An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
, often through
social media platforms
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...
. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet and is subject to change over time. Traditionally, the term mostly applied to images, concepts, or catchphrases, but it has since become broader and more multi-faceted, evolving to include more elaborate structures such as
challenges,
GIFs, videos, and
viral sensations.
The
retronym
A retronym is a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form/version from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were ...
derives from the earlier concept of a
meme
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...
as any cultural idea, behavior or style that propagates through imitation.
Internet memes are considered a part of
Internet culture
Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social medi ...
.
They can spread from person to person via
social network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods fo ...
s,
blog
A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...
s,
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
, or news sources. Instant communication on the Internet facilitates
word of mouth
Word of mouth, or ''viva voce'', is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one pe ...
transmission, resulting in
fads and sensations that tend to grow rapidly. For example, posting a photo of someone
planking
Planking may refer to:
* Planking (fad), an activity consisting of lying face down—sometimes in an unusual or incongruous location
* Plank (exercise), an isometric core strength exercise
* Planking, a form of indirect grilling
* Shad Planking, ...
online brings attention to the fad and allows it to reach many people in little time. The Internet also facilitates the rapid evolution of memes.
One hallmark of Internet memes is the appropriation of a part of broader culture. In particular, many memes use
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
(especially in
image macros
An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros are one of the most common forms of internet memes, and ...
of other media), which can sometimes lead to issues with
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
. Dank memes have emerged as a new form of image-macros, and many modern memes take on inclusion of
surreal, nonsensical, and non-sequitur themes.
Colloquially, the terms ''meme'' and ''Internet meme'' are used more loosely, having become umbrella terms for any piece of quickly-consumed comedic content that may not necessarily be intended to spread or evolve.
Characteristics
There are two central attributes of Internet memes: creative reproduction of materials and
intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of a text's meaning by another text, either through deliberate compositional strategies such as quotation, allusion, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche or parody, Gerard Genette (1997) ''Paratexts'p.18/ref>Hal ...
. Creative reproduction refers to "parodies, remixes, or mashups", and includes notable examples such as "''Hitler's Downfall'' Parodies",
and
Nyan Cat, among others. Intertextuality may be demonstrated through memes that combine different cultures. For example, a meme may combine United States politician
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts ...
's assertion of the phrase "
binders full of women" from a 2012 US presidential debate with the Korean pop song "
Gangnam Style
"Gangnam Style" ( ko, 강남스타일, ) is a K-pop song by South Korean rapper Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, ''Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1'' (''Ssai Yukgap Part 1''). The ...
" by overlaying the politician's quote onto a frame from
Psy
Park Jae-sang (, ; born December 31, 1977), known professionally as Psy (stylized in all caps as PSY) (; ; ), is a South Korean singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Psy is known domestically for his humorous videos and stage per ...
's music video where paper blows around him. The intertextuality in the example gives new meaning to the paper blowing around Psy; the meme indexes intertextual practices in political and cultural discourses of two nations.
The spread of Internet memes has been described as occurring via two mechanisms:
mimicry
In evolutionary biology, mimicry is an evolved resemblance between an organism and another object, often an organism of another species. Mimicry may evolve between different species, or between individuals of the same species. Often, mimicry f ...
and
remix
A remix (or reorchestration) is a piece of media which has been altered or contorted from its original state by adding, removing, or changing pieces of the item. A song, piece of artwork, book, video, poem, or photograph can all be remixes. The o ...
. Remix occurs when the original meme is altered in some way, while mimicry occurs when the meme is recreated in a different fashion to the original.
The results in the study of ''Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production,'' show that the internet directly adds some longevity in a meme's lifespan.
There is no single format that memes must follow. Photographs of people or animals, especially
stock photos
Stock photography is the supply of photographs which are often licensed for specific uses. The stock photo industry, which began to gain hold in the 1920s, has established models including traditional macrostock photography, midstock photography ...
, can be turned into memes by superimposing text. Popular examples include
Overly Attached Girlfriend, Crying Kim Kardashian, and various animal images. It is important to note that any image can be transformed into a meme.
Rage comics are a subcategory of memes which depict a series of human emotions and conclude with a satirical punchline; the sources for these memes often come from
webcomic
Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Webcomics can be c ...
s. Other memes are purely viral sensations such as in
Keyboard Cat.
Evolution and propagation
![Typical internet meme image format](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Typical_internet_meme_image_format.svg)
An Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations,
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
, or by incorporating news accounts about itself. Internet memes spread online through influences such as
popular culture
Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
.
Memes can be subjected to
in-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or a private joke, is a joke whose humour is understandable only to members of an ingroup; that is, people who are ''in'' a particular social group, occupation, or other community of shared interest. It ...
s within online communities such as
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
,
Tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to ...
,
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
,
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
,
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
, and
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
.
[Stryker, C. (2011). ''Epic win for anonymous: How 4chan's army conquered the web''. Abrams.] in-joke
An in-joke, also known as an inside joke or a private joke, is a joke whose humour is understandable only to members of an ingroup; that is, people who are ''in'' a particular social group, occupation, or other community of shared interest. It ...
s rely on the memes in-groupness to communicate exclusive cultural knowledge unbeknown to general users. In contrast, common internet memes, provide a broader cultural relevance in common text and imagery associated with memes.
