MASARYK UNIVERSITY

Faculty of Social Studies

Department of Sociology

Internet Memes as Means of Communication

Masters Thesis
Brno 2012

Author: Bc. Branislav Buchel

Study Advisor: Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, PhD.

I declare that I worked on this diploma work independently and with the use of the listed
literature.

Brno, 19 May 2012

Branislav Buchel

I would like express my gratitude to Ms. Nadya Jaworsky for guiding me through writing of
this thesis as well as all the feedback and encouragement she provided me with.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 6
2. Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 9
2.1 Arriving at a method .................................................................................................................... 9
2.2 Narrowing down the sample ..................................................................................................... 11
2.2.1 Data collection sites............................................................................................................ 12
3. Theory of memes ............................................................................................................................. 17
3.1 Key features of memes .............................................................................................................. 19
3.2 Modes of Transmission .............................................................................................................. 24
4. Internet memes ............................................................................................................................... 29
4.1 Demotivational posters ............................................................................................................. 30
4.2 Rickrolling .................................................................................................................................. 33
4.3 All your base are belong to us ................................................................................................ 34
4.4 Xzibit Yo Dawg ........................................................................................................................... 35
4.5 Disaster girl ................................................................................................................................ 37
4.6 LOLcats ....................................................................................................................................... 38
4.7 Creating memes intentionally ................................................................................................... 41
5. The Internet ..................................................................................................................................... 43
5.1 Hypertextuality .......................................................................................................................... 43
5.2 4chan ......................................................................................................................................... 46
5.3 Insider Knowledge ..................................................................................................................... 50
6. Communication ............................................................................................................................... 52
6.1 Popular Culture .......................................................................................................................... 54
6.2 The Casually Pepperspray Everything Cop ................................................................................ 56
6.3 Rage Faces (Rage Comics).......................................................................................................... 58
6.4 Advice Animals........................................................................................................................... 61
7. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 63
8. Bibliography ..................................................................................................................................... 67
9. List of figures ................................................................................................................................... 70
10. Name index .................................................................................................................................... 71
11. Annotation ..................................................................................................................................... 72

1. Introduction
The Internet is the newest of media and so far it is also the most complex. It can provide
most of what previous media have provided. We can talk person to person like via the
telephone, we can listen to radio broadcasts, we can watch movies and even live events
streamed through the Internet just as we do on television, and we can also use it to read
books or news. What is also remarkable is the fact that the introduction of the internet was
able to shift the equation in effect in the rest of the media. Previous types of media were
predominantly one-way communication channels. By this I mean that there was one
central transmitter of information and the rest were just receivers. This state has been
challenged by the spread of the Internet. Suddenly, there is a medium which provides all its
users with an easily accessible opportunity to be transmitters of information, to be active.
People have eagerly grasped this opportunity and now we spend gradually more and more
time connected online. The Internet gives a completely new meaning and dimension to
Simmels concept of individualization. There would be few, if any, who would not be able to
find something that is relevant to their interests. And not only can they find information
pertaining to the subjects of their interests, but there are also public spaces available for
people with similar interests to share and interact with others. However, these public spaces
are different from those we have been used to so far and thus their new virtual inhabitants
are still trying to figure out the options they provide and how to best utilize them in the
most beneficial way. One such area, where people are still just exploring the options
provided by the Internet is communication. The Internet provides many options and
opportunities for interaction and communication while almost bypassing entirely obstacles
of physical distance and time. On the other hand it also poses substantive constraints on our
communication and those attempting to communicate in the same way as they do in
physical world might be very surprised by the outcome of their efforts. Communication on
the internet poses several substantial obstacles to communication. The complete absence of
mimics and voice modulation reduces the content of the message substantially unless the
video or audio is used and even then it is distorted by the quality of the recording
equipment. However, the vast majority of the internet communication today is actualized
through textual forms of communication where the quality of computer hardware does not

even factor in. One of the ways to overcome the difficulties of communication in the
internet environment which have emerged is internet memes.
I first started to take an interest in internet memes several years ago. At the time I did not
know what internet memes were or even memes in general; all I saw were witty and funny
pictures. The first time I encountered an internet meme was probably when I was seeking
some advice regarding my computer. While searching for some advice I stumbled upon an
internet message board forum where someone posted a question about a problem which
looked very similar to the one I was struggling with. Luckily there were many kind people
who were trying to answer the question and solve the problem at hand. However, their view
of how the problem should be solved differed, substantially as it seemed, and the discussion
strayed far from the original problem to some particular details. I was interested to see how
the discussion had ended, since I still wanted to know if they had come up with a solution to
the question asked. At one point somebody apparently lost patience and instead of trying to
argue further posted a picture of Nicolas Cage with a strange bird on his head saying My
hair is a bird Your argument is invalid. At that time, I did not know that what I had just seen
was a very basic internet meme, but since then I was noticing similar pictures on various
internet sites and later I learned to distinguish even more types and forms of internet
memes. I have also learned that they are referred to as memes. From a sociological point of
view I have found it interesting to discover what internet memes actually are, who uses
them and why. I answer these questions in my thesis and thereby contribute to sociological
understanding of the internet environment.
Because I have been using the grounded theory approach to explore and describe internet
memes I have decided to organize my thesis accordingly. I put the methodology chapter at
the beginning, and just then I continue with theoretical chapter and the rest of analytical
chapters. In the first chapter I describe the methodology which I have employed to explore
and analyze the internet memes and answer the research questions I am posing, my
sampling and the criteria upon which the sampling was made.
In the second chapter I provide an overview of the literature dealing with the general theory
of memetics, as I will be using its concepts and terminology to frame the theoretical
contribution I am trying to make into the larger picture.
7

In the third chapter I have decided to provide my own definition and analysis of what
internet memes actually are, because I found the already available definitions and
descriptions lacking in one way or another.
The fourth chapter is a description and conceptualization of the internet environment which
has a determining influence over how the internet memes evolve and the forms they take. I
the last chapter I arrive at analysis of internet memes as means of communication and I also
provide a brief depiction of popular culture as one of the most widely used reference frames
which provides common ground for understanding the internet memes. In the end I provide
several notable examples of the internet memes used as means of communication also
explain why they are important for their users.
To conclude, I briefly discuss the spillage of internet memes into the offline world and
discuss the significance of my analysis and research.

2. Methodology
Based on the subject of my interest as well as the research questions I am trying to answer, I
decided to use the grounded theory approach. Grounded theory as Corbin (2011) says is an
attempt to provide one possible explanation of how and why persons, groups,
organizations and communities or nations experience and act/interact emotionally to the
events/happenings/situations/problems they encounter in life, which is what I aim to do in
my research. The phenomenon I am researching is internet memes and I aim to explain what
they are for the people who use them.
The main goal of the grounded theory approach according to Dey (1999) is to generate or
discover a theory. Its most distinctive feature, which fit my purposes very well, is that the
researcher approaches the research field without any theoretical preconceptions and
theoretical preparation. Instead the researcher starts to gather data in the field and starts to
systematically analyze them as soon as possible. From these data he or she develops
concepts and generalizations which should be able to explain the data and their relations.
The concepts generated from the data are continuously being exposed to the newly
acquired data and those concepts which cannot explain the data or contradict them are
discarded. Instead new concepts which can describe the old and the new data are
introduced and new generalizations are generated. This continues until point when the new
data do not generate any new incentives for changes in concepts or their generalizations. In
other words, the research achieves theoretical saturation.

2.1 Arriving at a method

The course of my research of this topic can be divided into two main parts. The first one can
be called exploratory and the second one can be called systematic. The exploratory part was
several years long and I actually was not aware that I would be conducting this research or
writing this thesis about the topic of internet memes. However, I had a keen interest in the
internet memes phenomenon and I always followed the new memes which I had come
across while browsing the Internet. I have also spent some time looking at sites and forums,
where the internet memes were abundant. Based on these observations I started to have

some idea about what internet memes are and decided to study them further and write a
thesis about this topic. In order to conduct a research I, of course, needed a more systematic
approach to the problem. Because of the relative newness of the topic as well as the type of
questions I wanted to answer about the internet memes I chose the grounded theory as a
way to approach the research. My research questions, which range in analytic focus, are as
follows:

What are internet memes? (definitional)

What communities use internet memes? (descriptive)
What is the purpose of internet memes for the communities using them?
(explanatory)
Is it possible to categorize internet memes into some typology? (theoretical)

As a method to conduct my research I chose covert observation or to be more precise

lurking. According to Lindof and Taylor (2006) among its benefits are, minimizing the
impact of the researcher on the research community, which could distract the normally
occurring interaction. Also in my case the lurking did not suffer from the drawbacks of
lurking which can be present when conducting research of IRC1 channels or MUDs2. This is
because in case of IRC channels and MUDs, the presence of arriving users is announced to
other users present there. In this way, the lurkers may not be active participants, but this
does not mean that the others do not orient to them. (Lindof and Taylor, 2006: 265) The
other reason is that in some cases asking questions could even be perceived as bad manners.
One of the so-called rules of the Internet, which is actually considered to be a part of an
internet meme (knowyourmeme.com) is called lurk moar and implies that one should
observe and try to learn the etiquette of the site before attempting to post or even ask
questions answers to which can be learnt by observing others.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels. Usually real-time, interactive, text -based discussion system delivered via a
networked computer chat server (Clarke, 2000: 4).
2

Multi User Dungeons.

10

2.2 Narrowing down the sample

After some time of intensive observation I came to conclusion that following many internet
sites was no longer necessary, and that I should instead focus more intensively on smaller
sample of sites chosen based on the previous observations. I also decided to focus on the
internet memes in picture format (mostly they are combination of an image and a text) as
opposed to videos or pure text. I chose to follow mainly internet sites which have a lot of
visitors, because from what I have observed there are internet memes which are specific to
certain sites and then there are those which are frequent on all internet sites. However, the
memes which were specific to a given site did not have any special feature apart from their
niche communities.

The criteria upon which my choice of the sites to follow was based are, as already
mentioned, high internet traffic,3 features that users have at their disposal to manage the
discussion, the identity under which the posts can be made, and characteristics of the site
regarding posting of new topics, i.e. threads. I have chosen internet traffic a criterion based
on the assumption that the sites with most visits will be more influential in spread of
memes. Further, I observed that the internet memes which are discussed on these sites are
the ones which are generally best known and understood on the Internet and thus best for
purposes of explanation and generalization. The features which are available to the users are
important because they greatly influence the level of complexity of communication which is
possible at that particular site. For example, if there is no threading available and there is an
upvote/downvote option the communication between the users cannot become too
complex, because the order of the responses would not be chronological but instead
ordered based on popularity votes. The identity under which the posts can be made, ranging
from posting under your own name to completely anonymous where everyone can have the
same nickname, based upon my observations, influences the hostility of the environment
which in turn influences what gets posted and what does not. The characteristics of the site
in terms of new topics influence how the new post can catch attention of users.

I have used the site alexa.com for the sites world rankings. The internet traffic ranking I quote stands for
place on the worldwide ladder of attendance of internet sites.

11

It is important to note, that the concept of internet memes is known to many internet users
(Knobel& Lankshear, 2006). As a result of this, there are internet sites which gather the
internet memes and provide space to talk about them or even sites, which enable their
visitors to create their own internet memes by using simple tools available on the sites. In
my research I decided to follow sites which are used to talk about the internet memes and
also on sites where the internet memes are used in interactions among its users. Due to this
fact I have decided to include a palette of different sites in my observation with intent to
ensure that the gathered data will be varied enough to make generalizations about internet
memes. Thus I have included in my observation sites that have internet memes as their
primary focus as well as sites which have other focus but use the internet memes for one
purpose or another. I have included sites which produce a lot of internet traffic and can be
considered as hubs through which many users will pass, such as imgur.com, reddit.com and
also smaller sites.
All the of the internet sites which I have followed have free public access. Anyone can visit
them and is free to view their content.4 This means that the data I gathered during my
research and based my research on do not include cases from sites which require
registration and membership to view their content. Contrary to freely accessible sites, the
lurking method can cause suspicion among the users/members of sites that require
registration in order for the sites content to be viewable. The freely accessible sites were
able to provide a great abundance of data. From previous experience with such sites I was
already aware, that the memes which are used there are either the widespread ones which
are used generally also on another sites, or they are just specific to the subject of interest of
the sites community, but their use is essentially the same as those observable elsewhere.

2.2.1 Data collection sites

In the following part I list the internet sites which I have followed, along with the
characteristics I perceive to be relevant to the topic of this research.
4chan.com

Some of the subforums may require age confirmation for content inappropriate for minors.

