Deleted member 3373
To be honest I'm kind of sick of meme culture at this point. It's something I've been feeling for over a year now and I've been trying to figure out why. I think the following observations may explain why I've been feeling this way. It may simply be a sign of cultural change or something worse. I'm not sure either way and I'll just go into my observations
One of the earliest memes I can recall is the newgrounds animation loop simply known as "badgers, badgers, badgers". For those of you who saw this old thing you'll know what I'm talking about pretty quickly. I don't even know if the word "meme" was in circulation at that time. But that for me was my starting point with the concept of a meme. A couple years later I got on to a website called youtube and experienced what I consider to be the glory days of meme culture. Now some of you might find what I'm saying to be nothing more than nostalgia. Myself looking at this old stuff through rose tinted glasses. But let's really look at this. Take yourself back to when you would have been laughing non-stop at say "pingas". Perhaps you weren't, perhaps you didn't see the humour in it at the time but I certainly did and still do. That isn't to say I still laugh at it like I did back then but I can still see why I found it funny. Back then the humour was in effect a form of shock humour. Prior to it witnessing any kids' cartoon character using non-PG language was a rare sight to see. No TV network would broadcast it (at least not during the day) and so seeing anything like that would be limited to shows like south park and family guy. Having a massive supply with virtually no restrictions was incredible at first and as such was a big part of 2000s internet humour and meme culture. But of course the meme died. As all do. But even then we can look to other memes. Take "over 9000". It had a practical effect as a highly exaggerated way of saying "a lot". It was funny due to the exaggeration aspect. The more I look back at what I consider to be the golden age of meme culture I realise it tended to have an actual basis in humour. For example much of the humour came from the formation of nonsensicle and humourous sentences and phrases made out of the various memes. "My boy", "Ship", "Spaghetti, etc. These were typically used to form more humourous videos. Sonic telling you to touch your teacher in a place or in a way that made him/her feel uncomfortable was funny on multiple levels. From the imagined reaction of said teacher to the fact you were being instructed to molest your local police officer in the most kid friendly way imaginable, it had a clear and defined sense of humour. Not to mention the overacting and all the weird jank of 80s and 90s animation. It had an actual basis in humour. Or take Rick Rolling. Possibly the single most famous meme of the era. A classic bait and switch. A sort of mass online prank. These were all grounded in actual humour. It truly was the golden age of internet memes.
But then we come to today and I feel increasingly alienated from the meme scene. Over time I find myself caring less and less. Am I just getting older? Did my sense of humour change? Or is something else going on? I think to get to the bottom of this I have to examine the latest going ons in meme culture. The most recent one is the happy side and sad side bus. I'm not entirely sure what its' origin is and I don't think it matters. What does matter is how it is used. Usually it is used to illustrate two conflicting scenarios and how a person feels in each scenario. Immediately the humour element is questionable. For the most half explaining how I felt in a given day is not really a sense of humour. It is simply a statement of fact. The happy side and sad side bus meme is nothing more than a mere means of expression. But that's the thing. Many modern memes have this as the underlying form of "humour". Take for example wojak. Although originally used to further various right-wing talking points, it has since taken on a life of its' own. It has since mutated into what is effectively a form of astrology for younger people. It has gradually devolved into a list of stereotypes of what other people say and think and do. Often times with the suffix "er" as a means of categorising people. The zoomer, coomer, doomer, etc. The humour has increasingly turned to attacking these perceived groups of people and what they believe in. Wojak is in effect a negative astrology. Whereas traditional astrology denotes certain personality traits to people depending on what time of year they are born in, wojak denotes personality traits to people depending on which superficial traits of these characters closest match the person the user is speaking to. These are just two examples of what I believe is a major shift in culture. That is memes as humour vs memes as expression. Older memes served as a form of humour. Usually some form of absurdist humour or mockery. Traditional forms of humour. Compare that to the modern form which is now more of a social media game than comedy. I feel this fact was exemplified by the "Damn Daniel" clip from 2015. I hated it at the time and still do. There was no humour to it. It was funny because everyone else thought it was funny.
It also doesn't help that the meme scene is now more a series of templates than any solid joke. Wojak is once again another good example of this in action. Wojaks can be used by just about anyone for any purpose. It's the same for Pepe and just about any other image based meme format. Older memes by contrast had a solid base. Over 9000 began as a joke among Dragon Ball Z fans related to poor dubbing which then went on to serve another purpose as a funny means of saying "a lot". It had to be used in specific contexts to be funny. Videos which did just spam the old catchphrases of YTP would be disliked to hell. They had actual rules to their use in order to work. Not so much anymore. This ties into another problem which is the politicisation of the concept where these template based memes are now being increasingly tied to the various political tribes of the internet. In fact not just tribes but fanbases as well. This causes a fragmentation of the meme scene in which one must subscribe to a specific internet collective in order to understand certain memes. Whereas "pingas" and "my boy" didn't require much context to be considered funny by the average viewer, modern memes on the other hand increasingly require this. This leads to what I like to call overmemification which I feel is a subject for another day. But either way this is another major problem. Memes simply have no solid basis anymore which leads into the next problem.
