Source: The Drum
Trolling And Fake News – Are Memes Only To Make You Laugh?
Memes can make you laugh. Memes can make you scared. They can be a benign source of entertainment or engineered to promote that is false. When the latter occurs online, it exploits human fallibilities and can spread disinformation like wildfire. They spread and influence humans. " It's not just fun, it can change your behaviour and some of the outcomes of society." Similarly, memes act as escapism to the users with their comic relief. But many times we converge memes with trolls.
What Makes A Meme Popular And Creative?
A meme which often grabs popularity is often relatable, humorous, short and based on current events. The use of memes and GIFs has a significant influence on interactions in social networks and online forums. As productions or utterances, these modes of communication benefit from thorough research works, notably led by Shifman, thus impacting many different scientific fields—such as linguistics, semantics, and communication studies. This situation is linked to the recent emergence of memes and GIFs, and also to their complex intertwining of discursive, visual, and video graphics signs, thus leading to a polysemic communicative phenomenon.
Memes – Creativity In Times of Lethargy
The global coronavirus crisis is keeping millions of people in their homes in an indefinite quarantine, a kind of lethargy that seems to drag us all into an episode of black mirror. One of the things that unite us is the memes in our phone gallery. By the way, it is interesting to know that the term meme refers to the minimum unit of information that can be transmitted and its name dates back to 1976. Richard Dawkins coined the term in his book "The Selfish Gene" a lot of time has passed since then and now we know that meme marketing has become a discipline.
What Makes Coronavirus Memes Creative?
There were many covid memes last year on various social media platforms.
We notice for example that “much of our public knowledge about the pandemic comes via advanced technology, through new media that has been never tested during a disaster of this scope and size and in these circumstances misinformation and conspiracy can flourish. Instead of focusing on the complex context, we focus on the creativity of the coronavirus meme and what kind of creative processes might be at play both in the construction and in the reception of such digital artefacts. In this article we especially focus on coronavirus internet memes – cultural units, typically humorous, this is a rich medium for creative researchers who aim to give creative responses to the pandemic.
Internet Meme In Everyday Conversation:-
Internet memes are online fads or trends consisting of a combination of images, verbiage, audio and video that are repeatedly altered by internet users and shared on the internet often in a rapid, viral manner. The contact process of mutation that an internet meme undergoes as it spreads across the internet typically involves repetition and rhetorical play, and punning, among others, all characteristics that Ronald Carter has defined in his analysis of spoken conversations as an example of demotic and ordinary creativity. Drawing upon and extending Carter's description of the everyday creativity of spoken language.
Instances Were Meme Gave Justice To People:-
One of the cases where memes had provided justice was the ‘LUCKNOW GIRL’ case. Priyadarshini Yadav had slapped the uber driver. According to her, the driver didn’t stop at the signal and the car hit her. Out of agitation, she slapped the driver numerous times. After the incident was investigated properly and numerous meme makers made memes in support of the driver it was proved later on that driver was not at fault, it was the girl who overlooked the signal and tried to cross the road. Another case often found is the caste reservation one. Most of the time we have seen that students with lower merit scores get a chance in prestigious institutes whereas the ones with higher merit scores don't. A very prominent example is the cancellation of the board exams in 2021.
Humour In Memes– Can It Be A Revolution?
As social media has captured the reach of millions of people, there came a rise in another digital revolution which is called 'memes'. Memes involve several types of it, they can be dark, deep, reaction-based, political statements turned funny & many more. Flooded over responsible for bringing in a humorous trail. The use of humour, in its various forms, is a critical feature of the internet meme. Humour is viewed as a means of establishing superiority or providing relief to oneself or others. Most critically, perhaps, it is understood as a medium to highlight incongruity in an environment.
E-Memes And Its Road Revolution:-
In contexts where media and political actors cannot or will not address crucial issues important to ordinary people, alternative forms of communication emerge. Internet memes have gradually turned into one of these forms.
Are Memes Revolutionary?
Well, for an instance it isn't, like who are we kidding? It's not instant coffee, it's a revolution that we are vouching for. Memes are one of the passers-by that we pass by on our social media lanes. Not always a specific meme creates much of an impact on our headquarters, does it?
Conclusion
Meme isn't just a culture, it's a way of showing oneself up, A Revolution is nothing but a trial and error method to bring about a better change. For memes to be revolutionary, there must be a good reason for the revolution. In the need to be solemnly unique, we lose where we are standing, and that's a common ground ‘together'. Memes do show what changes we wish to have in our social, political and cultural grounds, but to make it happen we need to research the ‘how' of it. A REVOLUTION CAN BE PEACEFUL TOO, LIKE WHY SHOULD WE WASTE OUR BLOOD WHEN THERE’S A LONG LIFE TOO”?
Written By: Riya Upadhyaya
Edited by - Kritika Sharma
0 Comments