22 Internet Memes Kate M. Miltner - The Bestem Network
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22
Internet Memes
Kate M. Miltner
Introduction to the endless listicles of Buzzfeed, an entire
media infrastructure has developed to report
The fact that this chapter exists is somewhat on, disseminate, and dissect the newest piece
remarkable. Not, of course, that approxi- of digital culture to emerge, whether that is
mately 8,000 words were written and pub- weekly, daily, or hourly. As internet scholar
lished in a massive tome (although that does Ryan Milner (2016, p. i) notes in the intro-
take quite a bit of effort), but the fact that a duction to his new book on memes, ‘it’s hard
major academic publisher thinks that the to imagine a major pop cultural or political
topic of internet memes is canonical enough moment that doesn’t inspire its own constel-
to include in a Handbook of Social Media. In lation of mediated remix, play, and commen-
2010, you could count the number of schol- tary’. Similarly, digital culture scholar Limor
ars interested in internet memes on one, Shifman (2013b, p. 3) has argued that our
maybe two hands. Furthermore, most of media landscape is governed by a ‘hyper-
those scholars had to consistently make their memetic logic’ where ‘almost every major
case as to why pictures of cats with mis- public event sprouts a stream of memes’.
spelled captions or videos of New Jersey However, while memes’ omnipresence
teenagers lip synching to Moldovan pop may make meme research more legible to
songs were worthy of academic inquiry. both academic and lay audiences, it is not the
In our current media landscape, such argu- key to their significance. Memes were impor-
ments are less necessary. In the space of a dec- tant before they were ubiquitous because they
ade, internet memes have gone from quirky, represent a practice of vernacular creativity
subcultural oddities to a ubiquitous, arguably (Burgess, 2006), a blending of folk practices
foundational, digital media practice. From (such as storytelling) with contemporary
Comedy Central’s television program Tosh.0 media savvy and skill. In this way, they act
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like a funhouse mirror for culture and soci- unit the ‘meme’, short for ‘mimema’, an
ety, reflecting and refracting the anxieties and ancient Greek word meaning ‘that which is
preoccupations of a variety of social groups imitated’ or ‘imitated thing.’ The concept of
across a series of national contexts. Memes the meme is based upon the principle of
have always been a method of circulating Universal Darwinism, which argues that any
ideas and influencing discourse; they just do information that is varied and selected will
so now on a grander, more rapid scale than produce design, whether that is biological or
they did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. cultural. That is to say, Dawkins believed that
As Limor Shifman argues in her book Memes information – whether in the form of a gene
in Digital Culture, ‘internet memes are like or a song – is interested in one thing, which
Forrest Gump. Ostensibly, they are trivial is to be spread far and wide. Dawkins argued
pieces of pop culture; yet, a deeper look that these ‘viruses of the mind’ – which can
reveals that they play an integral part in some be anything from the Happy Birthday song to
of the defining events of the twenty-first cen- religious beliefs – have a certain agency of
tury’ (2013, p. 4). their own, and propagate themselves to
This chapter is constructed as a primer on ensure their survival.
internet memes and internet meme research. While Dawkins has since distanced him-
It aims to provide a solid foundation in the self from memetics, others took his ideas
theoretical and empirical work that has been and developed them into a field of study.
done on internet memes up to this moment Scholars such as Richard Brodie (2009) and
(2016), while simultaneously illustrating the Susan Blackmore (2000) argued that humans
significance of internet memes for students are merely hosts and propagating machin-
of communication, sociology, anthropol- ery for memes. They maintain that humans
ogy, cultural studies, or any other discipline developed to receive and spread memes, such
invested in what has come to be known as as language – versus the other way around.
participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006). It will From this point of view, information is self-
discuss the theoretical origins and definition ish and strives to get copied, regardless
of memes, and trace the history of internet of the consequences. While controversial,
memes from the late 1990s to the current this position still has certain proponents; in
moment. It will examine memes as a politi- 2014, TechCrunch journalist Josh Constine
cal and activist practice in cultures across the explained the results of a Facebook social
world, and it will explore the process of com- influence study with the headline ‘Facebook
modification that memes have undergone as Data Scientists Prove Memes Mutate and
they moved from subcultural to mainstream Adapt Like DNA’, stating that ‘memes adapt
media realms. Finally, it will discuss the cur- to their surroundings in order to survive, just
rent state of meme research and avenues for like organisms’ (Constine, 2014).
further scholarly investigation. In the internet studies/cultural studies
world, memes are treated as media objects
with particular characteristics and and asso-
ciated practices instead of self-propelling
What is a meme? ideas. Media scholar Limor Shifman (2013a)
argues that Dawkinsian memes and internet
In 1976, evolutionary biologist Richard memes are both social phenomena that are
Dawkins published The Selfish Gene. In it, reproduced by various means of imitation
he made the case for a new unit, a ‘cultural and are diffused through competition and
replicator’ that spread ideas and behaviors in selection. However, Shifman (2013a, p. 367)
an infectious, gene-like fashion among indi- contends that the issue of human agency is
viduals and populations alike. He called this central to understanding internet memes,
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defining them as ‘units of popular culture content, form, and stance. The content of
that are circulated, imitated, and transformed internet memes refers to the ‘ideas and the
by individual Internet users, creating a shared ideologies’ that are expressed in the meme.