[Miltner, K. M., & Highfield, T. (2017). Never gonna GIF you up: Analyzing the cultural significance of the animated GIF. ''Social Media+ Society'', ''3''(3), DOI: 2056305117725223.] By using explicit cultural knowledge, internet memes provide affect as an emerging communication.
In utilizing affect as a visual vernacular, internet memes create a culture of unspoken referential importance.
An internet meme can rapidly become 'unfashionable', losing its humorous qualities to certain audiences, often even most prevalently by its creator(s). Internet memes usually are formed from some social interaction, pop culture reference, or situations people often find themselves in. Their rapid growth and impact has caught the attention of both researchers and industry.
The phenomena of viral memes is a users-to-users experience demonstrating the participatory culture on online platforms.
Academically, researchers model how they evolve and predict which memes will survive and spread throughout the
Web
Web most often refers to:
* Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal
* World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system
Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to:
Computing
* WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
. Internet scripting macros evolved for meme en- and decoding, facilitating their spread.
Through the spreading process, memes invokes studium and punctum memetrics.
Studium is the entertaining aspect of internet memes.
Punctum is the aesthetic affiliation to a piece of imagery, thus invoking a reaction.
It is the affect of the image.
With the combination of studium and punctum memetrics, individuals perceive and spread memes from their cultural significance to types of memes.
One empirical approach studied meme characteristics and behavior independently from the networks in which they propagated, and reached a set of conclusions concerning successful meme propagation.
[ Paper explained for laymen by ] For example, the study asserted that Internet memes not only ''compete'' for viewer attention generally resulting in a shorter life, but also, through user creativity, memes can ''collaborate'' with each other and achieve greater survival.
Also, paradoxically, an individual meme that experiences a popularity peak significantly higher than its average popularity is not generally expected to survive unless it is unique, whereas a meme with no such popularity peak keeps being used together with other memes and thus has greater survivability.
Multiple opposing studies on media psychology and communication have aimed to characterize and analyze the concept and representations in order to make it accessible for the academic research.
Thus, Internet memes can be regarded as a unit of information which replicates via the Internet. This unit can replicate or mutate. This mutation instead of being generational
follows more a viral pattern,
giving the Internet memes generally a short life. Other theoretical problems with the Internet memes are their behavior, their type of change, and their teleology.
Internet memes have been examined by Dancygier and Vandelanotte in 2017 for aspects of cognitive linguistic and construction grammar. The authors analyzed some selective popular image macros like, 'Said no one ever', 'One does not simply', 'But that's none of my business', and 'Good Girl Gina' to draw attention to the constructionally, multimodality, viewpoint and intersubjectivity of these memes. They further argued that with the combination of text and images, the Internet memes can add to the functioning linguistic construction frame as well as create new linguistic constructions.
Writing for ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...
'' in 2013, Dominic Basulto asserted that with the growth of the Internet and the practices of the marketing and advertising industries, memes have come to transmit fewer snippets of human culture that could survive for centuries as originally envisioned by Dawkins, and instead transmit banality at the expense of big ideas.
History
Origins and early memes
The word ''
meme
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ...
'' was coined by
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ...
in his 1976 book ''
The Selfish Gene
''The Selfish Gene'' is a 1976 book on evolution by the ethologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's '' Adaptation and Natural Selection'' (1966). Dawkins uses the term "selfish gen ...
'' as an attempt to explain how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve (
memetics
Memetics is a study of information and culture. While memetics originated as an analogy with Darwinian evolution, digital communication, media, and sociology scholars have also adopted the term "memetics" to describe an established empirical stud ...
).
Emoticons are one of the first resemblances of internet memes.
[Kulkarni, A. (2017). Internet meme and Political Discourse: A study on the impact of internet meme as a tool in communicating political satire. ''Journal of Content, Community & Communication Amity School of Communication'', ''6''.] In 1982, Scott E. Fahlman introduced the sideways smiley face formed by punctuation marks, with an intention to create emotion and expressions with the use of digital imagery.
The concept of the Internet meme was first proposed by
Mike Godwin
Michael Wayne Godwin (born October 26, 1956) is an American attorney and author. He was the first staff counsel of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and he created the Internet adage Godwin's law and the notion of an Internet meme, as ...
in the June 1993 issue of ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...
''.
In 2013, Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativity—distinguished from biological genes and his own pre-Internet concept of a meme, which involved mutation by random change and spreading through accurate replication as in Darwinian selection.
Dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a "hijacking of the original idea", the very idea of a meme having mutated and evolved in this new direction.
[ (video of speech)] Furthermore, Internet memes carry an additional property that ordinary memes do not: Internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate (for example, social networks) that renders them traceable and analyzable.
