asynchronous nature, this meant that people had time to compose their utterances.¹⁷

Doge and Doge Speak

In an age of memes and digital communities, languages have lifespans. In February 2010, a Japanese kindergarten teacher named Atsuko Sato posted pictures of her new dog, a Shiba Inu named Kabosu, online.¹⁹ In one of the pictures, Kabosu was giving a side glare, and the picture ended up on a sub reddit to be shared with the other users, under the term “doge.” In December 2012, the picture ended up in another subreddit called /r/DogsI WannaHug, and someone posted it with a different type of inner monologue speak, using an entirely new convention. Rather than Impact font, the new font was Comic Sans, written in several places in multiple fluorescent colors.

The doge meme changes the language of lolspeak and lolcats into a new, original form of internal monologue talk.²⁰ Whereas the cats spoke in poorly written full sentences, doge (and dogs) speaks in a happy and surprised, short, broken English. The image of the Shiba Inu dog, superimposed with the Comic Sans text saying things such as, “Wow,” “So scare,” “What r you doing?”, “Concern,” “Keep ur hands away from me,” comes from an odd Tumblr called Shiba Confessions.²¹ In terms of how to use the language, you have to identify the content of the image and then separate out the words and qualify them with “so,” “such,” “many,” “much,” and “very” added. The doge meme went in two immediate directions—one involved adding text to dog images, and the other involved adding doge speak to any image, from sports to food to politics.²²

Figure 4.5

Doge meme (not the original).

Source: Creative Commons

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch explained, in 2014, that the doge speak can be broken down into “doge phrases,” such as “such fall,” “many happy,” and “much feels,” and “doge words,” such as “wow,” “amaze,” and “excite.”²³ McCulloch says that any sentence could be converted to doge speak. Using her example, we can convert our previous sentence to this: “Much McCulloch” “So sentence” “very conversion” “Wow.” With a little practice, you can do it as well. When Reddit users were put to the task, they translated Romeo and Juliet to doge speak.

What light. So breaks. Such east. Very sun. Wow, Juliet.

What Romeo. Such why. Very rose. Still rose.

Very balcony. Such climb.

Much love. So Propose. Wow, marriage.

Very Tybalt. Much stab. What do?

Such exile. Very Mantua. Much sad.

So, priest? Much sleeping. Wow, tomb.

Such poison. What dagger. Very dead. Wow, end.²⁴

The Doge Meme Expands

As the time of writing, there was still an “Easter egg” (a secret left in a digital environment) on YouTube that converted YouTube to Comic Sans if you typed “doge meme” in the search bar. The doge meme spread in a very odd way across the web and into real life. A new digital currency was produced to satirize the bitcoin, called Dogecoin, and it is used as an alternative digital currency. The parody currency gained a large community following on Reddit and fundraised the money necessary to sponsor a Nascar car. The Dogecoin car raced at Talladega Speedway twice in 2014, driven by Josh Wise.²⁵

THE MEME ENVIRONMENT

The Dogecoin car is a phenomenal example of how online memes and odd Internet vernacular can be noticed in a physical environment. Ideas online manifest in a visual style and permeate, replicate, and proliferate culture so well that they often become part of our daily use. Making silly images of cats talking becomes the image macro and a way to speak to your friends in a silly manner. By the time you are reading this book, there could be a completely new meme that dominates the web.

Over the course of the rest of this chapter, we will give you some additional historical context of memes that have occurred and how they appeared. We will show you how some memes shape our discussions about culture and bring societal issues to a visual present. This chapter will help you understand how to identify visual trends and become literate in web visual grammar and it will encourage you to participate in meme creation.

THE VISUAL MEME ON THE WEB AND IN REAL LIFE

Online tools and web access do not cause memes to occur: They require creativity and an engaged web audience. The users of the web create memes, and the activity of creating a meme is a community agreement that must survive a battle for attention. The “networked individualism” that makes up communities online also helps generate content that has value to unique users and the web community at large. Being web savvy means being literate in the tools such as Photoshop or meme generators, as well as understanding the grammar and the language. When users participate in memes and shared ideas, they are being individuals together.