12

4chan.com (internet traffic ranking 908) is a BBS site which is considered to be among the
most influential when it comes to creation and spread of the internet memes. On this site
users are able to upload a picture which will be shown next to the post. The most important
features of the site are the ability to post completely anonymously and that the site does not
have any permanent history. Later I discuss in depth how the sites unique environment was
one of the crucial factors in the evolution of internet memes. At this site I have followed
mainly the /b boards which are designated for random topics and are considered to be the
most important subforums of the site.
Reddit.com
Reddit.com (internet traffic ranking 121) is a bulletin board style (BBS) style internet hub
that deals with a wide variety of topics, ranging from political and social to sports, nature
and entertainment. It also has subforums which deal specifically with internet memes. When
starting a new thread the reddit users are able to link a picture which will be visible in the list
of the topics. In the threads the users are not able to post pictures but instead can provide a
clickable hyperlink, which the users can click to view the picture. One of the most important
features of the site is that it contains an upvote/downvote mechanism for whole threads as
well as individual posts, indicating whether other users feel positively or negatively about
them. The topics (threads) which receive the most upvotes are shown on the top of the list
and the individual posts which have received the most upvotes are visible at all times while
the rest may be viewable just after specifically selecting the option to view them. This
mechanism is very important when talking about the internet memes as I will show later.
Last of the features of the site which I see as relevant with regard to my research is that the
users are posting under their registered5 nicknames thus ensuring their anonymity, but
enabling identification of the posts made by an individual user.
Imgur.com
Imgur.com (internet traffic ranking 70) is an internet site which enables its users to submit
pictures with different topics from serious to entertaining. The site also provides option to
post comments to the pictures as well as upvote/downvote mechanism for the pictures as
5

Here the term merely registered refers to the fact that the user needs to be logged in to post on the site.
However, they do not need to provide any information which would reveal their identity.

13

well as individual comments. There is no thread functionality and thus the viewers are not
able to see the comments in a chronological order, but they are listed based on the number
of upvotes they received. Similar to reddit.com, with which imgur.com is closely linked,6
imgur users are submitting their pictures under their registered nicknames thus enabling
individual users to be identified.
9gag.com
9gag.com (internet traffic ranking 274) is an internet site on which the users post pictures,
mostly of a humorous or entertaining nature. It also provides option to upvote/downvote a
picture. The most important feature of the site which makes it different from imgur.com is
that on 9gag.com the users post comments under their facebook identities. This means that
the comments they make are visible on their Facebook profile and also that posting and
commenting on this site is not anonymous, which greatly influences the tone of the
discussions as well as the content of pictures which are posted. The responses made on the
9gag are in general friendlier and more mannered than on sites where the users are more
anonymous.
Memebase.com
Memebase.com (internet traffic ranking 4516) serves as a repository of internet memes
where the users are able to post their contributions and other people can vote if the
contribution, usually a picture is in accordance with the original concept of the meme or
discuss it more thoroughly. The site was relevant to my interests, because there are a lot of
discussions about the most recent memes.
Knowyourmeme.com
Knowyourmeme.com (internet traffic ranking 2559) is an internet site originally intended to
be a site which gathers internet memes and provides research on their origins and spread,
evolved into encyclopedic site which covers internet memes and related topics. Users can
make new entries which are voted on to be accepted or rejected as legitimate internet
memes. Contributions can be discussed using Facebook profiles and real names or using a
6

Reddit users are often linking to images uploaded on imgur and imgur pictures are commonly discussed on
reddit when the threading functionality missing on imgur is desired by users. The ability to post in threads
enables the users to hold discussions, arguments and conversations which are longer, more complex.

14

nickname registered on the knowyourmeme site. The site also has a forum where the users
can discuss internet memes, and talk about many different topics as well.

I also utilized a number of other BBS sites and forums less regularly to crosscheck if my
observations were accurate and thus further validate my findings. I will be focusing on the
bigger sites named above, though, because they are more influential in the creation and
distribution of internet memes.
During my observations, I have been asking the following questions about the internet
memes I have encountered:
Does the picture fulfill the original gist of the meme? If not what is the reaction of
other people? This is very important when considering image text and macros. If the
meme does not fit the original idea it can derail the discussion from what the author
was trying to tell.
What is the meme trying to tell us? The point the author was trying to make is
obviously important.
How does the audience respond to the meme? Sometimes, the audience
develops further the idea presented by the meme.
What is the use of the meme for the person who posted it? Basically the poster of the
meme may want to get attention, share an idea, use the meme as a response to
previous posts, pull a prank on someone or even derail a topic.
How does the environment (type of internet site) influence the response to the
meme? This question came up after some time of observation when I realized there
were different reactions according to the type of site, mainly in terms of hostility to a
similar meme posted on different sites. According to what I found out the less
anonymity the posters have the less hostile will their responses be.

Based upon the answers to these empirical questions, I considered each of my broader
research questions in definitional, descriptive, explanatory and typological terms and
began to build my theory about internet memes. It is important to note, that the questions
15

were changing over time and the focus of the questions was always shifting more toward the
interaction between the internet meme and the users replying to it. This is what convinced
me that I should be focusing on the interaction and communication.
After I built a substantial part of my theory and understanding of the internet memes I of
course wondered if I could fit my findings into some broader theoretical context of memetic
theories. Thus I started to look into general theory of memes and also into the work that has
been done with internet memes. I have found out that it was possible to apply the general
theory of memetics onto internet memes. However, I also found that in some regards I could
not agree with the small body of existing scholarly work internet memes and thus I would be
able to offer a unique contribution with my own input about the topic. For example, as I was
not able to find any satisfactory sociological definition of internet memes, I sought to
conceptualize one myself. In the next chapter I will provide an overview of the general
theory of memes. In subsequent chapters I will provide my own explanations and findings
about the internet memes and where applicable I will also try to frame them in terms of the
general theory of memes.

16

3. Theory of memes

Before we can even begin to talk about memes we need to talk about the theoretical
contribution of Gabriel Tarde. He wanted to approach the exploration of the social world by
looking at products, acts and ideas and their reproduction which can then bring us
understanding about the society itself. (Marsden, 2000) The reproduction of society and all
of its manifestations occurs, according to Tarde, by means of imitation. He goes as far as
stating "What is society? I have answered: Society is imitation". (Tarde, 1962: 74) The goal of
his sociological approach is to identify the reasons why some ideas are reproduced while the
vast majority of them are going to be forgotten. These are the questions that are being
asked also by the scientists claiming their affiliation to the memetics, and imitation is a core
principle of the theory of the memes. Even though his work is very well fit to be
incorporated into foundations of the theory of memes, surprisingly, Tarde is not cited in the
basic works of memetic theories.
The concept of memes as such was developed by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins
while trying to explain cultural transmission, human behavior, cultural evolution and
development of human society. The need for the new theory came from his dissatisfaction
by often ad hoc explanations of human behavior by existing scientific theories, which were
trying to find biological advantages of various elements of the human society. (Dawkins,
1989:173) This kind of approach often contains implicit assumption that humans are a
different kind of specie and that mechanisms driving the evolution of human society are
different from those which are at work in the rest of nature.7 Dawkins chose to take a step
back and abandon the complex and purpose-built explanations in favor of a simpler one
which would be able to address the differences and the commonalities among the species at
once. For this he turned to the theory of evolution the basic idea of which can be summed
up as follows: genes are competing with each other for a chance to reproduce and spread in
their environment. Genes can also be called replicators, because that is their primary
7

Cultural transmission can be found also on other species. For example, it was shown that songbird songs are
not transmitted genetically, but are taught by listening to songs of other members of the specie and imitating
them. Also there are cases when the song was changed by a bird making an error while imitating the song
which was subsequently copied by other songbirds. (Jenkins, 1978 cited in Dawkins 1989)

17

purpose. To explain cultural evolution, Dawkins looked for similar principles and thus he
identified another form of a replicator, a meme.
A meme is a replicator of another kind. It is an idea, a thought, or a concept which can be
passed between minds. It can be anything from a catchy tune you adopt unwittingly, which
you keep humming subconsciously through slogan from a commercial, to intricate and
abstract ideas of grand design or the Big Bang. All of these have been passed into your mind
from someone elses mind. Memes are often compared to viruses, replicating agents which
need a host (carrier) in order to replicate. To some extent the comparison works, because
like viruses, memes, i.e. ideas, thoughts, concepts, tunes, etc., need a host to ensure their
replication and spread. However, due to the nature of memes and the means they employ to
replicate, memes are much more susceptible to mutations and changes than genes: A
meme reaching an agent, if it is reproduced at all, will typically be transmitted in a changed
form, possibly recombined with other information learned earlier. (Heylighen and Chielens,
2008: 7) In this sense, the reproduction of memes is more Lamarckian than Darwinian,
because the changes transmit not only among subsequent generations of hosts, as is the
case with genes, but they spread among the same generation as well. This implies that
memes can spread much more rapidly, but at the same time with much less fidelity than the
genes. Thus we come to the most important difference between genes and memes and that
is the way in which they replicate. Genes replicate by vertical transmission by copying from
generation to generation. Memes on the other hand are also capable of horizontal
transmission among members of the same generation by imitation, which means their
copies wont be as accurate; in other words, the fidelity of their replication is lower, but it
gives them ability to spread faster. While memes have a much higher fecundity than genes,
their plasticity implies a much lower copying-fidelity: a message as received and understood
by an individual will rarely be identical to the one that was expressed, as illustrated by the
many misunderstandings and reinterpretations during communication. (Heylighen and
Chielens, 2008: 7) Mutation is a crucial characteristic of memes, because it is in the process
of imitation where they are let loose from their hosts. Blackmore says: When you imitate
someone else, something is passed on. This something can then be passed on again, and
again, and so take on a life of its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a
behavior, a piece of information ... (Blackmore, 1999: 4) As Heylinghen and Chielens point
18

out, memes are subject to the principle of natural selection because the acquired new
characteristics along with the core idea of the meme are passed on selectively, based on the
fitness of the meme: Natural selection by definition will pick out the memes who survive
this transmission process relatively unchanged. Therefore, the fittest memes, such as certain
songs, religious beliefs, scientific laws, or brand names, will have a stable, recognizable
identity, even though they may differ in appearance, as exemplified by the many renditions
of a song or joke. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 7) This implies that it is in the process of
imitation where the memes which will survive are chosen, because their core idea is strong
enough while they are still able to adapt to their surroundings. Every day we come into
contact with thousands and thousands of pieces of various information, ideas etc, but only
some of them we do remember and even fewer of them we actually share with someone
else. This is because the capacity for remembering is limited and the resources for sharing
i.e. time we have to talk to other people or write some text are limited and at the same time
the attention we can get from others is limited as well. Thus only the most interesting, the
most memorable, the most useful etc memes are passed on.

3.1 Key features of memes

So far, we have come to a point, where we can say that the memes are replicators which
spread from a host to a host by imitation and that they are subject to the principle of natural
selection. Now we can identify some of the key features of memes, which will be both
important and useful when while we talk and explore the memes. The most basic
characteristics which memes need to posses in order to be eligible to be considered
replicators are variation, selection and retention (i.e. heredity) according to Blackmore.
These can be characterized as follows:

Variation stories are rarely told exactly the same way twice, no two buildings are
absolutely identical, and every conversation is unique and when memes are passed
on, the copying is not always perfect.

