Essay On Internet Memes

What is an internet meme?

Internet memes have gained rapid popularity among netizens (users of the Internet) ever since its introduction to the Internet in the early 1980s. The term Internet meme is a colloquial slang derived from the word meme which is defined as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture”. The word ‘meme’ was first introduced in 1976 by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. However, the term meme is, in more recent years, is also applied to content spread from user to user on the Internet. In 2009, the first ‘academically rigorous’ definition of internet memes was proposed by Patrick Davidson, in his essay in The Social Media Reader. Davidson defined

Most modern Internet memes are focused on humour. Some examples of Internet memes are Rickrolling, image postings of Planking, the Harlem Shake, meme faces or rage comics (Troll Guy, Forever Alone Guy, etc.), and multiple forms of image macros. Among the types of Internet memes are high fidelity static memes and remixed memes. High fidelity static memes are Internet memes that are replicated with little variation while remixed memes are Internet memes that are replications or imitations of the original meme. For the sake of practicality, this paper will focus on still images. Figure 1 shows examples of Internet memes in the form of image macros and a still image or meme faces. Internet memes are often multimodal, image memes are often accompanied by a certain style of text (Figure 1: White text outlined with black, and in Impact font). These image memes are usually inspired or copied from the media (movies, television series, music videos, etc), celebrities, and politicians. Internet memes, specifically image macros, In remixed memes, certain features can be edited or altered according to the user’s message. However, the image used and/or certain phrases must remain the same or only slightly