In this section we are going to talk about memes as trends and experiences in physical space, before we discuss the solely web-based memes. We feel that explaining some of the fads or trends that have seeped into visual culture outside the web provide a glimpse at how to become a better participant. We will talk about fad memes such as “planking,” “owling,” and even “Tebowing,” and we will discuss hashtag memes that were transformed by the audience online. Some of the earliest trends on the web were clearly a result of access and technology, and the more recent memes are similar, but far more community oriented.

As we continue to reiterate, we in no way provide comprehensive coverage of these web cultures, but please use our supplied examples to provide a context for exploring the new and digital media environment. We strongly suggest you follow up anything we have mentioned and continue to explore the memes online, and we recommend you visit KnowYourMeme.com, the largest known database of memes online. You will find current and old trends and you can contribute to their research. We also recommend you participate in Reddit or Imgur forums to keep up with visual trends.

TECHNOLOGY AND ACCESS TRENDS

Limor Shifman, author of Memes in Digital Culture (2014), defines the Internet meme as, “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.”²⁶

Previous to Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, and other communities that could create memes at a rapid pace, artists and creative individuals participated in meme-like activities. The web created a hypermedia environment of creation, but that did not prevent ideas from occurring and appearing simultaneously. In 2006, two separate, but extraordinarily similar, photo projects were posted online. Both Ahree Lee and Noah Kalina uploaded multi-year photo projects known as photo-a-day projects. Although neither Ahree Lee nor Noah Kalina had any idea that the other was creating their project, the results were eerily similar. The two put a fair amount of dedication and perseverance into their projects, and, when they posted them online in 2006, thousands of similar posts were created. In this way, the trend of the photo-a-day was not created by the web, but by the ease of use of web cameras, editing software, and later, web distribution.

Photo trends are often seen as a result of the web, but were very often present in culture previously. Take, for example, the work of the photographer Nicholas Nixon, who photographed his wife and her three sisters every single year since 1975.²⁷ What we see as a contemporary media trend, because it happened to appear on AtomFilms and YouTube, was actually part of our visual culture far earlier. The idea became circulated and imitated and transformed with more users having access. The photo-a-day meme continues to be popular into our present, and you will often find articles posted about people still participating and taking photos every day or week for many years.²⁸

TROPES AND CLASSIC MEMES UPDATED

Before the advent of screen-based media, visual culture existed in the form of performance and live entertainment. Around the turn of the last century (we mean the late 1800s), when Edison was experimenting with his cats boxing on film, vaudeville reigned as the popular entertainment medium. Vaudeville was a live art form mixing burlesque dancing, comedy, dance, and music meant to entertain a live audience. When performers went on just a bit too long, something known as “The Vaudeville Hook” would come out of the side of the curtain and pull the performer offstage, to extended laughter. Soon, the hook became a part of the show and was anticipated as an addition to the performances. The hook was parodied in Disney films, early black-and-white-era silent films, and early television shows. We still see “The Hook” on major entertainment award shows such as The Academy Awards or The Emmys, in the form of music playing when someone goes on for too long.

Of course, in our Internet age, savvy web users have updated the meme in the digital space. In 1984, a man named Charlie Schmidt recorded his cat Fatso, dressed in a t-shirt, playing a short piano track with its human-operated paws. In 2007, Schmidt uploaded the video to YouTube with the name “Cool Cat,” and it sat quietly on the web until the video was used as a resurrection of the vaudeville hook.²⁹ The “Keyboard Cat” video went viral and brought along with it the meme of the century-old entertainment trope. As you’ll learn in the next chapter, accident videos and fails made up the majority of early virals. Comedian and MyDamnChannel.com manager Brad O’Farrell remixed a video of a man rolling down an escalator, with the Keyboard Cat “playing him off.” From there, the video was circulated so widely it became viral and it was remixed (imitated and transformed) with hundreds of other “fail” videos.

