Beyond Laughter: Unpacking the Subtle Messages in Memes

 

Reading through some of your daily memes is something you do every day, and it's all extremely entertaining. So, hold off until these pixels allow you to see more than is reasonable. As an online stand-up comic, memes from wild visual culture also serve as covert social critique agents.

Like these adorable, fuzzy philosophers, memes make people giggle while they declare important truths. They seem to be the silent prophets of wisdom, peeping into our minds while we giggle over cat videos. Memes are the rebels of the visual scene that resemble dressed-up jokes carrying secret message backpacks (Phillips, 2019).

Screens are the canvas of our work in the meme age. These secretly romantic memes are paired with our visual culture and serve as "love notes" between them. Therefore, the next time you laugh at a meme, keep in mind that its astute observation may be changing the very essence of existence.

 

References

Phillips, W. (2019). It wasn’t just the trolls: Early internet culture, “fun,” and the fires of exclusionary laughter. Social Media+ Society, 5(3), 2056305119849493.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2056305121988932