The Spreading of Internet Memes and Unlimited Laughs
It is only in the last few years that the word ‘’Meme” has become famous and universal. It is pronounced as “meem” and rhymes with “seem”. All this because of various social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. These memes, better called “Internet Memes”, have been a good source of our laughs with all types of humor in it. But do you know that it has been around on the internet since the mid of the 90s decade!
There is no universally fixed definition of what is called an Internet Meme. It can be any concept or idea in any media form, expressed on the internet and which becomes viral in a short span of time. Before the advent of popular social media around the year 2005, with YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc., all the meme material was focused on specific fun and leisure websites only, and to top it all, the internet itself had reached less population than today.
But in the last decade, both internet connectivity and hence, social media has reached over a billion people in the world. This has led to more people getting involved in the meme culture. Some people get themselves involved completely in this meme culture the whole day, where they usually enjoy and create new memes to make viral. They may start and manage specific meme pages too.
On social media, the popular type of memes are images of animals or humans especially with weird or different expressions or actions. Then on top and/or on bottom side of the image will be some funny text written in white, relating the image to some latest event, phenomena, funny news etc. Every new happening gives birth to a new meme instantly and it spreads quickly via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp etc. making people amused about it.
You will agree that seeing memes on your social feed truly makes your day light-hearted as you relate them to the latest popular happening on which it is made and laugh to your heart’s content. One intriguing thing about these latest social media memes is the virality factor. Less the number of people see, appreciate and share a particular meme, more chances that it won’t spread and quickly it will be forgotten.
Memes have the power to make anyone famous overnight, whether it positive or negative fame. Some of the famous image memes are the “LOLcat”, “the distracted boyfriend”, “exit 12”, “grumpy cat”, “success kid” etc. thousands of funny captions have been written on them till now and are still being written for new happenings. Rage comics have also contributed to some of the famous memes characters like “Y U No” guy, Lol guy, Okay guy, Trollface etc.
Many websites have come up dedicated to just about everything related to memes. Apart from social media, some good websites to visit for amazing, outrageous and latest memes are 4chan, Reddit and Tumblr. It looks like all these memes and their culture is here to stay, at least till the social media exists, or maybe till some other, an equally strong phenomenon for humor doesn’t come up!
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