Capitalizing on the meme, Charlie Schmidt created PlayHimOffKeyboard Cat.com and invited users to contribute to the meme.³⁰ The meme gained popularity fairly quickly, adding an additional layer to viral videos by adding the meme to them. Virals, by comparison with memes, are singular in experience and do not often become memes. Memes offer themselves to the aforementioned attributes that Limor Shifman describes. This meme included fails from a Fox News commenter passing out on-screen to an awkward marriage proposal, all ending with the quirky Keyboard Cat theme playing them off the screen.³¹ In order to keep the meme going, a generator called “Auto Keyboard Cat” was created to help users participate in the everlasting trope.³²

PRANKS AS MEMES

The bait-and-switch is one of the oldest frauds ever carried out by human beings. The premise is simple: You advertise or explain one thing and, when the buyer or viewer shows up, you give them something else, usually of lesser value. This act is as timeless as gullibility, so, of course, the Internet would make this theme into a meme. In the case of the web, there is a famous version of this meme that has permeated all facets of common culture, and it’s called “The Rick Roll.” Born from 4chan, the act is simple and easy to execute on the web. You boast about something worth looking at, supply the hyperlink, and it leads to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” (1987) music video.

Pranks are timeless, and this meme offers common content in form and stance, created with the awareness of the meme. In order to use this prank meme, you have to be aware that it is possible. The joy of participating in a “Rick Roll” comes from knowing the person who clicks on the link will end up with the same video. Any time a highly anticipated movie is coming out, inevitably someone will boast that they have a “leaked” version of the trailer or some clip. You will unwittingly click on it and be brought to Rick Astley’s video. Again.

Figure 4.6

Rick Roll on a bulletin board.

Source: Creative Commons

It was used on everything from WikiLeaks to April Fools’ jokes to Astley himself jumping out of a parade float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s a meme that can be used any time, and the more savvily you use it, the more entertaining it is to the web audience.

MEMES IN REAL LIFE

As Rick Astley showed during the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, memes are entertaining the more they appear in our popular culture. The Rick Roll meme began online and spread to our physical space and, although at times it appears annoying, it still creates a humorous result. Sometimes, a strange act placed online becomes a meme in the digital space through the participation of the real audience. As a meme becomes popular, it attracts the attention of those who would like to play along. Take, for example, the odd physical meme called “Planking.” Not to be mistaken for the ab exercise, planking was originally called “The Lying Down Game” and was created in Australia.³³ The act, like many memes, is a simple one: Lie face down, with stiffened arms and legs (like a board), in random places, have a picture taken of the act, and post it online with the hashtag #planking.

Planking is technically a “photo fad,” but, as it exists because of the web and community support and replicates and evolves, it acts as a meme. Its circulation from Australia around the world was a result of the visual culture of participation. Its transformation and imitation allowed “plankers” to try the act in strange places, in order to transform and raise the bar for fellow participants. The act of participation in a meme that occurs in the physical space sometimes has unforeseen consequences. In 2011, a young Australian man named Acton Beale died when attempting planking on a seven-story-high balcony railing.³⁴ This unfortunate accident also caused the meme to enter our cultural understanding of memes and caused it to become even more popular. Odds are, when you search #planking on a social media platform, you will still find people participating in the meme.

Physical memes transformed into variations of the original planking in the style of “owling” or “Tebowing.” Owling is basically squatting in the strangest places in an attempt to imitate an owl doing owl things. The web community created the meme because “planking is so last week,” and this gives a true example of how memes compete for attention. The “Tebowing” meme is simple mimicry of quarterback Tim Tebow’s act of kneeling and praying after he scores a touchdown. It became highly imitated and used in the same way as the other physical fad memes where people had to do the act, photograph it, and share the image.

Figure 4.7

John Wick and Robert Benners planking in class.

