Tim Russell

ENG 740: Rhetoric

Final Paper

June 8, 2012

Do You Re-meme-ber? The Rhetoric of Internet Memes

When Blake Boston’s mother took his picture as part of her burgeoning photography career, neither of them expected that a generic, almost forced picture of him standing in a doorway would propel him to internet stardom.

But thanks to social media, the photo started trading among circles of online friends with captions about his questionable (though entirely fictional) lifestyle, spurred in part by his dress and overall appearance. The young man in the photo was no longer Blake Boston – he was now Scumbag Steve – and people all across the world were sharing captioned photos of him with a variety of misdeeds and deviant behavior. And thus, one of the most popular internet memes of recent years was born.

This paper seeks to lay the groundwork for understanding internet memes as an offshoot of rhetoric; first by defining the term “internet meme” as well as examining the origins of memes in general; and then by examining ideas from classical and contemporary rhetorical theories. I will seek to classify internet memes as something distinct from other branches of rhetorical study, tied closely to the ideas of humor and shared experiences. But before delving into the rhetorical analysis and impact of internet memes on the field of rhetoric itself, more context about the meme is necessary.

The term “meme” (which rhymes with seem) was first coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins coined the term as a variant on gene, and defined it as “a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena” (102). Much like genes and organisms that mutate over time, Dawkins saw memes as culturally-based “bugs” or pathogens that were transmitted person-to-person, almost like a virus. As they spread, they adapted qualities that would keep them alive and allow them to reach an even broader audience, much like a disease adapts to stay ahead of immunities and infect new individuals.

In this way, memes exhibit traits similar to the theory of natural selection, which is what the bulk of his book examined: the similarities of cultural memes and biological evolution. Though his work focused primarily on the scientific theory behind the idea of a meme, he noted some

examples of memes that contribute heavily to the identity of internet memes today, such as catchy jingles, slogans, urban legends, and even fashion trends.

Building on Dawkins’ work, a number of evolutionary scientists embraced his theory in the decades that followed, and by the mid-1990s, the field of Memetics was born. Memetics pulled in people from a variety of academic and non-academic fields who felt Dawkins’ theory of memes could be used in applications from cultural understanding to project management, mathematics and even engineering.

The meme movement reached a high point in 1997, when the Centre for Policy Modeling at Manchester Metropolitan University began hosting the Journal of Memetics – Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission. While no solid consensus of what Memetics is exists due to the broadness of the field and the interdisciplinary nature of those who helped create it, a number of the field’s leading contributors endorsed a subtle clarification in definition from Richard Dawkins’ initial concept.

This involved viewing a meme as a "unit of culture," such as an idea, belief, song or dance that is "hosted" in minds and can reproduce itself to stay alive. This makes memes valuable pieces of study to understand what a culture deems important or worthy, since only the most popular memes survive to reach others. Though the theory of Memetics is still very much alive, the e-journal published its last edition in 2005, and most of the contributing authors now work primarily as freelance journalists or in other fields.

The definition of what actually constitutes a meme is extremely broad, partially because it can be so difficult to limit the scope of what counts as a unit of culture. This is especially true when considering the advances made in sharing cultural content through the internet and especially social media platforms, such as Facebook, YouTube, personal weblogs and peer-to-peer file-sharing websites.

In fact, one could write endless analyses of the variety of memes that exist through the internet, so it is important to define the type of meme I wish to analyze in this paper. Here are the key principles I have used to limit the broadness of the term “internet meme”:

1. Images only: The memes I seek to analyze are stationary images, not videos, GIF files, songs, games or other forms of media such as weblogs.

2. Text on images: Similar to captions, the memes I will discuss here contain one or two lines of text imposed on the image. The text provides a greater insight to the rhetorical devices at work within this genre of memes and simplifies the archiving process.

3. Organic Units of Culture: Though memes are increasingly being used to advertise products and people (namely elected officials), I will focus primarily on memes that have been created by non-commercial entities, i.e., for the purposes of entertainment.

At first glance, this definition may seem constricting. However, this type of internet meme is exploding in popularity as more users are exposed to memes through the ease of sharing with friends on social media websites.

According to US News & World Report, one of the most popular meme-generating platforms, www.quickmeme.com, has experienced exponential growth since its’ founding in 2010 – and now logs nearly 70 million unique visitors and an astonishing half-billion page views per month. Other popular meme sites such as www.membase.com, www.memegenerator.net, and www.troll.me – which were originally set up as personal blogs or hobbies for web designers – now boast entire staffs that maintain and enhance the meme-making experience.

