“An ‘Internet meme’ is a form or concept that spreads via the Web, whether through email forwarding, viral videos or blogs.… Although they may recede from view, memes never fully cease to exist, surviving … in the ever-expanding network of servers that make up the Internet. In the realm of digital memory, what seems to have disappeared may simply be lying dormant in the recesses of a hard drive.” (Copeland, 22)
Internet memes come in many different genres. Like the quotation says, they can be email forwards, videos, blogs, and other things. These days, photo memes are everywhere. This is partially because they are so easy to make and distribute.
For example, I downloaded a meme creator onto my phone and made a meme in about 10 minutes. This meme is one of the “first world problem” memes. I used a situation that happened to one of our classmates… and she agreed to model for the picture.
Furthermore, to emphasize just how quick and easy memes are to use and how important it is to teach students to use and create memes carefully, here is a little story. For those of you who are familiar with meme characters, you may know that there is one meme character named “bad luck Brian.” Brian is a normal kid from a high school who happened to have an awkward school photo taken. One of his classmates got ahold of his photo and created an internet meme out of it. Brian never agreed to be in a meme, but now his face is known by millions of people and there is no way for him to change that. Here is one of the memes about him:
Actually, there are many meme characters already in use. Here is a photo of some of them… it is inviting you to use the characters to create your own memes.
And here is a video of where some of these faces came from:
Where did the Meme characters come from?
If you are interested in creating memes for possible classroom use (or even to teach children appropriate use of memes) here is a website you could use:
http://memegenerator.net/Meme-Creator
And the iphone app I used to create Melissa’s “first world problem” meme is called “just meme it”
-Katie
………………………………
COPELAND, C. (2011). MUTATING MEMES. Afterimage, 39(3), 22-23
Funnyjunk contributor: TexasChainsawDisco (2011). Meme Faces. Funnyjunk. http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/1698834/Meme/
Mobil contributor (2012). Bad luck Brian. Mobilbeta. http://memegenerator.net/Meme-Creator
Youtube contributor: Duffbeer96x (2012). The origins of meme. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z07TAM5Cc3A
1 response so far ↓
faran // Dec 5th 2012 at 12:51 pm
I found your post really interesting. It seems strange to me that English teachers tend to neglect the many different forms that students are already not only engaged in but also fluent with. This is my own failing too, as I did not think of memes before reading your post.
The skills that one must develop when creating a meme are parallel to those an English teacher hopes to cultivate in students. The ability to condense a message or a sentiment in only a few words, to find a visual representation that best compliment this message or sentiment, these two abilities require a number of useful skills.
But how is it that students are so fluent at such a task but they seem not to be capable when presented with a similar problem in class. This is a thought that has been plaguing me for the past while.
I judged the students of one of my classrooms based on a few experiences I had with them during my short practicum. I felt that the class was incapable in many ways. I thought that the material that they will be covering should be extremely simplified so that they can engage with it with more ease. Yet I had to stop myself. These grade 9 students have a lot of capacity. I could see how eloquent they are when they speak of things that they enjoy. I know that they are active on the net and that they take photos on instagram and put clever and intriguing tittles for each.
After all, how much excitement can a fill-in hand out induce, let alone its likeliness to have the creative juices flowing. I think our challenge as teachers is to understand the generation that we are teaching, recognize their likes and dislikes, their abilities and disabilities, and to respond to these. Why can’t we teach a unit on creating memes.
Shakespeare memes? I am even excited.
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