Memes With Meaning

When a meme enters our common cultural experience, it can be recognized by the masses. When doge made its way to a Nascar race car, it may have caused confusion among some viewers, but the cultural recognition was a fair payoff. Aside from the unfortunate death of Acton Beale, the planking meme made its way into common culture through various means. As the meme trend grew in popularity, the rap artist Xzibit tweeted: “Planking was a way to trans port slaves on ships during the slave trade, its [sic] not funny. Educate yourselves.”³⁵ Thus, many users who had never heard of planking or participated in the act were aware of its complications. The creators of the meme had to clear up their intentions by expressing that the meme comes from acting like a wooden board and they didn’t mean any relation to the way humans were horribly mistreated.³⁶

Planking was even used as a method of protest in the Philippines, after a huge transport strike as a result of high gas prices. Filipino citizens planked in the middle of a large roundabout to protest the hikes and disrupt traffic. The protest resulted in a Quezon City representative filing a bill called the “Anti-Planking Act of 2011.”³⁷ As you can imagine, this didn’t have the desired effect the representative thought it would have, and Twitter and the web community tweeted in support of the planking protestors.

THE MEMES OF THE ONLINE WORLD

In the pre-web traditional media environment, traditional gatekeepers maintained their hold on media distribution and blocked the average user from creating and participating in visual experiments. In our hypermedia environment, all you need is a small amount of technological competence and you can distribute your creativity while simultaneously participating with like-minded “networked individuals.”

In this section, we’ll focus on several popular memes you are most likely aware of and explain how they started, what impact the memes had on our common culture, and how some of the images inspired the business of using memes to raise awareness of news events. From “Disaster Girl” to “Sad Keanu” and “Strutting Leo” to “Pepper Spraying Cop” and “Binders Full of Women,” memes empower users to become savvy users and participate in creative endeavors and civic awareness.

REMIX MEMES

The planking meme showed a version of meme circulation known as mimicry, which is different than the remix meme. The remix meme usually requires the user to be aware of the meme’s various remixes, as well as having some technological skills. A remix meme is not as easy to do as an image macro meme, because, in order to participate, you’ll definitely have to use Photoshop or an online photo manipulation tool. It means taking part of an image and cutting it onto another layer, with each iteration and imitation trying to outdo the previous attempt in creativity and wit.

According to Limor Shifman, there are two types of remix meme: the juxtaposition image meme and the frozen-motion remix meme.⁴⁰ The juxtaposition meme takes a facial expression or an act out context and inserts it into an image that deserves the punch line. In video form, this would be the “Play Him Off Keyboard Cat” meme, and there are several variations of this meme that appear nearly every time an expression appears in an image by accident. Shifman explains that juxtapositions call for mimetic responses because the photos are taken out of context, and their reappropriation to other contexts feels almost natural. In the frozen-motion meme photo, a photo of someone mid-motion is taken out awkwardly and placed in and on weird, out-of-context information.

“Disaster Girl”

Dave Roth didn’t mean to inspire a juxtaposition meme when he photographed his daughter Zoe in front of a burning house in 2004. Roth later submitted the photo to a JPG Magazine photo contest about capturing emotion. The magazine thought the picture was great and shared it on several web platforms. The photo called for a caption for Zoe’s look, and, from there on, Zoe became the caption, as users added her image to accident and tragedy photos such as the Costa Concordia cruise-ship disaster, the Hindenburg, and Windows Vista Business Edition. If it seems like a disaster, you can use the “Disaster Girl” image.

“McKayla Is Not Impressed”

McKayla Maroney is one of the most talented gymnasts on Earth, and she wasn’t too happy to win the silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, UK. Bryan Snyder of Reuters photographed her on the podium making a scowling expression. The “McKayla Is Not Impressed” meme comes from a previous meme called “Spock Is Not Impressed,” where a folded-armed Spock from Star Trek stands in juxtaposed meme images. McKayla’s image has been used as an image macro with unimpressed text such as, “You don’t serve coke? Pepsi is fine,” and added to scenes of extraordinary greatness where she’s unimpressed, such as the Sistine Chapel, the Egyptian pyramids, double rainbows, and, of course, next to Tim Tebow praying. When McKayla was invited to the White House, she met with President Obama and even made the scowl along with the President.

