Welcome to the Meme-iverse #1
Twitter.
Here's Twitter getting dragged. Here's Twitter getting dragged again. Here are more examples of all the bad things Twitter has done, is doing, and will likely continue doing. (shouts to Maya Kosoff for bringing things to light).
The endless anti-Twitter rhetoric stems from real conflict, hatred, and discrimination that the company has yet to adequately address. But hidden amidst the hot takes and conservative idiocy is a treasure trove of weird, non-sensical memes that provide joy to those who can find it and confusion for those just indoctrinated in this jargon. As I've mentioned before, the Internet's "weirding," whether it is a Dadaist response to alienation in the real world or simply people exploring the boundaries of what is possible with a megaphone and a potentially unlimited audience, is largely a pleasant expression of modern sensibilities and humor that doesn't cause any harm, though it could be argued that it may degrade the overall discourse. I'm not going to argue that these memes contain multitudes, but taken together they add a little texture to the blabbering, self-aggrandizement, and pontificating of the rest of the web and content as a whole.
In 2016, New York Mag published 'A Year in Memes.' I would like to revisit this idea in a condensed form and occasionally dig up some of the most topical and used memes, and in particular, meme formats, of the hour. I can't keep up with the amazing work of New York Mag nor do I plan on ending the year in some grand gesture, signaling the fruition of these memes in an all-encompassing theory about the state of the nation, our dialogue, Internet rhetoric, and beyond, Just wanted to have a little fun.
Note: My primary meme sources are Reddit and Twitter, so I'll be pulling from there, though I acknowledge the wealth of weirdness on Instagram. No Russian memes will be shared. Hopefully.
"Me vs. Content"
A part of the 'weirding' has been the introspective and self-deprecation of memes. Why be cool when you can be weird? One of the most popular memes of recent memory was the Kermit the Frog "Me vs. Me," which openly castigated oneself for soon-to-be poor decisions. This new breed is even weirder, bringing up strange facts, bad content, and all around strangeness.
"Narrator: It Wasn't"
If you love Arrested Development, then this one should be music to your ears. Twitter is great for mocking people (if that's your thing), but it's also a great source for calling out people's idiocy and obviousness of that idiocy. A common trope is that the Internet has turned everyone into an expert. I'd argue that not everyone on the Internet is an expert, but you're certainly a moron.
[Voice]
Twitter is a great receptacle for all the great punchlines and taglines in existence. But being behind a keyboard takes a lot of the oomph out of classic burns and online savagery. It turns out text is a more difficult format with which to apply disses. Jeff Ross' Roast Battle looks a lot different in a Word Doc. Enter this joke setup, which I've dubbed [Voice] because it fluctuates based on your word artistry and knowledge of pop culture. There's nothing like adding the inflections of Drizzy to that epic tweet.
Shout out "God's Plan" video.
This Site is Free
This one is great because it speaks to the duality of Twitter. Twitter is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, yet just when you think when you think you're out...it pulls you back in. [That may be too many movie quotes in one sentence, but they're classics]. Despite the horrendous elements of the platform, every once and while, something marvelous happens. And it's all for free.