19

Selection some memes grab the attention, are faithfully remembered and
passed on to other people, while others fail to get copied at all.
Retention of some of the ideas or behaviors in that meme something of the original
meme must be retained for us to call it imitation or copying or learning by
example. (Blackmore, 1999: 14)

Dawkins (1989: 194) identifies as key characteristics of memes their fidelity, fecundity and
longevity. These can be used to measure success of particular memes.
Fidelity with which the meme is copied shows how strong the core idea of the meme actually
is. While the meme will still be subject to variation the core idea should remain intact in
order for the meme to be successful. An example of an unsuccessful meme can be found in
this well-known joke:
Question for radio Yerevan: Is it true that Jurij Gagarin received a new car in
Moscow?
Answer: Yes, this is true. Even though it wasnt in Moscow but in Leningrad. It wasnt
Jurij Gagarin but a local music teacher. It wasnt a car but a bicycle. And he didnt get
it but it was stolen from him.
Fecundity is an indicator of how rapidly can the meme replicate. Basically it is a number of
copies or imitations made in certain period of time.
Longevity shows for how long a particular meme can survive. For example memes for
everlasting life after death and gods i.e. religions apart from being very fecund is also have
very high longevity, because they have survived in their varying forms for millenniums.
Religions survived for such a long time probably because they were somehow useful to
people, but usefulness is not a necessary characteristic of a successful meme. It can improve
its chances for success, but there is always a possibility of a different meme, which will be
much more successful or even will completely prevail and replace the useful meme. The
useful ones can spread just as well as the pointless ones or even harmful ones. Example of
this can be houses built in areas endangered by floods. People building new houses opted
20

for new materials and building techniques, which they thought brought them advantage by
saving money. However, when the floods actually came, the houses built by new techniques
and from new materials such as concrete, instead of wood and clay, remained wet for
several months and some of them even needed to be torn down while the houses built of
traditional materials by traditional techniques were habitable in matter of two weeks. This
can also serve as an example of a meme, which has retained its core idea, meaning the
houses built in the traditional way were much less affected by the floods and at the same
time it has lost all the explanatory parts which actually explained why the houses should be
built in this way leaving the people quite surprised when they understood what was the
purpose of the materials used and techniques employed.
As stated above, memes do not need to be useful. Some of them can even be outright
harmful or even deadly, such as samurai honor code which required the warrior to commit
suicide by slashing his stomach; and they are still able to spread to their new hosts.
However, researchers have already identified criteria with potential to increase the chances
of memes to spread. As proposed by Heylighen (2008), these criteria can be split into three
different classes, based on the entity it pertains to. There are objective criteria, which
pertain to the object the meme refers to, subjective criteria pertaining to the subject, the
host who assimilates and remembers the meme, and intersubjective criteria pertaining to
the process of transmission of the meme between its hosts. These are as Heylighen and
Chielens (2008) list them:

Objective criteria:
Distinctiveness: information that refers to something precise, distinct, or detailed can
be confirmed more easily by observation.
Invariance: information that remains valid over a wide range of contexts or situations
is more stable and broadly applicable.
Evidence: information that is supported by independent observations is more
reliable.

21

Subjective criteria:
Utility: information that is valuable or useful to its carrier is more likely to be
remembered and passed on.
Affectivity: information that provokes strong emotions is more likely to be
remembered and passed on: this typically stimulates instinctive reactions, such as
fear, desire or disgust (Heath, Bell & Stenberg, 2001).
Coherence: the better information fits in with the knowledge that individuals already
have, the more easily they will understand and accept it (Thagard, 1998).
Simplicity: short, simple messages are easier to assimilate, remember and transmit.
Novelty: information that is unexpected will attract more attention.
Repetition: repeated exposure to the same message helps it to be assimilated and
retained.

Intersubjective criteria:
Publicity: the more effort an individual puts into spreading a message, the more
people will receive it.
Formality: messages formulated explicitly and unambiguously are less likely to be
misinterpreted.
Expressivity: information must be easy to express in a given language or medium.
Authority: an authoritative, trustworthy source of the information makes it more
likely to be accepted.
Conformity: information confirmed by many people is more easily accepted (Boyd &
Richerson, 1985).
Collective utility: information, if adopted by a group, may help the group to function
better, and therefore to grow or function as a model for others. Examples are

22

standards, linguistic conventions, and traffic rules. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008:
18)

Potentially, even more criteria can be identified. Further, memes can be successful even if
they do not meet these criteria, or even straightforward contradict some of them. For
example many of the religious memes could not meet the objective criteria of
distinctiveness or evidence, but they would probably do better in case of invariance criteria.

We have already established that the memes transmit through means of imitation and that
the reason why they propagate is that they are in fact replicators. Spreading is their primary
purpose and the rest of all the things they achieve is just a byproduct helping them in some
way to reach their goal. At this point it is important to mention that the memes often spread
jointly with other memes. These joint groups of memes were called coadapted meme
complexes by Dawkins, but are more commonly known as memeplexes. (Speel 1995,
Blackmore 1999) The principle is that there are certain memes which support each other and
make each other stronger.
Imagine two memes, one send a scratchcard to x and another win lots of money.
The former instruction is unlikely to be obeyed just on its own. The latter is tempting
but includes no instruction on how to. Together, and with some other suitable comemes, the two can apparently get people to obey and copy the whole package on
again. The essence of any memeplex is that the memes inside it can replicate better
as part of the group than they can on their own. (Blackmore, 1999: 19-20)
Often cited examples of these are religions. Religions, if we think about them in terms of
memetics, the religions can be viewed as groups of memes which support each other and
protect each other from competition of other memes, such as other religions, science or any
other meme which would rival the exclusivity of the religious memeplex.

23

3.2 Modes of Transmission

Now we will take a closer look at possible ways of their transmission as well as on the
process of the meme replication itself. There are six basic types of memetic transmission as
identified by Aaron Lynch. As is the case with many other typologies, none of these types is
mutually exclusive and most often the meme or memeplex is spread by means which would
fit more of these ideal types.
1. Parental transmission: is a type of a vertical transmission, when the memes are
spread by parents onto their children. This is a very obvious and logical way of meme
transmission as parents mostly have significant influence over their children and thus
it is logical, that the children would take over their view and opinions i.e.
memeplexes. Lynch describes two types of parental transmission. The first one is
quantity parental transmission, which basically means that the holder of the meme is
encouraged to have more children, thus more possible carriers for the memes. The
second type of parental transmission is efficiency transmission which increases the
chance that the parents will be able to spread their ideas onto their children. Honor
your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the
Lord your God is giving you, is a good example of a meme supporting this type of
transmission.
2. Proselytic transmission: is a type of a horizontal transmission. In this case the
memeplex encourages its hosts to spread it among the rest of the population, in
other word among their peers.
3. Preservational mode: is not a type of transmission per se but more precisely a
strategy to hold onto the hosts already under influence of the memeplex, often
promising some kind of reward or advantage to its holders e.g. positive thinking
philosophy promising better problem resolution attitude, or threatening those who
would abandon the memeplex by some kind of punishment or setback e.g. right wing
political ideologies threatening voters by transition of the country to socialism or
even communism and all the horrors related to such state and vice versa in case of
left wing political ideologies.

24

4. Adversative approach: is the most hostile of meme transmission strategies. It

encourages hosts of the memeplex to attack or even kill the hosts of competing
memes. The latter is an approach still used in cases of political or religious
memeplexes. The former can mean physical attacks, but also verbal offense of
opponents. The possible advantage which can be gained by this strategy can be
either shocking or discrediting the opponent or reducing the population of hosts of
competing memes making the propagation thus increasing the percentually
increasing portion of hosts of the meme.
5. Cognitive approach: is an approach taken by memes which are perceived to be
logical and well-argued. This is approach is most effective in societies based on
rationality such as academia or democratic societies.
6. Motivational strategy: the meme induces the potential hosts into considering the
benefits of hosting the meme compared to not hosting the meme. Simple example
would be a religious belief that god exists which should grant you access to heaven
after you die compared to being sent to hell if you choose to not believe. There can
also be social benefits promised as reward for adopting these memes. This strategy
engages hosts imagination.

There are also other possible transmission strategies which will come to mind, that were not
mentioned in this typology. None of the abovementioned types included moral values as a
basis for adopting the memeplexes. Someone might argue that these can be part of some of
the previous type, but I would argue that the distinction between right and wrong, or good
and bad is one of the essential attributes people are looking for when adopting some beliefs.
These were the strategies employed by memes to ensure their survival and spread onto
more hosts. While the strategies of transmission focus on transmission of the memes among
groups the process of replication describes how the host acquires the meme and passes it
onto other hosts. The process of the meme replication was described by Heylighen and
Chielens (2008) in four consecutive stages. The meme, in order to be successfully replicated,
needs to complete all of these stages. The four stages are as follows:

25

1) Assimilation by an individual, who thereby becomes a carrier or host of the

meme;
2) Retention in that individual's memory;
3) Expression by the individual in language, behavior, or another form that can be
perceived by others;
4) Transmission of the thus created message or mediotype8 to one or more other
individuals. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 10)

These four stages are crucial to understanding memes; thus, I elaborate each below.

Assimilation
A successful meme must be able to infect a new host, that is, enter into its memory, and
thus acquire its memotype9 form (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 10) i.e. be assimilated by
the host. When a person is introduced to a new meme either by being told, shown, etc, or by
discovering it on his/her own, it needs to be noticed, understood and accepted in order to
assimilate it. To be noticed the meme needs to be salient enough to get attention of the
potential new host. Then it needs to be understood, which means that the meme needs to
be fitted into context with the rest of knowledgebase of the person. This basically suggests
that certain memes can be mutually exclusive e.g. atheism and religiousness. And as the last
step, the meme needs to be accepted by the host, making it part of his cognitive structures.
An idea which was noticed and understood by a potential host can still be regarded as
unbelievable, unreliable, or uncredible to assimilate it.

A meme as expressed in an external medium, such as a text, an artifact, a song, or a behavior. (Heylighen and
Chielens, 2008: 2)
9

A meme in the form of information held in an individuals memory. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 2)

26

Retention
Throughout our lives, we are able to retain only limited only limited amount of information
in our memories, the rest are forgotten, either temporarily or permanently. The longer the
meme is retained in our memory, the higher are its chances of spreading further onto other
hosts. This is an individual dimension of the longevity characteristic established by Dawkins
(1989). Each day we come across hundreds or thousands of memes which we assimilate
even subconsciously only to forget them later. Example of this can be the news we read on
the internet or see on the television. Most of them we will not be able to recall in few days.
Expression
To be communicated to other individuals, a meme must emerge from its storage as
memory pattern or memotype and enter its mediotype phase, i.e. assume a physical shape
that can be perceived by others. This process may be called expression. (Heylighen and
Chielens, 2008: 10) There are memes, which can be regarded as so important by its hosts
that they feel urge to express them very often and there are those which are kept as secrets
or considered to be too insignificant to even mention to someone. An example of the former
case can be a person telling all his friends about healthy lifestyle and as an example of the
former we can consider washing your hands on the toilet. The means of expression can vary
from speech, gesture, text, and drawings, to creating representations of the memes like
statues or other art artifacts. In order to express the meme the person does not need to be
aware of expressing it. For example a very common way of expressing the memes
unknowingly can be the way a person dresses and how he/she behaves in these clothes.
Transmission
At this stage, the appropriate way of transmission of the meme needs to be chosen. As
Heylighen and Chielens put it, To reach another individual, an expression needs a physical
carrier or medium that is sufficiently stable to transmit the expression without too much loss
or deformation. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 10) This stage is a counterpart to Dawkinss
fidelity and is crucial for successful spread of the meme, because it is at this stage where the
meme takes some form which it will reach its new potential hosts. Regardless of what the
meme actually meant to be prior to this step, this is the one where it becomes a mediotype

27

which will be further interpreted by the carries who will or will not assimilate it based on
how they will understand it. As an example of this we can imagine a person attempting to
describe an idea of his/her future house. The house does not exist yet and so the person is
the only one who knows exactly how the house is supposed to look. Based on the fidelity
with which he/she will be able to convey this idea to the architect the project drawn by the
architect will resemble the original idea described. The ways in which the house can be
described are numerous of course. It can be, described by words, drawn in pen on a piece of
paper, sketched in some computer program, or built from Lego blocks. The person
attempting to describe the house will use the way which he/she deems as the most
appropriate to convey the idea, based on if he is proficient with the computer program,
good in drawing, or eloquent.

In the end of this chapter I would like to briefly return to Tarde and why I think that his
thoughts should yield more weight in the theory of memes. In comparison to Dawkins and
especially Blackmore, Tarde gives much more agency to people over what memes they
spread and how they use those memes to their advantage. Of course, Tarde does not use
the term meme, but it is very much implicitly present in his writings.

28

4. Internet memes

In the previous chapter I have focused on and explained what a meme in general is, how it
spreads among the population and how is all this operationalized by authors writing about
memes. In the following chapter I will be focusing on internet memes. I will try to describe
the internet memes in the terms of the previous chapter, but I will also give examples of
what the internet memes are, because I think that the very brief descriptions often given by
authors writing about internet memes are insufficient for this purpose.