Figure 4.8

McKayla and Barack are not impressed.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

“Bubbles Girl”

The frozen-motion meme of a little girl running with bubbles in her hand is still a bit of a mystery, including who took the photo, who the young girl may be, and why she’s running. What we do know is that this image appeared on 4chan in 2009 as a new meme among dated memes. (Dated means older by several months to a year in comparison.) The little girl is seemingly running, and so she is a juxtaposed frozen-motion image showing intent of running away—from Jurassic Park dinosaurs, bulls, lolcats, and police.

“Sad Keanu” and “Strutting Leo”

The prevalence of photographers capturing celebrities means that, without a doubt, there will be awkward images available to manipulate. Keanu Reeves sitting on a park bench, eating a sandwich: That is all a member of the paparazzi needed to send to the tabloids and simultaneously gave the Internet a meme to be remixed. Ron Asordorian, working for Splash News, took a photo of Keanu in 2010. Keanu is most likely just lost in thought, but it looks as though he’s a bit sad, and, from then on, “Sad Keanu” has been juxtaposed in thousands of images, of both happy and sad events. It’s such a mimetic trend that the Internet community nominated June 15 “Cheer Up Keanu Day,” when users send positive content on behalf of the actor in order to make his day happy.

Conversely, there is a frozen-motion image of Leonardo DiCaprio strutting on the set of Inception. His jubilant, cheerful walk has been added as a frozen-motion image, as the “Strutting Leo” happily walks away from tragedy, through random film scenes, and even on water. There’s also a frozen-motion “Prancing Cera” meme, made after director Edgar Wright uploaded a photo of Michael Cera from the set of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. “Prancing Cera” has been added to the oddest photos and locations you can imagine.

MEMES AND SOCIOCULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

When a meme becomes recognizable enough to be referenced in form and shape without the original media accompanying the meaning, the meme is truly embedded in our consciousness. Some images are so significant in our visual history that the framing and structure of the image contain the meaning. For example, on the 24th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party crackdown on protestors in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government blocked any reference to the protest on social media and search engines. The “Great Firewall” of China blocked any mention of the protests, from the words “today” and “remember,” to the date and photos. Savvy web activists challenged the censorship by using the iconic “Tank Man” image as a meme. The users replaced the tanks with large rubber ducks (like the one docked in a Hong Kong harbor), and the activist image made its way around Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, and helped other users try to imitate and circulate further memes.⁴³

Figure 4.9

Iconic Tank Man photograph, by Jeff Widener/Associated Press, remixed with ducks.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the United States, meme sharing sometimes helps citizens see an alternative view to the way politics and culture work. Like Veronica DeSouza’s “Binders Full of Women” Mitt Romney meme, images can bring awareness to issues that we should be discussing. A similar meme was the “Pepper Spraying Cop” meme from 2011. At a protest in UC Davis, where students were holding a sit-in protest on campus as part of the Occupy Movement, a police officer pepper-sprayed several students at close range in a seemingly casual manner. The video went viral and brought to light issues of police militarization, protest movements, and Internet reactions. Internet users created a cut-out of the cop and encouraged users to participate in the meme where you juxta-pose the cop with any image—the more inappropriate the better.⁴⁴ Some notable examples of victims of the pepper spray include the Founding Fathers, Mt. Rushmore, and the Declaration of Independence. This highly political meme is still referenced when situations of unrest and protest occur in the United States.

MEMES ARE CULTURE

We end this chapter by reminding you that memes empower all users with access to image manipulation software, giving them the ability to participate. If you recognize any image that is quickly circulating, being imitated and transformed, you are watching a meme in real time. Some memes enter our common culture in the form of slang or language, such as the terms “bae” (before anyone else), selfie, or fail, and some enter our mind as something culturally relevant and unforgettable.

