Memes

Rush Thomas

Since the dawn of the internet, memes have existed. A meme is generally an idea or a behavior that conveys a point or topic within our culture. While their earliest form were Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video being played on videos with promising titles, memes have evolved over twenty-seven years to photos with relatable top texts and bottom texts, then to more evolved versions with captions above the photo, then to fully fledged edited videos living side by side with captioned photos. While a naturally occurring phenomenon, memes have a natural enemy. These enemies are known as normies.

Half of the meme is the content, the other half is the added content. Considered by most to be 2016’s “Meme of the Year” is Robbie Rotten’s hit song “We Are Number One.” “We Are Number One” was edited by different meme creators, for instance using cut out photos and lines of Obi-Wan Kenobi over the original video to create something meaningful, well put together, and from the heart. Some memes can be commemorative pieces; some can be for promoting a point. Real memes can never truly be political, otherwise they are not worthwhile.

Normies are normal people too enveloped in their Starbucks and Facebook lives to understand true memes. While not a bad thing to be social with social media and enjoy drinks, normies will never ascend to being meme gods. Their memes are sometimes even at school level memes, which are enjoyable but are better off not seen on a fully fledged “dank” meme page and are adored by peoples within those schools. Most, but not all Normie memes are cringey and painful. Normie memes are usually this way just because of the pure content of the meme, but sometimes they are made with too many words covering the pictures. While enjoyable memes are made by young adults, high school age civilians are known to make high quality memes in down time. Just as on the internet, most meme producers are anonymous, and will not be mentioned here, or anywhere.

Pronunciation is also a big part of meme life. While the mainstream of meme aficionados pronounces meme as “Meem,” two other known pronunciations are “MehMay” and “MeeMee.” Where these pronunciations came from, is a mystery to most. Memes can express a very wide variety of topics, or just be abstract. True memes come from the heart, and nowhere else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-_O7nl0Ii0