Memes In Today's Popular Culture

“Meme” is a word most familiar to people who are in tune with today’s popular culture, the passing of a humorous object through the small alterations in imitations. However, the term “meme” was first brought to life in a 1976 book called The Selfish Gene by a biologist named Richard Dawkins. He coined the term as a “cultural unit that spreads from person to person through copy or imitation” and reflects and shapes cultural discourse, mood, and behavioral practice. Interestingly enough, he even compares the meme’s concept of evolutionary process to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Like a population, memes can spread rapidly via the Internet (mostly through social media) referred through mostly catchphrases, images, and videos. Author
There’s a spectrum of older to newer classic memes. Older classic memes pertaining to animals include the musical Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat–which are only examples of why cats are deemed to be the “lions of the animal memedom” (Ben Huh), the dramatic chipmunk, (honey) badgers, etc. Other older memes involving more into music are “Chocolate Rain” by Tay Zonday, “Friday” by Rebecca Black, the Numa Numa song, etc. Then there are the newer classic memes such as Doge the dog and Pepe the Frog (both image memes, also pertaining to animals). Another famous rendition of the bait-and-switch practice is the John Cena meme (based off of the famous professional wrestler). Today meme’s are also focusing more on famous catchphrases such as Damn Daniel, What Are Those (both oddly consisting the attention towards footwear, originating from the social media application Vine), 420 blaze it (a term concerning marijuana), etc. Throughout the timeline, there has been a pattern of memes focusing towards musical dances as well. There was the Harlem Shake, K-popstar Psy’s Gangnam Style dance routine, and the much more modern whipping, nae-naeing, and dabbing. There are most definitely a lot more memes; the list goes on and
What is it like to be an original meme? Olivia B. Waxman of TIME wrote an article on Vanity Fair’s interview with the the famous “Ermahgerd Girl”, an image meme of a young girl fanning three Goosebumps books with an excited expression deemed to say “Ermahgerd” (which is a speech-impetimized “oh my god”). “Ermahgerd Girl” Maggie Goldenberger explained what it’s like to be a meme, saying that she experienced a lot of staying power, meaning being asked a lot about the photo, but not as much fallout from being viral. However, another example like the “Shiva”/“Thumbs Up Kid” delve much more in depth in the Vice article “This Is What Happens When You Become a Meme” by Emma Pryde. For the Shiva, the meme originated from a man named Tim who uploaded his eighth grade school photo to Myspace. Through a process of going through forums and repurposing, the meme rapidly spread in January of 2012 through the website gyropedia.com. It was short-lived forced meme that was opposed but still outnumbered the amount of opinions (Gyropedia). Being asked how it felt to be a meme, Tim had a plethora of emotions. His fame heightened his cynicism, reinforced his fear, and other times he just felt liberated. Tim is much more careful about what he is sharing on the internet, which then also makes him much more self-conscious about his image. Altogether, he felt scared, mostly okay but not happy, and embarrassed but eventually came to the realization that it was