#discovered or go viral or get a random cultural wave of popularity all the time

[musical-chick-13]

Like, not to harp on this, but just because you don't see the "value" in a piece of art or don't think it's "technically beautiful enough" to be acclaimed or don't want to interact with it because the function it's serving isn't something you're interested in doesn't mean that it just. Doesn't deserve to exist.

[is6621]

A Brief History of Memes -- Curtis Bullock

The internet has always been a strange and encompassing place. There’s something for everyone; no matter how niche your sense of humor might be, there’s probably something on the internet that can make you chuckle.   Today, most millennials armed with smartphones get their laughs from memes. The term is a lot older than you’d think, it predates social media, smartphones, and even the internet itself. Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” in his 1976 “The Selfish Gene.”  Dawkins used memes as a way to explain how cultural information spreads. According to the top-ranked definition on urban dictionary, a meme (pronounced meem) is “The cure of depression.” According to an actual dictionary, a meme is “an idea behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” I like the former definition more.

Evolution of memes

The growth of modern memes can be directly correlated to the success of social media. When  YouTube took the world by storm in 2005, so did some of the most identifiable video memes. Rickrolling, editing videos to add a surprise cut to Rick Astley’s music video for “Never Gonna Give You Up,” became one of the most popular at the time. A few years, Twitter and Facebook became the most dominant social media and meme makes took their talents to these platforms with image macro memes. An image macro is what is typically thought of when thinking of modern internet memes. The typical format for an image macro is a photo with white text superimposed at the top and bottom of the photo, usually with the punchline being the bottom text. For many years image macros were the most popular form of meme-making,  then in 2012, three New Yorkers developed an app that had a huge impact on meme culture for the foreseeable future, Vine.

Vine officially launched in January of 2013. In its short 4 year life-span, Vine became extremely successful amassing more than 200 million active users. The platform featured user uploaded 7-second comedy sketches that ranged from hilarious, culturally aware, and in some cases downright confusing. Even though Vine no longer exists, its videos still live on. Users use YouTube to upload vine compilations, a (usually related) series of vines lasting from a few minutes to sometimes hours long. These complications attract tens of millions of viewers and continue to be some of YouTube’s most popular content.

Today, a significant portion of meme consumption takes place on Instagram and Reddit, with popular accounts like Instagram’s Beige Cardigan and subreddits like r/dankmemes growing millions of followers strong. These memes mix dark humor, wholesome stories, current events, historical events, and the occasional randomness to provide free laughs for subscribers.  

Where Memes Go from Here

Like most internet trends, there comes a time when the target demographic shifts from younger to older. I believe memes are in the earliest stages of their shift. While the average grandma is scrolling through Reddit memes to wake up in the morning, non-millennials have definitely caught on the meme wave.  Recently, memes become an important part of the political landscape.

The 2016 presidential election played a crucial role in bringing political memes to the national stage. Republican nominee Donald Trump rose to popularity largely due to his ability to turn his catchy slogans and snarky comebacks. His chants of “Lock her up!” in reference to allegations against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and his popular “Build that Wall!”  slogan are just a few examples of some of Trump’s more meme-able content that the internet went crazy over.  

After winning the election President Trump, an avid social media user, dove deeper into the memeing. In a January 2019 cabinet meeting, in response to critics claiming he was “soft on Russia”, the president created a meme of his own with “Sanctions are Coming”  (borrowing from the HBO series and pop culture phenomenon, Game of Thrones)  in large print written over an austere photo of himself.  

In order to check and see if President Trump was an outlier or the norm, I asked some of my friends their thoughts. “Dude, my mom sends me memes” one of them confessed, “they’re not very funny, but that’s not stopping her.” So,  outside of millennials, with the politicians and parents fully caught on to memes, there’s one important group left that has been able to take advantage of one of the internet most valuable trends, marketers.

Recently, corporate marketers have discovered that memes can make a lot of money. Many savvy digital marketing professionals use memes as a form of guerilla marketing, seemingly organic viral marketing that boosts awareness.  Some examples include Wilford Brimley talking about his “Diabeetus” for Liberty Medical and Heinz Ketchup working in conjunction with Memes.com to create memes attempting to finally answer the question if tomatoes are vegetables or fruits.

As memes continue to grow in popularity, it’ll be interesting to see how companies continue to capitalize. Some products are meme-able without interference from a company’s marketing staff; memes about Apple’s AirPods, Netflix’s film BirdBox, and Vans have all organically gone viral without assistance from their companies – even though there is a debate about whether marketers are truly behind these successes.  Regardless of the true origin, marketers have an important balancing act to perform: should they engage the memes risking stifling the popularity or just let them spread naturally. In my opinion, this will become one of the most interesting questions for marketers in the future as memetic marketing continues to mature.