Memes and The Human Condition
Do you believe in complex emotions?
Beyond the base elements of human experience, such as joy, anger, sadness, and fear, there are those feelings which refuse to be neatly categorized. These emotions defy simple, one word summaries.
These are the feelings that make up most of our life. these are the concepts that we struggle to express to others. It’s the kind of thought process that makes you both happy and sad when an ex is happily engaged, or when you are offered a new position that scares the hell out of you. We turn to metaphors and allegories to express them the best we can.
Like a panda with a mean face, or sandals with pressure points drawn on them.
Perhaps this is why the GIF and image macro has become such a modern stable of online communication. Image macros allow us to express a contained, singular type of feeling or situations that are common across all of mankind. I have no doubt that if you show an Awkward Seal…
Or a success Kid…
Or even a good old Courage Wolf….
To any adult, they will be able to describe the approximate emotional state it’s trying to show. It’s universal. GIFS are the same, just moving- little seconds long movies that show complex chains of our internal struggles and movements. How do I feel when my wife forgets my extra burrito?
I posit that this is ultimately the challenge for humanity, for storytellers, for poets, for writers…for the artist. To try to express that which cannot be conveyed through a rote pattern. To create a new method of communicating the sheer complexity of human existence. To quote a friend, “putting into words that which your very soul itself can’t express audibly.”
In this way, GIFs and Image Macros are the newest form of poetry. It’s a generation of people growing apathetic and struggling, trying with all their vain, to say what they feel inside. They don’t have the attention span to imitate the greats, but they can take 3 seconds to add some text to a rare Pepe, and for every upvote or like it gets they can nod their head and know that yes, other people do feel like this! This is a valid part of being human! This is the first generation that grew up on the internet, just another faceless anonymous poster among literally millions, where your opinion or the fact that you’re just a kid or suicidal or struggling with your own gender identity doesn’t matter. Everyone is trying to get noticed, more likes, like followers, more retweets, more reblogs, more views. As the Genius Bo Burnham says in his new special, Make Happy:
“Here, perform everything, to each other, all the time, for no reason.”
What do you think? How often do you struggle to express these complicated concepts? Are GIFS and Image Macros the modern poetry? Are we all just performing? Or am I a giant, pretentious idiot?