![CatLolCatExample](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/CatLolCatExample.jpg)
Internet memes grew as a concept in the mid-1990s. At the time, memes were just short clips that were shared between people in
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
forums. As the Internet evolved, so did memes. Over the years, many memes have originated on the
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
website, which have been described as "the cradle of memes,
trolling
In slang, a troll is a person who posts or makes inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a forum, a chat room, a online video game), or in real life, with the i ...
and
alterculture
An anti-establishment view or belief is one which stands in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of a society. The term was first used in the modern sense in 1958, by the British magazine ''New Statesman'' ...
"; major memes popularized by that site include
lolcat
A lolcat (pronounced ), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images' idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak.
Lolcat is a compound word of the acronymic abbreviation LOL (laug ...
s as well as the
pedobear
Pedobear is an Internet meme that became popular through the imageboard 4chan. As the name suggests ("pedo" being short for "pedophile"), it is portrayed as a pedophilic cartoon bear. It is a concept used to mock child sex offenders or people w ...
.
When
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
was released in 2005, video memes became popular. Around this time,
rickrolling became popular and the link to this video was sent around via email or other messaging sites. Video sharing also created memes such as "
Turn Down for What
"Turn Down for What" is a song by French DJ and record producer DJ Snake and American rapper Lil Jon released on December 18, 2013. The song and its viral music video popularized the use of the phrase. The song was particularly successful in Nor ...
" and the "
Harlem Shake". As social media websites such as
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...
started appearing, it was now easy to share
GIFs and
image macro
An image macro is a piece of digital media featuring a picture, or artwork, with some form of text superimposed. The text frequently appears at the top and bottom of the image. Image macros are one of the most common forms of internet memes, and ...
s to a large audience. Meme generator websites were created to let users create their own memes out of existing templates. Memes during this time could remain popular for a long time, from a few months to a decade, which contrasts with the fast lifespan of modern memes.
Early in the Internet's history, memes were primarily spread via
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
or
Usenet
Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...
discussion communities.
Messageboards
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
and
newsgroups
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...
were also popular because they allowed a simple method for people to share information or memes with a diverse population of Internet users in a short period. They encourage communication between people, and thus between meme sets, that do not normally come in contact. Furthermore, they actively promote meme-sharing within the messageboard or newsgroup population by asking for feedback, comments, opinions, etc. This format is what gave rise to early Internet memes, like the
Hampster Dance
The Hampster Dance is one of the earliest Internet memes. Created in 1998 by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte as a GeoCities page, the dance features rows of animated GIFs of hamsters and other rodents dancing in various ways to a sped-up sa ...
. Another factor in the increased meme transmission observed over the Internet is its interactive nature. Print matter, radio, and television are all essentially passive experiences requiring the reader, listener, or viewer to perform all necessary cognitive processing; in contrast, the social nature of the Internet allows phenomena to propagate more readily. Many phenomena are also spread via
web search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
s,
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempora ...
s,
social networking service
A social networking service or SNS (sometimes called a social networking site) is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, ac ...
s,
social news
Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not.
Etymology
The word "social" derives from ...
sites, and
video hosting service
An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...
s. Much of the Internet's ability to spread information is assisted from results found through search engines, which can allow users to find memes even with obscure information.
![Political memes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Political_memes.png)
The earlier forms of image based memes include the demotivator, image macro,
photoshopped
Photograph manipulation involves the transformation or alteration of a photograph using various methods and techniques to achieve desired results. Some photograph manipulations are considered to be skillful artwork, while others are consider ...
image, LOLCats, advice animal, and comic.
The Demotivator image includes a black background with white, capitalized text, often in
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration w ...
. The objective of using this format was to parodize inspirational and motivational posters, where the name "demotivator" is derived from.
Image macro consists of an image with white Impact font within a black border. The text/context of the meme is at the top and bottom of the image itself.
The photoshopped image is closely related to the macro image, but often is created without the use of text, mostly edited with another image.
Advice animals contain a photoshopped image of an animal's head on top of a rainbow/color wheel background. It includes the image macro of the top and bottom text with Impact font.
LOLCats incorporate the design of image macro and advice animals, but instead of just the cat's head, it is the entire picture unedited with top and bottom text, often with the usage of Internet slang.
Comics follow a typical newspaper comic strip format; there are a variety of different ways to create one, as multiple images and texts can be used to create the overall meme.
Rage comics such as
Trollface
Trollface or Troll Face is a rage comic meme image of a character wearing a mischievous smile, used to symbolise internet trolls and trolling. It is one of the oldest and most widely known rage comic faces.
History
Trollface was drawn in Mic ...
were often used to create comic memes.
Modern memes
Modern memes can generally be described as more visually (rather than contextually) humorous, absurd, niche, diverse and
self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philoso ...
than earlier forms. As a result, they are less intuitive and are less likely to be fully understood by a wider audience. By the mid-2010s, they began to arise first in the form of "dank" memes, a sub-genre of memes usually involving meme formats in a different way to the image macros that were in large use before. The term "
dank", which means "a cold, damp place", was later adapted by
marijuana
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various t ...
smokers to refer to high-quality marijuana, and then became an ironic term for a type of meme, also becoming synonymous for "
cool". This term originally meant a meme that was significantly different from the norm but is now used mainly to differentiate these modern types of memes from other, older types such as image macros. Dank memes can also refer to those which are "exceptionally unique or odd". They have been described as "Internet in-jokes" that are "so played out that they become funny again" or are "so nonsensical that they are hilarious".