cultural experience in the process.’ The form involves the ‘physical incarna-
Similarly, Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and tion’ of the meme; this includes the format
Joshua Green (2013) assert that internet (a video, a picture) and the ‘genre-related
memes, which they describe as ‘spreadable patterns’ of the format (such as font and text
media’, are successful because they allow position, or whether the video is a lip dub or
different audiences to make their own mean- fake movie trailer). The stance of a meme
ings from the same media artifact; the spe- has three sub-components: the participa-
cific element within each internet meme tion structures, keying, and communicative
that strikes a chord will differ from person functions. The participation structures of a
to person. Internet memes are texts, and like meme involve who is entitled to participate
any other text, different readers will interpret and how; the keying of the meme involves
them and put them to use in varying ways. the tone and style of communication; and the
Other scholars (Miltner, 2014; Milner, 2016) communicative functions involve the type of
have argued that internet memes succeed communication that is happening.
because of their ‘emotional resonance’ with In order for a piece of content to become
audiences; people share memes not because memetic, users need to modify at least one
they are mechanistically compelled to pass of these dimensions. This is the key differ-
on a cultural replicator, but because they are ence between ‘memetic’ content and ‘viral’
emotionally compelled by some aspect of the content; if a piece of content is passed along
media object with which they are engaging. intact and unaltered, it is considered to be
The media objects that come under the viral. If a piece is altered or changed as it is
aegis of the term ‘internet meme’ are far passed along, it is considered to be a meme
from uniform, but they do tend to fall into (Shifman, 2013b). For example, the 2009
specific categories. As Shifman (2013b, performance of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ by
p. 99) quips, ‘in theory, all Internet users are Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle
free spirits, individuals who take their unique is a viral video, since it was passed along
path to the hall of digital fame. In practice, without any alterations. However, 2012
they tend to follow the same beaten tracks K-Pop video Gangnam Style is considered a
of meme creation.’ These ‘beaten tracks’ are meme, as it inspired a series of spinoffs and
genres, ‘socially recognized types of com- imitations.
municative action’ (Yates and Orlikowski,
1992, p. 299) that are the ‘keys to under-
standing how to participate in the actions of
a community’ (Miller, 1984, p. 165). There Early internet memes
are dozens of genres of internet memes that
have their own rules, structures, stylistic fea- The exact origins of the very first internet
tures, themes, topics, and intended audiences meme are somewhat contested. As Lessig
(Shifman, 2013b). Some of the most recog- (2008) and Jenkins (1992) have argued, par-
nizable meme genres include flash mobs1, ticipatory culture did not start with the inter-
recut trailers2, rage comics3, lip dubs4, image net. In fact, some of the earliest and most
macros5, and exploitables6. popular memes were very similar to offline
However, no matter what the subgenre, ‘memes’ from the 1970s and 1980s. One key
Shifman (2013a) argues that internet memes example of this is the demotivational poster
have three main dimensions that can connect meme. Demotivational posters (or demotiva-
with audiences, or be used to create meaning: tors) were parodies of the motivational
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posters found in offices and classrooms pictures of cats with misspelled captions,
across the United States. Despair, Inc. was a and silly bait-and-switch pranks, where the
company that started selling demotivational promise of an interesting news story turns
posters in 1998, and later created their own out to be a video of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit
online ‘Parody Motivator Generator.’7 Never Gonna Give You Up. However, early
Many of the first internet memes took the memes were often cultural artifacts – some-
form of ‘single-serving sites’ (Kottke, 2008), times playful, sometimes not – that served to
websites consisting of a single page with a erect and maintain in-and-outgroup bounda-
domain name that matched the content of ries within the communities from which
the site. One of the earliest and most popu- they emerged. Many of these early memes
lar single-serving sites was The Hampster were created by members of Something
Dance, a website featuring a series of ani- Awful8 and 4chan9, communities whose
mated hamsters rotating to a sped-up version members were technologically skilled and
of ‘Whistle Stop’ from Disney’s animated valued absurdist and often off-color humor.
version of Robin Hood. The Hampster Dance Early memes that emerged from these col-
originally appeared on web community and lectives often reflected the tacit knowledge
hosting site GeoCities in 1998, gaining main- and technical skill required to appreciate
stream popularity in the early 2000s. Other their full meaning, making them inscru-
famous single-serving sites included youre- table for outsiders. They also reflected a
themannowdog.com, a site that appeared in specific positionality; many memes emerg-
2001 and featured a repeating clip of Sean ing from what Whitney Phillips (2012)
Connery from Finding Forrester repeating calls the ‘meme/troll space’ of 4chan and
his notorious line, ‘You’re the man now, dog’ Reddit had decidedly misogynist and rac-
(Asuncion, 2010). You’re The Man Now ist overtones (Milner, 2013). When memes
Dog (YTMND) developed into a repository like LOLcats moved from the subcultural
of other single-serving sites, many of which to the mainstream, it was because their tex-
turned into memes of their own. tual flexibility allowed them to be taken up
A single-serving site featuring a gray cat and imbued with new meaning by different
is responsible for one of the internet’s most groups (Miltner, 2014).
