Why Do We Create Memes That Make Fun of the Year 2020?
A closer look at the appropriation of a global pandemic into cultural understanding and connection through the satire of COVID-19.
Most people are saying that the year 2020 has been a bust, a dud, a failure, a disappointment. With the coronavirus shutting people from all around the world inside their homes, we’ve all been forced to take a step back from our daily interactions, six feet back to be precise. With this space has come a variety of memes being circulated that are making fun of the year 2020. It is my belief that the spike in memes trashing 2020 on Instagram are helping provide society comic relief from the anxiety of this time, and it helps us all stay connected during the current pandemic.
The term meme is believed to be devised by biologist Richard Dawkins which describes how culture spreads from person to person (Milner 2018). Dawkins says that a meme is like a virus. It is a way for small cultural artifacts such as slang terms, inside jokes and preexisting tensions to jump from person to person and spread through society. Ryan M. Milner is the author of the book The World Made Meme. This book takes a critical look at memetics and attempts to explain why they’re used, how they’re used and how they’ve become such a key aspect of today’s society. I used Milner’s book to help me further understand memetics and the impact it has had on our current forms of communication.
Over the last 20 years, memes have risen in popularity because they are being used to connect friends. Milner says that internet memes are pictures captioned and widely shared across various online platforms, and if you think about it, it’s hard to imagine a major pop cultural or political moment that doesn’t inspire its own cluster of remix, play and commentary. Almost every time I am on Instagram, I find a meme that somehow relates to me or one of my friends, and if it is the former, I tag them. Memes are just another way to communicate in the 21st century.
To further elaborate on the ways in which memes are circulated and their impact on public conversations, Milner shared the popular “Kanye Interrupts” memes. These particular memes were created from the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards moment when West jumped onto stage and publicly shamed Taylor Swift by saying, “Imma let you finish… But Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time.” With that singular moment, “Imma let you finish” began to speckle conversations globally. An example of a popular moment that a large portion of society has seen that has been made into a 2020 meme is seen in Figure 4. This is a meme of Cary Bradshaw from the popular 90’s TV series Sex in the City. Milner believes that internet memes are dependent on collective creation, circulation and transformation (2018). They’re multimedia texts that allow public participation in the re-appropriation of a shared moment (Milner 2018). Because of memes global impact, local impact, particularity and eccentricity, Milner describes them as “small expressions with big implications” (2018).
So, my big question is why do we use memes to communicate? How do so many people understand this form of communication? Milner believes that the fixity, novelty and collectivism of memetic expression are the keys to its popularity (2018). Milner says that fixity and novelty accentuate memetic texts, and the same style also resides in our shared public conjoint experiences (2018). Participants can understand the conversational contributions of others because memes have fixed premises (Milner 2018). Memes are often created from popular pop culture references and often bring continuous laughter to people all over the world.
Some of the most recreated memes over the internet are the “Evil Kermit,” the “Most Interesting Man,” the “Success Kid” and the “Squinting Fry.” Currently, however, the most popular memes are all about the flop of a year that 2020 has been.
Obviously, not all memes are sophisticated masterpieces of communication. Not all memes will connect the world with a piece of knowledge or an argument that will change the ways that our society interacts. But some might. Some will. Some have. Some memes that have been created have sparked a global social dialogue that will persist for years to come.
Memes allow many voices to connect and converse as well as argue and antagonize by applying memetic logics, grammar, and jargon (Milner 2018).
As I’m sure you’ve seen, memes allow us to communicate a vast range of perspectives on a global scale. The social world is woven together through collective participation in memes. “Memetic media have significant ramifications for civic participation: for representations of diverse identities, for political debate, and for the cultural industries central to the contemporary media ecology,” (Milner 2018).
The memes being circulated of the graduating class of 2020 is a way to connect all the would be graduates. It is a way to communicate their pain, loss and frustration at the current situation while also having fun at laughing at the source of it all.
Not only has the new pandemic left us quarantined to our homes and shut out of our work spaces, but it has created shortages of various household necessities. Because the recurring theme of memetics is to satire current events, countless memes have appeared relating to the hysteria surrounding the lack of toilet paper on our grocery store shelves.
But the satire doesn’t end with toilet paper. It continues to cover working from home, schooling from home, graduating from home, lack of travel, the mundane nature of quarantine, binging TV, boredom snacking and much more.
During this time of quarantine, many people have been turning to various sources of media to fill the time. Some people are binge watching Netflix shows, some have a newfound obsession with TikTok, some are picking up new hobbies or getting ahead on their work, but no matter what you decide to do with this time, we can all relate to one truth: 2020 is not what we expected it to be.
I believe it is because of that truth that the 2020 memes are becoming so dominant in our Instagram browsers. Take the meme in Figure 10 as an example. This is a meme of SpongeBob sitting quietly by himself. If you read the context, it is easy to tell that he seems lonely and shocked at the disappointments that the year has already provided.
Milner explains that memetic participation has five fundamental logics: “memetic media are unique for their expression in multiple modes of communication, their reappropriation, their connections to individual participants, their collectivism, and their spread” (2018). In other words, people easily participate in the creation, circulation and viewing of memes because they are effortlessly propagated throughout mass networks. During the time of quarantine thanks to COVID-19, the only way to communicate with the rest of society is by taking advantage of our miscellaneous sources of media. Hence, our use of memes to express our feelings regarding coronavirus.
Instead of 2020 fulfilling all of our New Year’s resolutions, our travel plans, our social agendas, our work aspirations and so much more, it has severely let us all down. When we would prefer to be living our lives, we are sitting by the window watching as nothing but time and missed opportunity passes us by. My new resolution is to make 2021 my year!
