Non-Celebrities and Non-Athletes in Meme Culture
Becoming a meme is as easy as having a bad picture day, if you’re Kyle Craven, who also goes by ‘bad luck Brian’ on the internet. Kyle’s meme stardom took off 10 years ago when he took a horrendously bad yearbook photo. After that, all it too was his friend to post the picture with some joke text on it with the title ‘Bad Luck Brian’ to reddit and meme history is made (Contrera). It seems almost all memes start that way, a simple joke that get taken by the internet and run with until it universally recognized. It’s what the internet does; if someone thinks they can make a joke they’ll make it, if someone thinks they can use an image to make that joke they use it. Take success kid as an example, a simple picture of a kid appearing to be smugly fist pumping, was originally a picture of a kid eating sand. Essentially, any image that could be used to portray an emotion, like success kid’s happiness, or a type of person, like Bad Luck Brian being a klutz or eternally unlucky, regardless of the images’ its original context, has the potential to be turned into a meme.
Why does one become a meme?
Why an individual is turned into a meme, is a much more complex question than how it happens. We may never truly know the full reasoning behind memes, however we aren’t totally in the dark when it comes to the subject. First we must differentiate between athlete and celebrity memes and non-celebrity memes. The difference between the two is clear, when celebrities are made into memes the context is clear. Whether it’s something they said or did, the meme is centered around something well known about the celebrity. That context is removed when dealing with non-celebrity memes, and all that remains is the image for the meme creator and the reader to creator their own context. Eventually, the context is added back in, for example one doesn’t read 100 Bad Luck Brian memes and expect anything other than something unlucky to happen in the meme the next time they read one. However, when a meme is created, all that the writer of the meme has to work with is the image and the text they choose to add. What then makes these memes so popular is the images themselves evoke such a strong emotion that the reader get increased value from the joke or story that they otherwise would have. The images’ ability to portray emotion or a certain situation is what allows them to succeed, because according to one study, “Memes that can be easily expressed will have a higher chance of surviving because spread depends on transforming the memory of the idea into a form that other individuals can imitate, such as speech, writing, or actions” (Mazambani). Meaning the reader’s ability to empathize with the writer or creator of the meme and then imitate or recreate the meme using their own experiences is what allows it to thrive. And many memes do exactly that, Bad Luck Brian’s ability be the punchline or be the butt of any kind of unfortunate or unlucky situation or success kid’s ability to portray and smug celebratory happiness is what makes them the widespread successes they are today.
It is important to look at why memes are being used in the first place to fully understand how and why people become memes. In his book Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan writes about how “the medium is the message” and how the way in which a society conveys their message is as important as the message itself (Marshall). In the case of memes, this means that memes being used as a form of communication, storytelling, and joke telling, informs us about society today just as much as the memes themselves do. The use of memes as a message tells us quite a few things. The use of memes shows us t how time impacts our message, instead of writing out a whole story, which may be rather time consuming, you can tell that same story using a meme using a lot less words to get the information across. A meme, while getting the same information across as a normal story had the added benefit of the image which informs the reader to how you felt or how you want the reader to feel. This is because of the accuracy of the images behind the memes that make this all possible. The ability for a completely unrelated image to add emotion and context to an image is what allows memes to thrive. As McLuhan said, ““…the message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs” (Marshall, 8). And memes are doing just that, changing the scale, pace, and pattern of which stories and jokes are being conveyed.
What are the consequences of becoming a meme?
Once one becomes a meme there are some things to look forward to. For some, this ranges being recognized in public to real monetary gain. For example, Kyle Craven subject of ‘Bad Luck Brian’ has t-shirts being sold at Hot Topic and even Walmart as well as licensing deals with Volkswagen and RealPlayer, all of which has netted Kyle somewhere between$15,000 and $20,000 (Contrera). Others have built off of their original meme fame and success and turned it into a real revenue stream. Laina Morris who is the subject and creator of the ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’ meme now has over a million YouTube subscribers and regularly puts out comedy videos while being sponsored by Audible, Autotrader and Kia (Garsd).
People are starting to take notice of the meme craze, now with talk show hosts and businesses trying to cash in on their success. A recent example of this would be the damn Daniel video that blew up in February of two kids goofing around talking about Daniel’s shoes. The video’s success landed the two kids a spot on Ellen, where it was revealed that Daniel would be getting a lifetime supply of Vans sneakers (Begley). This is just one example of many of the fact that there is money to be made from memes, as companies continue to attempt to be popular and ‘with it’, and what better way to show your young customers than to show theme you speak the same language: memes.
While often times there can be positive outcomes for internet meme stardom, it isn’t always the case. In 2012 a Taiwanese model’s picture was shown above the caption ‘The only thing you'll ever have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids’, where the picture was of her a man posed as her husband and ‘their’ three children, however the children had been photoshopped to look rather ugly and unattractive. The picture was made for an ad for a Taiwanese cosmetic clinic attempting to get people to get plastic surgery. The ad has had a major effect on the model since its release both personally and professionally. Professionally, she estimates to have lost $4m new Taiwan dollars or $123,000 USD in potential earnings from her modelling career. The image has destroyed her personal life, being a potentially significant cause of her then-boyfriend to break up with her out of embarrassment, as well as causing her relatives and current fiancé’s family to ask questions about her use of plastic surgery. As far as the legality of the image goes, the model plans on suing the cosmetic clinic but it is unlikely to yield any results as the company owns the copyright to the photo. However for her, it’s not so much about the money as it is clearing her name of having had any plastic surgery done, as well as attempting to, “get the company to own up to their role in how her image was used” (Can't Hide It Forever).
Another example of the dangers of becoming a meme sensation is ‘Scumbag Steve’. The meme originated in 2006 when the now well-known picture was taken by Blake Boston’s mom who then posted it on MySpace where it was copied and reused for memeing purposes. Unlike many other memes where the subject is seen as positive or neutral, Scumbag Steve is the punching bag of the meme world, being used as the subject of all meme creators’ hatred and loathing. With this animosity, and some’s inability to separate the subject of the meme with the image, Blake Boston felt the wrath of the internet. The 21 year old and his family were harassed, including death threats aimed at his unborn child. Mrs. Boston, Blake’s mother, tried everything to rectify the situation including writing letters to Google to try and remove the image. When nothing worked Mrs. Boston said she, “…felt like she was losing control of her family's identity” (Those Pictures Made Me Sick).
SOURCES:
Begley, Sarah. "‘Damn, Daniel’ Is Back at It With a Lifetime Supply of Vans."Time. Time, 24 Feb. 2016. Web. 11 May 2016.
"'Can't Hide It Forever': The Model Who Became a Meme." BBC News. BBC News, 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 11 May 2016.
Contrera, Jessica. "Being Bad Luck Brian: When the Meme That Made You Famous Starts to Fade Away." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 5 Jan. 2015. Web. 11 May 2016.
Garsd, Jasmine. "'Overly Attached Girlfriend' Meme Star Turns Online Fame Into Comedy Career." NPR. NPR, 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 May 2016.
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, Selection from The Medium is the Massage (Penguin Books, 1967): pp 1-81 + Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message,” in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (MIT Press, 1994; orig. 1964)
Mazambani, Gideon, et al. "Impact Of Status And Meme Content On The Spread Of Memes In Virtual Communities." Human Technology 11.2 (2015): 148-164. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 3 May 2016.
"'Those Pictures Made Me Sick... They Were so Cruel': Mother of 'Scumbag Steve' Reveals Torment at Internet Hate Campaign." Daily Mail. Daily Mail, 11 Feb. 2011. Web. 11 May 2016.