longstanding memes: the LOLcat. In 2007, Early memes in other areas of the world
blogger Eric Nakagawa took a picture of also reflected the cultural specificities of
Happy Cat, a grey cat originally featured in the contexts they came from. Animal-based
a Russian catfood ad, and superimposed the memes in particular were genres that popu-
text ‘I Can Has Cheezburger?’ on top of it larized the practice of meme generation and
(Tozzi, 2007). He then posted the picture on circulation. Early animal memes not only
icanhascheezburger.com, and an internet sen- reflected regional humor, but cultural and
sation was born. I Can Has Cheezburger was political interpretations of certain animals
responsible for popularizing LOLcats, as well that represented a specific national context.
as the image macro genre. While image mac- In Japan, for example, the popularity of early
ros had been floating around subcultural web meme favorites OMGCat and Maru reflect
communities such as 4chan and Something the historical role that cats have played in
Awful since the early 2000s, the popularity Japanese culture and folklore. Some have
of I Can Has Cheezburger brought the image argued that Maru closely resembles a bake
macro – and for many internet users, memes neko, or spirit cat – a frequently humanized
themselves – into the mainstream. spirit guide with special powers who is also
Many of the earliest internet memes in an emblem of good luck (Romano, 2013).
the US context seem to traffic in the random In Kenya, hyenas (mafisi) are animals
and bizarre: websites with repeating loops, that are seen as cowardly scavengers, and
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have lent their name to those who display critique and commentary. From the days of
an unseemly sexual desire: Team Mafisi the court jester through to the political car-
(Kaigwa, 2015). In 2015, Kenyan lawyer toon, humor has been a method for skewer-
Felix Kiprono Matagei was put on Team ing both people and institutions in the highest
Mafisi when he offered 50 cows, 70 sheep, echelons of power. Furthermore, as Pearce
and 30 goats to marry sixteen-year-old First and Hajizada (2014, p. 68) have argued,
Daughter Malia Obama (Pleasance, 2015). In humor can also ‘make a difference in mobili-
Latin America, the image macro Ola K Ase zation and dissent.’ The use of Ola K Ase to
(an intentional distortion of ‘hola que hace?’ make a political statement reflects a practice
or ‘what’s up?’) features a friendly llama, an that has existed since the earliest internet
animal that is indigenous to South America memes, and continues to be one of the pri-
and has played a role in the economic life mary reasons that memes are created and
of the region since the pre-Columbian era circulated today.
(Berrin, 1997). While Ola K Ase is an exam-
ple of the linguistic playfulness that accom-
panies many internet memes, it also has Memes in Authoritarian Regimes
been used to comment on political and social
issues, including corruption scandals and One key example of the political use of
gender discrimination (Monroy-Hernandez, memes is one of China’s earliest, most
2015) (Figure 22.1). famous, and popular memes: the grass mud
horse, or Cao Ni Ma. The grass mud horse is
a rare breed of alpaca that lives in the Male
Gobi Desert, which is constantly harangued
Memes as political practice by its nemesis, the river crab. It also interacts
with the French-Croatian Squid and the
As several meme scholars have noted (Milner, Intelligent Fragrant Chicken. The story of the
2013; Shifman, 2013a, 2013b; Miltner, grass mud horse started off as a children’s
2014), humor is a key component of many song, but now there are grass mud horse
memes, and a large part of what helps them stuffed animals, animated videos, artwork,
gain traction among online audiences. and even lines of clothing; it is truly beloved
However, the humorous nature of memes by many in China. While this little mythical
also makes them an ideal venue for political creature may seem innocent on its face, it is
Figure 22.1 Ola K Ase
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actually a deeply subversive symbol of resist- computers, as well as the government’s ban
ance against the Chinese censored internet, on ‘offensive’ behavior (Wines, 2009). In a
the Great Firewall (Wines, 2009). 2009 blog post, Beijing Film Academy pro-
According to web scholar An Xiao Mina fessor Cui Weiping explained that the tone
(2012b), the grass mud horse’s name is pro- of the grass mud horse is one of sly obedi-
nounced ‘cǎonímǎ’ in Mandarin; this sounds ence: ‘I know you do not allow me to say
very similar to ‘càonǐ mā’, which means certain things. See, I am completely coopera-
‘fuck your mother.’ The ‘Male Gobi,’ which tive, right? … I am singing a cute children’s
is pronounced ‘Mǎlè Gēbì’, sounds like ‘māle song – I am a grass-mud horse! Even though
ge bı̄’, Mandarin for ‘your mother’s cunt.’ it is heard by the entire world, you can’t say
The devious river crab, or ‘héxiè’, sounds I’ve broken the law.’
