Internet Meme

I remember a life without internet, without smart phones, without social media, without.... internet memes. Life was more simple and more peaceful back then, growing up as a child in the 90's. From around YouTube's emergence in 2005, these cultural collections evolved.

The word meme I believe originated from Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene, which I have read, and is meant for a biological context. However, the purpose of the internet meme is to attempt to gather a current event, shape it up in a humorous way, and attempt to make it go viral.

It's a rather young concept that tends to grow and evolve further, while basically by now, every major human topic has been approached by internet memes. From politics and religion, to corporate work ethic, science, technology, entertainment, pop culture and identity, nothing remains untouched.

They can come and go, become more or less relevant as time goes by. They can also come in different shapes, one of the most well known is of a particular image and 2 sentences being readable, 1 from above and 1 from below.

Internet memes can also be collections of a certain character, whether fictional or real, and they can be used during digital conversations such as WhatsApp, imageboards, social media and even now in modern chat software such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

Pepe the Frog is a noteworthy meme example because although it's original intention as a cartoon creation for comics has stayed the same, people have used the character during political events such as elections and protests, changing Pepe's symbol constantly, like a zeitgeist.

It just shows that while internet memes can have a general meaning, nothing is stopping people from attempting to change it's original meaning, or merely interpreted it differently in a different perspective, while conversations will go on.

They can mean many things. Personally I like to laugh at them if possible, as they can be one of the most effective forms of humor for me in this vast and rapidly changing world in a technological and social way.

Conveying the feeling of being cozy, like Pepe depicts above, that's how I feel nowadays about them. It's absolutely insane as an concept, but I am glad that they are part of internet culture now, and it seems that they will stay, in one form or another.