To Kill a Meme
How “Meme Review” Accelerates Inevitable Meme Death
Let’s start this essay off right with a little 👏👏, shall we?
The above video is a compilation of excerpts from PewDiePie’s Meme Review, a YouTube series in which the former gaming YouTuber quite literally reviews the latest memes and ranks them out of ten.
What’s interesting about this series — besides the entertainment face value, or the strange blend of controversy and hype surrounding the man behind it all — is its startling tenacity. It has managed to stay alive at a time when meme lifetimes are decreasing to the point where they live and die as quickly as we blink, when other meme shows have fallen, when the sheer absurdity of it seems too loosely-defined.
That’s a lot of information to dump right away, but hey, that’s what I do best! I also deconstruct things, and this seems like a nice place to start doing just that. So, in the immortal words of Philip DeFranco…
Despite feeling like, well, kind of a mess, Meme Review actually follows a very strict format. First, we get the Opening, usually consisting of PewDiePie clapping over and over and saying (or screaming) “Meme Review.” This is followed by the show’s description — “YouTube’s favorite show” — and then we jump right into the memes. During the Meme Discussion, a meme is introduced and occasionally explained for meaning.
Now it’s Example Time! Actual samples of the meme are either read out loud or clips of it are shown. The meme is then Rated out of 10, though the rating system isn’t as tightly-defined as the rest of the show. Memes have been given a “they did surgery on a grape/10”, “10–10-zero”, and “21 meme”, among others that can be found here.
Every once in a blue moon, at the end of a video, we get Bonus Meme, where PewDiePie covers an additional meme to exaggerated hype. (This eventually generated real hype for Bonus Meme, thereby making it its own meme.)
Four times now, instead of having Bonus Meme or just ending the video, PewDiePie has invited guests to “Host” Meme Review. This usually consists of the guests reviewing memes that PewDiePie has chosen for them in much the same way PewDiePie does.
The hosts haven’t just been anyone who likes memes, though — guest stars have included Ben Shapiro, Justin Roiland, Elon Musk, and Mr. Beast. The most recent star was Blue Shirt Kid, who became a meme in another of PewDiePie’s videos.
Besides this typical structure, the videos also follow a consistent style in terms of visual aesthetics and PewDiePie’s personality. There’s always a sparkly “Wow!” to be found somewhere; PewDiePie’s editor, Brad, is called out for something or hops in with a quick message; and PewDiePie yells a lot or climbs into his cabinet. All in all, pretty normal stuff.
But what continues to startle me about this show is its popularity. Each video has received anywhere from 2 million to 22 million views, though much of that might be due to PewDiePie’s wildly-high subscriber count or the hype around PewDiePie vs. T-Series. Still, though, the show itself has been memed to oblivion and has generated a fanbase.
Maybe all this hype is because the show stays pretty current, but other meme shows that have had their time to shine have eventually fallen to their doom. Take a glance at THATISTHEPLAN, the defunct meme channel run by now-music reviewer Anthony Fantano. It was pretty popular, but then the channel’s videos were all suddenly removed after demonetization just wouldn’t stop:
Then there’s Behind the Meme, another relatively-popular meme show that was surrounded by its own controversies. It shone for a while, but then it started to receive wide backlash from the meme community for “degrading” memes and “normifying” them. Now, it seems like it’s all gone, what with the recent videos on the channel containing nothing related to memes at all.
But despite the individual controversies surrounding these two other meme shows, Meme Review continues to stick around and grow — even with PewDiePie’s own controversy-ridden past. What is it about this series that suits the meme culture of today? What is PewDiePie, well, doing right?
This isn’t to say that there aren’t loads of other meme shows, but honestly, we’d be here all day if I went through them one by one. The Internet is vast and memes are as varied as they come, so of course shows about them would be, too. Also, three is a nice, round number and I got tired. There, I said it. I can’t look at memes all day.
This also isn’t intended to force any of you to like PewDiePie. I’m not advocating for Meme Review in the sense that you all should go out and watch Meme Review or any of PewDiePie’s content right now. I know about his controversies, as I’ve mentioned before, and even besides that, I know his content doesn’t appeal to everyone.
What I am instead trying to do is deconstruct the objective popularity behind his show: the views are high, the likes are up there, and the community is widespread. Those are facts that I want to find the reason behind, and I think that reason lies all in the structure and the timing. PewDiePie is nothing if not good at staying on top of trends, whether it be gaming in his early days or memes now.
So pray tell, oh wise Meme Essay Writer. What constitutes a “win” for Meme Review?
It’s all down to the culture. Say what you will about memes (though if you’d like to know whether I think memes are culturally important, you might want to read this), but there’s certainly a strong community around them. One that oftentimes — according to The Right Opinion, a commentary YouTuber — has a strict, exclusionary definition, particularly against so-called “normies.”
Behind the Meme, with its noble intentions to educate people unfamiliar with memes, was essentially allowing normies in the gates. In the words of The Right Opinion, “Behind the Meme [ran] counterintuitively to [meme] cultural fundamentals.”
Meme Review, on the other hand, never states an intention to “educate” or to invite those supposed “outsiders” in. Instead, it tailors to those already deeply-involved in meme culture. It’s an insider talking to other insiders, while not explicitly excluding outsiders.
Though I live and breathe memes, I’m not actually a fan of this exclusionist aspect of the culture. We’ve all been “normies” at one time or another, and memes are really supposed to be fun at their core. Being exclusionist about them isn’t really all that fun. But that’s the culture that’s in place, and Meme Review kind of serves it.
