The power of memes to connect people

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Trends

The meme is one of the prime examples of the internet and social media making the world smaller. Shifman refers to this process as “user-generated globalization” where the memes evolve to adapt to the nuanced differences between different societies. A meme that originated in the United States can be customized to fit the culture of another country like Germany. In 2009, a case study of a viral meme that was originally in English made its way across the world. It was translated into nine other languages, including European and Asian languages. As you can imagine, today this must be the case for even more memes because it’s been a decade since that study.

Another significant use of memes is that it fosters relationships online. Internet users form ties with new people and grow their current ties by sharing, editing, and creating memes. There are many avenues online for this to occur. It could be through mutual friends on social media, such as Facebook, where people can get to know acquaintances by sharing memes. Or, people can connect in shared online communities like Reddit, which is a platform that hosts various forums based on types of interests, where people are bound to find others with similar interests inside the group. Memes are so important to many people’s relationships that some users write in blogs that people deceptively laughing from their memes hurts their feelings. Another blog claims that sharing memes is a new love language, or way of communicating and receiving love like giving gifts and saying positive affirmations.

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Impact

Long-distance relationships can be sustained through disruptive technology like video calls and instant messaging, but they also people to bridge the cultural gaps from living in different societies. Though some memes are extremely niche to particular subcultures, most memes can be understood by large numbers of networked people. These memes cut across cultures and allow long-distance relationships to be more intimate and meaningful. They exist as another format of communication because the individual can edit the meme to their portray their particular message, so memes add to the polymedia that people in long-distance relationships especially use due to the limited ability for the individuals involved to speak in-person. Therefore, memes disrupt previous cultural divides allowing long-distance relationships to flourish in addition to helping the formation of new ties online. 

Online communities form around memes, and many people with similar interests can effectively communicate sensitive topics with humor. Facebook groups, Subreddits, and hashtags contribute to the categorization of memes that allow individuals seeking particular niches of humor to find global communities that fit their niches. For example, memes about depression and other mental illnesses are quite common. People share and create these memes to make each other laugh and feel less alone in their struggles with mental illness. Sufferers of mental illness can set the tone of the discussion by deciding to be more lighthearted with memes. Memes are disruptive as another form of communication that allows for particular topics to arise more easily and provide another important digital avenue for people to communicate.

Moving Forward

As the more impoverished people in developing countries get access to high-speed internet and social media, memes will globalize the world further, connecting cultures, communities, and people far more than today. Memes will become further embedded in our relationships and communities until we can longer put them down as silly humor. Memes will not be considered a subculture anymore, but a large piece of the global culture that almost everyone engages in. Understanding memes will become a social necessity, and those who cannot understand them will face difficulties socializing and may be considered socially awkward. Communities of people who shut themselves out from the global internet, such as China, will become even more culturally segregated from the rest of the world because of their lack of access to global memes.