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OpinionFrom the political to the completely pointless, memes have brought unending happiness to some of the worst days on social media

Friday, 20th December 2019, 3:54 pm

The internet is a dark, dank place that has, arguably, allowed the most awful traits of human nature to thrive. While this has become markedly worse in the last 10 years, the 2010s also saw the rise of the single thing that makes this hellscape bearable: the meme.

British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first defined a "meme" in 1976 as a behaviour or idea passed from one animal to another through imitation. In online culture this word has come to mean an image, phrase or video - often humourous - that is rapidly copied and re-shared on social media with slight variations.

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From the political to the completely pointless, memes have brought unending happiness to some of the worst days on social media. Among the fractures of disparate online cultures, memes are one of the few things that connect us. It is the most community-like medium we have, uniting us through shares and lols.

A shorthand language

One of the most joyous things about memes is that they are essentially a constantly evolving modern language, shared and understood by people around the world, regardless of what language they speak.

Scott Wark, an associate researcher at the University of Warwick, agrees. Internet memes are undoubtedly the most important popular culture medium online, he tells i.

One key example of this was 2012's "Grumpy Cat" - an animal, and meme, so popular it subsequently sparked merchandise, a film and multiple consumer endorsements. The picture featured a cat named Tardar Sauce with an extremely unhappy expression caused by an underbite and feline dwarfism.

At this time, the main format of memes were pictures with text above and below the image, and "Grumpy Cat" took this form, with people adding pessimistic captions as if the cat were speaking.

Wark explains that this format continued to reign in meme culture for a few years, up until the emergence of the "Doge" meme in 2013 which was developed from images of a Japanese photographers dog found on a blog.

In the meme, a Shiba Inu dog is seen in various poses, but there is brightly coloured text in the Comic Sans font plastered all over the picture. The idea is that the text represents the innermost thoughts of the dog (or person posting).

This style was far more abstract than "Grumpy Cat", and the image looks more chaotic as the text and image interact with one another.

This was a big moment. From then the style of memes radically shifted, marking the beginning of our creative approach to them and a more abstract way of presenting thoughts and opinions.

Moreover, the way Twitter and Instagram users can immediately understand a memes message with very little context is extraordinary, especially when they are constantly changing.

There's something incredibly powerful about how online communities have created a smart, witty way to converse with and understand one another, wherever they are in the world.

Mental health

While memes can unite the masses, they also appeal to specific groups. For instance, the rise of mental health memes in the mid-2010s allowed people with mental health conditions to identify and confide in one another while partaking in some cathartic dark humour.

After this came the rise of astrological memes which, in the same way, became a sub-culture for people wanting to self-deprecate and laugh about their negative characteristics.

These were particularly happy moments in internet culture as they offered a vessel to self-reflect and laugh at yourself. Amid trolling, online cancel culture and general negativity online, these memes offered a positive alternative.

The image began recirculating on bulletin site 4chan in 2015, as Donald Trump gained popularity on the site. It also featured on Reddit and a year later, The Daily Beast published a piece entitled "How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol" outlining how an otherwise harmless figure had been turned into a symbol of monstrosity and vitriol.

It's fair to say this was one of the lowest points in meme history, demonstrating how innocent imagery can be adopted by the alt-right to perpetuate their messaging.

Next decade and the impact of TikTok

Looking into the next decade, it's clear that memes won't disappear - they will always adapt alongside online culture.

Wark believes TikTok, a video-sharing social network, has already laid the groundwork for this transition, and said it is essentially "memetic culture in overdrive".

Were seeing multiple versions of the same video but some go viral and others do not, and they have really slight differences separating them, he says.

We have already seen the crossover between Twitter and TikTok this year with the huge popularity of "Trying Kombucha for the First Time", in which stills taken from a video by TikTok user Brittany Tomlinson went viral and became a template for other memes. The first image showed her looking disgusted, while the other showed her looking more convinced, and the images paired together were used to highlight a pivot of opinion. It was an example of how users can take elements of videos and create a whole generation of new memes.

Wark adds that on TikTok, we're seeing users become even more creative with music and rhythm in a way the image format never afforded.

Whatever shape or form they're presented in, it's clear their ongoing transitions and transformations are a sign of their unwavering influence in modern communication. They don't disappear - they adapt. The 2020s will undoubtedly be a revolutionary and progressive time for them.

Ruchira Sharma is a staff writer at i

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From Grumpy Cat to TikTok, this decade belonged to memes and their ability to unite the masses - iNews