The entertainment industry and memes coexist.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Trends

Many moderate and heavy users of the internet and social media today view and create memes as a source of entertainment. A new genre of comedy online is reacting to memes in videos. The influence of memes as a form of entertainment can be seen through the number of views these videos get. Memes go viral so rapidly because people are spending significant portions of their time online viewing and creating memes.
Many memes are based on traditional entertainment media, such as movies, TV shows, and videogames. The most popular recent movie Endgame produced massive numbers of memes. Numerous scenes from the film were used as source materials for the memes. All these memes were known as Thanos memes, and the face of Thanos was widespread on all social media platforms for weeks. Thanos memes were also ubiquitous online last year when Infinity War was released. Other major films and shows have had memes made of them, such as the ones above Guy Fieri, Rick and Morty, The Office, and PewDiePie.

Impact

Memes do not disrupt the entertainment industry and take over the market. Rather, they complement traditional entertainment, and memes and the industry exist in mutual symbiosis, each helping the growth of the other. Memes simply exist as another form of audience commentary of new entertainment. Statistically, since the birth of the internet and memes, the production of films have only increased, so memes have in no way overtaken the movie industry. However, it is possible that memes may be a contributing factor to the decline in television consumption over recent decades. It is hard to see how much of an impact memes themselves have had on this change because streaming services like Netflix have also played a major role in disrupting the traditional TV industry.

Moving Forward

As the reach of the internet further grows in places with limited access to the internet, local memes will intertwine with local entertainment, just as memes and entertainment coexist in the developed world. Memes exemplify media convergence and promote traditional entertainment as something that can be prosumed.