I’m sure you’ve read this same type of post many times over. But, since it (like memes themselves) never seems to get old, we thought we would take a few minutes to explore why we love memes so much.
On the internet, memes have attained a new genre of existence, giving people an opportunity to be a comedian, politician or honestly whatever they can dream up (literally whatever). Bite sized pieces of humor, satire, political commentary or plain surrealism, through the use of everything from obscure screen captures of Game of Thrones characters to six-second Vines. And the popularity of memes says a good bit about the technology channels we use as well as just how funny a few randomly selected images and carefully placed words can make us laugh out loud (uncontrollably sometimes).
The Internet Is The Perfect Place for Memes
According to Richard Dawkins (if you don’t know him look him up) the there are three fundamental things beneath rapidly spreading memes. Longevity (survivability), fecundity (potential to be copied), and copy fidelity (ability of copies to be accurate).
The internet produces all of these in an environment where they can last a lifetime (and beyond) if the general meme idea or concept catches fire.
Inside Jokes
Sharing a meme is part of the big deal. Content that you can text off to an old friend that instantly puts you back in touch and has you pondering something or laughing like you haven’t in forever (without having to actually speak to a person). Memes can do that. Memes do that. Experts say that insider knowledge is also one of the big things we love about memes: they make us feel part of an elite group, and give us a moment of understanding something often not-so obvious and usually always slightly odd.
They Are Extremely Social
I know both my wife and myself have spent countless evenings on the couch, tv on, but our attention completely stuck on our phones to see which of us can find the most funny meme. It’s a fact that they take up a fair amount of our time on the spent on the internet. Memes, are also more than just funny or amusing. They are truly a means for we pick up on things that are of interest or concern… with an instant means for openly commenting and communicating. Memes have become a part of our very fabric as human beings.
Improvisation & Competition
We love improvising and memes allow us to act up a bit and be a little weird. We also like being a person that can “one-up” someone else to take the meme to a whole other level. That’s where memes feed our basic human desires for novelty and competition.
User-Created Content That Can Evolve
Most memes are not created by someone famous or otherwise popular. Generally, memes are created by anonymous users who get a taste of the famous and popular life after one well placed idea that gets taken, replicated, and altered as spins virally out of control across every digital channel we have at our disposal.
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