Meme Culture

Netizens have found a new way to express their feelings. All around the world, these seemingly hilarious graphic comics have popped up everywhere, from social networking sites to blogs, forums and game chats, people have used them to express their opinion on something that happens or perhaps to show what they think in a certain situation that many people go through. These sketches of ‘peoples’ expressions are pictured to extremes, such that the sketch, better known as a meme, is comical, and can thus be used to mock or to create laughter out of a certain situation. In fact, these memes are so popular that there are even websites which features them, and also allows people to share their memes with others, such as the well known 9GAG.com. So, with their immense popularity and funny factor, are memes all that good? These are my thoughts:

Advantages of memes:

Memes can be a very good way to laugh, or to express ones’ opinion, without any direct slandering of another person. It can be a good avenue to let out ones’ frustrations, as under a shade of anonymousity and with no mention of names, one can express what they truly feel without having to let the other person know which might bear consequences.

Also, viewing memes for the fun of it can be a form of entertainment, and such a pastime is definitely healthier than vices like smoking. People creating memes and viewing them is definitely not a negative thing so long as certain lines are not crossed.

Dark side of memes:

While memes can be fun to create or look at, their level of politeness is greatly questionable. Most memes expressions would in reality be considered as rude or disrespectful, and thus memes cannot and should not be created when the meme addresses something in respect to a senior or to someone important. People however, have constantly crossed this line and used memes to make fun of people of importance, such as government officials or their bosses.

Memes are meant to be a sort of comic figure, and one should not use it to describe or express an opinion about a situation of deep gravity, or where there is a lot of feeling involved, such as the aftermath of a disaster. However, because the creator of memes are not at the receiving end of the situation, some people create memes which indirectly insult someone or make fun of another person’s negative situation. Such memes have surfaced on popular meme sites like 9GAG.com, and while they have been moderated, it is morally incorrect to even create such memes.

Memes can be made to be very insulting and can embarrass another person by making fun of their appearances  situation or personality traits. This form of memes is often abused by cyber bullies and the so called “keyboard warriors”, who insult and scold others on Internet under the shade of anonymousity  In this case, memes have been utilised as a sort of weapon for verbal abuse and slandering, definitely not something that should be present.

So are memes really good or bad? In the end, it all boils down to how they are used and who creates them.