Memes!

What you see above for this new blog post are three memes. This blog post is a little different from my others, as I am using a different approach to address some aspects of my website, as I'm doing this through memes. A large majority of my target audience is beginners, and I wanted to share some popular gym culture memes and how they are related to this website as a whole. The main way I wanted to do this is through “ideals”, which as defined by Davison the ideal of a meme “is the aggregate of all manifestations of that meme.”(Davison 15). Lets start off with the first meme “Do You Even Lift?”. This meme was created with the intention of calling out people’s commitment to fitness, as it shows a baby trying to deadlift. The second meme, “skipping leg day”, highlights a common beginner mistake that many people make. Regardless of what split you choose to do, making sure legs are also trained is a key component, and even though many dislike it, it's important for your health and for your overall fitness journey. The last meme “Swole”, shows a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger, an icon in the gym community. Many don’t know the definition of swole, which is to have a lot of muscle mass, and Arnold is a prime example of this. I chose these three memes because they represent different levels of people in the gym community, and I felt they would best resonate with my target audience, as some would see the “Swole” meme as a goal, and learn from the “skipping leg days” meme. Davison describes the behavior of a meme as “the action taken by an individual in service of

the meme”(Davison 5). Essentially, this regards how the meme is created and spread. The Know Your Meme database provides the origin of these memes. The “Do You Even Lift?” and “skipping leg day” meme originated in old bodybuilding forums, specifically bodybuilding.com according to Know Your Meme. The Swole meme originated from a Youtuber through a music video, stating “YouTuber skaterfrek09 uploaded a music video titled “Swole Guy,” which featured animated pictures of the former California governor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger”(Know Your Meme). Lastly, the manifestations are the specific versions of the meme we see. The baby lifting the barbell is a “humorous exaggeration”, whereas the skipping leg day meme is an edited picture of a muscular upper body to show more into the skipping leg day stigma. These manifestations are different because they don’t need deep knowledge to understand, and are perfect for beginners to gain a general message or idea from them.

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Citations

Davison, P. “The Language of Internet Memes.” The Social Media Reader

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-you-even-lift

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/skipping-leg-day

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/swole