So, what is an internet meme then? Any number of emotions and messages are possible, but the creator of www.quickmeme.com notes that internet memes are a hybrid of humor and shared experiences that allow audiences to create and share ideas. Since nearly anyone with a computer, smart phone or tablet can go online, upload a photo and caption their own memes, this method of communicating ideas, humor or shared experiences enables a larger audience to get involved than previous forms of artistic self-expression, such as comics or joke-telling.

And unlike the forms of self-expression mentioned above, the audience is an active participant in the meme process, as they can choose to let the meme die (by not sharing), pass it on to others, or even adapt the meme to capture a new feeling or point of humor. In this way, internet memes completely bypass the concept of passive communication vehicles.

Though it is tempting to dive right in to the actual study of memes and provide examples, we must first look back at the writings of classical rhetoricians on the importance of humor as it pertains to rhetoric. While I will advance the notion that internet memes more closely resemble tropes or enthymemes – devices that only convey meaning to an audience that has the ability to deconstruct and understand the message – my analysis begins with those who provided our foundation of understanding rhetoric as a field of study.

Classical Perspectives: Plato

Plato believed that laughter and humor were essentially vices that grew from laughing or mocking others for their mistakes and shortcomings. Because of this, humor in his mind was unethical and would detract from a rhetor’s ethos. He also believed that rational people “should avoid laughter be wary of amusement - especially in cases where one's emotions are activated - because under such influences one tends to lose rational control of oneself.”

Plato was the first to advance the idea of a “pain-pleasure” response to humor, which essentially means we laugh at others’ misfortunes because all comic or humorous situations are based in either malice or jealousy. Thus, while we feel bad for them, we also enjoy seeing them

fail. Though he didn’t have much of a sense of humor, his theories and writings on humor have stood the test of time, and one well-known German word (schadenfreude) actually describes his pain-pleasure theory from more than 2,000 years ago. The word is translated to mean “laughing at or enjoying the misfortune of others,” and as I will demonstrate later, the idea of schadenfruede is a central premise in a number of internet memes.

Plato may not have advocated humor in rhetoric or even embraced the concept of laughter, but he knew it was a powerful force and could provoke emotions and even a loss of control in certain situations. Because of his strong views and interest in finding truth, he would despise internet memes if he were alive today. Though no strong parallel exists, perhaps a speaker who shared old wives’ tales or inappropriate stories would be comparable to something he may have encountered in his life.

Aristotle

The founder of modern psychology understood that it was important for a rhetor to be viewed favorably by the audience and appear credible (ethos) to gain their trust before persuasion could take place. Though he wrote about humor primarily in Poetics, he noted that humor – when used in moderation – could entertain the audience and relieve tension when discussing difficult subjects. This could help keep the audience’s attention to the rhetor and keep their mind open to his argument because they find him more likeable. This idea also applies to the idea of pathos, or emotion, since a skillful rhetor can get the audience to feel what he wants them to feel by making them laugh or be joyous through humor.

Aristotle noted that the key to humor was moderation – one must not go so far as to do anything for a laugh (which he characterized as buffoonish), and one must also not appear to have any sense of humor (a humorless boor). In addition, he felt strongly that humor is based in malice – in other words, that we laugh at those who we feel superior to (such as a bad athlete in a sport, or a town drunk who has no dignity). He felt these uses of humor should be avoided because “they aren’t pleasing aesthetically,” and advocated a more gentle form, such as surprising the audience with something they may not expect, or making jokes about oneself.

Aristotle would most likely dislike internet memes however, as memes advance ideas that aren’t based in truth or in pursuit of any “goods” – they simply exist to be shared with others and the most popular memes, not necessarily the accurate memes, are shared.

Quintillian

If Plato is the most conservative when it comes to using humor and Aristotle occupies the middle, it could be argued that Quintilian has the most liberal views among the classical rhetoricians we studied when it comes to humor in rhetoric. Quintilian believed in humor as a

valuable rhetorical device that could “dissipate melancholy,” and “unbend the mind” in intense situations. He also felt it was a useful way to give the audience a break and get them to focus back on the remaining speech at hand.

Although I couldn’t find as much on Quintilian’s views, he appears to advocate using humor in a similar way as Aristotle, to prime the audience for persuasion, or to get them in a favorable frame of mind to listen to an argument. He builds on the premise by also noting the value of giving the audience mental breaks from long orations by sprinkling in some levity so that they are refreshed and do not lose focus.

