The internet has become something of a culture in its own right, and for people who enjoy interacting with internet communities such as Reddit and 4chan, one of the most common ways to communicate and engage with people is by posting user-made memes.
Memes can feel like an inside joke. While designed to be funny, you often have to know about popular culture and internet culture references to understand them. When you do, they can be hilarious and a great way of making a joke within a community, but when you don’t understand a meme, it can seem random and baffling!
Telling Stories Through Memes
One of the main meme-sharing platforms is 9Gag, and on that site, a lot of the memes are made using specific templates that allow a person to express something using a well-recognized (within the community) image macro.
Examples can include the ‘confession bear’, which is just a picture of a bear that people write their confessions about all kinds of things over. Another is the ‘socially awkward penguin’. This is simply a penguin, but because everyone who uses the site recognizes the picture, they know that what will be captioned on it will be a cringe-inducing story of an embarrassing moment.
You can even buy cryptocurrency in the form of meme coins which are used to pay homage to a particular meme. Meme coins such as the Ugandan Knuckles Coin are designed to go viral rather than have any actual monetary value. They are often inspired by an internet joke or meme that has circled an online community.
User Made Comics
Another way that people tell longer stories using memes is with a style called the ‘rage comic’. These are fairly basic in the imagery used and easy to make using sites like RageMaker.net.
Everyone in the communities where these kinds of comics are posted are familiar with the language and faces used (such as the ‘troll face’ or the ‘poker face’). So it makes it a fun way to tell true or imaginary funny stories in a style that is anonymous and doesn’t require the storyteller to develop any real art skills.
Understanding the peculiarities of things like rage comics allows the creator and the reader to share a common thread of knowledge. For instance, people who regularly read other people’s rage comics will know that the characters are always called ‘Derp’ and ‘Derpetta’ and they always use the French style ‘le’ in front of nouns instead of ‘the’, even though the comics are generally in English. These are part of the style and make the comics feel like inside jokes shared between people worldwide!
Memes And Social Media
While memes are popular on sites that exist mainly to share and create them, they also tend to get shared a lot on social media. They are sometimes even used in place of words as replies to posts or tweets.
Using a meme can be a funny way to express yourself and more creative than simply writing a comment, and many users find this fun.
Memes are just a way of combining words and pictures. However, because they are now so easy to make they have become a language of their own online, and one that is likely to continue evolving.