like ‘harmony’ (‘héxié’) in Mandarin – a ref- The grass mud horse is just one example
erence to the fact that the Communist Party of an ‘alternative political discourse’ that is
refers to the censored internet as the ‘harmo- taking place in China with the help of inter-
nized internet.’ The French-Croatian Squid is net memes. The China Digital Times has
pronounced ‘Fǎ Kè Yóu’, and the Mandarin argued that internet memes have generated
name for Intelligent Fragrant Chicken sounds ‘frames, metaphors, and narratives’ that are
remarkably close to the Mandarin for ‘jack- an essential part of a ‘resistance discourse’
ing off’ (Mina, 2012b). As Shifman (2013b) that undermine the authoritarian regime of
points out, the humor of the grass mud horse the Chinese Communist Party, and as such,
is the incongruity between the way the lyrics are an important venue for free expression
are written (and meant to be read by the cen- and the development of civil society in China
sors) and how they sound when spoken (or (Qiang, n.d., para. 2). However, China is not
sung) aloud: the lyric ‘on the vast and beauti- the only authoritarian regime where internet
ful Male Gobi desert is a herd of grass mud memes also play this role: dissenting groups
horses’ actually sounds like ‘in your mother’s in Iran, Egypt, and Russia (among others)
vast and beautiful cunt is a group fucking have also used memes to speak out against
your mother.’ (Shifman, 2013b, p. 148) those in power. In Azerbaijan, the use of inter-
The appearance of the grass mud horse net memes takes on particular significance,
appeared in concert with the Chinese govern- as Azerbaijan was one of the first countries
ment’s ‘Special Campaign to Rectify Vulgar to arrest activists for creating and circulating
Content’ (Weiping, 2009). Its genius – and digital humor (Pearce and Hajizada, 2014).
power – lies in the fact that although it is a In September 2013, Azerbaijani youth
rather dirty pun, its literal meaning is entirely activist Ilkin Rustemzade of the Free Youth
benign; this means that it escapes the censors’ Organization was arrested for ‘hooliganism’
Figure 22.2 Grass mud horse
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for posting a video of the Harlem Shake, a that the regime uses to put distance between
video dance meme. Pearce and Hajizada themselves and the harassment they are con-
(2014) explain that while the video itself was ducting (Pearce, 2015 p. 1165). Several key
non-political, the symbolism of Rustemzade’s opposition figures and activists have been
involvement with global internet culture (and the subject of memes that ridicule and dis-
its attendant political ideas) was perceived to parage them in an attempt to undermine their
be threatening to the government. This was credibility and authority, a weapon that is
not the first time such an arrest occurred. In particularly effective in an ‘honor society’
2009, ‘donkey bloggers’ Adnan Hajizada and like Azerbaijan.
Emin Milli were arrested for producing a Similar tactics have been used in Russia
YouTube video ridiculing the government for to humiliate and discredit Ukrainian leaders
spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the wake of the Russia–Ukraine conflict
to import donkeys from Germany (Pearce of 2015–2016. Ukrainian President Petro
and Hajizada, 2014), and in 2011, a group Poroshenko became the subject of a series
of Azerbaijani students were threatened with of Russian memes after he photoshopped
violence and military conscription for creat- himself in the place of Russian President
ing a fake talk show that critiqued Azerbaijani Vladimir Putin on a cover of The Economist.
society and the government (ibid.). This prompted a flurry of photoshop memes
The use of memes in Azerbaijan is an where Poroshenko’s head was put on a series
important case study, because it illustrates of magazine covers, usually on the bodies
that while memes are often used as tools for of famous women: Kate Upton, Megan Fox,
speaking truth to power, they can also be used and even the Mona Lisa (Sharkov, 2016).
as tools of oppression. Katy Pearce (2015) However, the Russian government – and
has shown that memes are a powerful source particularly President Vladimir Putin – has
of state-sponsored harassment in Azerbaijan. also been the subject of many memes. In
She argues that their effectiveness lies in the 2011, a photo of Putin riding a horse while
fact that memes are inexpensive and easy shirtless turned into a photoshop meme of
to make, and the lack of attribution usu- Putin riding a variety of objects, including
ally associated with memes is an affordance bears and spacecraft (Figure 22.3). Putin was
Figure 22.3 Putin riding bear
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also the source of memetic ridicule when it a variety of internet platforms and formats,
was reported that voter turnout for the 2011 from animated GIFs and image macros on
elections exceeded 140% in some regions Twitter and Tumblr to reviews for three-ring
(Abramovitch, 2011). For the Russian gov- binders on Amazon.com. While Binders
ernment, the use of humorous memes as a Full of Women was similar to other memes
form of political critique is no laughing mat- from the 2012 election in that it capitalized
ter; in April 2015, the Russian government on a sound bite and was met with a satiri-
declared a ban on the use of high-profile cal and parodic response, it had a longer
figures in memes (Rothrock, 2015). shelf life. This was primarily because, as
Carrie Rentschler and Samantha Thrift
(2015, p. 332) have argued, the meme ‘dis-
Memes in Democratic Regimes tilled a larger context of feminist critique of
the Republican Party’s war on women and
The use of memes as parody and political increasingly vitriolic online misogyny’ and
statement is not relegated to authoritarian or provided the women who participated with
otherwise repressive regimes. Memes have an easy and humorous outlet to voice their
been a major part of the American electoral frustration and displeasure.
