Meme Culture: A Viral Phenomenon
How memes permeate society.
Ah, the Instagram Egg- currently the most liked picture on Instagram. Just overnight, this egg was able to generate over 27 million likes to surpass the previous most liked picture by Kylie Jenner of her baby. Even I was swept into this chaos when someone sent me the meme. I did not even think twice to jump on the boat and double-tap. Looking back on this, it’s incredible how such a simple photograph, captured by Serghei Platanov and named “eggs isolated on white background” would garner more attention than posts from celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez. What spurred more than 50 million Instagram users to “like” such a simple picture? The answer: meme culture. Memes can bring communities and even nations together due to the ease of which they are spread. However, this can cause a culture of mass conformity which is dangerous to society.
The Meme
As it turns out, memes are not just the funny pictures that we find on the internet. The word “meme” was first coined by ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 publication of The Selfish Gene. It is based off of the Greek word mimeme, meaning “something imitated”, and the English word gene. A meme, by his definition, was any cultural idea that could be passed from person to person, replicating in an imitating fashion, like a gene. Thus, anything from an internet picture, a catchphrase, an idea, or even a whole language could be considered a meme. Memes must be spread to survive. We are hosts to memes, and they can replicate and become “viral” if we spread them to others. Thus, memes gain their popularity and influence when we share and propagate them.
However, not all memes share that fate. With the collective efforts of many individuals, only memes that provoke people with a shock factor will be shared and ultimately survive from generation to generation. Most memes will die out or remain in specific subcultures like a local community, while the popular ones develop and infiltrate society as a whole. Even seemingly “offensive” memes may become viral if enough people are emotionally affected by them. We must remember that anything that becomes viral does so for a reason. If no one thought that these memes were significant, they would have become extinct a long time ago. Thus, the memes that do go viral have an emotional impact on people, and they can connect over these shared experiences.
Connections through memes give us opportunities to traverse geographic and social boundaries, building communities. Take the ALS Ice bucket challenge, for example. While this may not be considered as a typical meme, it certainly embodies the principles of Dawkins’ cultural meme. Peter Frates, former all-star athlete, was diagnosed with ALS and nominated friends and coworkers to dump ice-cold water on themselves and donate money to the ALS association. In less than two months, the challenge spread across the world with 17 million participants, raising over $100 million.
Thanks to this challenge, many people became more aware of ALS and scientists even discovered a new gene that could be helpful in curing this debilitating disease. Hence, this meme connected people around the globe to form a community, benefiting the people with ALS and creating a common memorable experience for those involved.
Nonetheless, memes can have detrimental effects on society as well. Especially on the internet, people are isolated from one another by a computer screen. By hiding behind this wall of anonymity, users can flirt with more taboo and controversial topics. They feel free to create and share offensive memes because they can keep their own identity hidden and blind themselves to the effects that they have on others, something that psychologist John Suler calls the “Online Disinhibition Effect”. Some people believe that such memes should not be allowed in society because they are offensive. While it is true that certain memes will be perceived as such, they also generate attention to and conversation about taboo topics.
For example, online memes poking fun at mental health issues, which may seem offensive, can actually bolster mental health awareness by fostering a sense of community among those who suffer from it. According to pop-culture expert Shontavia Johnson, our generation is one of the most mental health aware in history. Johnson proposes that certain “offensive” internet memes that depict or reference mental health issues, like depression, actually help those who have them because of the memes’ relatability. Through this, a meme can make light of one’s dark situation, elevating their mood. Individuals who typically feel outcast by society can also find others who share their struggles to form positive support systems where they can truly find a place of belonging. Like the ALS Ice bucket challenge, these memes establish a community of people who likewise never would have been in contact with each other. While these depressing memes are certainly unappealing and considered “offensive” to many people, they have a place in society. Banning certain memes that a majority find offensive would be a disservice to the subcommunities which may be benefitted by them. Nevertheless, some memes do cross the line and will hurt people more than help, such as the Blue Whale Challenge. Society would benefit from censoring them, but this is literally impossible due to memes’ infectious nature.
Memes’ Effect on Society
Memes get spread from host to host, affecting the hosts themselves, similar to how a virus gets spread from cell to cell, taking over the internal programming of its host cells to make them code for the virus’s replication. Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Inception, Dom Cobb, an infiltrator of people’s dreams, says it best. He asks Saito, a businessman, “What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An idea. Resilient… highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate.” What Cobb is describing is the fictional idea of inception, where an idea is implanted into someone and dictates their actions and belief systems. This is not as fantastical as the movie makes it out to be, though. Social memes work like inception, transforming one’s outlook of life. Thus, the simple transmissibility of memes by meme spreaders can cause masses of people to conform in the same way.
