The Crying Jordan Meme, Why Has It Gone Viral?
By: Sean McChesney
We have all seen it, we all know what it is and we all love the newest editions of it…the “crying Jordan” meme. The meme is based off the 2009 hall of fame speech of legendary basketball icon Michael Jordan. During his speech, many witnessed Jordan break down multiple times as he thanked many of his players, coaches and fans.
On April 23, 2012, the “crying Jordan” meme was born after Jordan purchased the Charlotte Bobcats basketball team. The meme that was submitted to “MemeCrunch” was titled “Sad Michael Jordan,” with the caption “Why did I buy the Bobcats?” (As Seen Below)
Nobody expected this to become anything, but with the help of social media, creativity and millions of people drawing attention, the “crying Jordan” meme went from a one time thing to a global revolution.
Since 2012, multiple editions of the meme have been created, you can mainly see a new edition when a sports team loses an important game like a series clinching playoff game, or a team loses a game after leading the majority of the game, to poke fun at other teams and sometimes a meme is created for situations other than sports.
So, we know that the meme is funny and it is going to keep going for a very long time, but there are two questions, why does it keep going and why is it so popular?
When you think about it from a virality aspect, you have to think why there is even intention to keep creating the meme in the first place. So in order to figure that out, we need to know who the gatekeeper of the meme is. The gatekeeper is the people on social media, mainly people who love creating memes and are fans of sports. These are the people who have the control, influence and creativeness over the memes. The meme has got so popular over the years (especially in postseason sports) that every time a sports team is eliminated in the postseason and can’t compete for a championship, you can expect a “crying Jordan” meme posted within five minutes. For example, in the 2015–2016 NBA season, the Golden State Warriors made history in the regular season, by becoming the first team to win 73 games in the regular season, only loosing 9 times. However, they would not win the NBA Finals as they blew a three games to one series lead against the eventual champion Cleveland Cavaliers and lost the series in seven games. Once the Warriors lost the finals, the internet had its fun (see below).
The audience that the memes targets is mainly sports fans and specifically, fans who understand what the certain meme pertains to. To clarify, a baseball fan who does not understand and follow football is not going to understand a Jordan meme about Tom Brady and deflategate and a football fan who hates and despises basketball is not going to understand and care why a meme about why going 73–9 is humorous and enjoyable to anybody but a Warriors fan. So the audience definitely changes, but it depends on the type of Jordan meme to change it. The media content is very interactive as well, the example of that is the memes are all over social media being liked, shared, retweeted, you name it, everyone has seen it.
The reason these memes still exist and are still popular is due to the people and social media keeping them alive. With that being said, there is also a bottom up effect with these memes. The bottom up effect has remarkable content and the content is emotional and has an impact while at the same time the content has quality, and there is “internet works” along with the virality of the meme. These memes were not created by any major sports company, they are created and carry on through every day through regular people who have regular lives, know basic photoshop editing, and have a creative and comical mindset. In my opinion, there is no better example of a bottom up effect then the Jordan memes, as they were created and have been a global trend for almost three years.
A meme that started as nothing has now worked its way up to being one of the most talked about memes in the world. As long as controversial events take place in sports, tough losses happen when you least expect it and news breaks that we never saw coming, you can expect a “crying Jordan,” meme to surface all over the internet quicker then you least expect it. You can also expect that these memes will be on your Twitter timeline and Facebook wall for years to come.