Pacing is another key aspect that separates Meme Review from the competition. Behind the Meme, while making shorter videos, usually around 5 minutes, focuses on one meme at a time. THATISTHEPLAN, while appealing more to the insider meme audience, falls into this shorter format too, where the focus of each video is on one particular current meme.
Meme Review instead focuses on multiple memes, usually around three or four per video, that kicks the pacing up a notch. Despite having longer, 10-20 minute videos, PewDiePie moves much more quickly and covers multiple different meme mediums, so to speak, based on images or text or videos. That parallels meme culture itself, what with how quickly memes live and die now.
And isn’t it interesting that the Meme Lifespan™ is getting shorter and shorter? Other meme scholars before me have done the good work and sorted out some reasons why, but I propose another possible cause: the way we reflect on memes themselves, the ways in which we look back on our own culture in the moment, shortens the lifespan of those cultural pieces as well.
It’s a joke in the Meme Review community that PewDiePie’s signature two claps after every meme is reviewed “kills” them. This is largely a running gag, but maybe — maybe — it does kill them. After all, most of the memes that PewDiePie covers quickly fall out of fashion afterward, right?
I’m not giving credit entirely to PewDiePie, though — one man can’t kill all the memes alone. (But if he can, I stand corrected and respect his Meme Destruction Power.) Memes are a culture, and the culture itself can’t exist without hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people perpetuating it.
So maybe PewDiePie has good timing. Maybe he just knows when memes are about to die. But each video seems to come out when a meme is just starting to gain traction, or right when it’s hit widespread awareness. Why would they die so quickly afterward? Remember when memes used to stick around for months on end, even years?
Now I can barely keep up with them all. I was going to throw in so many fun meme references into this essay, but by the time I publish this only a few short weeks later, it’ll be dated and awful, and I can’t have that. I have to appear hip. I can’t let the Kids These Days lose their trust in me.
I think the answer to our Big Meme Death Question lies in oversaturation. Memes have been called the “inside jokes” of the Internet, little bites of humor that only those “in the know” will get and laugh at.
But jokes have a lifespan, too. How many chicken-crossing-the-road jokes have you heard over the years? Far, far too many. And there was a point when they stopped being funny — a point where the laughter didn’t come and you just rolled your eyes or gave a little exhale out of your nose.
Memes have that breaking point, too. And Meme Review perpetuates that by making the memes, well, killable. In every video, PewDiePie overuses the meme to the point of absurdity. He reads out just too many memes, or shows just too many clips, and suddenly it stops being funny. Maybe the first few times it maintains its spark, but, eventually, it’s oversaturated. Overused. Overblown.
And then the two claps come and the meme dies. By overusing the memes, PewDiePie is able to point out how silly a meme is and how ridiculous it is to see it repeated everywhere online. He uses its own absurdity to make it absurd to his audience, and that makes it easy to review and wipe off the map.
Then his audience, just as sick of the meme as him, moves on. (Or they overuse it in the PewdiepieSubmissions subreddit and then they move on. It’s a process.)
Again, I’m not giving full credit to the Swedish YouTuber here for oversaturating all memes. But shows like this, that reveal to us just how ridiculous memes are, contribute to the quick succession of memes we have now. They’re a sort of microcosm for the whole culture: we get obsessed with a meme, spread it around everywhere as quickly as possible in order to seem hip and with the times, and then move on when it gets too saturated.
Behind the Meme failed partially because it hopped in on old memes that were already saturated and buried in the ground, or contributed to the oversaturation of current memes without embracing its inevitable demise. It didn’t intentionally kill memes. THATISTHEPLAN was more on top of meme culture, but it didn’t intentionally kill memes, either.
A recognition of the rapid-fire culture we’ve built for ourselves is what brings viewers back to Meme Review. It stays on top of the current trends while cutting them down and being aware of that inevitable fallout. It’s a silly show that has deeper undercurrents of cultural awareness, and combined with relatively fresh commentary, you’ve got yourself a piping-hot, popular series.
But I can still hear you out there, you disbelievers in meme culture. “What’s the point? You said yourself that memes are silly and ridiculous! Why should I care?”
Hoo boy, you knew this was coming. I mean, I’m not going to tell you to start sinking into the depths of meme culture and then write too-long essays about them when you could be doing literally anything else. I’m also kind of killing memes by writing this in the first place (and sorry, Meme Review, if I contribute to your death).
I know memes are dumb. That’s kind of why I love them in the first place — they manage to remain silly while still being culturally-relevant to some extent. But it seems to me that to understand memes is to understand what we cared about at one point in time. What is humor if not a reflection of the times? What are memes if not something we once found joy in?
And what is Meme Review if not a reflection on ourselves? What if to understand meme shows is to understand how we talked about memes? To understand how we reflected on our own culture as it was happening?
I’ve heard a lot of my friends joke that someday, scholars will be closely examining memes the same way we look at any piece of cultural history. And I have to agree, as funny as that sounds — someday, we will be looking back at them with a degree of detached indifference.
But reflecting on them now as they’re happening is just as important. We live in a swiftly-moving culture, and to reflect, if only for ten or twenty minutes, is to breathe and try to understand why we do what we do as we do it.
Or I could just leave it be and let you memers do what you do best. I don’t know.
All I know is that, for a period of time, we cared about silly gifs, or dumb edits, or amusing blocks of text. And we have a choice: to kill them and let them stay dead, or to care about that care.
I give this meme essay a 4.5™ out of 10. 👏👏