First of all, let us take a look at how internet memes are described by authors who research
them and write about them. Quaranta writes, that the phenomenon is known as an
Internet meme, and could be described as media objects (for the most part videos) that
would probably have been destined for invisibility and then for some bizarre reason go viral,
becoming facts and contaminating other media, and at times even entering spoken
language. (Quaranta, 2010: 3) Apart from the fact that the claim about internet memes
being mostly videos is highly debatable and probably untrue other characteristics mentioned
by Quaranta are true about internet memes. Knobel and Lankshear (2006) characterize an
internet meme as a popular term for describing the rapid uptake and spread of a particular
idea presented as a written text, image, language move, or some other unit of cultural
stuff. (Knobel& Lankshear, 2006: 202) and Bauckhage describes them as phenomena
that rapidly gain popularity or notoriety on the Internet. Often, modifications or spoofs add
to the profile of the original idea thus turning it into a phenomenon that transgresses social
and cultural boundaries. It is commonly assumed that Internet memes spread virally but
scientific evidence as to this assumption is scarce. (Bauckhage, 2011: 42) We also need to
consider the definition provided by the site knowyourmeme.org, which is an encyclopedialike site which gathers internet memes and attempts to provide insight into their origins and
further spread.
Internet memes are typically associated with media, catchphrases, and more general
trends that spread throughout various outlets on the World Wide Web like chat
29

clients, blogs, social networking sites, email, forums and image boards. Its often used
to point out how trends online evolve and change over time, creating various new
derivatives. (knowyourmeme.org)
When we look at these definitions of internet memes, we can see that what they have in
common is an emphasis on the rapidity of spread of internet memes. Other than that they
focus on different aspects of internet meme characteristics. If we attempt to merge these
definitions together to form more complete one, we can say that the internet memes are (1)
rapidly spreading by means of electronic communication such as e-mail, forums, image
boards, chats, etc. and (2) that they are media objects such as videos, pictures, texts, audio
recordings, etc. Internet memes also transgress social and cultural boundaries, their
successful spread is almost always very surprising and unexpected, and they are often
humorous imitations of some product or concept. This characteristic of internet memes is
more complete than the partial ones which served as source and a person familiar with the
concept of internet memes would be able to identify a meme based on it. Those who are not
familiar with the concept of memes or even did not encounter an internet meme while
browsing the internet, which I doubt, would have a problem identifying a meme if they
encountered one. For purpose of clarity I will now provide examples of internet memes
which should help to better explain what I am going to talk about further ahead in this
paper.

4.1 Demotivational posters

Maybe, while browsing the Internet, you have already run across a picture with black
borders coupled with title written in capital letters and more text written in smaller font
under it. It could have been something like this: a picture of lot of light bulbs lying around
and a text saying: CLUELESSNESS, There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of
inquisitive idiots (Figure 1). What you saw was a demotivational poster. The idea for
demotivational posters is based upon the motivational posters which could be sometimes
found on walls in offices of companies. Their purpose is to demotivate and discourage you,
to make you feel powerless and as if every effort was futile. This particular internet meme is
30

very popular and widespread on the internet and over the time it has many derivates and
spinoffs. The original topic of the meme i.e. corporate motivational pictures was expanded
and nowadays the demotivational posters often stand for cynical or ironic statements over
wide variety of topics.

Figure 1. Demotional: Cluelessness

After reading the previous paragraph someone could be asking himself a question, if this is in
fact correct, because he remembers seeing a picture fitting the visual description, but there
was no sarcasm or cynicism, but instead it was just some humorous statement referring to
the picture. It might have been for example: Apple, Now with dual core technology with a
picture of an apple with two cores. (Figure 2) This is in fact a misinterpretation of the original
concept of the meme which happened during the assimilation stage of the memetic
transmission process. Now, I could just end the description with statement, that there are
demotivational posters and then their stillborn imitations and move on to the next example
of an internet meme. But instead let us take a look how the original meme is able to protect
its fidelity and thereby further its longevity.
31

Figure 2. Demotivational: Apple

So, at this point the meme is losing fidelity of its transmission and if this failed imitation will
find its hosts, the original meme will lose its power, because the two memes are obviously
not distinctive enough for some of the hosts to distinguish. However, the internet memes
actually are not single memes, but rather memeplexes consisting of at least two memes. The
first one is the idea of the gist i.e. the demotivational poster and the second one is an idea of
an internet meme. As Knobel and Lankshear point out, The concept of a meme itself has
become something of a meme online (Knobel & Lankshear, 2006: 202), which suggests that
the carriers of this memeplex will know that the demotivational posters are an internet
meme. Upon encountering this failed attempt of a demotivational poster, they will react
according to some of the strategies of memetic transmission. In this particular case the
reaction was an aversive one as we can see on the webpage reddit.com, sub forum
32

demotivationals where the picture of dual core apple was posted. For illustration, I will
quote: OP10: How many people need to say it? Demotivational posters are NOT just some
picture with a funny caption, take that shit to /r/funny or /r/pics11. Im tired of this shit. In
this case the person reacting to the posted picture objects to the picture being called a
demotivational poster and tries to expel the unwanted picture from the space reserved for
this particular internet meme. After subsequent exchange of arguments, he succeeds in
persuading the original poster that the picture he posted in fact is not a demotivational
poster and he agrees to post similar pictures into this sub forum. Thus the fidelity of the
demotivational poster meme was protected by the accompanying meme of internet memes
and the discussed picture will not be able to pose as a demotivational poster. Behavior
similar to the one cited above is quite common in cases of failed attempts to create internet
memes.
I have shown an example of an internet meme picture which actually is a memeplex of the
demotivational poster concept plus a concept of the internet meme and its failed copy. I
have also demonstrated how the host of the demotivational poster meme defended the
fidelity of the original meme against perceived rivaling meme. The fidelity of the internet
memes is important for their users since they use them as a form of communication. If the
fidelity of the meme becomes compromised too much it can become confusing, essentially
the same as a word which has shifted its meaning.

4.2 Rickrolling

Up to date the Rickrolling is one of the most well known and widespread internet memes.
Rickroll is an internet prank used by internet users to amuse themselves at expense of other
people. The gist of Rickrolling lies in tricking a person, usually by promising content relevant
to the topic at hand, to click a link leading to video of Rick Astleys 1987 single, Never
Gonna Give You Up, uploaded on YouTube. When the person clicks the link he or she has
been successfully Rickrolled. According to knowyourmeme.org this is a spin-off of an earlier
practical joke known as duckrolling, in which an external link with a sensational title (i.e., a
10
11

Original poster. An acronym commonly used on internet forums.

/r/ funny or /r/ pics are tags for subforums designated for funny topics and pictures respectively

33

specific picture or news item) would be redirected to an edited image of a duck with wooden
wheels. (knowyourmeme.org) As we can all imagine, after several instances of this prank
being pulled on someone this would get quite annoying and frustrating (and it was). People
would get more suspicious about links they would click on, especially if it led to YouTube and
so the pranksters began to mask the links by using services such as a tinyurl, the original
purpose of which is to shorten the long links, but in this instance they were used to mislead
the people into being Rickrolled. But there are those who would go even further in their
effort to Rickroll someone and amuse themselves and possibly even those who would be
victims of their prank. Some creative variations of Rickrolling include spelling the lyrics of the
song by the first letters or word of each line in a conversation (Figure 3. See appendix 1),
rewriting the lyrics by using synonymous words, editing videos in a way that in the first few
seconds they show some other content and just then the clip starts etc.

Among other things, this example shows how the meme will change its mediatype in order
to spread further. The original internet meme of duckrolling, which was able to propagate
itself only in the environment of 4chan, where it originally evolved, when changed into
Rickrolling it was able to spread much further onto another hosts. In addition, when the
original form of video would already be so recognizable, that the people who knew the
meme would just instantly cancel it and even warn other internet users from clicking the
link, the hosts of the meme attempting to Rickroll someone devised different ways how to
accomplish the goal. From memetic perspective this can be seen as the meme influencing its
host to propagate it further by any means necessary. I will further refer to Rickrolling later
on when I will be talking about how internet memes have influence beyond the borders of
the internet and also when talking about 4chan and its role in evolution and spread of
internet memes.

4.3 All your base are belong to us

34

The All your base are belong to us internet meme is one of the oldest. Its origins can be
traced back to a Japanese video game named Zero Wing. In the introductory part of the
game there is a computer-animated video, where the leader of the enemy invading human
territory among other important things says also the phrase All your base are belong to us.
This is a result of poor translation from Japanese into the English language. People playing
the game found it amusing enough to spread it further and thus the meme was born. For our
purposes it is interesting, because it is a primary and probably the most prominent example
of subgenre of internet memes which can be called Engrish.12 Over the years there have
been numerous variations of this meme and it was already made into songs, videos,
photoshoped into pictures etc.
I chose it as an example of internet memes, because like with many other internet memes it
is very unclear why exactly this phrase out of all misspelled, mispronounced, and probably
equally amusing cases of Engrish words and phrases it was this one which became so
successful. As Danung says, *It is+ interesting to observe that the meme in whole is based on
the accidental, uncontrived failure to properly translate the game into English. (Danung,
2008: 9) Also it points on another key characteristic of internet memes in general and that is
making fun of botched, flawed or otherwise broken products of popular and consumer
culture. From memetic point of view, we can say that the central meme is making fun of the
Engrish translations and this particular meme is just the most prominent and well known
derivate. Another successful memes of this type according to knowyourmeme.org are:
Shamefur dispray, I am error, and A winner is you. All except for Shamefur dispray
have their origin in old videogames translated into English. The Shamefur dispray originated
in a new videogame Shogun 2, where the narrator is talking with heavy Japanese accent.

4.4 Xzibit Yo Dawg

This internet meme has its origins in the MTV show Pimp My Ride hosted by rapper Xzibit.
The premise of the show was to take a car of some person and customize based on his or
hers preferences. The show was known for putting awesome things like fish tanks, clothes
dryers, and even fireplaces in the back of your car. (knowyourmeme.org) This plus the
12

Engrish is a slang term referring to bad use of English by Japanese and other East Asians.

35

specific way in which Xzibit was talking on the show sparked the emergence of the Yo Dawg
image macro. Similar to the Demotivational posters it consists of a picture with a written
text. In this case the text has a specific formula which is followed:
Standard: {yo,sup} dawg, I herd you like X, so I put an X in your Y so you can

VERB

while

you VERB
Repetitive: {yo,sup} dawg, I herd you like X, so I put an X in your X so you can X

while

Abstract: {yo,sup} dawg, I herd you like X, so I put an Y in your Z so you can VERB

while

you X

you VERB (knowyourmeme.org)

Important part of the macro is that it is recursive, which makes it appealing for creative use
in many different cases. The original form of the meme with picture of Xzibits face (Figure 4)
can be changed for a picture of some event or a curiosity on which the formula can be
successfully applied. A popular application of the meme is the movie Inception where the
main characters move in dreams and they do not know if they are already in their reality or
still dreaming. The basic text macro would go like this: Yo dawg, I herd you like to dream, so I
put a dream in your dream so you can dram while you dream.

Figure 4. Xzibit Yo Dawg

36

The format of image macros is very popular in creation of internet memes. In this particular
case the interesting point is the formula which can be played around with a lot, providing an
opportunity to creatively engage. This is also one of important characteristics of internet
memes. They are often stimulating creativity of their hosts while providing a simple
template to follow. The other characteristic which helped this internet meme to spread is its
geekiness.

4.5 Disaster girl

Disaster girl (Figure 5) is a very simple internet meme which originated in a photo of a little
girl standing near a burning house with a rather devilish look on her face. The photograph
was taken by her father and uploaded it on a flickr server13. Later it was submitted into
photo competition with theme Emotion capture which is when it caught wider attention
from internet users. Soon Photoshopped14 pictures with the face of the girl and some
disaster or calamity in the background, thus insinuating that she was responsible, started to
show up on the internet. For our purposes the interesting point is that the girl is not an
anonymous face without name. Her name is Zoe Roth and she lives in Mebane in North
Carolina.

13

Flickr.com is a server dedicated to sharing photos. Many people use it as online family albums.
Photoshopped means edited using the Adobe program Photoshop. The word is often used as synonym for
advanced photo editing.
14

37

Figure 5. Disaster girl

What this example should illustrate is that virtually any picture or in fact any piece of
information can become an internet meme and we cannot really be sure which one will
catch the attention of people. Another important point is the fact that the main protagonist
of the meme is not anonymous and there is a name and a story linked to the picture which is
known and can be found. This is characteristic also of many other internet memes when a
random person suddenly became face of an internet meme, such as Scumbag Steve,
StarWars Kid, or Success Kid. (Figure 6. See appendix 1) The stories behind pictures of these
people do not really reflect the purposes for which they are being used. Zoe Roth did not
really start the fire it was set by firefighters who were having a live training.

4.6 LOLcats

This internet meme consists of cats photographed in various humorous positions with a text
written in so called lolspeak15. The origin of the picture stems yet again in a random picture
15

Lolspeak is an internet dialect of English that is used in conjunction with images of cats, exhibits distinctive
variations and patterns which differ from those of standard English. Lolspeak has influenced other language use

38

from a Russian website with misspelled text Can I has a cheeseburger? While its origins
can be traced to other internet sites, the main role in the wide spread of this meme is
attributed to 4chan forums. Over the time of this memes existence, many mutations and
spinoffs have appeared. There is a Caturday submeme which is a name for 4chan tradition
to create LOLcat threads on Saturdays, and among thousands of random cat pictures there
are few which became submemes of the genre. Examples are Ceiling cat (Figure 7), Longcat
(Figure 8. See appendix 1), Kitler (Figure 9. See appendix 1) and so on. There are several
interesting points about this meme. The first is a question. Why cats, when there are more
dogs than cats on the internet? Susan Blackmore in her interview for the
knowyourmeme.org came up with this answer:
I think they are easier to anthropomorphise and harder to herd. Theres something
secretive about them. When I was a child I used to imagine that all our local cats met
up every night after dark to plot schemes against the grown-ups (I wished!). One
would never imagine this of dogs, so Ceiling Cat ruling the world from the loft is
perfect.

