A Post on Memes

Meme (pronounced meem) is an idea, style or behavior that spreads from person to person within a culture.  Of course, with the Internet, memes can spread even more rapidly and the term itself is now used for image macros that are disseminated on sites like Reddit and 4Chan.  But the term "meme" can be used for so much more than that.  You know "Obamacare"?  That's a meme.  The truth is that something doesn't even need to be true to become a meme.

A couple of years ago now I started the meme of "trolling" at MT forums.  Of course people trolled for several years before I even got there, but the idea of "trolling" was new to the forums.  I started saying "problem", "u mad" and "u jelly".  People got mad.  But others saw "problem" and joined in.  Specifically it gave a lot of identity to a certain troll that was later banned from the board.  Nobody called Tonavi a troll until I brought trolling to the board but he never really changed.  As time went on, more things that weren't even trolling started to be called trolling.  Stuff like nonsense posting and threadbombing.  These aren't trolling at all, but since the meme of trolling was there, people focused their rage against "trolls", namely me.  That was proliferation of a meme.  Memes spread through the board all the time.  The LF-A?  A meme.  Mustang is better?  A meme.  Ridgeline?  A meme.  Basically memes show how the ideas or actions of a single person can make a huge impact through a culture.  I attached the word "problem" to a bunch of my on-topic posts and now the culture of Motor Trend Forums is forever altered by the force of "trolling".  And of course, eggs.  Eggs itself is an interesting case study because the person who introduced "eggs" (Westy) didn't actually spread the meme, Topheezy and myself did through a game we played against each other when we wanted to change up our own use of a dead meme called "The Game".  We made every single post in a day have the word "eggs" in it and eventually people got mad about eggs so we kept doing it.

Of course, memes come and go.  I think the whole "Ridgeline" thing is pretty stupid honestly because it was a meme that was before my time and it has passed since the Ridgeline isn't relevant anymore.  Heck, even "Mustang is Better" is irrelevant anymore.  This is a concept known as a "dead meme".  Of course, fans of the dead meme will still attempt to revive it from time to time and people will reminice about how funny the meme was and participate in it for a little bit, but the spark dies quickly because you can only zombify a meme for so long before it goes away again.  So this brings forth the idea that memes have a lifespan.  And I've noted that trolling itself is a meme.  Will "trolling" become a dead meme someday?  Definitely.  People will still post to try and make each other mad, but it will be given a different name.  The joke will get old, the trolls will get bored and people will move on.  But the import fans on the board can't manage to post anything but troll threads so there will always be mad.  But life goes on. 

In the wider Internet, one can see how fast a meme can come and go.  I visit the site quickmeme.com on a regular basis and there are two things that stand out to me: 1) mostly every meme these days is unfunny and 2) memes die fast these days.  All the jokes have been played out by memes that were actually funny.  So then that creates another question, are Internet memes themselves going to pass on?  A scary thought, but not really.  Because the funny memes like Yo Dawg, Insanity Wolf, and Troll Science will always still be out there.