scene since artist Shepard Fairey created his While elections and electoral cycles are
famous Hope poster and Obama was subse- rich environments for the generation and cir-
quently coined ‘the first meme President’ culation of poltical memes, they are only a
(Beckwith, 2012). Memes were such a part small part of the political memescape. Like
of the political discourse during Obama’s political memes in authoritarian regimes,
2012 re-election campaign that it was dubbed most political memes in democratic regimes
‘The Meme Election’ by a variety of media focus on critiquing, lampooning, and dissect-
outlets, including Salon (Jurgenson, 2012) ing the quotidian goings-on of the people and
and The Nation (Melber, 2012). While institutions in positions of power. In his book
memes had long been a part of online politi- Social Media and Everyday Politics (2016),
cal discourse, this election brought the rec- media scholar Tim Highfield argues that
ognition that memes had a major role in memes outside the electoral cycle are sim-
shaping – if not outright dictating – the ply how politics are discussed and dissected
media narrative surrounding each candidate. by social media-literate, politically engaged
From the ‘live-GIFing’10 of televised debates citizens. Just as in authoritarian regimes,
to the Obama campaign’s meme-ridden memes in democratic nations are used to cre-
Tumblr, memes started to be recognized as a ate new meanings and alternative framings
powerful form of political expression, par- of particular issues, events, and public fig-
ticipation, and agenda-setting. ures. Highfield also argues that political con-
One of the most significant memes from tent is often excellent fodder for the memetic
the 2012 election cycle was Binders Full logics (Milner, 2015) that increasingly per-
of Women, a meme created from a com- vade online cultural spaces. He also explains
ment made by Republican candidate Mitt that because the endless media coverage of
Romney during one of the presidential politicians provides boundless material for
debates. When asked about the gender pay commentary and remix, even small moments
gap by a female voter, Romney responded can be turned into big memes if they are
that he was given ‘binders full of women’ offbeat, unexpected, or ripe for mockery
to choose from when looking for qualified (Highfield, 2016).
candidates to employ during his tenure as One key example of this was the #davecalls
Governor of Massachusetts. The gaffe was incident on Twitter. In March 2014, British
instantaneously taken up by women across Prime Minister David Cameron posted a
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photograph of himself on the phone, osten- population, and there was a distinct senti-
sibly speaking to American President Barack ment among this group that Cameron was
Obama about the crisis in Crimea. The photo promoting himself and his leadership skills
was ruthlessly mocked on Twitter, with in a ridiculous and unnecessary manner
users posting pictures of themselves in faux- with the photo. Furthermore, as Alexander
serious poses with other objects held up to (2010) has argued, Western citizens are
their ears in lieu of phones: stuffed animals, deeply skeptical of political news coverage
soda cans, beer glasses, and so on. Celebrities because they perceive it to be highly staged
also joined in on the joke; in particular, when and choreographed. On top of being cartoon-
knighted actor (and prolific Twitter user) Sir ish, Cameron’s picture played right into these
Patrick Stewart joined in by holding a cylin- perceptions.
drical container of wet wipes up to his ear, he
gave the meme a serious boost. Eventually,
Cameron himself got in on the joke, tweet-
ing a picture of himself in a meeting with Another kind of politics:
former President Bill Clinton to Stewart and Memes as activist practice
quipping to Stewart, ‘Talking to another US
President, this time face to face, not on the Humor is often an effective tool for com-
phone.’ menting on the gaffes and hypocrisy of those
Cameron’s photo represented a meme- in power, and many political memes are used
able moment for a variety of reasons. First, to comment on politics in a humorous and
Cameron is not particularly popular with parodic way. However, memes often reflect
certain digitally savvy segments of the UK and invoke the rage of the subordinated;
Figure 22.4a Cameron tweet
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Figure 22.4b Stewart tweet
Chinese film scholar Cui Weiping (2009) were injured. After the Chinese government
has referred to memes as one of the ‘weap- claimed that there were no further survivors,
ons of the weak’ in our mediatized society. rescue workers found two-year-old Xiang
While that may be so, the impact of some Weiyi alive in a train car that was being
activist memes illustrates just how powerful demolished; this led to a great deal of criti-
they can be. cism of the government and the overwhelm-
While many early memes emerging from ing sentiment that the government was more
the 4chan subculture were prankish and puer- interested in covering its tracks than taking
ile, they also had their roots in (and occasion- the rescue effort seriously (Ding, 2011).