Figure 7. Ceiling Cat

and may have a significant impact on the English language, due in part to the internets role in the evolution of
English (Crystal Language and the Internet, 2006:26-27)

39

What is important for us about her answer when researching internet memes and probably
memes in general is that the sheer amount of base material does not suffice there also
needs to be a spark which ignites the appearance of the meme. The other interesting point is
the lolspeak. According to Lefler, lolspeak can be considered an English dialect and is
influencing the spoken language due to its large popularity. Not only is the sentence
structure of Lolspeak different from that of standard English, but the verb forms and
spellings differ as well, and in a distinctive fashion. Some elements of Lolspeak (such as
spelling) are found in Netspeak16 as well. This is a factor of shared origin of both of these
forms of English on the internet. (Lefler, 2007: 3) In general, when creating memes people
often use the Netspeak and they use it on purpose.

Of course, there are many more examples of internet memes, which would help to paint
even more complete picture of the internet memescape. However, the important points
have been covered and the examples I have provided are sufficient to illustrate what the
basic forms of internet memes are. If we try to describe the internet memes based upon
these examples what we will arrive at a more complete definition than those theorized
previously. The phenomenon which we call internet memes actually consists of mediotypes
of memeplexes. These memeplexes consist of the concept of the internet memes plus one
or more concepts which are the actual subject matter of a particular internet meme. The
strategies used for their transmission seem to be mostly proselytic, adversative and
motivational. Internet memes can be found in all forms of information transmission available
on the Internet i.e. text, sound, video, pictures and their possible combinations. Internet
memes most often come from completely unexpected sources and theoretically it is possible
for everyone to become an internet meme. In most cases of internet memes the origin of
the meme can be backtracked and the story of their emergence is known. Key characteristics
of internet memes are humor, playfulness, and ability to engage its hosts in a creative way.
They are an important part of internet subcultures and are even able to incite creation of
new forms of language and have other consequences even outside of the internet. I will
come back to how the internet memes influence our physical or the offline world later. In

16

Lolspeak is a part of Netspeak, which is the term for acronyms, abbreviations, emoticons, and slang produced
by internet users for keyboarding on the internet (Crystal Language and the Internet 2006: 12)

40

the next chapter I will discuss the Internet and why the contemporary form of internet
memes is a very logical consequence of how the people use it.
Remarkably, I did not encounter any internet meme, which would be explicitly sexual, nor
did I find any reference about such meme. The reason for this is, in my opinion, that the
internet memes are in fact a form way to communicate and sexuality is still, even on the
Internet where everyone can post anonymously, is a private matter, which we do not really
share with others. Although pornography is one of the main themes for internet sites, they
are not communities as such from what I have been able to find. This of course does not
mean that there are not any references to sex and sexuality in the memes altogether, there
are plenty of double entendres, allusions or hints, but nothing explicit, which might come as
a surprise.

4.7 Creating memes intentionally

Before I move forward to discussing the Internet and how it influences internet memes I
want to touch the issue of their intentional creation. As I have already stated above, we can
never be sure about what will become a meme and what does not. However, the uncertainty
does not stop people from attempting to create memes on purpose and some of those will
actually succeed. For example, Knobel and Lankshear have described cases of what they
have named deliberate counter-memes. These have been created with the intent to counter
already existing memes and their makers have made an effort to spread them thus ensuring
that

they

caught

on.

These

were

for

example

Black

People

Love

Us!

(blackpeopleloveus.com), which is a wry, if not scathing, commentary on white American

liberal paternalism towards black Americans (Knobel & Lankshear, 2006: 212) or the Flying
Spaghetti Monster, which is a meme created to counter the intent to teach intelligent design
at schools in Kansas. There are also instances of variations of existing internet memes which
are intended to become memes. Notable examples of these are mutations of the Advice
Animals meme. Pictures claiming affiliation to this meme often consist of picture of an
animal on a colors wheel background to imitate the customary mediotype.

41

Tarde too was interested in the problem of creating memes, in his terms imitations, on
purpose. He perceived them as function of power held by those to whom the memes were
supposed to be beneficial according to Marsden (2000). Tardes input on this matter can be
seen as fruitful in instances of politically charged memes. He assessed that the reproduction
of the goals takes priority over the reproduction of means to achieve the goals. Also he
identified that the imitations in society often spread by so called trickle-down effect from
those in position of power and prestige, the elite, on those who want to mimic them, the
mass.

42

5. The Internet

Now that I have described the internet memes in general I will talk a bit about the
environment they originate from and how this environment influenced their contemporary
forms. In this chapter I will describe the internet as the perfect environment for a meme and
I will also extensively discuss a particular case of 4chan, which as stated by researchers
(Danung 2008, Liu 2011, Saklofske 2011, Underwood and Welser 2011) was instrumental in
the evolution of internet memes into the shape they are in today.
First all we need to briefly define what the Internet is, what is it made for and how that
influences what can be done with it or at it. For our purposes it suffices to say that the
Internet is comprised of the physical infrastructure i.e. the servers, the networking devices
such as routers, cables, etc, and also of computers of the individual internet users. Then of
course there are programs which are run by the computers and servers. And, most
importantly, the internet contains information in the digitalized form i.e. video, audio and
text. The important qualities of the Internet relevant to our topic are:
1. Digitization: the standardization of diverse forms of information (e.g. text, audio,
and video) as binary computer bits
2. Synchronicity: the relative capacity for simultaneous (versus delayed) interaction
3. Interactivity: the capacity of systems to generate and experience of relatively
synchronous and responsive communication between users (Downes & McMillan,
2000)
4. Hypertextuality: the systematic linkage of information in nonlinear, weblike
fashion. (Lindof, 2002: 249)

5.1 Hypertextuality

You have probably already experienced a situation when you have gone online for some
reason, for instance, to read some particular news article, watch a video or find some
information, and when you went offline again you suddenly realized that you have looked

43

onto many other things during your online stay. Perhaps you have not even finished the
originally intended task. If this was the case my bet would be that the culprit to blame for
this, apart for your lack of concentration, is the hypertextual and interactive nature of the
internet. In other words while you were reading through the article you might have run into
a hyperlink leading to another site with information on some particular phenomenon
described in the article (just imagine the structure of Wikipedia). More and more
information wrestles for the diminishing space available space now. The obvious result of
this is that every one of us has to limit the time he or she dedicates to a single piece of
information. (Eriksen, 2001: 85 translated) Eriksen wrote these words in a Facebookless,
Twitterless world, in a world without RSS newsfeeds. Now the amount of pointless and
superfluous information being thrown at us is even larger. This represents a problem for
memes as this largely increases a pool of competitors for the attention of potential hosts.
On one hand the Internet and its digital nature provide, probably more than any previous
medium, is suitable for large-scale meme distribution. (Shifman and Thelwall, 2009: 2568) If
we look at characteristics describing the effectiveness of the memetic transmission which
were introduced by Dawkins i.e. the fidelity, the fecundity and the longevity of memes, we
find out that in this regard the conditions for meme transmission are great. The fidelity of
the transmission can be really high as the digital technologies provide copying options are
generally superior to those available for other mediums. The fecundity can also be much
higher, since by few clicks a person can make large number of copies of the information in
digital format. The longevity can also be increased because on the internet the information
can be stored indefinitely in archives (Heylighen, 1996), but for serious assessment of the
longevity of the memes in the online internet environment not enough time has passed to
really make any definite assessment. (Knobel & Lankshear, 2006) What Heylighen says about
information is correct they can remain stored virtually forever in some archive.
However, it is important to make a distinction between a meme and information. Every
meme is information, but not every information is meme. Stonier says about information:
Information exists. It does not need to be perceived to exist. It does not need to be
understood to exist. It requires no intelligence to interpret it. It does not have to have
meaning to exist. It exists. (Stonier, 1990: 21) This of course is not the case for memes. In
order to be considered as a meme the information needs to be copied, used, or imitated by
44

people. As it was made apparent in the previous chapter even the most insignificant picture
or phrase can become an internet meme and usually it does not attain its memetic status
over night. It needs to be noticed, to find its hosts who will carry it and spread it among the
rest of the population. In this way information can be viewed as a potential meme. An
example of information lying dormant on the internet and then suddenly becoming a meme
can be found in a song recording of a TVshow that was made in the year 1976 and which
became famous as the trololoman. It has been uploaded to YouTube on November 26 of
2009 and hardly been recognized until February 25, 2010. Then it went viral and ended up
with more than seven million views. (Klasen, 2011: 64)
One of the common ways this can happen is that someone comes across this information
accidentally and then posts a hyperlink at some BBS17 or chat. These can be understood as
affinity spaces, which were operationalized by Gee (2004) and can be described as:
specially designed spaces (physical and virtual) constructed to resource people [who
are] tied together . . . by a shared interest or endeavor . . . . [For example, the] many
many websites and publications devoted to [the video game, Rise of Nations] create
a social space in which people can, to any degree they wish, small or large, affiliate
with others to share knowledge and gain knowledge that is distributed and dispersed
across many different people, places, Internet sites and modalities (magazines, chat
rooms, guides, recordings). (Gee, 2004: 73)
According to Knobel and Lankshear (2006), affinity spaces instantiate participation,
collaboration, distribution and dispersion of expertise, and relatedness. (Knobel &
Lankshear, 2006: 208) From this description and from what I have elaborated before it is
clear that these places are ideal to facilitate spread of the memes. In regard to spreading the
internet memes we can find many affinity spaces, which have had an enormous impact on
their spread and evolution. The idea of affinity spaces is, I believe, in terms of the Internet
closely connected to what Granovetter states about the cultural diffusion:

17

Users of BBS connect to computers serving as hubs for particular, special interest conferencing or
newsgroups. Users then post messages to a single address, and read and respond to messages posted by
others. Messages are archived, and are produced and displayed in a threaded format corresponding to their
topicality. Exchanges are asynchronous. (Lindof, 2002: 251)

45

What makes cultural diffusion possible, then, is the fact that small cohesive groups
who are liable to share a culture are not so cohesive that they are entirely closed;
rather, ideas may penetrate from other such groups via the connecting medium of
weak ties. It is a seeming paradox that the effect of weak ties, in this case, is
homogenization, since my emphasis has been the ability of weak ties to reach out to
groups with ideas and information different from one's own. The paradox dissolves,
however, when the process is understood to occur over a period of time. The ideas
that initially flow from another setting are, given regional and other variations,
probably new. (Granovetter, 1983: 215-216)

People can be members of various different internet communities and the membership is
not mutually exclusive, thus through their ties to different communities the memes can be
passed on. The most successful memes can then result into what Granovetter describes as
homogenization i.e. some internet memes are spread all around the internet and can be
considered to be almost universal, while other ones will remain group specific because at
the other end of the ties there is no interest in them. The spread of the internet memes can
be considered as a good example of how the weak ties can work as this kind of diffusion of
the internet memes can reach very wide audience.
One of the most influential ones, if not the most influential at all is 4chan. It is often cited as
a source of different memes and from the examples which I have cited in the second chapter
most of the memes had been influenced or even originated at the 4chan message boards.

