Hey Girl, You Should Totally Read This Story…

Natasha Cipriani
RTA902 (Social Media)
3 min readJan 30, 2017

Q: Reverse-engineer a meme of your choice. Why & how did it go viral?

Ryan Gosling and funny pick up lines.. what more could a girl want? The Hey Girl Meme is a simple yet compelling meme that has been shared and re-created hundreds of times. The meme was created in 2008 by Douglas Reinhardt for a single topic Tumblr post. His idea was to simply post pick up lines alongside images of the attractive Ryan Gosling. Single topic refers to online publications which are updated with theme specific media content, geared toward facilitating mass replication through providing custom macro generators and user-generated content. The meme gained global attraction and solidified its meme status when Gosling himself was asked to read a few of the created memes aloud during an MTV interview.

Years later, the meme has grown to include other content and serve different purposes. Most prominently the images of Gosling are still paired with text that attracts women to include the well known pick up lines, but also words of encouragement (the sole reason I can get through exam season).

The meme has also been re-created to address larger topics such as feminism, as seen with the Feminist Ryan Gosling Meme derivative. The meme was created by a Gender Studies student named Danielle, who created the memes initially as private study method to remember theories learned in class. She used the Hey Girl template as a starting point for her own memes, and now has created dozens of her own feminist Gosling memes. It is interesting to note that she did not choose Gosling for her posts because she knew he was a feminist (there is very little evidence to support whether or not he is), but rather chose him as she thought it would be funny to have a white male depict feminism.

While the original Hey Girl Meme had little thought behind it, it is interesting to see how this meme grew from a silly shareable post to something with a much deeper meaning. Further, it can be said that memes are a simple and effective way of affecting a consumer’s opinion as they can be used as persuasive tools, as seen with Feminist Ryan Gosling.

For example, a study done by the University of Saskatchewan showed that men are more likely to believe in feminist statements when they are paired with an image of Gosling. Evidence showed that it was because men admire Gosling and see him as a ‘cool’ guy that their own beliefs were enhanced with thinking that Gosling himself believes in the statements.

Therefore, memes should not be quickly dismissed as random pop culture but rather analyzed to identify if they are potentially affecting a consumer’s beliefs and opinions. Emotion, humour, and creativity, just a few elements of the Hey Girl and Feminist Ryan Gosling Memes, are key factors that attract consumers and have a strong affect on one’s desire to engage with the content and believe it (as with post truth discussed in Week 1). Thus, while memes are considered an art, not a science, they have the potential to psychologically affect a consumer, and should be analyzed further as to why a meme becomes a meme to understand more about society.

References:

http://www.avclub.com/article/ryan-gosling-memes-make-men-more-feminist-study-sh-214522

http://feministryangosling.tumblr.com

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/ryan-gosling

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