Managing Mediocrity: THE RISE OF THE MEME

Listening To: 1999 - Prince

My Mood:

I don’t even remember when I first encountered an internet meme, but it was love at first sight. Originally a tool for the tryhard blogger people to poke fun of mainstream culture, memes have now broken out into the masses.

But what actually is a meme? According to thefreedictionary.com a meme is, “A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” And here I was thinking it was just a silly picture with a caption.

For those Facebookers who are new to internet memes, they are all just about poking some light hearted fun at the unvoiced annoyances that we all share. They have recently become increasingly popular in relation to educational institutions and towns or districts. UQ currently has a memes page on Facebook, and my home town of Emerald also has its own page, which has recently been getting some unwanted attention in local news. The problem with these pages, if Emerald is any example, is that some people are beginning to take offence to these memes and the humour is becoming a little less light-hearted.

My advice? Get off Facebook. Not only is it annoying, and boring, it is a personal social networking site. It is a place where you connect online with the people that you actually associate yourself with in real life. Therefore there will always be room for personal attacks. Just troll the internet like me instead, go on Tumblr or 4Chan and get back to the origins of the meme. It’s much more fun.

Here are a few of my favourite memes;

Insanity Wolf