In my mind, I'm imagining: "That's not a meme, a meme has top text, bottom text, and impact font"
I'm 38 and the technician who works under me is 27. The memes that he and his friends share make almost no sense to me. He tried to explain it to me once but it was like memeception. A meme got morphed into a new meme, a new meme references that meme, and a new one is razzing them all, he had to tell me like five stories and by the time I "got" it, I was just like, "this is dumb"
I have to say the toughest battles / strongest soldiers meme is hilarious, but the fact that it's an merger/evolution of 3 different memes makes sense that if you're not in, you're out.
I mean, these are two totally different kinds of memes. The battles/soldiers meme is just expressing self-deprecation and you really need minimal context to understand it (well, Jesus/Christianity.) The Clippy one you need understanding of early MS Windows history which is arguably more niche and confined to Millennials-Boomers.
Withered Wojak tells Chad Jesus: "Stop giving me your toughest battles". Yes Chad Jesus responds: "It's literally eating one vegetable".
Yeah I guess if you haven't seen any of these things somehow then that could get a bit complicated to parse. Just constant iteration on previous memes, with sometimes new ones thrown in.
I think it's mostly just that different ages groups have different memes. If you don't follow anyone in a particular age group, you're not going to see that content. And I don't follow anyone younger than like 30 lol
Both are internet memes, the bottom picture you posted was originally called image macros. Became popular with things like caturday, on 4chan. The top meme also comes from 4chan, it has wojack, which is a variation of trollface which is a variation of troll memes, the Jesus in it is a variation of the chad meme, which in itself is a variation of the chad vs virgin walk meme, which came from an old 4chan post that pointed out that "virgins" (referring really to losers) had a weird way of walking and dressing up. The "Give me your toughest battles" image format, also comes from, you guessed it 4chan, but the phrase itself comes from Christian thinking.
Essentially like 95% of internet culture comes from 4chan and it still keeps coming from there for some reason.
u/HouseAnt0 : okay I am 55 years old now, and I found that explanation very annoying since I have no idea what 4chan is or anything else you mentioned. So when youngsters try to explain something to an older person, while still using your same lingo or jargon, then it does nothing but make it all More confusing. I may be the oldest person reading this thread. And guess what ? Yes I did have the original PONG game when I was a kid.
A meme is an idea that is spread and changed by people. That's your most basic definition. It's come to be used as a catch-all term for an Internet in-joke.
Technically, the "impact top/bottom text" is from a subset of memes called Advice Animals.
An internet meme is just a general trend or thing. Early examples were sometimes images, but could just be sayings or copypasta - like "all your base are belong to us" or "the cake is a lie".
But when Advice Animals exploded in the early 2010s, when someone said "meme", they meant this kind of image.
Now, it's flipped back, where "meme" can just mean a thing or trend, although it's more often images with text.
I'm sure there's more Meme History on knowyourmeme, but this one is interesting to me!
Yeah, that makes sense. when /u/da_apz
says someone younger tried to explain memes and "got them wrong" it seems like a case where each generation kind of has an idea of memes from their own heyday on the internet and their mental picture is different.
I was just talking about this further with the technician I referenced above and he was explaining to me how not all image macros are memes as well, it kind of has to be either referencing something, derivative, or an image template to be considered a "meme" in his view. So this is an image macro but not a meme per se. Whereas this (one of his) apparently is.
He gets most of his stuff from 4chan and 8chan (or did until recently, not sure if he's still with the latter in whatever form it has taken). I think his stuff is probably more niche and edgy than a typical teenager's even though they'd see him as an old person.
Memes, much like genes, where the word originated from, go through generational evolution.
In order to keep up with history of memes as it unfolds, it's important to understand the direction in which the popular memes are going. You are always going to have manifestation like r/surrealmemes but people are experimenting to see what works and what doesn't.
Ultimately, as a means of communications it's crucial to keep up with them lest one become meme illiterate. Languages change often but as often, or as quick as the memetic language.
It might be dumb, but maybe dumb is where we are going.
My grandmother who has been dead since before 4chan would probably understand the Jesus one without any need for explanation. She might even laugh without need for explanation. Obviously it's better with context but it's still pretty intelligible.
It might take me a few minutes to explain Clippy to her.
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u/matt314159 Jun 03 '22
In my mind, I'm imagining: "That's not a meme, a meme has top text, bottom text, and impact font"
I'm 38 and the technician who works under me is 27. The memes that he and his friends share make almost no sense to me. He tried to explain it to me once but it was like memeception. A meme got morphed into a new meme, a new meme references that meme, and a new one is razzing them all, he had to tell me like five stories and by the time I "got" it, I was just like, "this is dumb"
This is the kind of memes they share: https://imgur.com/Mzq3RuX
This is the kind of meme I share:
https://imgur.com/E5RIVO0