5.2 4chan

The 4chan message boards are not unknown to researchers (Danung, Saklofske, Liu, Lefler,
Saklofske, Underwod and Welser) dealing with internet phenomena, internet memes in
particular. Also many internet users are familiar with existence of the site, fewer are those
who will actually go there and become a part of 4chan community, because of its nature. To
be more precise, when 4chan is discussed the /b/ subforum is mostly meant. This part of the
46

site is designated for random which means that the users are free to post any content they
desire there.
It is the place to go if you want to witness unbridled misogyny, racism,
objectification, hatred, stupidity and spectacle. However, this is only a limited
catalogue of /b/s contents. Less apparently (and also less frequently), I have also
witnessed heartfelt emotional exchanges, political debates, empathy, sympathy,
feminism, egalitarianism, justice, and creativity. (Saklofske, 2011: 3)

As the description by Salkofske suggests, the site is very ambiguous and volatile place and
you never know what you will find there. The reasons why these forums are so different
from the rest of the BBS on the internet are the anonymity of the users and the
temporariness of the content: While users have the option to post messages using their
real names, or pseudonyms, leaving the name option blank creates an Anonymous post in
which the users name is not shared with those reading the messages. IP addresses of those
who post content are also not shared with the community. (Saklofske, 2011: 4) One could
argue that other internet BBS and chats are also anonymous, because no one has to post
there under their real name and the rest of the forum users are unable to identify who the
user really is, but the difference is that while on other forums the users are posting under
aliases unique for each person, on 4chan everyone can post and most of the people do,
under a same alias. On the other forums you can develop your own identity, you can make
others perceive you based on your previous postings, your alias has a history of its posts
behind it and the rest of the posters can have a unique relation to the identity you have
developed on a BBS or chat. This is different for 4chan, because there is no personal history.
The other unique attribute of the 4chan is the temporariness of its content: 4chan
preserves only 1118 pages of message postings on each forum. The rest are permanently
deleted. As well, posts which include material that violate US law are deleted by moderators.
Thus 4chan makes no effort to archive or record its own history. (Saklofske, 2011: 4) These
qualities along with the number of users create a very unstable environment, meaning that
there is no certainty that the content which was there a minute ago is still available there.
18

15 at the moment

47

The collective memory and repostings of its anonymous, shifting populace

sometimes manage to reinvent and reintegrate past memes into new contexts, but
nothing lasts for long. Importantly, activity on the /b/ channel is often so voluminous,
that refreshing your browser window every few seconds gives you an entirely new
summary of recently contributed-to threads. When viewing individual threads,
refreshing the page can often yield dozens of new replies within a few seconds, or
reveals a 40419 screen, which means that the thread has been permanently erased.
(Saklofske, 2011: 5)
It is this environment which has influenced and shaped the form of the contemporary
internet memes. Let us imagine that in this volatile and shifting environment we want our
post to be noticed. The tools at our disposal are a text window into which you can type your
post and a space next to your post where you can upload a picture. In order to get the
attention you are seeking the best bet is to post some interesting or obscure picture along
with the text, because it is more likely to be noticed by people scrolling and browsing the
site and thus give you the attention you desired. Now let us consider this situation from a
standpoint of a meme, an internet meme in our case. As I have shown the 4chan
environment is very unstable and the threads can appear and disappear very quickly.
As Eriksen states, Compression of information into gradually shortening time intervals leads
also to changes on the side of those who transmit them. (Eriksen, 2001: 85 translated) In
terms of memetics this means that the physical representation of the meme needs to be
such that it will be noticed by the potential hosts. This poses a question. How does a meme
know which mediatype to take on in order to successfully catch attention? By imitation of
course, it will attempt to copy the mediatype of another successful meme. The success of
the meme on 4chan BBS can be measured for example by how many responses the thread
has received or for how long it remains there undeleted. From 4chan the memes need to
either spread elsewhere to another site, carried by one of the visitors of 4chan which
happened to go by while it was there or become a part of 4chan sociotype20 otherwise they
will get deleted permanently. This creates what we could call evolutionary pressure on the
19

The HTTP error message returned to the browser by the Web server when a requested Web page is not
available. The error occurs because the page no longer exists or is restricted. (www.pcmag.com)
20
The sociotype denotes the group or community of individuals who hold that information in their memory
(Blackmore, 2000).

48

memes on the 4chan to create effective mediatypes in order to escape the conveyor belt of
information. As it seems, the most efficient mediatype today for transmission of internet
memes is a picture and text macro. The reason behind this is that it can convey messages
faster and probably even more effectively than pure text and in comparison with other
formats i.e. audio or video, it requires much less proficiency with specialized software, also it
is possible to produce it with the default hardware and software equipment available on all
computers.
A proof of the effectiveness of this mediatype used to convey memes on 4chan is a fact, that
these internet memes became an essential part of the language used on the forums.
In terms of grammar and content, 4chan is the English teachers worst nightmare. If
4chan was a country, the dialect of English utilized in the community could be
considered a different language. On first examination, the language seems so foreign
due to the many grammatical errors and inside jokes. But after reading enough posts
and understanding the community, the lexis can be broken down into three simple
categories. The first part of the unique lexis of 4chan is attributed to typing out words
phonetically. The second element of understanding is to know the inside jokes or
reasoning behind the humor of the language. Lastly, the memes that 4chan is
infamous for are crucial for the total 4chan lexis experience. (Liu, 2011: 2)
Thus we arrive at point where we can see that the internet memes not only spread through
communication, but are in fact a part of communication on the internet which has evolved
to its contemporary state in conditions of the 4chan. One important thing to mention is, that
while most of the other bulletin boards keep the threads archived for a very long time and
have a different type of design, the evolutionary advantages of the memes which survived
the 4chan environment and their ability to attract attention prevails in these milder
conditions without many problems.

49

5.3 Insider Knowledge

We have also learned that the internet memes require insider knowledge, which pertains to
some particular internet community which utilizes the memes for its own purposes. Knobel
and Lankshear have put the point well by expressing it as: Many of these memes have
become internet lore, and even though all of them are relatively new in terms of longevity,
all of them draw deeply on popular internet culture. (Knobel & Lankshear, 2006: 213) The
memes are obviously not coming only from the 4chan, but from other sources as well.
The evolution of greater accessibility to internet has meant a truly gargantuan influx of new
users with new faces popping out each day to keep flooding the previously barren landscape
of the world of internet as all of them got plenty of opportunities to separate the grains from
the chaff, to plant a plant, or simply add an ad to their website. The extensive freedom that
one still could experience while browsing the what often looked like an endless content
allowed the users to pick what they liked or considered interesting and ignore the rest with
knowledge, that the extensive anonymity of the internet rendered their actual contribution
having almost no impact on their real lives. For few years, memes have been mainly
spreading through channels such as message boards, image boards and various forums
which could be dedicated to basically any topic imaginable, and also through IRC channels
and communication devices such as instant messengers and e-mails. Of these, only the latter
did really put any stress on the users in a way that would make them consider their
reputation while sharing the meme with others.
However, with nascent of internet social networks and even the bigger increase in a number
of users and ways to access the web, the once all-covering shroud of anonymity has started
to fade away. The new generation of users proved to be much more confident and came in
accompanied with a new take on discussion and image boards; boards linked with social
networks where one would be able communicate with the rest of the world in a much more
intuitive way while not necessarily being able to keep his identity a secret. While this might
seem as a tradeoff which one would have to spend a certain amount of time ruminating
over, with most of the users, the period of reconsidering possible pros and cons was either
very short or did not happen at all. Already being used to communicate with, and present
50

themselves in front of, theyre not so close but still Facebook-worthy friends, the new
generation users did not consider staying low profile a priority. Of course, this is mostly an
impression one gets due to the sheer amount of people using the internet and sharing their
thoughts, photos and videos throughout the web. Nevertheless, while the great hubs of
activity such as 4chan continue to be the content creating machines which are capable of
turning a simple picture or an uninspiring phrase into internationally revered and recognized
piece of art, both the audience which now judges new creations and also a category of
people actually coming up with the new content have grown exponentially.
The two immediate effects of this transition are return of anonymity through belonging into
the crowd and an increase in a number of mildly successful content which can now have
enough supporters that enable it to survive. Indeed, many of the memes that originate from
websites dedicated to picture sharing such as Imgur or 9GAG would have not survived the
natural selection process that rules over websites such as 4chan. The difference, however, is
that here, the processes of both publishing and selection are no longer completely, or at all,
anonymous. And while the content creators who publish on 4chan can be rightly afraid of
sharing too much information in order to protect them from any possibility of online
harassment which even a harsh criticism can be a sort of, being stripped of anonymity, the
users in the role of the virtual jury are much more lenient, forgiving or simply not willing to
openly criticize and having to face the impending war of the words over a not that funny or
interesting piece of paintbrush skills. A consequence of this change is that broader base of
content creators and potential re-publishers have enabled for new types of memes which
are nested in different communities, thus once again hinting at the role of internet memes
as of an alternative medium of message relaying.

51

6. Communication

When we look at internet memes as a form of communication we need to pose a simple

question. Why should posting a picture be considered to be communication? This is, I
believe, explained by Savoie when she talks about YouTube video content uploaded by
internet users:

Broadcasting implies receipt of a message; the desire to broadcast oneself is

synonymous with the desire to feel connected, to know that the meaningful symbols
encoded into a YouTube video are grasped by others out there. That is the desire to
touch a common ground, to create community; that is not depthlessness. It is the
opposite; it is connectedness. This connectedness may be shallow, but it is
connectedness nonetheless. (Savoie, 2008: 187)

In other words, why would someone post something on the internet, which is a public space,
if it was not to share it with someone else and in that way to communicate?
Another question which needs to be answered in order to understand how pictures can be
an effective way of communication is, how can we be sure, that the other people looking at
it will understand the intended meaning properly? As Heylighen and Chielens (2008) point
out: a message as received and understood by an individual will rarely be identical to the
one that was expressed, as illustrated by the many misunderstandings and reinterpretations
during communication. (Heylighen and Chielens, 2008: 6) As Aunger explains, this problem
was similarly formulated by Noam Chomsky:
Chomskys principle21 is true of communication in any context you care to mention:
in communication between genes, viruses, cells, computer viruses, or memes. There
21

This is the poverty of the stimulus dictum - that what gets transmitted in signals is insufficient in content to
account for what people can make of them. We recognize this ourselves when we commonly say that a single
gesture or word speaks volumes. (Aunger, 2002: 247)

52

isnt a single example of a communication process in which all the necessary

information is transmitted from sender to receiver; messages are always
depauperate and insufficient to explain how the receiver reacts. The receiver
(whether a computer, a cell, or a mind) must always engage in some kind of
interpretive or reconstructive process, based on the message as well as other
contextual factors, to determine what the source of the message meant by the act
of sending the message in the first place. (Aunger, 2002: 247)
In terms of memetics, this means that the person receiving the message goes through the
assimilation stage of the memetic transmission process and attempts to interpret the
message according to his knowledge and experiences. The reason why pictures can work as
a way to transmit the memes is that in the process of interpretation and understanding of
the information we encounter our mind almost always fills in the gaps and comes up with a
resolution. This can be anything from a very complex theory e.g. conspiracy theories which
are often used to explain things which do not add up to just simply conceding that the
thing is just stupid and has no logical explanation at all. The latter is an approach many
people take when confronted with abstract art, without the background knowledge, the
common ground, they are unable to find plausible explanation and thus in order to solve the
problem they can either research more or solve it simply by stating that it is nonsense.
This brings us to the next problem, which is that in order for memes to spread there needs
to be some kind of common ground for meanings which would ensure that what is meant
and what is understood is similar. More than any previous medium, the Internet has the
technical capabilities for global meme diffusion. Yet, to spread globally memes need to
negotiate their way through cultural and linguistic borders.(Shifman and Thelwall, 2009:
2567) One of the most common is popular culture thus making it an ideal source of the
memetic material and references.

53

6.1 Popular Culture

As popular culture I regard products of entertainment industry, such as movies, music,

books, computer games and so forth. The key features of pop culture relevant to this work
are its wide reach and coverage, its simplicity or sometimes even outright naivety and great
abundance of production. Products or popular culture are basically a pastime for people
which are consumed in great quantities.
Popular culture has at least two very important aspects in regard to internet memes. The
first one is that it serves them as one of their reference systems. People need reference
systems, which they can use to express themselves and which would be easily
understandable by others. When we want to find such systems, we need to be looking for
something which is widespread so that it can form a basis for understanding with others,
simple to be easily graspable so that wide variety of people can use it, and the people need
to be able to relate to it in some way. We can imagine this as a situation in which someone is
giving an example. The example needs to be something to refer to that the other person can
imagine and understand it in the same or nearly the same manner as the person explaining
his thoughts intends it should be understood; otherwise, it wouldnt be of any use. This
suggests that people will be inclined to pick such examples or such reference systems which
can be expected to be understood by the listeners without much difficulty. As a good
example of this we can look at the numbers of internet memes listed at
knowyourmeme.com which are related to well known movies or actors. Thirty-one
references can be found for Star Wars movies, Harry Potter has 21, and then there is Star
Trek with 15, Lord of the Rings with 12, Twilight with 7. From animated series we can name
My Little Ponies series which has 57 submissions; Simpsons have 17; Futurama 8. There are
also 321 submissions with an anime22 tag. From actors there is Nicolas Cage with 8 memes,
Arnold Schwarzeneger with 5, Keanu Reeves with 4. There are also numerous memes related
to computer games, the most notable are World of Warcraft with 22 references, Skyrim with
21, Portal with 12 and Half-Life with 11. In these numbers there are confirmed submissions
as well as those which were rejected or not yet confirmed as memes by the members of the
site, because I find even these unconfirmed memes to be an important pointer of popularity
22

Japanese animated movies and series

54

and wide spread of the mentioned titles. We can see that the most popular titles and
persons are very frequent sources of memetic references. This suggests that the general
knowledge of the reference frame of the meme can be one of the deciding factors in
deciding whether the meme will successfully propagate or not.
The second one is that memes are a form of agency, means to react to the contents of
popular culture, to express opinions about it or use it for peoples purposes as it suits their
needs when they are looking for amusement, good comparison or symbolic reference. Allen
talks about a "Meme warfare" which involves countering commercial images or ideas with a
"metameme," a meme that both repositions a corporate meme and invokes a larger critique
of corporate culture. One of the metamemes identified by Lasn is "True Cost," which calls
attention to the ecological and human costs of a product beyond its sale price. (Allen, 2003:
21)

The reference frame is most important when pertaining to memes which refer to some kind
of event. Very common events which often spark creation of internet memes are premieres
of movies in cinemas. Worldwide premieres of movies can create an event which can incite
many people to express themselves and many of them will do so by means of internet
memes. This is for example case of the movie series Twilight, about a boy vampire and a
human girl who fall in love with each another and struggle against hurdles of fate in strife for
their happiness. These movies prompted emergence of internet memes which are
predominantly mocking the movies for their cheesiness, bad storytelling, and acting
performances. One of the popular ones is very simple catchphrase Still better love story
than Twilight. This meme usually points to something which is very poorly done, and often
is not a love story at all, for example this thesis. This can be seen as a way to oppose the
media pressure which promotes the movies and also their main protagonists very
aggressively.
In the following examples I will show how the internet memes are used as means of
communication about topics ranging from current events that are being talked about to
topics and events of everyday life which from the essence of everyones lives.