ally overlapped with) a hacker culture that In response to the government’s negligence,
resisted and rejected traditional power struc- a series of memes began circulating about the
tures and norms. As Molly Sauter (2014) train crash. Eventually, the outcry reached
explained in The Coming Swarm, LOLcats such a fever pitch that top Ministry of
featured prominently on the Low-Orbit Ion Railways officials resigned, and the govern-
Cannon (LOIC), a tool used to engage in ment eventually issued a report on the cause
civil disobedience in the form of Distributed of the crash. Artist and researcher An Xiao
Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on power- Mina described the involvement of memes in
ful individuals and institutions. the government’s response as ‘a watershed
However, Chinese netizens were one of moment’, arguing that ‘it forced the govern-
the first groups to clearly illustrate the activ- ment to have more transparency’ (quoted in
ist power of memes. In July 2011, two high- Subbaraman, 2012).
speed rail trains collided in the suburbs of Memes also played a major role in Chinese
Wenzhou; 40 people died and over 192 others citizens’ protest of activist lawyer Chen
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Guangcheng being placed under house arrest and violence – in the media, both social and
in 2011. While Chen’s name was officially broadcast.
censored from the ‘harmonized’ internet, Mina (2012a) also makes the important
Chinese citizens showed their support for point that part of the success of the Trayvon
Chen in other ways. One was by taking a Dark Martin and Chen Guangcheng meme cam-
Glasses portrait, a project created by digital paigns lay in the fact that they were organ-
artist Crazy Crab, which exhorted Chinese ized: Crazy Crab and Daniel Maree provided
internet users to post themselves wearing clear instructions on how to participate, and
dark sunglasses or blindfolds to express their they also provided a central repository in
solidarity for the blind lawyer. Like the grass the form of dedicated websites to collect the
mud horse, this was designed to escape the images they were encouraging people to
censors, as it would be rather difficult to make. This sort of organization was also
distinguish between a Dark Glasses portrait key for the success of Black Lives Matter
and a selfie on a sunny day. While Chinese (BLM),11 the tour-de-force hashtag-turned-
censors eventually caught on, certain images movement that changed the American dis-
escaped their grasp; there are still images of course on racial justice and police brutality
Chen circulating on photoshopped posters starting in 2015. In their seminal study of
of The Shawshank Redemption. As An Xiao 40.8 million tweets, 100,000+ web links,
Mina (2012a) explains, the significance of and 40 interviews of BLM activists, Deen
the Chen Guangcheng meme is that it kept Freelon, Charlton D. McIlwain and Meredith
awareness of Chen’s plight active and rel- D. Clark (2016) argued that one of the main
evant in public discourse, a state of affairs contributing factors to BLM’s success was
that would have otherwise been difficult to that their core demand of ‘stop killing us’
achieve in such a censored environment. was clearly articulated and agreed-upon from
Mina also notes that memes played a simi- the start (Freelon et al., 2016, p. 83). The
lar and equally important role in the case BLM movement has been incredibly suc-
of Trayvon Martin. In February of 2012, cessful in circulating narratives about police
seventeen-year-old Martin was fatally shot brutality and racial profiling that counter
in Sanford, Florida. While Martin’s murder the ‘neutral’ narratives in the mainstream
is now a well-known event, there was origi- news media. Additionally, the content posted
nally very little media coverage surrounding in connection with the #blacklivesmatter
his death. That changed after digital strate- hashtag was remarkably successful in edu-
gist Daniel Maree posted a video on YouTube cating casual observers on Twitter, illustrat-
encouraging people to wear hoodies in honor ing that ‘under some political circumstances,
of Martin, who was wearing a hoodie when political appeals on social media can do more
he was killed. Maree called his movement than reinforce people’s preexisting opinions’
the Million Hoodie March, and it sparked a (ibid., p. 79).
vibrant and intense discussion in American
public discourse, a discourse that was fur-
ther amplified when the Million Hoodie
March moved offline into the streets. As The meme-industrial complex
Mina (2012a) explains, ‘even in a democratic
country with broad speech opportunities, it As the many examples of political and activist
can be difficult to gather eyes and ears around memes illustrate, memes can be an efficient,
an issue and even harder to sustain it in peo- high-impact method of spreading a message
ple’s minds’, and the hoodie meme helped or idea, and they also have the potential to
amplify and sustain Martin’s story – and the dominate popular culture during their time in
surrounding discussion of racial profiling the limelight. Both of these affordances make
BK-SAGE-BURGESS ET AL-170281-Chp22.indd 422 24/10/17 12:24 PMInternet Memes 423
memes particularly appealing to people and thought was fantastic. … And second, it was the
groups interested in making money, whether incredible community. It had amazing buzz. We
felt like that there was a pretty good possibility
that is advertisers, entrepreneurs, media com-
that we were buying into a cultural phenomenon,
panies, or other business interests. a shift in the way people perceived entertainment.
