International Memes
The Emergence of Rage Comics and their History, Virality, and ProfitabilityDefinition
It is hard to define what are actually international Internet memes. I did not found materials that clearly defines the meaning of international Internet memes. Therefore, I separate them into three categories that, as far as I am concerned, are all count as international memes:
Source: Those Internet Memes whose country its SOURCE (such as picture it uses) is from is not United States of America.
Spread: Those Internet Memes which get SPREAD or became popular outside United States of America as well.
Language: Those Internet Memes which uses LANGUAGEs other than English (as the dominant language in United State).
*The above definitions are all from the perspective of a person knowing Internet memes in United States better.
The “Y U NO” Guy is a good example of the International Source Memes.
The source of its facial expression is from a Japanese manga. “The character’s facial expression, full of frustration and rage, can be found in Gantz’ Chapter 55: Naked King (裸の王様), originally released in February 2002 and the English translation in June 2009.”("Y U NO" Guy)
On the other hand, rage comics are those which spread all over the world. As far as I am concerned, these comic should be count as memes as how memes are defined. This comic style was originally drawn by Carlos Ramirez, an Oakland-based artist. It mainly spread through Social Media like Facebook, Tumblr, and 4chan. It is both popular in United States and
abroad. It is very common to see it on social media in China such as Weibo (a Chinese microblogging, which is used more than Facebook and Twitter since they are banned ofr use in mainland China) as well. Here is an example of Chinese rage comic.
There is even website that is built for Internet users to create and publish their rage comics. (http://baozoumanhua.com/catalogs/duanpian)
Besides these two categories, those memes with foreign languages written on are also included in one of primary types of international memes. In the following website(International Internet Memes):
There are several memes that are collected from countries all over the world. The website states: “Yes, the same things happen in different forms in different languages, and luckily there are enough multilingual web publishers to give us a glimpse into those non-English memes, even if they don't catch on in the English-speaking world.” Since the title of this article is called International Internet Memes, I assume it supports the idea that memes in different languages are part of International Internet Memes.
Reference
""Y U NO" Guy." Know Your Meme News. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2016. <http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/y-u-no-guy>.
"International Internet Memes." Mental Floss. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2016. <http://mentalfloss.com/article/49977/international-internet-memes>.This page has paths:
- Meme Genres and Features Adonis Jones
- Memes in Media, Culture, and Society Adonis Jones