55

6.2 The Casually Pepperspray Everything Cop

Another type of event which can incite an inception of an internet meme can be an affair
which is so shocking that people just want to talk about it and express their views. A perfect
example of this is the meme called The Casually Pepperspray Everything Cop
This meme refers to event which took place at the University of California Davis campus on
November 18th, 2011. A group of students gathered there inspired by the Occupy protests
which were taking place all around the world. During the protest some of them were sitting
on the ground and holding their hands. At one point of the protest they were requested to
cease the protest and leave by the police forces which were called to disband the protesters.
When the students did not comply with the request, they were pepper sprayed by a police
officer who casually walked around the group and sprayed the pepper spray into their faces
while they were still sitting on the ground.
Tremendous media exposure ensured that many people were familiar with the story. The
most widely spread was a video of an officer using pepper spray on a group of students who
were sitting on the ground peacefully. The figure of the police officer, the cop, became a
symbol, an icon representing the whole situation and thereby the whole meme. The whole
story which pertains to this event is important, because it gives the meaning to the meme.
There have been many variations of this meme where people expressed their opinions about
the incident. Perhaps the most iconic one is the picture where the officer is spraying the
Declaration of Independence on the painting by John Turnbull (Figure 9). Many others have
followed shortly.

56

Figure 10. The Casually Pepperspray Everything Cop

Of course, they also presented their views by writing about what happened and what they
thought about it. The important fact is that there were also picture memes about the event
which were able to convey the views of their creators in a very powerful way and address
much wider audience than by writing a plain text.
Yet another type of events which can start a meme are criminal acts. This was the case for
example in instances of Basement Dad/Joseph Fritzl, Casey Anthony Trial, or to mention
a case of a local internet meme Devnska Nov Ves Massacre. The Basement Dad meme
refers to the infamous case which took place in Austria. There Joseph Fritzl held his daughter
Elizabeth captive in a basement for 24 years and over the time he repeatedly sexually
abused her and raped. During the time Elizabeth gave birth to seven children and miscarried
once. Casey Anthony was a mother of two years old Caylee whose body was found in the
forest near the house where she lived with her mother. The girl was reported as missing by
her grandmother after not seeing her for 31 days. The case sparked much controversy and
memetic activity on the social networks when even though the evidence was pointing to the
57

mother as the culprit, she was acquitted. Devnska Nov Ves Massacre refers to shooting
spree which took place on 30 August, 2010. During the spree the shooter killed seven people
and injured another 17. Primary targets of his spree were six members of family living in the
flat next door, because they have been bullying him and the rest of the block. The incident
was used to point on the Roma ethnic as maladjusted people and unpleasant neighbors and
up to these days it is possible to find hints about the incident present in the internet
discussions when Roma neighbors are talked about. All of these cases were unusual in one
way or another and as a part of the public discourse about them, internet memes were
created.
A characteristic attribute of event related memes is that that in terms of longevity they come
as suddenly as the event to which they point and after the public moves on to another topic
the occurrence of these memes declines rapidly. This does not mean that they are forever
forgotten, but that they are merely dormant and can be made use of if a fit opportunity
arises. On the other hand they are much more diverse than the next type of internet memes
I am going to talk about. This type usually has better longevity than the previous one and
also the fidelity of the meme is higher. These are what I would call utility memes.
Contrary to cases described above when talking about utility memes the story of its origin
does not matter to a large degree, even though it is known. These memes, we can say, have
liberated themselves from their original and now people recognize their meaning and their
purpose without knowing much or even anything about their origins. Such situation is, of
course, very advantageous for a meme, because this way it can transmit more freely i.e.
without need to explain its background. For example, The Casually Pepperspray Everything
Cop would have a very hard time, spreading if people did not know about the event it
references to. In this sense we can say that the utility memes refer to situations or concepts
which are more common occurrence and thus are understandable even without the story of
their life.

6.3 Rage Faces (Rage Comics)

The Rage Faces or how they are of then referred to Rage Comics are a set of faces made in
the basic picture-editing program called Paintbrush. Drawing in the Paintbrush can be in
58

general considered to be synonymous to amateur picture editing skills as opposed to

Photoshopping which is professional picture editing software. Thus also Rage Comics (Figure
11) are very amateurish by their appearance. The result of this undemanding nature of this
meme is its wide-ranging spread. However, the fact that it is easy to make would hardly be
sufficient reason for its popularity. The main reason of the popularity of this meme is its
utility and possibilities it gives to its users.

Figure 11. Rage Comics

The meme consists of number of submemes. Each of the submemes is represented by a

picture of a face and each stands for concept of more or less complex emotion or behavior.
The first of these concepts was the Rage Guy, thus the name, and the meme originated on
59

4chan forums. Because of the aforementioned ease with which it can be imitated it gained
popularity and soon other Rage Faces started to appear. Among the most notable are
Forever Alone Guy, which is a concept for someone who is lonely and disappointed in life
and destined to remain forever alone which very frequently implies that the person will not
be able to find a partner. Then there is a Troll Face implying the person is intentionally being
mischievous and having a laugh at someones expense. These faces are not used as set
characters but rather as representations of emotional states and so the protagonists of the
story which is being told by the comics can exchange several of these.
The importance of this internet meme, or rather memeplex, lies in the fact that it is being
widely utilized to talk about social life, to tell simple stories of everyday life as well as whole
life stories. This gives people a way to share their story with an internet community and
often get feedback on in. Oftentimes it can be just something as simple as: This happened
also to me!
Most of the stories told by the Rage Comics are very ordinary and mundane and the
advantages of sharing your story in this way instead of writing it down are obvious. It would
be probably harder for many people to write them in plain text and also the rest of the
community would not be as willing to read them. In this form, the Rage Face meme serves as
a way to reach out to the community and talk about problems and situations of the everyday
life and get some feedback on your story in other words, to feel connected.
This meme can be perceived as a means to socialize and share ones experience with others.
Compared to writing about it it has several advantages which include that the Rage Faces
help to express complex concepts by using a simple image. Also many people do not have
god enough writing skills to be able to tell the story. With pictures the viewers will be able to
fill in the blanks themselves, because the basic concepts are already defined. Also, reading a
plain text which would be able to cover the whole story might be more time consuming than
just looking at few pictures and on the contemporary Internet the time is of the essence so
to say.

60

6.4 Advice Animals

The Advice Animals memeplex consists of many single memes, knowyourmeme.com shows
79 instances. These memes, similarly to the previous one, enable people to talk about a
range of different topics in a way which can be easily understood by others who understand
the gist. And the gist is a very simple one. The meme usually consists of one picture, which
serves as a label or an icon of the topic the meme will be talking about and the concept. For
example there is Socially Awkward Penguin. The meme will consist of a picture of a penguin
walking from right to the left and some text describing what the author perceives as a
socially awkward situation (Figure 12). There are many others of these concepts which
enable their users to talk about wide variety of different topics. There are First World
Problems to talk about the things of our everyday life which are insubstantive in the larger
scheme of things but yet they bother us. Then there is a Third World Success Kid which is
used to describe the difficulties of life in underdeveloped countries and is a counterpart to
the First World Problems and a spin-off of the Success Kid meme, which depicts a little boy
clenching his fist in a seemingly victorious gesture. There are also memes which are used to
mock stereotypes, tell bad jokes (Bad Joke Eel), make bad puns (Bad Pun Con) , ask witty
philosophical questions (Philosoraptor) (Figure 13), and many more.

Figure 12. Socially Awkward Penguin

61

The utility of these memes is that they make it possible to talk about all these different
topics just by the way, so to say. Anyone can sometimes have a philosophical or quasiphilosophical question or thought which she would like to share with others but if she had
no way to bring the topic up she might just decide to abandon it. This way there is an option
to share it and engage in interaction with the community which, if it will like the idea, will
reward it with positive feedback. One might argue that it is not necessary to use a meme to
talk about these topics and that would be right, but at the same time talking about the same
topic without the use of the meme could require much longer introduction to what kind of
idea is the person trying to convey.

The memes I have listed above are just a tip of the iceberg and there are literally thousands
of other cases. I have picked just the few examples which I think are the most suitable to
illustrate the point I am trying to make, which is that the internet memes are increasingly
becoming prominent way to communicate on the internet. This gives its users option to
effectively communicate their thoughts in the internet environment. Many internet
communities have memes which are relevant to their interests and which they use to talk
about their topics. For example, knowyourmeme.com contains 321 memes which are
referring to topics related to anime. These would however require specific knowledge of the
genre to talk about.
The use of the internet memes makes the communication on the Internet more
understandable and more predictable for its users. We can say that the memes create a
reference frame similar to the one created by the popular culture. The internet memes
provide a way to talk about various different topics, whether they are pop culture, the
current events, or the common mundane.

62

7. Conclusion

On September 2, 2011, an American football game was played in Painesville, Ohio between
two high school football teams that raised many eyebrows within internet communities. This
was not due to exceptionally good or bad play on account of the involved teams but rather
because of a sign that supporters of one of the teams have held up during the game.23 The
message on the sign said: YOU MAD BRO? On the Internet this is a very common phrase
used by internet trolls24 all over the world and it is supposed to further infuriate an already
upset person by asking him or the obvious question. The problem is that the sign was not
understood in the way it was intended. Because of the use of the word bro and also
because the majority of the opposition team were black players, the sign was marked as
racial intimidation by the coach, several players and a NCAAP25 representative who was
present at the game. The incident was reported in local television news as well as in
newspapers. This caused a strong reaction of the Internet community and many people
wrote blog posts where they expressed their dismay and amazement about the fact that
something which, to them obviously, could not be possibly meant as a racial innuendo was in
fact perceived in that way by some people.
What happened here is clear. After an internet meme leaked out of the Internet into the
real world, it was put out of its context and confronted with people who were not familiar
with its reference frame. The intent of the message was misinterpreted, which had
unfortunate unintended consequences for the young men who put up the sign and also it
caused unnecessary upset of the people who did not understand the message.
In 2002, Rick Astley, whom I have already mentioned above in Chapter 3, has attempted a
comeback (Liu, 2011) and he did not have any notable success. In 2008, after a wave of
Rickrolling swept through the internet, Rick made another attempt, this time with very
notable success when a compilation of Astleys most famous works reached #17 on the
UK Top 40 Albums Chart. (Liu, 2011: 3) In this case the impact of an internet meme coming
23

People Think You Mad Bro Is Racist. 2011. YouTube video uploaded by jackpmoore on September 5, 2011.
Retrieved May 19, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Rm30cepvMQA.
24
Trolling is an internet term which stands for deliberately infuriating people via talk, prank, or other means.
25
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

