EnfraMEMEment at its Finest: Meme Culture Reflection
They’re everywhere – on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google, and I bet there’s even one in at least two group chats you’re a part of. That’s right, I’m talking about memes. From Grumpy Cat and Doge to the “That you could do anything” kid, memes have become an almost integral part of modern society, and I’m not going to lie to you…I’m not mad about it. In fact, meme culture might be the only thing my generation has spearheaded that I am proud of at the current moment.
Say what you want about the millennials (except apparently I’m part of iGen?¿), but memes are just down right hilarious. I have yet to meet someone who, knowing the context, didn’t think a meme was funny. But that’s arguably the most important part of it, the pesky little context.
Right or wrong, good or bad, memes have become a source of information for budding generations who are still in their formative years. And let’s face it, who isn’t really in their formative years? Memes are shorter, sweeter, funnier, and circulate easier than articles or any credible news source. Whether they're accurate, in the case of the iPhone 7 vs iPhone 8 debate or hold no merit whatsoever, they are altogether prevalent. Since the majority of the American population is now getting their news from online social media sites (*cough* Facebook *cough cough* fake news), they see thousands of memes in their daily hunt for media fulfillment.
Okay, maybe not thousands but I’ve seen at least fifteen already today and it’s only 10:00AM. While my generalization is admittedly hyperbolic, society is rapidly approaching that potential reality when we trust things like this photo to give us an accurate representation of a news event:
Is that really how Putin feels about President dearest? Or is that just one person’s viral misrepresentation of an entire situation? Ehhhh probably the latter -- as much as we, the people, might agree with it. How much of society’s truth is caught in this disseminated miscommunication? I’d wager a guess that a disappointing amount has been trapped in the circulation of this meme-ified digital culture.
But is this the meme’s fault? No, we do this to ourselves. We are in such an endless cycling of swiping and retweeting, scrolling and sharing, that we don’t even realize that we are mediating our own truth. Does the school system teach us what’s real or do we learn for ourselves? Is the government giving us legitimate information or should we ask the Russians? Who’s to say?
Either way, the truth is changing. It is only for so long that a piece of information can exist in a communication driven society before we who make up that society accept it to be objectively true. The earth was flat, until it wasn’t. Trump won fairly, until he didn’t (can you tell I’m still bitter?). We as the masses have the power to create, accept, and change the truth because who knows what’s really out there? Who knows if we’re all even here or just figments of an imagination somewhere.
Or a video game. Think about that for a second.