Ironically, I was first tempted to aggregate the three classical perspectives and discuss the theories of humor they are widely credited for establishing: Superiority Theory (we laugh at those we feel superior to), Incongruity Theory (we laugh at the unexpected, or that which doesn’t add up), and Relief Theory (we laugh as a way to relieve tension or release emotion); however, Lisa Berks noted in her article, “The Ancient Roots of Humor Theory,” that scholars tend to oversimplify their views and lump them together for convenience in summarizing. That’s why I looked at each perspective individually and stayed away from simply listing each theory and ascribing it to each classical rhetorician.

As mentioned before, the two main drivers of the internet meme’s newfound popularity are humor and shared experiences. Since I covered the classical rhetorician’s views on humor, I will now examine how contemporary authors view key components of rhetoric – such as situation, shared experience and identity – that contribute to the success of internet memes.

Contemporary Perspectives: Vatz on Situation and Shared Experience

After being exposed to several views on what constitutes a rhetorical situation, I believe Richard Vatz’s view that rhetors define a situation by what they choose to discuss most accurately describes the construction of internet memes. Since there are limitless potential meme topics, the creators of memes (in this case, the rhetors) control the situation by what they choose to create. Once the meme reaches a point where it is shared, the rhetor has succeeded in his aim, as he made a salient case to the audience to share it and even build on it by adding their own ideas

While it’s not a perfect parallel to Vatz’s view of a rhetorical situation, I believe his views that reality is a shared construction (not objective as Bitzer claims) tie into the idea of internet memes as a means to share experiences as well. Going back to my example of Scumbag Steve at the beginning of this paper, part of the reason it became such a successful internet meme is because it centers on a young adult who lies, steals, cheats and generally shirks off responsibility. Nearly all of us have known (or been) someone who continuously bums money from friends, borrows possessions and never returns them, or crashes a party they weren’t

invited to attend. Once the audience began to understand that the Scumbag Steve meme was a way to share stories of shady behavior – both inviting laughter and also serving as a way to share frustration or outrage about things they have experienced in life – a new reality was constructed and more people began creating their own memes and sharing them with an even broader audience. The meme spread because the audience found the original work salient, and it continues to grow because it strikes a chord with people all over the world.

Jamieson – Rhetorical Constraints/Genre

With such a broad array of internet memes to analyze (and incomplete records about which memes popped up first), there is almost no way to trace the origin of the internet meme back to one particular piece of work. However, it is possible to look at the most popular memes on the first large-scale meme-building website, www.memegenerator.net, and see how the most mainstream memes (Scumbag Steve, Philosa-raptor, and Joseph Ducruex) have informed the creation of newer memes since then. In fact, everything from the font used to the dimensions of the photos are taken from the memes that have proved most popular, which points to a definitive meme genre, even thought the individual content of memes varies greatly.

It is also possible to argue that the first memes were modeled after captioned photos, pointing to yet another constraint which informed the field of meme-building. Since the simplest way to share a photo with a caption is to include the caption on top of the image itself, early memes most likely started because of this limitation. And, since the authors didn’t want to block the image itself, they most likely followed the template of comics by using space around the sides of the image to contain the text. Once this expectation was defined and accepted by the audience, all future memes were modeled after the original format.

Burke –Identification/ Consubstantiation

Kenneth Burke’s ideas surrounding identification and consubstantiation are likely the most useful in the context of exploring internet memes, because his theory of identification is grounded in his rhetorical belief that we are symbolic beings who respond to things we see in ourselves or those we associate with. Memes are filled with symbols that the audience either processes as traits they exhibit, or traits they know others exhibit. This compels meme enthusiasts to share them with others who they believe will also identify with the symbols or message contained within the meme, and the process continues as more people identify with it. At the same time, the audience gets ideas for other memes and then those get passed around based on how many people identify with the meme’s message or idea.

Though we never covered it in this quarter’s class, we learned about Burke’s theory of the “terministic screen” for his view of reality in my undergraduate communication courses. Simply put, we see the world through a screen or filter of symbols – and these symbols go a long way

toward defining us as people and what we consider important. I believe Burke would argue that memes are a way to understand both the creator’s and the receiver’s terministic screen, even though the message of most memes is rooted in humor. Though the content may seem lighthearted, there are many cues within memes that show how people perceive themselves, others and the world. In doing my research for this report, I combed through a number of comment boards regarding memes, and I often came across people who said “this is so like me,” or “I know people who do this all the time.” So now, the meme that describes themselves or others is now part of how they perceive others, or how they make sense of the world.