The formats are usually from popular television shows, movies, or video games and users then add humorous text and images over it. The culture surrounding memes, especially dank memes, grew to the point of the creation of many subcultures surrounding them. For instance, a "meme market", satirizing on the kind of talks and stocks found normally on Wall Street, was created in September 2016. Originally started on
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
as r/MemeEconomy, people would only jokingly "buy" or "sell" shares in a meme to indicate how popular a meme was thought to be. The market is seen as a way to show how people assign value to commonplace and otherwise valueless things such as memes.
One example of a dank meme is "''Who Killed Hannibal''", which is made of two frames from a 2013 episode of ''
The Eric Andre Show''. The meme features the host Andre shooting his co-host Buress in the first frame and then lamenting that his co-host has been shot in the next, with Andre often depicted blaming someone else for the shot. This was recaptioned to depict other situations, such as
baby boomers
Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. ...
blaming
millennials
Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 20 ...
for problems that the boomers had caused themselves.
Dank memes also stem from interesting real-life images that are shared or remixed many times. So-called "moth" memes (often stylized as "möth") came about after a Reddit user posted a close up picture of a
moth
Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...
that they had found outside their window onto the r/creepy
subreddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...
. The image became popular and began to be used in memes; according to Chris Grinter, a
lepidopterist
Lepidopterology ()) is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. Someone who studies in this field is a lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian.
Origins
Post- Renaissance, t ...
from the
California Academy of Sciences
The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...
, moth memes gained recognition because of the inexplicability surrounding moths' attraction to lamps.
Irony and absurdism
![Deep fried meme](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Deep_fried_meme.jpg)
Many modern memes stem from nonsense or otherwise unrelated phrases that are repeated and placed onto other formats. One example of this is "they did surgery on a grape", from a video of a
da Vinci Surgical System
The Da Vinci Surgical System is a robotic surgical system that uses a minimally invasive surgical approach. The system is manufactured by the company Intuitive Surgical. The system is used for prostatectomies, and increasingly for cardiac ...
performing test surgery on a grape. People sharing the post tended to add the same caption to it ("they did surgery on a grape"), and eventually created a satirical image with several layers of captions on it. Memes such as this one continue to propagate as people start to include the phrase in different, otherwise unrelated memes.
The increasing trend towards irony in meme culture has resulted in absurdist memes not unlike
postmodern art
Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia, installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, ...
. Many Internet memes have several layers of meaning built off of other memes, not being understandable unless the viewer has seen all previous memes. "Deep-fried" memes, memes that have been distorted and run through several filters and/or layers of
lossy compression
In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data si ...
, are often strange to one not familiar with them. An example of these memes is the "E" meme, a picture of YouTuber
Markiplier
Mark Edward Fischbach ( ; born June 28, 1989), also known as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber. Originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, he began his career in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In addition to u ...
photoshopped onto
Lord Farquaad
Lord Maximus Farquaad is the main antagonist of the 2001 animated feature film ''Shrek'', as well as ''Shrek 4-D'' and the musical. He is voiced by John Lithgow. He does not appear in William Steig's original picture book of the same name.
I ...
from the film ''
Shrek
''Shrek'' is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film loosely based on the 1990 book of the same name by William Steig. It is the first installment in the ''Shrek'' franchise. The film was directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jen ...
'', photoshopped into a scene from businessman
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), of ...
's hearing in Congress.
"Surreal" memes are based on the idea of increasing layers of irony so that they are not understandable by popular culture or corporations. This strange irony was discussed in the ''Washington Post'' article "Why is millennial humor so weird?" to show the disconnect from how millennials and other generations conceive of humor; the article itself also became a meme where people photoshopped examples of deep-fried and surreal memes onto the article to make fun of the point of the article and the abstraction of meme culture.
Short-form video
After the success of the application Vine, a format of memes emerged in the form of short videos and scripted sketches. Vine, in spite of its closure in early 2017, has still retained relevance through uploads of viral vines in compilations onto other sharing social media sites such as
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
and
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
. Since Vine's shutdown, the service
TikTok
TikTok, known in China as Douyin (), is a short-form video hosting service owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes.
TikTok is an international version o ...
has been described as a better version of Vine and many comparisons have been made between the two platforms. TikTok is also focused on short form video, but permits longer videos than Vine, with it allowing videos of up to 15 seconds when it launched, and slowly expanding to 1, 3, and most recently 10 minutes, blurring the boundaries between short and long-form video.
The short-form videos created on sites like Vine and TikTok found use in being posted on other social media sites, such as Twitter, as a form of reacting and responding to other posts. These videos become replicated into other contexts and often become part of
Internet culture
Internet culture is a culture based on the many way people have used computer networks and their use for communication, entertainment, business, and recreation. Some features of Internet culture include online communities, gaming, and social medi ...