We want to remind you to be aware that, in our image-based culture, you should never assume immediately that something is true because there is photographic evidence. The side effect of access and the technological approach is that users become far savvier and competent at using the tools that can manipulate and trick other users. This happens politically and globally, to create messages such as when Iran’s propaganda team Photoshopped an extra launched missile into an image in 2008, and the Internet had a field day, adding more missiles, Jar Jar Binks, cats, and Wile E. Coyote’s Acme boxes.⁴⁵ Make sure you check the source of the meme before you believe it to be true. Many people try to trick less savvy social media participants during times of stress and duress, such as adding sharks to water during hurricane floods. The photo manipulation is easily done and shares extremely quickly. If an image seems too good/crazy to be true, you are most likely correct. Use Snopes.com to verify or just simply Google the image using the image search tool at google.com/imghp, to reverse search images to their source.

NOTES

1  The original “Binders Full of Women” post. Retrieved from http://bindersfullofwomen.tumblr.com/post/33747457705/binders-full-of-women (accessed May 5, 2015).

2  Kwoh, L. (2012). “‘Binders Full of Women’ May Help One Woman Get a Job.” Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2012/10/17/romney-binders-full-of-women-sparks-fame-for-laid-off-blogger/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

3  Franke-Ruta, G. (2012). “Binders Full of Women: A meme that means something.” Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/binders-full-of-women-a-meme-that-means-something/263740/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

4  Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved from www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme (accessed May 5, 2015).

5  Gleick, J. (2011). “What Defines a Meme?” Retrieved from www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/what-defines-a-meme-1904778/?no-ist (accessed May 5, 2015).

6  Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

7  Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

8  Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

9  Know Your Meme. About page. Retrieved from http://knowyourmeme.com/about (accessed May 5, 2015).

10  Edison, T. (1894) “Boxin Cats.” Seamus McGoon, YouTube. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52pLvVmmkU (accessed May 5, 2015).

11  Grossman, L. (2007). “Creating a Cute Cat Frenzy: Talking cats have taken over the web. But are great online fads like this one a dying breed?” Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1642897,00.html (accessed May 5, 2015).

12  McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding Comics: The invisible art. New York: William Marrow Paperbacks, p. 36.

13  Houston, K. (2013). “Smile! A history of emoticons.” Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304213904579093661814158946 (accessed May 5, 2015).

14  Rutkoff, A. (2007). “With ‘LOLcats’ Internet Fad, Anyone Can Get in on the Joke.” Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB118798557326508182?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB118798557326508182.html (accessed May 5, 2015).

15  Citizen, J. (2012). “92 Teen Text Terms Decoded for Confused Parents.” Retrieved from http://techland.time.com/2012/05/03/92-teen-text-terms-decoded-for-confused-parents/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

16  Beale, S. (2007). “Roll Your Own LOL, Not Just For Cats Anymore.” Retrieved from http://laughingsquid.com/roll-your-own-lol-not-just-for-cats-anymore/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

17  Gawne, L. and Vaughn, J. (2012). “I Can Haz Language Play: The construction of language and identity in Lolspeak.” Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/9398/5/Gawne_ICanHaz2012.pdf (accessed May 5, 2015).

18  The Lolcat Bible. Wiki page. Retrieved from www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Genesis_1 (accessed May 5, 2015).

19  Know Your Meme: Doge. Retrieved from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/doge (accessed May 5, 2015).

20  Broderick, R. (2013). “Everything You Wanted to Know About Doge but Were Afraid to Ask.” Retrieved from www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-but-have-been-too-scare (accessed May 5, 2015).

21  Shiba Confessions Tumblr. Retrieved from http://shibaconfessions.tumblr.com/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

22  Chen, A. (2013). “Doge Is Actually a Good Internet Meme. Wow.” Retrieved from http://gawker.com/doge-is-an-actually-good-internet-meme-wow-1460448782 (accessed May 5, 2015).

