Meme Personal Narrative
Before entering this class, I did not realize the significance memes. Every meme has a story behind it. These memes come from some form of cultural phenomenon. They could represent different current events, something on TV, music, and something that has been made up. A well-known meme often goes viral and is shared on different platforms across the internet. These include Social Media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as blogging sites like Wordpress. These memes are shared and commented on. They are usually funny or hold some meaning behind it. Based on the story of these memes or the memes in particular, some of the memes are not understood unless the person reading it knows that particular reference. If someone creates or shares a meme regarding Pretty Little Liars talking about A, someone who does not know the show would not understand who A is. That's the thing too, people can take these memes and make them into their own. There are meme generating websites that allow any person to create their own mean. It has to be appropriate though, through the story behind the meme. It is helpful to know that there are websites in which descriptions of memes are show cased on. In class, we looked at memes and the background story of them and were asked to make our own. We used websites and were also asked to download a meme generator app. We could choose from pictures of Success Kid, Grumpy Cat, Socially Awesome Penguin and so much more.
Writing in The Digital Writing, I have learned how memes can be portrayed. One picture of a little boy can tell thousands of different stories. The Success Kid is a picture of a little boy clenching his fist with a handful of sand. This picture started out with his mother posting this picture on her blog and it soon went viral. It is also known as I Hate Sandcastles. The little boys name is Sammy and he was 11 months old when this photo was taken in 2007. It was on her Flickr account and uploaded to Getty images but was eventually removed. In 2008 it became a widespread on Myspace. This photo eventually became the model for many successful acts done. One of the many memes include, “Put 5 dollars in pocket, pulls out 10.” This shows that this kid is very lucky. He is so lucky that he beats the odds of finding 10 dollars when he only put 5 in his pocket.
One particular meme concept we looked at in class is the Doge meme. The Doge meme was spread out to many different online communities. The multicolored comic sans font gives us the illusion of floating thoughts. These thoughts are not supposed to make sense all the time they could just be phrases. These phrases are meant to be “baby talk.” This is the use of interior monologue captioning as well. There is random text around images that include thoughts and feelings. The use of visual learning and visual communication is used as well. Visual communication is how we see the image. We interpret it based on our perception of what it should say. The idea behind this meme was to take away from Grumpy Cat and create something new for people to look at. They have many different concepts but the idea is dog versus cat.
Memes tell a story. The story it tells can actually be interpreted in many different ways. What we find to be humorous may actually be confusing to someone else. This will depend on how the audience perceives it. This can then be interpreted into other memes. This is where the meme generator comes into play. Based on what stories other memes have told, this is what will be copied in future memes to come.
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