. An example of a TikTok meme is the cosplay by Nyannyancosplay juxtaposed to the musical track "
Mia Khalifa
Mia Khalifa (; ar, ميا خليفة, Miyа̄ Ḵalīfah; born 1993) is a Lebanese-American media personality and former pornographic film actress and webcam model. She began acting in pornography in October 2014, becoming the most viewed ...
" by iLoveFriday. This meme became known as Hit or Miss. Hit or Miss has been referenced multiple times, including
PewDiePie
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg ( , ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie ( ), is a Swedish YouTuber known for his Let's Play videos and comedic formatted videos and shows. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage ...
's 2018 Rewind as one of the most influential memes of the year alongside numerous other influential memes of the year. PewDiePie's 2018 rewind video has been viewed over 83 million times and has 9.5 million likes as of October 14, 2021. Hit or Miss has been remixed as well, including by other social media influencers such as
Belle Delphine
Mary-Belle Kirschner (born 23 October 1999), professionally known as Belle Delphine, is a South African-born English Internet celebrity, pornographic actress, model, and YouTuber. Her social media accounts feature erotic and cosplay modelling, ...
. SirKibbs' YouTube has uploaded a video of Belle Delphine and Kat (Nyannyancosplay) side-by-side comparison and has garnered over 4.4 million views as of October 14, 2021.
Marketing
Public relations, advertising, and marketing professionals have embraced Internet memes as a form of
viral marketing
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way tha ...
and
guerrilla marketing
Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service. It is a type of publicity. The term was popularized by Jay Conrad Levinson's 1984 ...
to create marketing "
buzz
Buzz may refer to:
People
*Buzz (nickname), a list of people
* J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner (born 1967; aka ''Dr. Buzz''), American forensic psychologist and journalist
Fictional characters
*Buzz, a character in the 1987 American comedy movie '' Rev ...
" for their product or service. The practice of using memes to market products or services is known as
memetic marketing.
Internet memes are seen as cost-effective, and because they are a (sometimes self-conscious)
fad, they are therefore used as a way to create an image of awareness or trendiness. To this end, businesses have taken to attempting two methods of using memes to increase publicity and sales of their company; either creating a meme or attempting to adapt or perpetuate an existing one. Examples of memetic marketing include the
FreeCreditReport.com singing ad campaign, the "Nope, Chuck Testa" meme from an advertisement for taxidermist
Chuck Testa,
Wilford Brimley
Anthony Wilford Brimley (September 27, 1934 – August 1, 2020) was an American actor. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and working odd jobs in the 1950s, Brimley started working as an extra and stuntman in Western films in the l ...
saying "Diabeetus" from
Liberty Medical and the
Dumb Ways to Die
''Dumb Ways To Die'' is an Australian public campaign made by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to promote railway safety.
On 1 October 2021, PlaySide Studios () acquired the Dumb Ways to Die franchise for A$2.25 million from Met ...
public announcement ad campaign by
Metro Trains Melbourne
Metro Trains Melbourne, often known simply as Metro, is the franchise operator of the electrified suburban passenger service on the Melbourne rail network. Metro Trains Melbourne is a joint venture between Hong Kong-based MTR Corporation (60% ...
.
Marketers, for example, use Internet memes to create interest in films that would otherwise not generate positive publicity among critics. The 2006 film ''
Snakes on a Plane
''Snakes on a Plane'' is a 2006 American action film directed by David R. Ellis and starring Samuel L. Jackson. It was released by New Line Cinema on August 18, 2006, in North America. The film was written by David Dalessandro, John Heffernan ...
'' generated much publicity via this method. Used in the context of public relations, the term would be more of an advertising
buzzword
A buzzword is a word or phrase, new or already existing, that becomes popular for a period of time. Buzzwords often derive from technical terms yet often have much of the original technical meaning removed through fashionable use, being simply used ...
than a proper Internet meme, although there is still an implication that the interest in the content is for purposes of trivia, ephemera, or frivolity rather than straightforward advertising and news.
Brands' use of memes has disadvantages when considering people's perception of a brand. While effective use of a meme can lead to increased sales and attention, seemingly forced, unoriginal, or unfunny usage of memes can negatively impact the brand as a whole. For instance, the fast food company
Wendy's
Wendy's is an American international fast food restaurant chain founded by Dave Thomas (1932–2002) on November 15, 1969, in Columbus, Ohio. Its headquarters moved to Dublin, Ohio, on January 29, 2006. As of December 31, 2018, Wendy's was ...
began a social media approach in 2017 that heavily featured memes and was initially met with success, resulting in an almost 50% profit growth that year; however, the strategy has also backfired when sharing memes that are controversial or otherwise negatively perceived by consumers.
Throughout the years, there have been media that used, were inspired by, or centered around various memes. The most popular is
Slender Man
Slender Man (also spelled Slenderman) is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta Internet meme created by Something Awful forum user Eric Knudsen (also known as "Victor Surge") in 2009. He is depicted as a thin, unna ...
