Memes were created to allow for people to laugh at or observe the different ideas, beliefs and practices that take place in diverse cultures. The use of memes allows people to become familiar with events and situations without actually having to experience them.
Albert Lern has posted a meme via 9gag.com that illustrates the different levels of pay for a CEO, employees, and interns. Infusing humor into this complex and difficult subject, the meme tries to make it more relatable. The captions are intentionally misspelled and repeat letters to make the image more understandable. Memes are usually composed of a picture with a short text. Memes are intended to be humorous and require minimal effort on the part of their audience. This is why they do not usually involve a great deal of reading. Memes with excessive reading tend to be skipped over by those who browse them. Memes usually follow a particular format. Memes are not always standard. However, they usually have a humorous caption to accompany the image, text, or both. The meme usually consists of a central image with text placed on top. Text is usually in non-artistic fonts, with heavy colors and bold fonts.
There are many sub-genres within memes. There’s misspellings with a purpose, phonetic interpretations, repeated letter patterns, and acronyms. There are many acronyms to help you convey ideas and phrases quickly. Letter repetition is not just a slang. It’s also a dialect that is often used by teenagers. A similar letter within a word will be repeated several times to emphasize the meaning. Lauren Jenkins posts a meme on 9gag.com of a tide pod with a caption which references natural selection. She uses many repetitions of letters to express her frustration. This meme shows how this genre can be used to start a discussion on a particular topic, and then elicit many different emotions in a humorous and concise manner.
Internet memes are not standardised, but in the best memes, both the image and its message compliment each other. It’s main essence is its conciseness, insight, and how it makes you laugh or realize something. The new meme genre is dominated by internet slang and wittiness.