An article by James Garner also proposes that our notion of culture and consciousness is just the interaction of selfish memes that replicate, evolve, and spread from person to person. In his view, we are slaves to memes. Memes control us. We, as meme hosts, must therefore be critical of our experiences and interactions with other people and other memes. We must be conscientious of what inputs we receive, governing our flow of ideas instead of letting them govern us. Gardner pushes us to realize that “understanding the often unconscious nature of genetic control is the first step toward understanding that we’re all puppets, and our best hope for even partial liberation is to try to decipher the logic of the puppeteer.” Hence, we must first enlighten ourselves about our everyday influences and how they affect our decision making. Who are these puppeteers, and how do they manipulate us to adopt certain memes?
One of the first modern puppeteers was Edward Bernays, who helped the Wilson administration strengthen American support for World War I by promoting the idea that their involvement would bring democracy to Europe. He appealed to the innate American ideals of democracy and freedom to compel people to enlist in the war. He saw how effective propaganda was during war in influencing irrational behavior, so he theorized that it could be utilized during peacetime, too. After the war, Bernays applied his propaganda talents to advertisement and created a culture of mass consumerism.
He accessed humanity’s most vulnerable point- their subconscious desires- to manipulate their behavior. Previous advertisements would tell people to buy a product by listing its attributes, thus only people who had a use for it would buy it. Instead, Bernays would create a demand for goods by convincing consumers that they needed a product by selling them the implications of buying that product. He was hired by multitudes of big firms to advertise their products, one of which was the American Tobacco Company, who wanted to expand their market of cigarettes to women. At the time, it was taboo for women to smoke in public and thus, tobacco companies could only sell to half of the population- males. During the Easter Day parade in New York City, Bernays staged a display of suffragettes smoking Lucky Strikes, calling these cigarettes “torches of freedom”. Suffragettes were looked up upon as moral compasses during the ongoing feminist movements. Women’s unfaltering faith in them made them vulnerable to manipulation, causing them to unquestionably follow their lead. They, too, took up smoking, believing that women were another step closer to equality with men. Sales of cigarettes increased dramatically as its market doubled in size. Bernays, the puppeteer, created the start of a culture for women to smoke, one that would pervade American society for many decades to come. The propagation of this meme caused people to take up smoking, damaging society as smoking ruins their health.
Now, you may be thinking, simple internet memes will not cause me to start smoking cigarettes or something irrational like that. However, there are many cases where people are vulnerable to conforming to meme culture, such as under the influence of role models and under stress. Many of our behaviors are influenced by people that we look up to like parental figures. Thus, they pass many of their beliefs down to us. Doctors are another figure of influence. Bernays promoted bacon and eggs as the all-American breakfast by having doctors publicly state that they were good for you. There is a psychological relationship between the person and their doctor because they are glorified as figures of health. Thus, many people were swayed to eat bacon and eggs, associating them with longevity. Thus, oftentimes influential people will gather a following of people who take up their habits or advice without critically thinking about it. This creates a conformist culture where people do not evaluate why they do things Rather, they just follow in others’ footsteps, which can lead them to do dangerous actions, like smoking cigarettes. In addition, people are more prone to act irrationally under stressful situations like after someone’s death or during economic turmoil. This is why the United States gave economic relief to decimated European nations after World War II through the Marshall plan. They were afraid that previously free-market countries would turn communist. When people are under stress, they seek the closest thing that can provide them reassurance, which tended to be communist leaders who promised everyone salvation. Propagandist intervention by the United States helped to alleviate this economic stress so they could latch on to capitalism before they could submit to communism.
It is important to be aware of these influences so that you are aware of when you are susceptible to irrational behavior. Of course, humans are animals, and our primitive instincts cause us to act as a group. Memes can be used to create a sense of belonging like that within the ALS and mental health communities. However, individuals who follow without sound judgements can collectively set up society for failure, like with smoking. They will not be able to form ideas for themselves and only regurgitate what others say. We must be able to take all of our experiences and decide for ourselves how to act. This is the only way for us to find at least partial liberation from the dominating forces of societal influence, one meme at a time.
