Now that the social media era has come, the world has come where anyone can have their own media in various ways. Users directly participate in the content through the media and form their own communities. And content goes beyond the intention of the person who first planned it and acquires new meaning and reproduces it into derivative content or culture.
It is often easy to think of memes as simply funny videos or buzzwords, but the role memes have in our society is very significant. An intermediate medium that serves as clones like genes is also needed for the delivery of culture, and memes are the units, forms, types, and elements of information that play this role. All cultural phenomena fall within the range of memes. In other words, as Internet meme means that the ideas, behaviors, and styles of culture are transformed by the creativity of users and spread in various forms such as images or videos.
Entertainment
Memes influence the spread of culture through music, especially the production and re-creation of memes by music users through various social media. Music-related memes are divided into various categories such as cover, remix, dance, parody, reaction, flash mob, etc. I am also playing a role as a 'multiplier' through various social media. For example, the dance community I belong to has taken videos that cover the choreography of several K-pop or dance studios and uploaded them steadily on our Facebook page. At the same time, I also enjoy listening to the remix version of my favorite song or watching reaction videos on YouTube. Likewise, social media users will be able to actively participate in social and cultural issues by re-transcribing and sharing content in these various forms.
Politics
Memes have always been regarded as “shallow” - meaningless displays of humor and popular culture. You should know that this is a great misunderstanding we have due to the lack of attention given to the use of memes in political contexts. During the past few years, people’s growing desire to communicate has caused online platforms to gain great popularity, and with the empowered ability to create and share memes, its impact on our society is overwhelming. We can take Brazil’s Internet memes as an example which gained popularity on social media before the impeachment case in 2016. Facebook and Twitter took an active role as online platforms for users to produce, consume and share images with innuendo about the political situation.
To Conclude
Memes spread widely and quickly over a short period of time, creating a trend. Particularly noteworthy is that memes, which used to be created and extinguished through the voluntary sharing and spreading of users, are now growing beyond a single play culture to determine the cultural trends of the real world. What’s your favorite political meme? Please share your thought in the comment below!
political memes absolutely are the best! Thx for letting me know more about memes!
I remember how satirical cartoons in newspapers used to have political commentary while being funny. I think those cartoons are slowly replaced with memes because memes are easier to make by everyone and the same template can be used for a variety of situations. I think it is easier to express political opinions through memes by the youth as the governments mainly consist of the elderly who might not be able to grasp the meaning of the memes, which makes memes a safer option in countries with high censorship of speech.
Some political memes maker has capture scenes of ironic cartoons, like The Simpsons and South Park, and express themselves in some politics issue. I think the memes of cartoons scenes are interesting and attractive on social media.