A look at the biggest lulz in town: internet memes
“Imma let you finish” Kanye’s outburst at the VMA Awards – started something big: a meme.
Sure, you get your lulz – but where’d it all come from? I jumped on the chance to speak to Heather Snodgrass, Mark Pollard and Julian Cole about what they thought. There’s already the domain and social collaboration site: I’mma Let You Finish – in fact, Mashable just produce the Top 10 I’mma Let You Finish list.
Between them, these two pick up more memes than anyone else I’ve seen. Previously I’ve talked about a few more of my favourites including LolCats, Fuck Yeah Sharks and of course, Charlie The Unicorn. Make sure you don’t miss out on the Internet Meme Guide or the Internet Meme Database either.
So how did this begin? And where will it end? JC and Heather let me know:
Seriously, WTF did the word meme come from? and what does it even meme. i mean, mean?
Heather:
I personally like to think it came from the way Beaker on Sesame Street communicates. The poor bastard is always so confused and lost and you don’t know why it’s funny, it just is.
In actuality, though, it’s a Greek-derived term adopted by Richard Dawkins in ‘The Selfish Gene’ to describe the role of evolution on the transfer of cultural information and ideas between people. I’m going to stick to my Beaker theory, though. I find it a lot more romantic and doesn’t make my brain hurt when I think about it.
Kanye: did he know what he was about to do? Positive or negative?
Julian:
I do not think that he knew he was making a meme. I think that it is probably not helping him out either because people are bringing up the idea on and on
I actually do not think that the kanye meme will last very long, I think it doesnt not have the longevity of previous memes like lolcats
Heather:
Kanye is, historically, an attention whore. He bitched about Justice’s video beating his at the 2007 European VMAs, and I think he probably knew to a certain extent that what he did was going to steal the ‘spotlight’ so to speak.
What he didn’t count on was how darling Taylor Swift is. The music industry knows this — she’s a sweet young girl from Pennsylvania, who hasn’t ended up in rehab and seems fairly well-adjusted for someone who’s been exposed to as much as she has at her age. If you aren’t on Team Taylor, you too, in Obama’s OTR words, are a jackass.
Maybe, had Britney Spears had a video good enough to beat out Beyonce (hahaha!) and he’d done the same thing, she’d have probably pulled out an umbrella out of her bedazzled one-size-too-small unitard and beaten his stupid ant-tracked head to a pulp. Then we would have ended up with a celebrity death-match sort of meme. It was always going to happen, unless someone put a muzzle on him. Which would have ended up as a meme, etc etc.
Mark:
I don’t think so. Probably a cocktail of pre-event anxiety, a huge centre-stage ego, a brain explosion, maybe a reaction to some people thinking he’s been tamed by The Man, and whatever he was on at the time… that oxygen stuff.
Memes: why do we love them so much? Does everyone love them? or are they just some silly thing us internet obsessed do?
Julian:
We love online memes because eveyerone can get involved. in alot of cases you just need paint skills and you can get involved
Heather:
In the past, there’d be a couple of internet nuts sitting at the dinner table with their friends who were, say, bankers and solicitors. One internet savvy kid would be laughing their ass off because another one of their kind had quoted the USPS “Put yourself in my shoes” meme, and the rest of the table would be asking themselves why they kept invite these assholes out for dinner, the ones who’d continually quote esoteric shit from the internet that doesn’t even make sense. To those of us who worked on the internet, the ultimate appeal was the inside joke.
Now, everyone is on the internet. There are bankers who spend more time on the internet than people who work on the internet do. People get fired for updating their Facebook status at ‘inappropriate’ times. There are journalists write articles based solely on quotes passively sourced from Twitter, for God’s sake — and for those reasons I’d say that memes have finally gone mainstream and are well on the way to jumping the shark.
What’s been your favourite all time meme?
Julian:
lol cats cause it was the first big one and it has had the legs to keep going on for a long time. But I also think that Keyboard Cat has to be one of my favourite
Heather
Such a tough one — I could watch the ‘Hilter/Downfall’ meme for hours, given half the chance. Demotivational posters are always uplifting when you’re having a bad day or at the hands of an incompetent superior. “Emails from an Asshole” is great value and so is “Fuck Yeah Sharks!”, but I think my all-time favourite is that terribly hilarious “Eyebrows Are Important” email that grows exponentially every time I see it.
What’s the importance of memes on the internet today? Are they significant at all?
Heather:
I think it’s three fold:
- it gives people with the inability to express themselves the chance to do so in a constructive, creative way,
- we can finally understand how cats communicate,
- it makes the lives of cubicle monkeys everywhere just a little bit brighter.
Julian:
They make some people a shit load of moula, Ben Huh (google him) has been able to monetize memes.
they are significant cause they can act as social objects which can help strengthen relationship between two individuals
Mark:
Yes, what’s great about memes is that they are as significant as the people of the internet make them. They have a life of their own. Everybody wants to make one; some want to be one. The concept of a ‘meme’ deserves its own song.
As for me? I love the way memes can join people and bring them together for a few laughs. It’s clever and creative and it has an amazing snow ball affect on the humour itself.
