The Rise of Memes and the gradual downfall of youth.
The war of attention.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are in a meme?
The currency of the social world is influence. Influence being our ability to drive others to take action and a powerful tool to drive action is a meme.
To me memes have brought a huge revolution to this country. The way we live, look towards it and how we react to it which has helped us upto that extent , that we can’t even figure out how fucked we are.
The social damage is clearly obvious. Social media has invaded our lives and impact our routines so significantly, for example in the case of productivity is especially corrosive to focus and deep work, and let’s not forget the recently and enormous negative impact on democracy as well.
I believe that the way we consume information has literally changed the kind of people we are.
How it all started
As much as the Internet has been a tool for spreading serious information and the gravity of the world, it has also allowed for people to express their need for non-seriousness.
Memes mock current events, pop culture, and the seriousness of the world. And this is something that a lot of people, especially young people, need.
We’re tired that the world is so heavy, so serious. We’re tired of the expectations of society, the stress of school or work. And then there’s this kind of desire to be accepted. Memes fit quite nicely into all of that. They fit our common need, and we validate each other because of it.
I’m not saying our lives are harder than any other generation,
but this is how we deal with it: using the Internet.
What are Memes?
Memes have become popular because of they are easy formats to use, and heavy levels of irony are deemed quite desirable. When people get tired of being serious, they can make fun of something. An image on the Internet, as opposed to actual real-life people. And this is a need that a lot of people have.
It is, in fact, a trending culture nowadays where at times your friendship is measured with the number of memes you tag your friends in. Most obviously memes were created by some random lazy procrastinator sitting at his desk, impeccably good at jokes, trying to make fun of one of his friends and unknowingly created an internet sensation that now is a medium to find happiness in small things and of course make fun of certain things.
The Problem
The problem arises when the so called harmless culture of memes turns into an ugly game of racism and body shaming majorly. The hidden reality of these jokes comes in the forefront when they start hurting the mass’ sentiments. A random picture of a black person, someone fat or really skinny or even a transgender is shared among the various social media platforms without any permission with a caption of ‘tag a specific person you want to them to marry’ and other things and we the social media freaks go on sharing and liking, tagging these photos and thus encouraging such unseemly content.
These posts are pathetic and disturbing as well. The inappropriate message these posts give out to the public is totally neglected.
If you think tagging your friends in such memes makes you look cool, let me tell you, IT IS NOT COOL. You just make a fool out of yourself on the internet. So, please be a little kinder, people.
How it impacted us.
What’s good for capturing human attention is often bad for humans
Our feeds can make us angry for a reason.
Imagine that you’re walking down the street, and you hear a fight break out. It’s loud and aggressive, and people are yelling about something. You’ll likely stop momentarily to see what’s going on — it’s in your nature.
If you personally know one of the people fighting, you will probably immediately pick a side — you might even get involved. At minimum, you will pay attention.
This is what social media does to us regularly: it encourages us to observe conflicts and pick sides on topics about which we would otherwise have few opinions.
At its core, it is an opinion-serving machine. And on social media, not all opinions are served equally.
What did we get from it.
We all felt so damn proud to shout #PyarEkDhokaHai didn’t we ?
Know one no knows a shit about the Syria War but just to show-off #PrayForSyria
Whenever a rape case or attacks or scandals happens we just put out a story to make people believe we care and know about things.
Ask people to take stand over increasing rape cases , injustice, corruption from a never ending list issues, we are not free enough for it. Its not really our problem, the goverment isn’t doing much about, the system is like this only and the bitching continues.
But tell people that we need to shout #PyarEkDhokaHai , #AntiNational , #JNU or #HinduMuslim and people are all ready to leave their work to change the world.
5k people gathered at a ground shouting out #PyarEkDhokaHai and what not.(Like seriously ?)
More than millions of stories and updates posted just to maintain our #SocialStatusQuo.
This is a huge issue.
It’s hard to overstate how important and influential these platforms are to society at this moment in time. Some of the biggest, most significant social changes in recent years have come from activism catalyzed by moral outrage shared through social media. Many of these cultural and political movements would not have been possible without them.
But this is the critical problem: social media already suppresses our voices.
The way we are currently served content is not a neutral, unbiased process.
The world feels more dangerous. Our streets seem less safe. The assault on our values is constant. The threats feel real.
The enemy is out there — just check your feed.
The ball is in your court.
Young people are shaping the world’s largest democracy(yea, I’m talking abt us only), where 40 percent of the population is under age 35 and a million people turn 18 every month.As this population grows up, it will significantly reshape India and the world politically, economically and environmentally.
The dreams are so big, the hopes are so high.
But are we really on that track?
Are we doing enough to justify those statements?
The way information is being consumed and how is affecting the current political landscape is yet to be determined, but we are already facing the consequences of an unregulated industry. “Everyone who has scrolled through Facebook knows how, instead of imparting wisdom, the system dishes out compulsive stuff that tends to reinforce people’s biases”
Its not time to stop consuming but to consume the right one.
If you found this helpful, consider sharing it with a friend living across the ideological divide and a clap, is always, appreciable.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
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