Tiny Revolutions

“You cannot be really funny if your main aim is to flatter the comfortable classes: it means leaving out too much. To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious.” - George Orwell, 1968

George Orwell (1968, p.1), in his essay “Funny, but not Vulgar”, wrote that “Every joke is a tiny revolution”. His meaning was that something cannot be funny without being vulgar and subversive; to be funny, you must upset the established order.Memes are, at their core, an inside joke among millions of members of the cyber community. But what makes them funny, so resonant? If we follow Orwell’s argument, it is precisely because they are subversive. Orwell (p. 2, 1968) writes, “Whatever destroys dignity, and brings down the mighty from their seats, preferably with a bump, is funny”. The meme #FirstWorldProblems, also known as White Whine, succeeds in taking the trials and tribulations of privileged individuals down a few notches (Best memes of 2011, 2011). The satire is pitch-perfect when trivial inconveniences like “I’m so tired of eating at all the restaurants near my work” are superimposed onto a melodramatic stock image of a distraught white woman. What’s interesting about this meme is that the dignity of the “mighty” is most often the self, as when the Twitter hashtag is used to denote self-awareness of an admittedly trivial personal complaint.

Orwell (p.4, 1968) continues to say, “The truth is that you cannot be memorably funny without at some point raising topics which the rich, the powerful and the complacent would prefer to see left alone”. Popular memes in 2011 have poked fun at sundry taboo subjects, not least of which are the rich and powerful themselves. Memes have taken aim at the religiosity and unpreparedness of Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry, and at the “crazy eyes” of his contender Michele Bachman. In April of 2011, a meme was spawned when Republican Senator Jon Kyl responded to the accusation of making a false claim with: “That was not intended to be a factual statement”. The incident spawned thousands of parodies in which individuals would post outrageous biographical lies about the Senator, tagged “#NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement”.

First World Problems spawned a spin-off meme, known as Third World Successes. The first instance of this meme read: “Found Water, Not Contaminated”. This particular joke highlights many real problems in the world (like poverty) that the rich and powerful would prefer to see left alone. Indeed, many users complained to Buzzfeed, a site that aggregates viral content, about the distastefulness and offensiveness of the meme.

Lastly, Orwell (p. 2, 1968) writes that humor can also be found in “pure fantasy, which assaults man’s notion of himself not only as dignified but a rational being”. Nonsensical memes like 2011’s Nyan Cat, a viral video of an animated cat with a breakfast pastry for a body, flying through space, certainly assault notions of rationality. Easily, absurdity of this variety characterizes the vast majority of Internet memes.

In this light, memes are indeed tiny revolutions. Each subverts the mainstream, makes the serious laughable, the powerful fallible, and the rational illogical. It then follows that the life cycle of a meme parallels that of a revolution as defined by Brinton. For the purposes of this paper, I will rename the four stages of revolution to suit meme phenomena: Spark, Virulence, Popularization, and Appropriation.

Anatomy of a Tiny Revolution

A meme is inevitably a reaction to some event or trend. Because a meme is by nature short and easily reproducible, its success relies on some pre-existing knowledge on behalf of the viewer. Understanding the reference is a prerequisite for getting the joke. It is this knowledge that constitutes the Spark.

The Spark can be a specific incident or shared cultural experience. Many of these reflect existing racial, sexual, and class tensions in the zeitgeist. For example, #FirstWorldProblems was a response to a self-awareness and even guilt of privilege based on class, race, and location. Other Sparks are more specific, like the pepper-spray incident at UC Davis that spawned “Pepper Spray Cop.” In any case, the impetus and ultimate popularity of a meme can always be attributed back to a Spark. Often, the degree to which the meme resonates or is readily recognized by the cultural consumer determines whether or not it advances to Stage Two: Virulence.

Virulence is the phase in which a meme catches on and is rapidly reproduced by anonymous members of the community. In other words, Virulence is the rapid reproduction and transmission of memes. During this time, a meme evolves, becomes exponentially popular, and reaches new audiences.

This stage likely presents the greatest threat to the culture industry. It necessitates that consumers participate in cultural production by first reproducing the image and secondly sharing it. Further, the success of memes is solely determined by a groundswell of popularity. While Horkheimer and Adorno (1944) in their discussion of the Culture Industry rejected the idea that popular culture spontaneously erupts, this is exactly the case with online memes. To be clear, spontaneity does not exclude the reality that luck and quality of content are huge determining factors, but instead emphasizes the point that popularity is determined by a bottom-up democratic consensus rather than a top-down imposition by cultural elites.

