Four things to consider when considering upping your meme game
Of the many fantastic ways to tarnish one’s reputation online, posting lame memes is (probably) one of the more common methods. Nobody wants this. What you want is for your memes to go viral, to make you famous, to convey the online persona of someone much more fun at parties.
Well I’m here to teach you how.
And with this in mind, it’s time to play the meme economy. A bad bet could spell disaster for your clout — but a good bet? A good bet could reap you the kind of internet fame and fortune you can only dream of until your alarm clock goes off and then you hit snooze and you try to re-enter the dream but you can’t re-enter the dream because your dream is dead.
Don’t let your dream die. Read the rest of this article.
1. How successfully does the meme express emotion or a shared human experience?
One of the best examples of this is the motion blur or radial blur meme format. It’s an extremely broad format that uses a simple photo effect to convey a um…feeling. Truth be told, the feeling is different from meme to meme, but it’s an extremely effective amplifier. The meaning without the blur is the same, the blur just hits different.
2. How adaptable is the meme?
A truly great meme format can be applied to many different situations that carry varying degrees of absurdity. Stonks, a relative newcomer, is an excellent example of this. In its original form, stonks was just a funny way of saying “stocks,” paired with an amusing 3D face (you may call him Meme Man) and some stock photo goodness.
Then it became a format. The premise is simple: a nonsensical or otherwise useless trade.
Luckily, as a wordplay meme to begin with, it’s wide open to puns.
And now, about two years after stonks officially arrived on the scene and a few months after it sharply increased in market value, stonks has transcended its original form and knows no bounds so long as a 14-year-old will find it funny.
What do you mean you don’t understand?
3. How simple is the meme’s premise?
The simpler the better, really. Truly successful meme formats don’t have a convoluted backstory. They have a set-up and a pay-off. They communicate whatever it is they’re trying to communicate in one or two sentences and with an image that is easily deciphered (or not deciphered at all, but only if that’s the point).
The simpler the premise, the easier it is to pull this off in multiple iterations, which brings us back to point number 2.
Shrek memes, where you insert Shrek and it’s funny: simple
Whatever this meme is, where whatever is going on happens: not simple
4. How funny do you think the meme is?
There are tons of meme formats with massive followings that I absolutely hate, and that’s a good thing. You can’t force funny. Like you know when someone sends you something they clearly found hilarious but you’re just like “nah” and have to pretend it’s funny but also you don’t want to pretend too hard because you don’t necessarily want to encourage their behavior?
Don’t feel pressured to make memes you don’t believe in.
If you don’t find it funny, there’s literally zero value to you when playing the market. And for a meme format to be valuable to an individual, one must understand its premise at the core to best know how and when to follow or break the format.
Do you really want to be the person bringing snow skis to the lake because when they said “bring your water skis” you assumed they meant “bring your frozen-water skis”? No, no you don’t.
All right, lesson over.
