CLASSIFYING TO UNDERSTAND
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Memes can be very confusing for those who do not participate so intensively in their creation and propagation. The fluid nature of digital social media, paired with memes’ tendency towards the absurd, may leave many people in a very confusing place, in which the images shown to them make little to no sense, due to lack of literacy and familiarity with internet phenomena and inside dynamics of the platforms in which such memes circulate. Although meme literacy is usually acquired in an organic, intuitive way through consistent and frequent interaction with online communities and creators, it can also be obtained through indirect means. The goal of this chapter is precisely to demystify and explain in a simple, visual way the linguistic aspects of internet memes, their structure and their particular language, while classifying them under different scopes to provide to the reader a diverse range of perspectives to see and understand that which could be one of the most popular and more representative media ever.
The first tool that will be used for improving meme literacy is a diagram that explains meme virality. The concept of internet virality can be understood as the potential for propagation that a message or image to be shared and visualized by many people, behaving, as the term suggests, in a way similar to that of a biological or computational virus, in which one person sees the image, and for one or more of the three reasons explained by the diagram, decides to pass this image forward, in a chain effect that might motivate ever more people to pass it forward. The tips of the triangle on the figure below point to three factors that may make an image go viral. Those three are dankness, satire and relatability. The diagram can be interpreted in multiple ways. Some memes can be relatable and dank, or satirical and relatable, or any combination of those three aspects, to simplify the understanding of the defining terms, they will be explained using pure, typical examples of each category.
A Diagram that explains Meme Virality
Relatable MEMES
Relatability can be defined and explained in a very simple way : a relatable meme is an image that refers to a situation that one can understand and feel sympathy with. This kind of meme becomes viral by being understandable to many viewers, that share or repost it on their social media timelines or send them directly to close people, that in a chain of finding it relatable and forwarding it to someone who might to the same, can make the meme widely famous inside and outside the internet. Relatable memes often refer to situations and aspects of everyday life that can be understood by a large amount of internauts, refraining to themes that are mundane and often not talked about in more traditional media, like strange family dynamics, work problems, intimated details about relationships and unique, private situations of everyday life. Developing about undercommented everyday life details, relatable memes can reveal that to someone who sees them that they are not alone in the world, that their mothers are not the only one who is far better in finding lost objects than they are, that millions of people who liked a meme also thought about turning a number 3 into a number 8 to adulterate a grading in school, or that many other people also suffered trying to carefully rip a tiny piece of dead skin close to their fingernails. The sensation of being part of a very specific community of thousands of people who liked and shared a relatable meme, can be an important factor to passing that meme forward. Bellow are some examples of relatable memes:
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Satirical MEMES
Satirical memes are arguably one of the most common and most ephemeral types of memes that exist. They get viral making fun or commenting on trends, and phenomena that are currently relevant in politics, the news for example. These memes might propagate so fast, that many people will see memes about a certain news headline rather than seeing the headline itself. They hold an important role in digital society, allowing basically anyone with an internet connection to express their opinion and even engage in deeper critique about the current events in their reality. Satirical memes, as the name indicates, generally try to comment and satirize some person, brand, or any other entity or phenomena that might have fallen under the digital spotlight. Making fun of opposing political figures, engaging in critique about a new album release by a popular singer, looking down on behaviors typical to people of a different country or generation, preferring one brand or movie to another, all of this are characteristics of satirical memes. The urge to share and pass forward these memes are varied, one can send them to their peers that will agree and reboot the cycle of sharing it to the like minded people might that also agree, or these satirical memes can be shared in an antagonist environment, that might be outraged, and star defending the thing attacked by the meme, or even create more memes in order to counterattack . By either reason, seeing a figure one strongly likes or dislikes being mocked has a big influence in their decision to share and repost such memes.
Bellow are some satirical memes:
DANK MEMES
Dank memes are generally classified as bizarre, unique and weird memes. It is common for them to be made out of overused or passed trends, templates, images and slang. But the relevance of the term and its ever changing meaning goes far beyond antagonism to norm and tendency. Dank as a word, before being applied to memes and internet images in general, was often associated with recreational drugs of exceeding rarity and quality, for example , the phrase dank kush which refers to marijuana strands of the highest quality, with powerful effects and a very high price. In a similar way, when applied to memes, the term Dank evokes an idea of rarity, weirdness and refinement. This said refinement, is understood in a very ironic way, in which a really poor quality expressed in both misspelling, low definition, and low effort cropping are seen as a sign of ironically good taste, even being a status signifier, in an ironic internet hierarchy in which the most lofi, the most ironic, the most edgy, or the dankest memes occupy higher ranks opposing to normie content that is seen as cringe. If dank kush is a strand of hard to find luxury recreational cannabis, a dank meme is a bizarre, over the top meme often loaded with high amounts of novel forms of irony characteristic to the Generation z. Seeing such bizarre images on a timeline designed by an algorithm in order to catch one’s attention faces the user with a gigantic contrast. Most of the content shown by algorithm is directly related and familiar to the user, selfies with the same expressions, landscapes with the same feel, adverts with the same color palette, and out of apparently nothing, a dank meme. A meme featuring famous children’s character engaging in anarchist economical debate, a video of a dog howling in a human -like way, a weird edit of a meme you might have seen five years ago, a random image covered with nonsense text; the uniqueness of such memes create an urge to show them to someone else, to share them to comment how confused you are. Against all odds, competing for attention with professionally made content dank memes go viral everyday.Below are some typical dank memes.
