THE JOURNEY OF MEMES

From the day I started using the internet, every day when I’m using the internet, I encounter memes. From the motivational poster, lol guy, rage guy, the blinking white guy, Sponge bob meme, Chinese guy meme and many more I love it all and not to forget the exaggerated discussion between millennials and the boomers over the pronunciation of the word. Memes have become the language of the internet now, or maybe it’s the easiest way to express your feelings on the internet and also a point to kick off conversations where almost everyone is participating. But have you ever wondered how did meme came into existence?

Over the past two decades we have changed a lot with the compatibility and easy accessibility of the internet and memes also have evolved a lot. It has become one of the most Influential things on the internet.

The word meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins a biologist and was mentioned in his book “The Selfish Gene” which was published in the year 1976. The majority of the book explores genetics but in one of the topics he talks about a new word “meme”. He then explained the meaning of meme as “meme is the unit of cultural inheritance, its anything that’s copied or imitated and spreads around like a virus”. So, basically any cultural product or a catchphrase or tunes that’s repeated over time, for Dawkins that was a meme.

              While the idea of meme came from Dawkins, the word meme was first referred within the context of the internet in 1994 by Mike Godwin in a Wired article called “meme, Counter-meme”. Where he wrote, “most people on the internet, as elsewhere hasn't heard about memes or memetics”.

Initially memes were simplistic and wholesome, having image macros and had only a single word or catchphrase and were shared through emails. Sharing memes through emails was limited and it didn’t get exposed to a larger audience until social media platforms like Reddit, YouTube, Vines, Facebook, and Twitter emerged. Now the velocity of a meme transmitting from one to the vast majority of the audience is exponentially fast and can go viral worldwide within 1 to 2 days. When YouTube first came out video meme started to get viral and Chocolate rain by Tay Zonday is one of the oldest memes on the internet. But between emails and social media platforms, a site name 4 Chan played an unknown but significant role to straighten up the meme culture and all of this happened because it didn’t have a lot of server space and wasn’t a robust site. All of the meme formats and subgenres like dank memes, photoshop meme, Pepe memes, stock character macros, and others were formed in 4 chan. Also, 4 Chan is responsible for producing a genre of deeply problematic, racist, propaganda and violent memes that have been around and are still being created.  

With the power of meme which had the ability to get viral in no time, an unknown life span and the whole world communicating on the internet there was some kind of business to be made and as a result, brands came in.

Brands began to collaborate with meme-makers and started advertising in the form of memes. Moreover, it’s very important to know the emergence of a meme cause the intention behind how they were created might not always be what you think and that’s specially with political memes.

We already know that Google, Facebook and Youtube restricts and limits the content traffic and the content which are being circulated at the time of elections. In the last U.S Presidential election, Facebook was a major catalyst for President Trump's victory and the Russian trolls used memes to divide Americans. As the 2020 U.S Presidential election is around, memes have again become the hot topic. Political campaigns and propaganda are now been run through memes and as the world is getting more and more engaged with the internet, memes have now become modern information warfare.

So, that’s a wrap! Tell us which meme is your current favorite in the comments below. Share the article with your friends, family and in your Socials.

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