Some of my favorite memes are the Judith Butler memes and even Ryan Gosling ones.  One day I’ll know who Ryan Gosling is and they’ll probably be even funnier.  Successful memes, I think, are fundamentally troubling and queer  AND merge the visual and verbal.  If
not they are merely puns or an incongruous image --  which are fun, sure, but probably do not successfully replicate beyond one or two iterations.  Or they are something provocative or esoteric or political which would have no legs without the visual.  A good meme grabs on to something in the zeitgeist (1^st world problems) or some existential issue.  For example, the ‘what you think you do, what your parents think you do’ meme.  Some memes though I think are shibboleths (one of my favorite words, probably not the first time I’ve used it this semester)  and help set who is in and who is out --  they define groups.  Do you
understand the meme?  You’re in. Of course, I’m also being idealistic.  Sometimes memes are trolls, racist, incompetent, unpleasant reifications of how we exist rather than how we aspire and trouble the angels.