, a
creepypasta
Creepypastas are horror-related legends that have been shared around the Internet. Creepypasta has since become a catch-all term for any horror content posted onto the Internet. These Internet entries are often brief, user-generated, paranormal ...
meme that have been used in
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...
,
films
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
, and
documentaries
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...
. Another example is the
pop culture novel ''
Otaku Girl'' that used memes in its story, oftentimes as characters or antagonists, like
Ultra-Instinct Shaggy and
Big Chungus.
By context
Finance
Meme stocks, a particular subset of Internet memes in general, are listed companies lauded for the social media buzz they create, rather than their operating performance.
r/wallstreetbets
r/wallstreetbets, also known as WallStreetBets or WSB, is a subreddit where participants discuss stock and option trading. It has become notable for its colorful and profane jargon, aggressive trading strategies, and for playing a major role i ...
, a subreddit where participants discuss
stock and option trading, and the financial services company
Robinhood Markets
Robinhood Markets, Inc. is an American financial services company headquartered in Menlo Park, California, that facilitates commission-free trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies as well as individual retirement accounts ...
, became notable in 2021 for their involvement on the popularization and enhancement of meme stocks.
Politics
![No Step On Snek (Gadsden Flag)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/No_Step_On_Snek_%28Gadsden_Flag%29.svg)
Internet memes are a medium for communicating comical images and or phrases for mass online audiences.
As internet memes become a common means of online expression, they become quickly used by those seeking to express political opinions or to actively campaign for (or against) a political entity. In some ways, they can be seen as a modern form of the
political cartoon
A political cartoon, a form of editorial cartoon, is a cartoon graphic with caricatures of public figures, expressing the artist's opinion. An artist who writes and draws such images is known as an editorial cartoonist. They typically combin ...
, offering up a way to democratize political commentary.
Elections
Early examples of political memes can be seen from those resulting from the
Dean Scream. Another example can be seen from MyDavidCameron.com, a website that allowed users to change the text of a
British Conservative election campaign poster featuring
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
from the
2010 general election. This website was often used to produce memes that replaced the original slogan with a series of exaggerated claims or sarcastic fake campaign promises along with derision of David Cameron's airbrushed appearance.
Within each subsequent election, and the growing importance of visual communications due to the Internet and social media, memes have become a more important element within political campaigns as fringe communities have shaped broader discourse through the use of Internet memes. For example,
Ted Cruz
Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (; born December 22, 1970) is an American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator from Texas since 2013. A member of the Republican Party, Cruz served as Solicitor General of Texas fro ...
's 2016 Republican presidential bid was damaged by
Internet memes
An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
that speculated he was the
Zodiac Killer
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The case has been described as the most famous unsolved murder case in American history. It became a fixture of popular c ...
.
Another internet meme was created from the 2012 US presidential debate surrounding United States politician
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney (born March 12, 1947) is an American politician, businessman, and lawyer serving as the junior United States senator from Utah since January 2019, succeeding Orrin Hatch. He served as the 70th governor of Massachusetts ...
's usage of the phrase "
binders full of women". Internet meme creators quickly created "My Binders Full of Women Exploded", referencing the Korean pop song "
Gangnam style
"Gangnam Style" ( ko, 강남스타일, ) is a K-pop song by South Korean rapper Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, ''Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1'' (''Ssai Yukgap Part 1''). The ...
" by overlaying the politician's quote onto a frame from
Psy
Park Jae-sang (, ; born December 31, 1977), known professionally as Psy (stylized in all caps as PSY) (; ; ), is a South Korean singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Psy is known domestically for his humorous videos and stage per ...
's music video where paper blows around him. This internet meme specifically indexes the central attribute of intertextuality by blending together pop culture with politics.
There has further been academic research that provides evidence that the use of memes during elections has a role to play in informing the public. In a study of 378 Internet memes posted across Facebook during the
2017 general election, McLoughlin and Southern found memes were a widely shared conduit for basic political information to audiences who often did not seek it out.
Indeed, a fifth of all political memes posted during the election referenced a political policy which was part of a political parties mandate, while messages promoting people to vote were shared more than 160,000 times, suggesting memes have a small role to play in increasing
voter turnout
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This can be the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford Univ ...
.
Satirical memes that express political opinions are effective in not only informing others but also driving political debate and engagement with politics by offering an easy and even fun way to talk about important issues.
Some political campaigns have begun to explicitly taken advantage of the increasing influence of memes; as part of the
2020 US presidential campaign,
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a c ...
sponsored a number of Instagram accounts with over 60 million collective followers to post memes related to the Bloomberg campaign. Similar to criticisms against corporations who use meme marketing, the campaign was faulted for treating meme culture as an advertisement or something that can be bought.
The 2020 Presidential Campaign of
Kanye West
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...
quickly became a meme, following its announcement on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, with numerous celebrities and influencers endorsing the rapper out of
irony
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized int ...
. Other personalities began announcing their own satirical presidential campaigns, parodying West.
