We use memes everyday, whether to get a quick laugh out of our friends or to brighten our own day. My friends ended up creating a meme out of a picture they took of me, all because I was Hangry(meaning I was hungry and because I was hungry it resulted in me being angry, hence the combination of the two words to create hangry)But have we really taken into consideration where theses memes originated from. How did they come about? I’m sure they did not just pop up on the internet, it needed to start from somewhere. Well this question popped in my head many times before and I actually decided to explore this.
Where did the word Meme even come from?
The word meme was introduced in 1976, it did not just arrive in the 2000’s (sorry for bursting that bubble) by Evolutionary Biologist Clinton Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. The word meme is based off the Greek word mimēma “that which is imitated” in relation to the pattern of a gene. The word meme is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means”. Guess that’s what defines an internet meme because we are basically imitating the original photo and manipulating it into what ever we want it to be at the time, through a meme generator or any other source. The YouTube channel SourceFed does a good job breaking down what a meme is, in a funny way of course portraying themselves as some other popular meme. Below is a video of SourceFed explaining what a meme is.
TrollFace
The particular meme that I investigated is the troll face meme, why? Because I love it, it great and very versatile. It can basically be used for anything. According to the Know Your Meme, this certain meme was created by artist Carlos Ramirez or his deviantART(a place where different art forms are expressed) handle Whynne in 2008 . The meme was actually based off another character depicting a Rodent, again another imitation. This Rodent was also based off another cartoon character called Might Mouse. Honestly every thing is copy of what was before. The previous artist imitating the other in order to make something new and slightly different than the first. At one point this meme was know as the “cool face” because it was to represent how the calmest of a person when something was going wrong. Ramiriez used this image as a way to represent the dreadful internet troll. You know how these trolls operate, trying to get a person mad for no apparent reason.
The images of Trollface can be found all over the internet, some site include but are not limited to Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, and Imgur. According to Know Your Meme, Ramirez has made approximately $100,000 in licensing fees, settlements and other payout since registering with the U.S Copyright Office in 2010. When the meme was in it peak he was reaching monthly revenues of $15,000. Guess we can say Carlos was ballin’ when the meme was in the height of its popularity.
Remember never chase an internet troll, chasing them only makes things worst. plus, they can probably run for hours.
