Since the beginning of this year, I have been keeping track of the latest memes cropping up on a near-daily basis.
Many have asked me why I do this, often while looking over my shoulder at the sticky note on my computer, judgement flashing across their faces. I smirk. I know they think less of me.
Perhaps it is odd, and I honestly never know how to respond when someone asks why, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I think I finally have an answer.
Over the past few years, I have grown more and more active on social media, and I have discovered each has a different purpose. Facebook is for middle-aged wine moms. Twitter is for politicians and people who yell. Instagram is for models, Tumblr is for loners, and Snapchat is for nudes. (I joke. I do think Snapchat is mostly pointless, but I have a delightful cousin groupchat on that platform.) The two that have grown most in the birth of memes are Twitter and Tumblr, and both have tremendously shaped the culture of our generation’s sense of humor.
In order to analyze the current meme culture, we must start with definitions. The Oxford Dictionary defines a meme as “an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means,” or “an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.”
While some may see the second definition to be more prevalent to our current society, I would argue that the first covers the whole concept of inside jokes held within a generation. One of the very best examples of today’s meme culture was found during the 2018 Olympics.
Red Girard is seventeen years old and has already won a Gold medal during the Olympics. He is considered among Gen Z not only an icon, but a hero to teens all over the world. The young athlete stayed up late binge-watching Brooklyn-99 the night before his event, slept in the morning of, and immediately said “holy fuck!” upon winning—on live television.
Multiple social media platforms have shown countless teenagers calling Red a legend, a perfect representation of today’s American Gen Z kid. He has become a meme.
Memes are important because they bring whole generations together. I feel that past generations do not understand why things like “my FBI agent” and “the Walmart yodeling boy” bring so many of us joy, but in such dark times as this, we need a laugh to bring us together.
I’m aware that keeping track of the memes of the year is entirely pointless, but I want to remember when I laughed this year. I don’t find a lot of joy online these days, but the meme culture of Gen Z brings me a little hope that we will make it through these shitty times, laughing at ourselves along the way.