Social movements
Internet memes provide significant contributions toward social issues.
Memetric structures have enabled social movements to become spreadable pieces of information.
During the 2010
It Gets Better Project
It Gets Better is an Internet-based 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth around the globe. It was founded in the United States by gay activist, author, m ...
for LGBTQ+ empowerment, memes were continuously used to promote and uplift LGBTQ+ youth. The Human Rights Campaign equal rights symbol became an internet meme in defending the legalization of same sex marriage.
The
Ice Bucket Challenge
The Ice Bucket Challenge, sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, is an activity involving the pouring of a bucket of ice water over a person's head, either by another person or self-administered, to promote awareness of the disease amyo ...
became a viral meme in promoting and raising money and awareness for
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or Lou Gehrig's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that results in the progressive loss of motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. ALS is the most commo ...
.
The
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in Zuccotti Park, located in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in September 2011. It gave rise to the ...
(OWS) protest movement saw a rise in internet memes after gaining attention on social media. All internet memes that were created and shared during the movement were very important in mediated discussions surrounding the OWS. Typical phrases such as "
We Are the 99%" and "This is what democracy looks like", were remixed into memes and subsequently posted in the discussion board of OWS on popular social media sites such as
Reddit
Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...
, Tumblr, and
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
. Those who actively participated in the movement conversed through these visuals.
Memes making political or social points are sometimes structured as ostensible thought experiments in various forms, such as, "What if A were B in situation X?" and are framed to provoke a particular response. The conclusions intended, however, do not necessarily follow since there can be multiple factors determining the outcomes in situation X.
Religion
Internet memes have also been used in the context of religion. Internet memes allow for expression for those who are religious and provides a way for them to connect with others who may have a shared experience.
Healthcare
Internet memes have been used in Nigeria to raise awareness of the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
as healthcare professionals used internet memes to spread information on the virus and also promote use of the vaccine. There continues to be discussion on ways to increase adoption of evidence-based practices, and Internet Memes are also apart of this discussion. While little research has been done on the impact of memes, they continue to be spread on social media and widely recreated.
Copyright
![Farmer meme with apostrophe](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Farmer_meme_with_apostrophe.jpg)
The eligibility of any memes to get copyright protection depends on the copyright law of the country in which such protection is sought. Some of the most popular formats of memes include cinematographic stills, personal or stock photographs,
rage comics, and illustrations meant to be a meme,
and the copyright implications differ for each of these different formats. There is precedent both for memes to be in violation of copyright and in other memes having copyrights of their own.
If it is found that the meme has made use of a copyrighted work, such as the movie still or photograph without due permission from the original owner, it would amount to
copyright infringement
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, ...
. Rage comics and memes created for the sole purpose of becoming memes would normally be original works of the creator and therefore, the question of infringing other copyright work does not arise.
In a cinematographic still, part of the entire end product is taken out of context and presented solely for its face value. The still is generally accompanied by a superimposed text of which conveys a distinctive idea or comment, such as the
Boromir
Boromir is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He appears in the first two volumes of ''The Lord of the Rings'' (''The Fellowship of the Ring'' and ''The Two Towers''), and is mentioned in the last volume, ''The Return of ...
meme or "Gru's Plan". This does not mean that all memes made from movie still or photographs are infringing copyright. There are defenses available for such use in various jurisdictions which could exempt the meme from attracting liability for the infringement.
United States
Under United States copyright law, a creation receives copyright protection if it satisfies four conditions under 17 U.S.C. § 102.
For a meme to get
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
protection, it would have to satisfy four conditions:
# It falls under one of the categories of work which is protected under the law
# It is an "expression"
# It has a modest amount of creativity
# It is "fixed".
Memes can be considered pictorial, graphical or motion picture, and so are subject to copyright law.
As such, memes are protected under copyright under the same conditions as these mediums, including concepts such as the low
threshold of originality
Threshold may refer to:
Architecture
* Threshold (door), the sill of a door
Media
* ''Threshold'' (1981 film)
* ''Threshold'' (TV series), an American science fiction drama series produced during 2005-2006
* "Threshold" (''Stargate SG-1'') ...
for what constitutes creativity (as demonstrated by
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co). Since a meme is essentially a comment, satire, ridicule or expression of an emotion it constitutes the expression of an idea. Memes are contained in the medium of the Internet and so are fixed expressions by 17 U.S.C. § 101.
Fair use
Fair use
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...
is a defense under U.S. copyright law which protects work that has made using other copyrighted works. The section provides that if a copyrighted work is reproduced "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
.. scholarship or research", it would not amount to infringement. Notably, for memes, the use of the term ''"such as"'' in the section denotes that the list is not exhaustive but merely illustrative. Furthermore, the factors mentioned in the section are subjective in nature and the weight of each factor varies on a case to case basis.
The four factors are:
# The purpose or character of use,
# The nature of the copyrighted work,
# The amount and substantiality of the portion used, and
# Effect on the market.
Many memes are
transformative
In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright. T ...
in nature as they have no relation to the original work and the motive behind the communication of the meme is personal, in terms of disseminating humor to the public; such memes, being transformative, would be covered by fair use.