63

into contact with real world was different and the meme helped to bring back the faded star
once more to the limelight.
These are just two examples of the impact that the internet memes can have in the offline
world. I also think that this is a good reason to dedicate time to study the phenomenon of
internet memes. As people are spending more and more time using the Internet or at least
they are connected online via some portable device, such as a mobile phone, notebook, and
readers such as iPad or Kindle, and soon there should even be glasses by Google, there will
be more and more cases of the internet memes leaking to the offline world. And I believe
that we should be available to understand them and interpret them properly when they do.
However, at the moment, internet memes are most influential in their own element, online,
and if we want to study the online environment and the social life which is taking place
there, we need to take memes seriously. While internet memes might appear as mere
entertainment at first glance, their real purpose/function for internet users and their
communities is much greater. They provide avenues for the effective communication of
thoughts, views, and ideas as well as participation in the life of the community. By using
them people are able to actively and creatively engage and to express their thoughts in a
way which is comprehensible and easily graspable by others who are familiar with the
concept utilized.
What are internet memes? (definitional)
As part of my contribution to the existing body of research on memes and the Internet more
broadly speaking, I have explored and analyzed internet memes. I have come up with a
definition of internet memes which, I believe, is more complete than the ones available
previously. I have also connected the definition of the internet memes to the broader frame
of the general theory of memes. As I have already said above, the memes we can find on the
Internet are actually mediotypes of memeplexes. These memeplexes consist of the concept
of internet memes plus one or more concepts which are the actual subject matter of a
particular internet meme. Internet memes can be found in all forms of information
transmission available on the Internet, i.e. text, sound, video, pictures, etc., and their
possible combinations. Internet memes most often come from completely unexpected
sources and theoretically, it is possible for everyone and everything to become an internet
64

meme. In most cases of internet memes the origin of the meme can be backtracked and the
story of their emergence is known. Thus they can be, in some cases considered as bearers of
the history of internet communities. Key characteristics of internet memes are humor,
playfulness, and ability to engage its hosts in a creative way. They are an important part of
internet subcultures and are even able to incite creation of new forms of language and have
other consequences even outside of the Internet.
What communities use internet memes? (descriptive)
I have also looked at which communities are using internet memes. These have been mostly
the big communities, using their own terms by which they refer to themselves, b-tards
(members of the 4chan community gathering in the /b subforum), the redditors, the
imgurians and the 9gagers and other communities gathering on forums and discussion
boards of various sites. In this regard I can conclude that we should probably be able to
identify internet memes in some form or shape in a majority of communities that gather
online. In some cases they would be only short text phrases and macros, in some cases
pictures with text, or videos with various degrees of difficulty in editing and compiling. This
all depends on the technical attributes of the spaces used by the community to
communicate, their technical prowess and wide variety of other factors that are seemingly
impossible to predict. The memes will be referring to some notable events of the
community, to various points of interest of the community of just to novelties the
community finds interesting or amusing for one reason or another. The main point is that
the memes will be there.
What is the purpose of internet memes for the communities using them? (explanatory)
I have focused my research mainly on memes which can be found in form of pictures, most
often accompanied by text. This is due to the fact that this kind of internet meme is the most
common in the contemporary internet environment. As I have explained this kind of
mediotype of internet memes has many advantages for its users. First of all it is best suited
to catch attention of the internet users who can assess the message the picture is supposed
to convey much quicker than it would be the case if it was just plain text. On the other side
videos are harder to produce than pictures, they require more attention and time to follow

65

through and often there are also technical difficulties of playing video files. Thus the pictures
emerge as the best choice for a meme to spread around at this time.
As I have shown, internet memes have become an important part of community and social
life within the contemporary online world. This is because they provide ways and means to
talk about social life, about common everyday topics as well as about important or notable
events which are being discussed at that time. By using internet memes people can share
their ideas, views and stories with community and get feedback on them, thus engaging in a
form of social contact mediated by means of internet communication. The memes form a
reference frame which provides common ground for their users make the communication on
the internet more understandable and more predictable for them. The internet memes also
provide opportunities to be creative, playful in a social way.
Is it possible to categorize internet memes into some typology? (theoretical)
While looking at possibilities of creating a typology of internet memes I have come to the
conclusion that in this regard the internet memes are somewhat similar to a an open can of
worms, there is always something which does not fit in. I was able to broadly identify memes
which refer to events and what I call utility memes, which can be distinguished in terms of
their longevity. Memes can also obviously be put into categories based on their mediotype,
but that does not tell us anything about their essence and thus I do not consider it as
relevant enough to base a typology on it. Otherwise, I have found memes to be too diverse
and their topics and characteristics to be so fluctuating and interchangeable that I consider
any kind of complex typology to be impossible.
To conclude, I would just state that the internet memes are important integral part of the
internet environment and that they can already now influence also the world offline. I
believe that in my thesis I have shown, that they are worthy of our attention and our effort
to explore them and understand them.

66

8. Bibliography

Thinkquest. Web. 20.4.2012. http://library.thinkquest.org/

PCMAG. Web. 1.5.2012. www.pcmag.com
Know Your Meme. 2011. Weblog. Retrieved April 21, 2012 http://knowyourmeme.com/.

Allen, Dennis W. The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association Vol. 36, No. 1,
Thinking Post-Identity (Spring, 2003), pp. 6-24
Aunger, R. [2002]: The Electric Meme. New York: Free Press.
Bauckhage Christian. Insights into Internet Memes IAIS Bonn, Germany. 2011.
Blackmore, Susan. The meme machine. 1st pub. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. xx,
264 s.
Clarke P. A. (2000) The Internet as a medium for qualitative research. South African Journal
of Information Management. Vol. 2 (2/3) September/December 2000.
Corbin, J. C., & Holt, N. L. (2011). Chapter 13: Grounded theory. In B. Somekh & K. Lewin
(Eds.), Theory and methods in social research (2nd ed., pp. 113-120). London: Sage.
Danung, J., Holloway Attaway L. All Your Media Are Belong To Us: An Analysis of the
Cultural Connotations of the Internet Meme. Literature, Culture and Digital Media, 17 April
2008
Dawkins, Richard. The selfish gene. 30th anniversary ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006. xxiii, 360.
Dey, Ian. 1999. Grounding Grounded Theory: Guidelines for Qualitative Inquiry. San Diego:
Academic Press. (pp. 1-24, 18 pp.)
Eriksen T. H.: Tyranie okamiku. Doplnk, Brno 2005.
67

Gabora, L. M., 'Memes: the creative spark', Wired, June 1997, pp 110-112.
Granovetter, M. S.,1983, The Strength of Weak Ties, A Network Theory Revisited,
Sociological Theory, 1,201-233.
Heylighen, F., and K. Chielens. 2008. Cultural Evolution and Memetics. Ed. B.
Jenkins, P. F. (1978) Cultural transmission of song patterns and dialect development in a
free-living bird population. Animal Behaviour 26, 50-78.
LANKSHEAR, C. and KNOBEL, M. (2007) Sampling the new in new literacies, in
C.Lankshear and M.Knobel (Eds.) A New Literacies Sampler. New York: Peter Lang.
Lefler J. I CAN HAS THESIS?: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF LOLSPEAK University of Louisiana
at Lafayette 2011
Lindlof TR and Taylor BC (2002) Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Liu,

S.:

The

Most

Popular

Thing

You've

Probably

Never

Heard

of.

www.writingandrhetoric.cah.ucf.edu/stylus/files/2_1/stylus2_1-liu.pdf. Accessed at 2.3.2012

Lynch, A. (1996). Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads through Society: The New Science
of Memes, New York: Basic Books
Marsden, P. (2000). Forefathers of Memetics: Gabriel Tarde and the Laws of Imitation.
Journal

of

Memetics

Evolutionary

Models

of

Information

Transmission,

4.

http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/2000/vol4/marsden_p.html
Marshall, G. The Internet and Memetics School of Computing Science, Middlesex
University,
Meyers.

Encyclopedia

of

Complexity

and

System

Science.

Springer.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Memetics-Springer.pdf
Savoie Hillary, John McCain gets BarackRolld: Authorship, Culture, and Community on
YouTube in YouTube and the 2008 Election Cycle in the US Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute.2008.
68

Shifman, L., Thelwall, M.: Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics: The Spread and
Evolution of a Popular Joke. In JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 2009
Shifman, L. An anatomy of a YouTube meme New Media Society 2011
Stonier T., Information and the Internal Structure of the Universe: An Exploration into
Information Physics, 1990.
Tarde, G. (1962) The Laws of Imitation, translated by E.C. Parsons with introduction by
F.Giddings, reprint, Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith.

69

9. List of figures
Figure 3. Demotional: Cluelessness ................................................................................ 31
Figure 4. Demotivational: Apple ..................................................................................... 32
Figure 3. Rickroll .............................................................................................................. 76
Figure 4. Xzibit Yo Dawg .................................................................................................. 36
Figure 5. Disaster girl .. 38
Figure 6. Scumbag Steve, Star Wars Kid, Success Kid ...................................................... 77
Figure 7. Ceiling Cat . 39
Figure 8. Longcat ............................................................................................................. 78
Figure 9. Kitler ................................................................................................................. 78
Figure 10. The Casually Pepperspray Everything Cop ......................................................57
Figure 11. Rage Comics ................................................................................................... 59
Figure 12. Socially Awkward Penguin .............................................................................. 61
Figure 13. Lame Joke Eel, Bad Pun Coon, Philosoraptor ................................................. 79

70

10. Name index

A
Allen
Aunger

K
22
52, 53

Klasen
Knobel

B
Bauckhage
Bell
Blackmore
Boyd

45
12, 29, 32, 41, 44, 45, 50

29
22
18, 19, 20, 23, 28, 39, 48
22

Lankshear
Lefler
Lindof
Liu
Lynch

12, 29, 32, 41, 44, 45, 50

40, 46
10, 43, 45
49, 63
24

C
Chielens
Chomsky
Clarke
Corbin
Crystal

18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 52

52
10
9
39, 40

D
Danung
Dawkins
Dey
Downes

M
Marsden
McMillan

Q
Quaranta

35, 43, 46
17, 18, 20, 23, 27, 28, 44
5
43

Richerson

22

S
44, 48

G
Gee
Granovetter

29

E
Eriksen

17, 42
43

45
45, 46

Saklofske
Savoie
Shifman
Speel
Stenberg
Stonier

43, 46, 47, 48

52
44, 53
23
22
44

T
H
Heath
Heylighen

22
18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 44, 52

Tarde
Taylor
Thagard
Thelwall

J
Jenkins

17, 28, 42
10
22
44, 53

U
17
Underwood

43

W
Welser

46

71

11. Annotation

Author: Bc. Branislav Buchel

Study Advisor: Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, PhD.
Number of character: 132 895

This thesis deals with the phenomenon known as the internet memes. It is an attempt to describe
and conceptualize the internet memes by using the grounded theory methodological approach. It
also attempts to connect the phenomenon of the internet memes to the broader theoretical
framework of the general memetic theories and tries to tie it to several other sociological concepts.
It does so by answering four central research questions with different analytical focus. What are
internet memes? (definitional) What communities use internet memes? (descriptive) What is the
purpose of internet memes for the communities using them? (explanatory) Is it possible to categorize
internet memes into some typology? (theoretical)
In the end the thesis concludes that the internet memes provide the internet users with options and
means to talk about various topics, ranging from mundane and common stories of the everyday life
to unusual and exceptional events. Due to the fact that they can relate to topics and events inside
the communities they can also be considered to be bearers of history of the internet communities.
They are an important and integral part of the internet environment which needs to be taken into
account when researching the Internet and its communities.

Tto prca sa zaober fenomnom znmym pod nzvom internetov memy. Poka sa
popsa a konceptualizova internetov memy pomocou metodologickho prstupu
zakotvenej terie (grounded theory). Zrove sa poka prepoji fenomn internetovch
memov s irm teoretickm rmcom veobecnej terie memov a naviaza ju na alie
sociologick koncepty. Tento cie je naplnen pomocou zodpovedania tyroch hlavnch
vskumnch otzok s rznym analytickm zameranm. o s to internetov memy?
(definin) Ktor komunity internetov memy pouvaj? (deskriptvny) Ak vznam maj

72

internetov memy pre komunity, ktor ich pouvaj? (vysvetujci) Je mon kategorizova
memy v nejakej typolgii? (teoretick)
Zverom tejto prce je, e internetov memy poskytuj svojim uvateom monosti a
prostriedky pre rozprvanie o rznych tmach, ktor siahaj od banlnych a vednch
prbehov z kadodennho ivota a po neobvykl a mimoriadne udalosti. Pretoe sa asto
vzahuj k vntornm tmam a udalostiam komunt, mu by tie pokladan za nositeov
histrie internetovch komunt. Internetov memy s integrlnou sasou internetovho
prostredia a pri vskume internet a internetovch komunt je potrebn ich bra do vahy.

Key words: communication, communities, cultural diffusion, imitation, meme, Internet,

internet memes.

73