Most successful memes are not created for (Cook, 2008)
the purpose of making money. Most memes
are created for fun, to connect with a friend, Huh used the advertising profits from ICHC
or to express some kind of personally relevant to acquire a collection of meme-related web-
statement, opinion, or joke (Miltner, 2014). sites, including FAIL, The Daily What,
As one meme creator put it, ‘We’re spending Memebase, and meme encyclopedia Know
hours making these fun things for no com- Your Meme. Huh consolidated the websites
pensation, and not even any recognition … under the aegis of Cheezburger, a corporation
just because of the inherent fun in it’ (ibid.) that received US$30 million in venture fund-
Furthermore, the general lack of attribution ing, made $4 million in yearly revenue, and
that comes with the generation and dissemina- employed 75 people at its peak (Erlich, 2011).
tion of memes may be good for authoritarian Cheezburger has published five books – two
governments looking to distance themselves of which are New York Times Bestsellers –
from their harassment of dissidents, but it also and was the subject of LOLwork, a short-lived
makes it difficult to claim ownership – and reality TV show on the Bravo network (Chard,
consequently profit – from memes. Speaking 2010; Watercutter, 2012).
to the collective nature of meme creation, While some applaud Huh’s savvy, the
one LOLcat enthusiast explained, ‘You can communities that were responsible for the
never be like, “I’m the guy behind Ceiling generation of LOLcats and many of the other
Cat”’ (ibid.). As Phillips (2015) relates, early memes that populate the sites of Huh’s meme
memes – particularly those coming from empire were less enthusiastic. In 2010, Huh
subcultural community and ‘meme factory’ and 4chan founder Christopher ‘moot’ Poole
4chan – required deep subcultural knowledge were on a panel at internet culture conference
in order to both parse and participate in them. ROFLCon, discussing the mainstreaming of
However, the fact that certain memes weren’t meme culture. Towards the end of the panel,
designed to be mined for profit failed to deter Poole accused Huh of being an ‘oil tower’,
those who saw them as an untapped commer- unfairly profiting off the unpaid labor of oth-
cial opportunity. As more accessible memes ers,12 and contributing to the destruction of
crossed into the mainstream and became more the meme-creating subculture that he had
visible, their marketability also increased helped establish. ‘You can say “we’re giving
(Phillips, 2015, p. 139). people tools to create LOLcats” and that’s
The first person to create a sustainable great and all’, Poole said, ‘but more or less
business model based on memes was Ben you’re giving people those tools so you can
Huh, an entrepreneur who purchased LOLcat post them on your site because you mon-
blog I Can Has Cheezburger (ICHC) in etize them with display ads. Do you feel like
2007. Huh recognized early on that ICHC you put something back? Because I don’t’
was unique in the internet media ecosystem, (Phillips, 2015, p. 140).
and was able to pitch the uniqueness of ICHC Poole’s sentiments were expressed in a
to venture capitalists, eventually raising over less politic way by 4chan’s /b/ board13 in
US$2 million to purchase the site. In explain- November 2010 with Operation Black Rage.
ing his interest in ICHC, Huh said: Teen-oriented clothing retailer Hot Topic had
started selling t-shirts with Rage Comics on
It was doing 500,000 page views a day for a cat them, a state of affairs that enraged /b/’s com-
picture site, that nobody understood, which I munity and spurred them into vengeful action.
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‘The corporate slut that is Hot Topic has now The road to meme monetization is not a
decided that memes are to be the latest “cool” one-way street; some advertising campaigns
thing amoungst [sic] 13 year old emo con- turned into memes of their own. Old Spice’s
sumer whores’, the flier for Operation Black ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ was
Rage groused. ‘This is only the beginning, if a memetic success that inspired imitations on
this is allowed to continue then it’ll only be a Sesame Street, Nickelodeon television show
matter of time until /b/ starts getting raped of iCarly, and the ad campaign for Shrek spinoff
every meme to be turned into the next I Can Puss In Boots. The advertising spokesman
Has Cheezburger? And before long? /b/ will for Dos Equis, The Most Interesting Man in
die.’ The plan for Operation Black Rage was the World, has long been the subject of his
to create a series of racist Rage Comics and own image macro template. However, brands
subsequently encourage an outrage-fueled have generally not met with much success
consumer boycott of Hot Topic until the when it comes to creating truly successful
shirts were removed from shelves. The plan memes. This is because memes created by
originally worked, with Hot Topic agreeing marketers and advertisers are seen as inau-
to remove the shirts from their online store. thentic and ‘forced’. Meme encyclopedia
The victory was short-lived, however; Hot Know Your Meme defines a forced meme as a
Topic soon became wise to /b/’s campaign meme that is ‘artificially created and spread
and reversed their decision. … made with the intent of becoming a meme
In the end, /b/’s fears were warranted: Hot and aggressively promoted by its creator’
Topic’s commodification of memes was only (‘Forced Meme’, 2010).
the tip of the iceberg. In the years that fol-
lowed, British company Virgin Mobile used
Success Kid14 in a cable television campaign;
American startup HipChat used Y U NO15 Memetic futures
on billboards around the San Francisco Bay
Area, and Wonderful Pistachios used the By 2012, the commodification of memes
Honeybadger16 and Keyboard Cat17 in tel- combined with other shifts in the digital
evision commercials. While some of these media ecosystem incited a series of dire
memes were created and popularized by a proclamations and death knells for memes.
collective, such as Y U NO, many of them At the 2012 Digital Life Design (DLD) con-
contain media that can be traced back to an ference, 4chan founder Christopher ‘moot’
original owner or creator; Keyboard Cat, The Poole mourned the end of internet culture
Honey Badger and Success Kid all had video (Olsen, 2012). After the final ROFLCon later
or images that could be – and were – licensed. that year, technologist Andy Baio (2012)
Other memes that were created by a single complained in Wired that the shift to mobile
author have also successfully capitalized on social (i.e., primarily accessing social media
their intellectual property. The creator of on a mobile phone) was quashing creativity.