However, copying memes that are made for the sole purpose of being memes would not enjoy this protection as there is no transformationthe copying has the same purpose as the original meme which is to communicate humorous or entertaining anecdotes.
Purpose and character of use weigh in against memes which have been used for commercial purposes because in those cases, the work has not been created for the communication of humor but for economic gain. For example,
Grumpy Cat
Tardar Sauce (April 4, 2012 – May 14, 2019), nicknamed Grumpy Cat, was an American Internet celebrity cat. She was known for her permanently "grumpy" facial appearance, which was caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism. She came to promi ...
won $710,001 in a copyright lawsuit against the beverage company Grenade which used the Grumpy Cat image on its roasted coffee line and t-shirts.
The nature of the copyrighted work asks what the differences between the meme and the other material are. This factor applies to many types of memes because the original work is an artistic creation that has been published and thus the latter enjoys protection under copyright which the memes are violating. However, as memes are transformative, this factor does not have much weight.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used tests not only the quantity of the work copied but the quality that is copied as well.
[. ] Memes copy only a small portion of a complete film, whereas for rage comics and personal photographs, the entire portion has been used to create the meme. Despite this, all categories of memes could fall under fair use because the text that is added to those images adds value, without which it would just be pictures.
Moreover, the heart of the work is not affected because the still/picture is taken out of context and portrays something entirely different from what the image originally wanted to depict.
Lastly, the effect on the market offers court analysis on whether the meme would cause harm to the actual market of the original copyright work and also the harm it could cause to the potential market. The target audience for the original work and meme is entirely different as the latter is taken out of the context of the original and created for use and dissemination on social media.
Rage comics and memes created for the purpose of being memes are an exception to this because the target audience for both is the same and copied work could infringe on the potential market of the original. Warner Brothers was sued for infringing the
Nyan Cat meme by using it in its game Scribblenauts.
NFTs
Some subjects of memes made money from them through licensing deals. In 2021, in a new version of this concept several subjects of memes sold Non-fungible token, NFTs through auctions.
Ben Lashes, who managed numerous memes, said sales of these as NFTs had made $2 million and established memes as serious art.
One example of how this idea works is the case of "Disaster Girl", based on a photo of Zoe Roth at age 4 taken in Mebane, North Carolina in January 2005.
After the photo became famous and was used hundreds of times without permission, Roth decided to sell the original copy
as an NFT, for the equivalent of US$486,716.
The smart contract was programmed to give the family 10 percent of proceeds when the NFT was sold.
India
Under Section 2(c) of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, a meme could be classified as an 'artistic work' which states that an artistic work includes painting, sculpture, drawing (including a diagram, map, chart or plan), an engraving or a photograph, whether or not any such work possesses artistic quality.
The section uses the phrase ''"whether or not possessing artistic quality"'', the memes that are rage comics or those such as
Keyboard Cat would enjoy protection as they are original creations in the form a painting, drawing, photograph or short video clip, despite not having artistic quality.
Memes that made from cinematograph still or photographs, the original image in the background for the meme would also be protected as the picture or the still from the series/movie is an 'artistic work'.
These memes are a modification of that already existing artistic work with some little amount of creativity and therefore, they would also enjoy copyright protection.
Fair dealing
India follows a fair dealing approach as an exception to copyright infringement under Section 52(1)(a) for the purposes of private or personal use, criticism or review.
The analysis requires three steps: the amount and substantiality of dealing, the purpose of copying, and the effect on potential markets.
The amount of sustainability of dealing asks about how much of the original work is used in the meme, or how the meme transforms the original content. A meme makes use to existing copyright work whether it is a cinematograph still, rage comic, personal photograph or a meme made for the purpose of being a meme. However, since a meme is made for comedic purposes, taken out of context of the original work, they are transforming the work and creating a new work.
The purpose of copying factors in the purpose of the meme compared to the purpose of the original work. Under Section 52(1)(a), the purpose is restricted to criticism or review.
A meme, as long as it is a parody or a criticism of the original work would be protected under the exception, but once an element of commercialization comes in, they would no longer be exempted and because the purpose no longer falls under the those mentioned in the section .
When the Indian comedic group All India Bakchod (AIB) parodied Game of Thrones through a series of memes, the primary purpose was to advertise products of companies that have endorsed the group and thus was not fair dealing.
Memes generally do not have an effect on the potential market for a work. There must be no intention on part of the infringer to compete with the original owner of the work and derive profits from it.
Since memes are generally meant for comedic value and have no intention to supplant the market of the original creator, they fall within the ambit of this section.
See also
* Cliché
* List of Internet phenomena
* Pepe the Frog
* Remix culture
References
Further reading
*
*
* Wiggins, Bradley E. (September 22, 2014). How the Russia-Ukraine crisis became a magnet for memes. The Conversation
Theconversation.com*
*
External link
{{DEFAULTSORT:Internet Meme
Internet memes,
1990s neologisms