Making Memes
To learn a new language, most people need to learn how to absorb and produce content. The passive skills, like reading and listening are greatly improved by exercising active skills such as speaking and writing. In a very similar way, producing memes can greatly improve your capacity to understand and enjoy memes when you see them.
This chapter might help you improving your meme making skills, or even guide you through the process of making your very first meme.
What do you Meme ?
First, you have to decide what is the meme going to be about. A good way to decide what type of meme you are going to make is choosing one of the tips of the Virality Triangle. To each tip of the triangle there is a different approach that can make it more likely for your meme to go viral and capture the attention id deserves. If You want to learn how to Make Relatable Memes or how to Make Dank Memes, click the colorful links imbedded in the text. This guide is specially focused on making the most common type of meme, which is Satirical.
1- Find something important, a very famous person or event, or something you have seen in the News this week. If your main source of news are memes and social media, strongly consider changing your internet habits.
2- Critique .What do you think about this ? Doesn't matter if you want to make a complex and valid argument, or just make fun of a funny face that some politician made. Find something that you want to critique about it. The more provocative and polemic your take, the higher are the chances for your meme to go viral.
3-Obtain your image. You can screenshot it directly from the TV or the news site, or search the web for images of the person or event you want to talk about.
4- Edit. Now it's time to get your image ready, and juxtapose your take on your topic in a text form. The text must be short, and concise. Memes are about synthesis, not precision. If you have digital image editing skills, go for it, but keep it simple. If you don't know much about image editing, don't worry, you can just pop some edgy text on top of your screenshot or downloaded image. Imgflip.com , and features in some apps like the Instagram or snap chat story editor, the WhatsApp or Telegram image editors are all great for combining text and image in an easy way.
5- Post it ! when your meme is ready, post it somewhere you think it might be visible. There is no guarantee that it will go viral, the internet is a chaotic place. Where you place it is completely up to you. You may try to make it visible on Instagram or Twitter with the aid of hashtags, or simply send it directly to a friend. After posting, the meme doesn't belong to you anymore. Its destiny is in the hands of millions of strangers and their relations, ruled by faceless algorithms. Good Luck with that !
Examples
Bellow there are some examples and tutorials on how to make satirical memes. There is no right or wrong way to make memes. If your meme goes viral, even if it is not for the reason or among the community you intended, it is working.
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Tutorial 1- making memes
Tutorial 2- Improvising Memes
There are many tools that are useful for making memes, even if they were not designed specifically for it. Bellow there are some tutorials that might improve your meme making skill even without a specialized page or app.