23  McCulloch, G. (2014). “A Linguist Explains the Grammar of Doge. Wow.” Retrieved from http://the-toast.net/2014/02/06/linguist-explains-grammar-doge-wow/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

24  Source of Doge Romeo and Juliet. Tumblr. Retrieved from http://daysofstorm.tumblr.com/post/68101267671/new-vogue-ravyn-chibi-koun (accessed May 5, 2015).

25  Payne, M. (2014). “NASCAR Driver Josh Wise Will Drive the Dogecoin Car Again Thank to Two New Fundraisers.” Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/early-lead/wp/2014/05/28/nascar-driver-josh-wise-will-drive-the-dogecoin-car-again-thanks-to-two-new-fundraisers/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

26  Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

27  National Gallery of Art: Nicholas Nixon. Retrieved from www.nga.gov/exhibitions/nixoninfo.shtm (accessed May 5, 2015).

28  Stone, A.R. (2014). “Dad Filmed His Daughter for 15 Seconds Each Week Since Birth to Age 14: The result will leave you breathless.” Retrieved from http://aplus.com/a/father-filmed-his-daughter-once-a-week-for-14-years (accessed May 5, 2015).

29  Know Your Meme: Keyboard Cat. Retrieved from http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/keyboard-cat (accessed May 5, 2015).

30  Play Him Off Keyboard Cat main site. Retrieved from http://playhimoffkeyboardcat.com/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

31  Coyle, J. (2009). “‘Keyboard Cat’ Spreads on Web, TV.” Retrieved from http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/hotsites/2009-05-22-keyboard-cat_N.htm (accessed May 5, 2015).

32  Lowensohn, J. (2009). “Weekend Webware: DIY keyboard cat videos.” Retrieved from www.cnet.com/news/weekend-webware-diy-keyboard-cat-videos/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

33  Eddy, M. (2011). “The 65 Best Planking Pictures From Around the World.” Retrieved from www.themarysue.com/best-planking-pictures/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

34  Milian, M. (2011). “‘Planking’ Death Puts Spotlight on Bizarre Web Craze.” Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/05/18/planking.internet.craze/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

35  Xzibit. Twitter status, July 6, 2011. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/xzibit/status/88795039257468928 (accessed May 5, 2015).

36  Hughes, S. (2011). “Is ‘Planking’ Connected to the Slave Trade?” Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/is-planking-connected-to-the-slave-trade/2011/07/08/gIQAz1aj3H_blog.html (accessed May 5, 2015).

37  Flock, E. (2011). “Anti-Planking Act Proposed in Philippines After People Plank in Manila Streets.” Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/anti-planking-act-proposed-in-philippines-after-people-plank-in-manila-streets/2011/09/20/gIQAVZl8hK_blog.html (accessed May 5, 2015).

38  Merevick, T. (2014). “LGBT Activists Launch ‘Cheers to Sochi’ Parody Site After ‘Highjacking’ McDonalds’ Hashtag.” Retrieved from www.buzzfeed.com/tonymerevick/lgbt-activists-launch-cheers-to-sochi-parody (accessed May 5, 2015).

39  Phillip, A. (2014). “Well, the #MyNYPD Hashtag Sure Backfired Quickly.” Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/22/well-the-mynypd-hashtag-sure-backfired-quickly/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

40  Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

41  Rosman, K. (2013). “Grumpy Cat Has an Agent, and Now a Movie Deal.” Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324412604578513352795950958 (accessed May 5, 2015).

42  Erickson, C. (2012). “Meme Management: Meet the man who reps Internet stars.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/04/17/meme-management/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

43  Romano, A. (2014). “Tiananmen Square Protesters Slip Memes Through China’s Web Censors.” Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2014/06/04/tiananmen-square-memes/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

44  Chen, A. (2011). “UC Davis Pepper Spray Cop Is Now a Meme.” Retrieved from http://gawker.com/5861431/uc-davis-pepper-spray-cop-is-now-a-meme/ (accessed May 5, 2015).

45  Hudson, J. (2012). “Busted: Iran’s jarring Photoshopped missle test image.” Retrieved from www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/busted-irans-jarring-photoshopped-missile-test-image/51940/ (accessed May 5, 2015).