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THE MEME COMPASS
Another very interesting way of classifying memes draws its inspiration from a diagram that by itself, creates thousands of memes everyday. The Political Compass® is a website that measures the user’s political inclinations based on a quiz featuring sixty three propositions and questions. The results are displayed in a simple diagram with two axes and four quadrants, that go from libertarian to authoritarian, and from social to economic. This simple way of profiling an individual into political ideologies far more complex than the questions made in the quiz could ever englobe, has become viral in the most diverse internet platforms. Entire communities and subcultures emerged from this reduction of the political debate, and many people, especially young adults often take their position on this simplified political diagram as a both a meme and a reality, in a complex and nuanced way that will be discussed more deeply in the fourth chapter. One of the many outstanding images that drew direct inspiration from the political compass is the meme compass. The meme compass has 2 axes, a vertical one that goes from Edgy to Wholesome, and a horizontal axis that ranges from Normie to Dank. All of the defining terms of this diagram come from internet slangs that oppose each other, as in Edgy being the opposite of Wholesome, and Normie being the opposite of Dank. One of the most interesting and useful characteristics of this meme classification system is the fact that the axes, being made of opposing concepts generate spectra under which a meme can be classified beyond a binary paradigm . The vertical axis in its superior end englobes edgy memes and internet slang that refers to people or behaviours that are rebellious and avant-garde, often in an exaggerated manner, that is unnecessarily provocative in contrary to the status quo. This is the opposite of wholesome in the lower tip of the axis which refers to a healthy, caring, and placid sense of humor, in which the message of the meme is usually one of love and support, or admiration towards caring, cuteness and overall goodness.
Edgy memes are generally satirical, making fun of topics and situations that wouldn’t be made fun of , or that are seen as politically incorrect. Memes making fun of taboo, self-called dark humor memes, intense and provoking bait memes that are made only to infuriate, and to an extreme bigotry and hate promoting memes, are all on the edgy part of the spectrum as well as they are in the edge between satire, bullying and bigotry. On the other end of the spectrum, are wholesome memes. Memes with a positive and motivational tone, cute images captioned “send this to your significant other”, memes with short stories of success, are all wholesome memes. Most of the puppy or kitten videos that get millions upon millions of views on streaming platforms could be considered Wholesome memes by themselves, with no intervention whatsoever. They are viral images on the internet that move around and might get viral because of their wholesomeness and positivity.
The horizontal axis goes from normie to dank . The difference between the two concepts stands somewhere near what is colloquially called the Indie Hierarchy or Hipster Hierarchy, in which individuals who prefer more uncommon and obscure content are seen as more highly educated, more unique, more Indie. In a similar way to that Indie music communities, in which being a fan of an unknown group, or owning rare, limited edition hard to find records despite of their actual musical qualities, the normie -dank hierarchy in the meme compass depicts a tendency towards the hierarchization of internet users based on their taste in memes: the more common, trendy and easily understandable memes are seen by certain digital communities as of lower value when compared to their bizarre, low fidelity and many times nonsensical memes. The quality of the meme, and even the meaning, are not as nearly as important as dankness, the factor that is most valued to dank meme enthusiasts. Even though the idea of dankness can be detached from this opposition to normality, putting dank and normie as extreme opposites in a spectrum offers many advantages to understanding both concepts. Normie memes are the memes most people are exposed to, memes about trending topics on twitter®, debating highly visible topics such as political events or the release of a long waited movie or device, most relatable memes seen in the virality triad can be seen as normie too, since their main factor for going viral is relatability to a wide audience that will easily understand and forward them. Dank memes on the other hand, are rarer, weirder, harder to find and to understand, they carry with them different forms of irony characteristic to the humor of the Generation Z, born between the years of 1997 and 2012. They may feature post-irony- a return to honesty using the language and the aesthetics of irony, or even meta-irony which is the use of ironic language and style satirizing both the medium and the message, without necessarily caring for the meaning or the message whatsoever (JREG,2020). There is one more nuance to the dank versus normie classification that lies in time. An old meme that could be seen as cringy, unfunny or that might have held little value when posted some years ago in a non ironic way, can be reposted ironically, changing completely its meaning and audience perception. One example of that are emo, gamer, otaku and other subculture memes, that when originally posted in a non ironical way were frowned upon and seen as shameful in the late 2000s, but being rescued and reposted in the early 2020s are seen as an admirable form of self mockery, which returns to one fundamental characteristic of dank memes, that is to rely on out of fashion and overused tropes.
Classifying memes is a good way to spot the differences between them, but it carries no absolute value in determining their nature or value. Memes, being one of the most popular forms of art ever developed by humanity, are fundamentally polysemantic, each piece, and each edition and each comment made about every single meme, can have infinite interpretations. The meaning of a meme is not only influenced by the individual perception of the author, the reposter , the editor and the viewer, its message is also profoundly influenced by the context, the community in which it circulates, and the time when it is posted. A normie meme today might be the dankest meme ten years in the future. A meme that is seen as wholesome and supportive to one community can be seen as extremely offensive to a different group. Even without considering edition, reposition and captioning, the function, classification and the meaning of a meme is not permanent by any means, and the only way to understand them is to recognize that there are endless ways to interpret them.