Meme Culture On The Internet

As the internet evolved over time it has developed its own culture. Within this internet culture ideas that would, in real life, take a long time to get around and fade into obscurity before getting very far instead spread quickly across wide communities on the internet. As a result of this they become part of the internet's "meme culture". A meme is an idea that spreads from person to person within a culture (in the case of the internet a meme is usually a humorous or funny image); the internet amplifies this effect due to its ability to convey communication quickly to a large number of people. The result of this is that memes go through several stages very quickly whilst surging through the internet's population. The five main stages that can be seen on most internet sites are:

Discovery/creation: The potential meme is either "discovered" from existing content or created by someone (usually a web comic or video maker). It is then posted on a website and potentially adopted by an internet community. Some people attempt to promote things that they believe should be memes and these usually fail as they are seen to be "forced memes".

Adaptation/adoption: The meme is adapted to conform with the rest of the internet's culture and is adopted into the meme culture. The adaption can include slight distortions of the meme to include other references to other popular parts of meme culture. If the meme is an image then it may include rasterized versions of the meme, and modified versions of the image to be more friendly to image boards (transparent background, etc.).

Running it into the ground/Beating the dead horse: The meme has become so wide spread that everyone has seen it at least twice and it loses its edge. It is no longer considered funny and most people are sick of seeing it. There are still a minority of people that find it funny and continue to post it, much to the annoyance of the majority. Sometimes attempts are made to perpetuate the meme for a while longer by making references to it using other memes. Some people start complaining about the meme and others start complaining about those who are complaining about the meme.

Mocking/Still beating the dead horse: Any posts including the original meme are considered "cancer" by the internet community and are generally disliked. Poorly drawn (often in MS paint) and misquoted versions of the meme are created and posted mocking it and comparing it to other "dead" or unpopular memes.

Fade into obscurity: The meme gradually gets posted less and less, including the mocking versions. People eventually forget about the meme. Sometimes it will crop back up again but for the most part it is forgotten.

One of the most interesting examples of the spread of memes in internet culture is when a user of the website known as 4chan caught on to the fact that the majority of popular memes had originated on 4chan. After being initially introduced or created on 4chan memes would seem to spread very quickly to the rest of the internet and become very popular very quickly. The user in this example noticed that it didn't seem to matter if the meme meant much or was particularly funny, it would just spread and become a meme anyway. So due to this the user decided to test their theory that the rest of the internet would follow like mindless sheep if a new meme was proposed. The user created a meme known as "New meme" (shown above on the right) that was intended to mock meme culture and forced memes. In the end they were proven correct as it was widely adopted quite quickly. This was most likely due to the fact that by sharing "New meme" people thought that they were laughing with the creator at the ones who would so quickly adopt it like sheep. Unfortunately they ended up being more the ones laughed at than the ones laughing as they had proven the original creator and poster of "New meme" correct.

Personally I quite like meme culture. It doesn't really fulfil many useful purposes other than entertainment, but it changes constantly with the various collective mood-swings of the internet community so there's always something new. If nothing else it's a bit like a house on fire: sometimes it's just fun to sit back and watch it burn.