Stagnation seems to have occurred quite rapidly in the past few years where memes that in days long past would have died out years ago, are still in use regardless of how overused they are. Take Pepe the frog. The ubiquitous cartoon character who first became popular on 4chan before spreading out to the wider internet is perhaps one of the most enduring memes of all time. This is despite its' overuse and thus lack of real humour at this point. To this day I cannot understand the consistent love of this thing that's been a joke for around a decade now. But he's not the only one, wojak is another all pervasive meme that I feel is long past its' sell by date. For whatever reason internet culture has seemingly stagnated.
Memes today seem to increasingly serve the function of a means of communicating ones personal opinions towards a subject with often times quite nasty undertones. Many memes today focus around an element of domination of the perceived opponents of whatever group or ideology made by the meme in question. This ties in to the plasticity of modern memes in so far as they are easily adaptable to whatever group or person wishes to use them. This in turn creates a meme landscape which serves more to boost the ego of the poster rather than to make a joke or observation.
But even then memes which are designed to be jokes are increasingly lost on me. A good example was the rather strange and somewhat grotesque "gamer girl pee". This seemed to poke at the fact that a lot of the people posting it were urine fetishists. This serves as a good example of self-deprecating humour which is quite common in modern meme culture. But there's just one problem with the whole thing. Self-deprecating humour only really works in the context of a person to person relationship. It works when it is one person admitting these things to a friend as a means of establishing intimacy between two persons. That or a stand up comedian admitting to something embarrassing for an audience to laugh at. When removed from this context what you get is a person just straight up admitting that they have certain proclivities to just about anyone who sees the image in question. It's just a bare exposure of your shame to the public. A kind of sadistic social activity. Hell, look at tik tok. Much of that is just softcore pornography and people doing embarrassing things on camera for views.
Ultimately I feel the issue does boil down to memes as humour as opposed to memes as expression. Perhaps I am looking back at the old days with rose tinted glasses but I simply never recall anyone communicating via memes in the 2000s. That is a strictly 2010s trend that I don't see going away anytime soon. I'm not going to pretend that older memes were devoid of cringe or just genuinely unfunny stuff but the relationship people had with them was completely different. I'm not sure what you think but frankly, I think it was better.
One of the earliest memes I can recall is the newgrounds animation loop simply known as "badgers, badgers, badgers". For those of you who saw this old thing you'll know what I'm talking about pretty quickly. I don't even know if the word "meme" was in circulation at that time. But that for me was my starting point with the concept of a meme. A couple years later I got on to a website called youtube and experienced what I consider to be the glory days of meme culture. Now some of you might find what I'm saying to be nothing more than nostalgia. Myself looking at this old stuff through rose tinted glasses. But let's really look at this. Take yourself back to when you would have been laughing non-stop at say "pingas". Perhaps you weren't, perhaps you didn't see the humour in it at the time but I certainly did and still do. That isn't to say I still laugh at it like I did back then but I can still see why I found it funny. Back then the humour was in effect a form of shock humour. Prior to it witnessing any kids' cartoon character using non-PG language was a rare sight to see. No TV network would broadcast it (at least not during the day) and so seeing anything like that would be limited to shows like south park and family guy. Having a massive supply with virtually no restrictions was incredible at first and as such was a big part of 2000s internet humour and meme culture. But of course the meme died. As all do. But even then we can look to other memes. Take "over 9000". It had a practical effect as a highly exaggerated way of saying "a lot". It was funny due to the exaggeration aspect. The more I look back at what I consider to be the golden age of meme culture I realise it tended to have an actual basis in humour. For example much of the humour came from the formation of nonsensicle and humourous sentences and phrases made out of the various memes. "My boy", "Ship", "Spaghetti, etc. These were typically used to form more humourous videos. Sonic telling you to touch your teacher in a place or in a way that made him/her feel uncomfortable was funny on multiple levels. From the imagined reaction of said teacher to the fact you were being instructed to molest your local police officer in the most kid friendly way imaginable, it had a clear and defined sense of humour. Not to mention the overacting and all the weird jank of 80s and 90s animation. It had an actual basis in humour. Or take Rick Rolling. Possibly the single most famous meme of the era. A classic bait and switch. A sort of mass online prank. These were all grounded in actual humour. It truly was the golden age of internet memes.
