Memes, an Experiment in Human Creativity…
“A meme is an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.”
As far as I understand, entertainment has always played a role in the human story. Whether it be through the technology we use today, or older methods from a time since passed, people seeking to entertain one another has lasted the test of time. Living in the era of entertainment abundance, I believe we’re becoming numb to the methods with which entertainment is produced and consumed. Being so distracted by the entertainment itself, any constructive commentary focused on the methods used to create our entertainment, is slowly being drowned out.
I don’t intend to create a piece of social commentary on the misuse of technology, rather we’re going in the opposite direction, the way of admiration. This is because I feel that it’s valuable to create more commentary on the way we create and consume entertainment. Plus, I’ve become quite impressed lately with what I’m seeing being created by my fellow humans.
Memes. If you’ve been on the internet at any point, chances are you’ve come across them. I was born in 2000, so my first few opportunities to interact with the internet were blessed with the presence of meme culture. I believe that I grew up in the golden age of the internet, things were advanced enough to be both practical and enjoyable, not like the chaos that is the internet today.
I was never someone who got too involved in meme culture. From time to time I would create my own as any young kid on the internet does, but for the most part, I stayed on the peripheries. I preferred to watch and enjoy the creations of others, over making my own. As adolescence came around, my involvement in the world of memes stayed much the same. Then with adulthood, I made a complete exit from the meme world for a two to three-year stint, until recently.
Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts (I refuse to use TikTok) marked my entry back into the meme world, this wasn’t intentional. As an avid YouTube user, it was rather an inevitable reality that I was going to get sucked into the world of short-form content, just by being on the platform. I was ready to cast my judgements upon the world of endless content that I had begun to dislike, even before my first interactions with it. While I certainly did so, I happened to find something valuable amongst the weeds… Human creativity.
I won’t be stopped short of saying, the effort that some people put into making content is phenomenal. I consider myself to be both creative and intelligent, but when I see some of the memes that people come up with, I’m just blown away. There is a natural receptive intelligence that is required to be able to both assess and replicate something humorous, to be able to understand what others will find funny and recreate it. This goes only for those jumping on the trend, to be able to create a trend that’s new and unique is a whole other story.
Memes don’t take up space in the same way that other “more important” aspects of our lives do. This is why I believe people don’t truly recognise how much effort, creativity and intelligence they put into their creations. For most people, memes are banished to live in their spare time, this I believe gives memes a casual feeling, excluding the full-time memesters out there of course. I think this is why people don’t bother to assess the depth of the investment they’re making in their work because it’s so casual. You can’t earn money from it (changing these days), it’s not a job (also changing these days), it’s not considered “legitimate” work, it’s just a hobby. People create freely without the assessment or oversight that might come from a paid position or a hobby you’re seriously invested in. I think this is what makes memes special, people are creating to entertain each other without too much regard for the work they doing, it’s very raw in that sense. I don’t know how much we see that in the world outside of memes.
While I don’t personally feel that connected to the world of memes. I can’t help but be captivated by the level of human investment that is consistently seen in the meme space. Endless streams of content that for the most part seem to serve not much purpose (from the creator’s perspective) other than to entertain one another. I couldn’t imagine what the world might look like if this level of effort and human creativity were channelled into more productive investments. I do suppose there is an argument to be made that in its current form, it’s serving a purpose, after all the demand is certainly there so it must be meeting some collective needs. Regardless, I often feel optimistic about humanity when I see all the fun things people are creating online. It shows that dedication and creativity are alive within people, they just need something worth pursuing to bring it out.
How could we channel the ingenuity, intelligence, creativity, dedication and consistency seen in the meme space, towards real-world pursuits? That’s one of the defining questions of my generation.
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