Further, because memes rely on the re-imagining of an image in different contexts, participants in the phenomenon have the power to and indeed do change the meaning and intention of the images. Take, for instance, “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop”, or more succinctly, “Pepper Spray Cop”. This meme appeared immediately following the incident at UC Davis, in which a police officer named Lt. Pike was filmed casually pepper-spraying peaceful student protesters while they sat with their arms linked. Immediately, Lt. Pike’s image was isolated and repeatedly superimposed into various scenarios. The first appeared on Reddit, and reimagined Pike in a famous painting depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence (Know Your Meme, 2011). Variations of the meme flooded the internet, including Lt. Pike pepper-spraying Jesus at the Last Supper, a row of small children at “Career Day”, various pop culture icons, and The Constitution.

The popularity of the meme quickly garnered attention from news outlets, which generated more news coverage of the originating event. Major news publishers such as the Huffington Post, ABC News, and the Washington Post all reported on the memes and hosted galleries on their websites. This phenomenon demonstrates that the internet and memes in particular can serve as a vehicle for social resistance. First, it allowed individuals to produce cultural content that voiced their outrage and could be expressed in personal ways while being part of a broader phenomenon. Secondly, the meme spread knowledge of the event in a way that traditional media could not. As an image, the message of the meme could be easily digested, reproduced, and distributed, allowing for viral transmission. Thirdly, it prompted the media to both report on and extend coverage of the incident, thereby leading to more legitimate forms of pressure and calls for accountability on the Chancellor of the University and the perpetrating officer.

In some instances, memes will make it beyond the margins and find popularity outside of Reddit and 4chan. Any meme that makes it into the mainstream media, i.e. traditional forms of media including newspapers and television, have made it into Stage Three. Other memes can achieve internet popularity without crossing over to traditional media. When widespread popularity is achieved, the meme becomes something entirely different.

While memes originate in response to a Spark, a popularized meme becomes a phenomenon in and of itself. In this case, it is reproduced for sake of reproduction, rather than as a reaction to the Spark. In some instances, the original intent of the meme is lost. In this moment, a meme is interpreted in an a-contextual vacuum, which then allows for its meaning to be mutated during replication.

A good example of this is the “Successful Black Man” meme, which began as a satirical response to racist stereotypes of Black Men. As the meme gained popularity, what began as sarcastic representations of racism devolved into actual incidents of racism (Know Your Meme, 2011). Rather than inverting it, new incarnations merely stated a racist stereotype. Thus, popularization can cause a crisis of contradiction within a meme.

Widespread popularity can also result in divergence from the original intent. An example of this comes from the Pepper Spray Cop meme. As the meme was reported more and more in the mainstream media, reproductions of Pepper Spray Cop began to exhibit less and less commentary on the incident. Reproductions were made for the sake of Pepper Spray Cop rather than for the sake of protest. As such, the images became more and more frivolous. In these incarnations, Lt. Pike was portrayed as a member of the band Kiss, as a replacement for the nanny in the Brady bunch, and in one picture, his can of spray paint is replaced with the Pokémon Charizard, who breathes fire instead of pepper-spray (Know Your Meme, 2011). While these images retain some humor, the original purpose of the meme as a vehicle of protest was diminished.

In light of this, it is important to recognize that meme and Internet culture provide a space for a counter-hegemonic movement, but does not resist it in and of itself. Gitlin (1985) makes the case that the deeply saturating nature of hegemony makes it impossible for resistance to occur within the practice of journalism. Similarly, the more a meme moves into the mainstream, the more that mainstream ideology and hegemonic influences are able to affect and dictate the meme.

If a meme survives Stage Three, it more often than not is appropriated by the ruling class. Arguably the most popular meme to arise from the Internet, LOLcats, is now a veritable blogging empire. There are multiple websites dedicated to the meme, each with their own advertisers and in some cases, novel merchandise.

The corporate impetus to produce or appropriate a viral meme is compelling. A writer at a blog dedicated to marketing (Inspiration For Developing Your Own Buzz Marketing Campaign, 2011) posted one article that analyzed Old Spice’s viral “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign. From the analysis, the writer produced a list of guidelines to produce your own viral campaign. Guideline one and three read, “Humor is a great viral booster. If you can, leverage it in your viral campaigns,” and “You can pick up good ideas by following trending memes” (2011, p. 2). The article ends, “The Old Spice guy is an ideal example of how marketing campaigns can become part of our collective consciousness. When you do it right, viral marketing can have immediate and long-lasting, positive results” (2011, p. 2.). In these examples, you see a direct plea to appropriate meme culture for the marketing of goods.

The danger of corporate appropriation is this: Memes offer a unique space for resisting the cultural establishment by providing a vehicle in which ideas can be generated, interpreted, and shared freely and openly. If that space is appropriated and corporatized, if memes exist not for the sake of “lulz” or creative expression but instead serve to manufacture profit, the means of cultural production fall back into the hands of the ruling class. The content of memes would then be subject to the standards of advertisers, website publisher, editors, and others who would maintain the status quo by amending or eliminating any resistant themes.