But then we come to today and I feel increasingly alienated from the meme scene. Over time I find myself caring less and less. Am I just getting older? Did my sense of humour change? Or is something else going on? I think to get to the bottom of this I have to examine the latest going ons in meme culture. The most recent one is the happy side and sad side bus. I'm not entirely sure what its' origin is and I don't think it matters. What does matter is how it is used. Usually it is used to illustrate two conflicting scenarios and how a person feels in each scenario. Immediately the humour element is questionable. For the most half explaining how I felt in a given day is not really a sense of humour. It is simply a statement of fact. The happy side and sad side bus meme is nothing more than a mere means of expression. But that's the thing. Many modern memes have this as the underlying form of "humour". Take for example wojak. Although originally used to further various right-wing talking points, it has since taken on a life of its' own. It has since mutated into what is effectively a form of astrology for younger people. It has gradually devolved into a list of stereotypes of what other people say and think and do. Often times with the suffix "er" as a means of categorising people. The zoomer, coomer, doomer, etc. The humour has increasingly turned to attacking these perceived groups of people and what they believe in. Wojak is in effect a negative astrology. Whereas traditional astrology denotes certain personality traits to people depending on what time of year they are born in, wojak denotes personality traits to people depending on which superficial traits of these characters closest match the person the user is speaking to. These are just two examples of what I believe is a major shift in culture. That is memes as humour vs memes as expression. Older memes served as a form of humour. Usually some form of absurdist humour or mockery. Traditional forms of humour. Compare that to the modern form which is now more of a social media game than comedy. I feel this fact was exemplified by the "Damn Daniel" clip from 2015. I hated it at the time and still do. There was no humour to it. It was funny because everyone else thought it was funny.
It also doesn't help that the meme scene is now more a series of templates than any solid joke. Wojak is once again another good example of this in action. Wojaks can be used by just about anyone for any purpose. It's the same for Pepe and just about any other image based meme format. Older memes by contrast had a solid base. Over 9000 began as a joke among Dragon Ball Z fans related to poor dubbing which then went on to serve another purpose as a funny means of saying "a lot". It had to be used in specific contexts to be funny. Videos which did just spam the old catchphrases of YTP would be disliked to hell. They had actual rules to their use in order to work. Not so much anymore. This ties into another problem which is the politicisation of the concept where these template based memes are now being increasingly tied to the various political tribes of the internet. In fact not just tribes but fanbases as well. This causes a fragmentation of the meme scene in which one must subscribe to a specific internet collective in order to understand certain memes. Whereas "pingas" and "my boy" didn't require much context to be considered funny by the average viewer, modern memes on the other hand increasingly require this. This leads to what I like to call overmemification which I feel is a subject for another day. But either way this is another major problem. Memes simply have no solid basis anymore which leads into the next problem.
Stagnation seems to have occurred quite rapidly in the past few years where memes that in days long past would have died out years ago, are still in use regardless of how overused they are. Take Pepe the frog. The ubiquitous cartoon character who first became popular on 4chan before spreading out to the wider internet is perhaps one of the most enduring memes of all time. This is despite its' overuse and thus lack of real humour at this point. To this day I cannot understand the consistent love of this thing that's been a joke for around a decade now. But he's not the only one, wojak is another all pervasive meme that I feel is long past its' sell by date. For whatever reason internet culture has seemingly stagnated.
Memes today seem to increasingly serve the function of a means of communicating ones personal opinions towards a subject with often times quite nasty undertones. Many memes today focus around an element of domination of the perceived opponents of whatever group or ideology made by the meme in question. This ties in to the plasticity of modern memes in so far as they are easily adaptable to whatever group or person wishes to use them. This in turn creates a meme landscape which serves more to boost the ego of the poster rather than to make a joke or observation.
But even then memes which are designed to be jokes are increasingly lost on me. A good example was the rather strange and somewhat grotesque "gamer girl pee". This seemed to poke at the fact that a lot of the people posting it were urine fetishists. This serves as a good example of self-deprecating humour which is quite common in modern meme culture. But there's just one problem with the whole thing. Self-deprecating humour only really works in the context of a person to person relationship. It works when it is one person admitting these things to a friend as a means of establishing intimacy between two persons. That or a stand up comedian admitting to something embarrassing for an audience to laugh at. When removed from this context what you get is a person just straight up admitting that they have certain proclivities to just about anyone who sees the image in question. It's just a bare exposure of your shame to the public. A kind of sadistic social activity. Hell, look at tik tok. Much of that is just softcore pornography and people doing embarrassing things on camera for views.
Ultimately I feel the issue does boil down to memes as humour as opposed to memes as expression. Perhaps I am looking back at the old days with rose tinted glasses but I simply never recall anyone communicating via memes in the 2000s. That is a strictly 2010s trend that I don't see going away anytime soon. I'm not going to pretend that older memes were devoid of cringe or just genuinely unfunny stuff but the relationship people had with them was completely different. I'm not sure what you think but frankly, I think it was better.
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, Discord and 4chan on the fringes began to utterly dominate the portion of the internet most people bother engaging with. Most old school memes were products of a specific community and often were a sort of inside joke. Even when they spread, that range was limited because the internet was so fragmented. 