Nyan Cat18, Christopher Torres, has mon- On his blog, Know Your Meme co-founder
etized his creation through YouTube ads and Chris Menning (2012) declared that 2012
Nyan Cat merchandise; the owner of Tardar was ‘the year the meme died’. In his book,
Sauce, more commonly know as Grumpy World Made Meme, internet scholar Ryan
Cat19, has parlayed ‘Tard’s’ popularity into Milner (2016) tells a story of how in 2014,
toys, books, clothing, animated specials, pet one of his second-year undergraduate stu-
food sponsorships, and even ‘Grumppucino’ dents told him, ‘I remember memes. They
iced coffee beverages. In Hong Kong, famous were really big in high school. Junior year.’
cat Brother Cream has also received sponsor- It’s true that the body of texts that were
ships and book deals. readily identified as memes by a specific
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cohort of internet culture enthusiasts from #BlackLivesMatter. At the time of writing, as
the mid-2000s to approximately 2012 are no the American Presidential election of 2016
longer in vogue. LOLcats, Advice Animals, reaches fever pitch, so do the memetic texts
Rage Comics, Rickrolling and their ilk have generated about (and perhaps by the cam-
fallen so out of favor that they have been paigns of) Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders,
given the meta-memetic label ‘dank memes.’ Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz. Whether we
As Don Caldwell (2015) of Know Your Meme are watching Bad Lip Readings of the
explains it, dank meme is ‘an ironic expres- Republican debates or trying to
sion used to mock online viral media and in- #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain at the exhorta-
jokes that have exhausted their comedic value tion of media critic and late-night host John
to the point of being trite or cliché’. As digital Oliver, user-driven imitation, remixing, bri-
scholar Whitney Phillips pointed out in 2012, colage, and circulation are at the core of our
‘the meme/troll space of 2012 is very differ- media engagement. Furthermore, these
ent from the meme/troll space of 2008. The behaviors and logics will continue to evolve
question of whether or not that’s a good thing and expand long after the election – or what-
is irrelevant – we are where we are, deal with ever media event is next – has ended. As
it’ (Phillips, 2012). Milner (2016, p. 15) reminds us, ‘whether or
Much of the research on memes from not the subculture has lost its edge, memetic
2014 onward has aimed to do just that – deal logics are as pervasive as ever.’
with the shifting memetic landscape and
understand where we are now, although as
Milner (2015) notes, ‘it’s easy to log in to Notes
Facebook, see yet another goddamn Minion,
throw up our hands, and declare the death of 1 Flash mobs are coordinated events where a large
number of people descend on a location for a
the subculture.’ For despite four years’ worth
short-lived purpose. Flash mobs are usually video
of earnest declarations that memes are dead, recorded and posted online. For more, see http://
the sheer volume of memes that permeate knowyourmeme.com/memes/flash-mob
our media ecosystem illustrate that they are 2 Recut trailers are parody videos that take
very much alive; or rather, as Milner (2016, movie trailers out of their original context and
re-edit them to reflect different genres or nar-
p. 5) asserts, memetic participation is very ratives. For more, see http://knowyourmeme.
much alive: com/memes/recut-movie-trailers-movie-trailer-
remix
Memetic media didn’t start with 4chan, just as 3 Rage comics are a series of stick figure comic
they didn’t end with the final ROFLCon. Memetic strips used to humorously express anger about
practices persist, even if the specific resonant texts the frustrations and defeats of everyday life. For
shift over time. If we’re tired of stock character more, see http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/
macros in 2015, it doesn’t mean that ‘memes are rage-comics
dead’; it indicates that those memes don’t hold the 4 Lip dubs are videos that feature a person or group
specific cultural capital they did in 2010, or even of people lip synching to a popular song, usually
that they hold cultural capital for people other to comedic effect. For more, see http://knowy-
than us. ourmeme.com/memes/lip-dub
5 Image macros feature a picture or other image
As Milner, Highfield, Shifman, and others with text superimposed on it, usually in Impact
argued in an October 2015 series on Culture font. For more, see http://knowyourmeme.com/
Digitally, much of our media engagement is memes/image-macros
governed by memetic logics, whether that is 6 Exploitables are image templates where a defin-
ing characteristic or key piece of content can be
the platform vernacular of Twitter (Highfield, easily edited to make a joke or other humorous
2016); new modes of fundraising, like the Ice statement. For a full explanation of the various
Bucket Challenge (Silvestri, 2015); and new types of exploitables, see http://knowyourmeme.
forms of social mobilization in the form of com/memes/exploitables
BK-SAGE-BURGESS ET AL-170281-Chp22.indd 425 24/10/17 12:24 PM426 The SAGE Handbook of Social Media
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