Down To Business: Examples of Memes (and why they work)

I will now analyze three of the most common, most popular memes found through my research. After learning about different rhetorical concepts, I believe internet memes fall somewhere between a trope and an enthymeme in terms of a rhetorical device – not in the literal sense of their definition – but more so in how the audience must decode the device to have its’ intended effect. Although tropes are defined as artful deviation from the ordinary or principal signification of a word, the idea behind the trope – something with a different meaning that must be understood and deconstructed by the audience to be successful – is the same principle that memes rely on to be understood and transmitted. And just as an enthymeme is a logical argument that relies on the audiences’ ability to put different parts together and make the connection the rhetor wants them to make, the ability to process the context and parts of a meme is what makes it work.

Here is our first example – Blake Boston, or as the meme community knows him, Scumbag Steve.

Figure 1-A Figure 1-B

Figure 1-C Figure 1-D

The figures above represent four classic Scumbag Steve memes. At first glance, most people wouldn’t find the ideas conveyed in them funny, because all of them represent disrespectful and downright annoying behaviors. However, most people have either been friends with or known someone who would do these types of things, so the personification of “Scumbag Steve” in our own minds makes the memes more humorous. Combine the personification with the attire in the photo – a fake fur coat and a sideways hat – and even more humor can be derived from either knowing someone like this or seeing someone like this on the street and thinking they look ridiculous. This mixture drives the humor that makes this meme so popular.

In addition, the subtlety of the humor adds to the meme’s appeal. In figure 1-B, leaving a shopping cart in a parking spot isn’t a serious offense, but it’s still obnoxious and still provokes irritation in others. At the same time, it also makes consumers of the meme look for funny things they can make memes about, and the humor reaches a new level; not because of its audacity, but because the described act is a minor problem for others. For instance, a Scumbag Steve meme I recently saw said, “Gets in Express Line: Has 13 Items.” While it’s not the end of the world to do that, the behavior is still irritating in a comical sense.

Yet another reason Scumbag Steve stays at the top of the meme world is because many people release their frustrations by making memes about things that have happened in their lives. For instance, it’s very likely that the actions in Figures 1-C and 1-D took place in real life. For the victims of these actions, it can be very therapeutic – almost cathartic – to make a meme and see it reach thousands of people who can relate to their struggle. The fictional character also serves as a way for friends to point at the actions of others and compare them to something Scumbag Steve would do – conveying a variety of different meanings in just a few simple words, similar to the effect of Periphrasis. “Hey, buy us a round of beers – don’t be a Scumbag Steve.”

The next example I will discuss is a relatively new meme known as “Bad Luck Brian.”

Figure 2-A Figure 2-B

Figure 2-C Figure 2-D

Though different than the Scumbag Steve meme examined before, the Bad Luck Brian meme works in much the same way: by making the audience find humor in bad situations and getting them to draw parallels between the fictional character and themselves or more likely someone they know. The humorous appearance aspect that helped the Scumbag Steve meme become popular is the same one here: almost everyone has had a terrible yearbook photo at least once in their life, and when combined with all sorts of other cringe-worthy situations, the character that emerges is one the audience feels bad for and mocks at the same time (Plato’s pain-pleasure proposition maybe?).

And just as the Scumbag Steve meme allows people who have a Scumbag Steve in their own life to vent and share their misery, the Bad Luck Brian meme serves as a humorous outlet to share unfortunate experiences in our own lives. Figures 2-C and 2-D are excellent examples where someone with the best of intentions had bad things happen, which is universally relatable.

Whereas the Scumbag Steve meme relied on subtlety to also drive its’ humorous appeal, the Bad Luck Brian meme thrives on hyperbole to be comical. In Figures 2-A and 2-B, both situations are funny because they would never happen to anyone else but still happen to Bad Luck Brian. This helps make the character more real and can also serve as a coping mechanism to the audience in their daily lives. If something really bad happens, they’re just having a Bad Luck Brian sort of day – and who knows, maybe their experience will fuel the creation of a popular meme.

My final example for analysis is in many ways the antithesis of Scumbag Steve: Good Guy Greg.

Figure 3-A Figure 3-B

Figure 3-C Figure 3-D

While many memes are based on exploiting negative or bad behaviors, Good Guy Greg serves to remind others that there are good people out there, too. And just like the last two memes I analyzed, it became popular because of the humorous aspect of his good deeds and because nearly all of us have someone in our lives who we would consider our own Good Guy Greg. The other reason I chose this meme for analysis is because it clearly serves as a contrast to the misdeeds of Scumbag Steve – especially in the case of Figure 3-D – and points to a common theme of internet memes: that contrast is also humorous.

Of course, Good Luck Greg is also funny because of the combination of subtlety and overstatement. Figure 3-B is obviously impossible, but it’s still funny to think there’s a person out there who personifies that character and does what no one else will do. Even though in this case there are less people out there who personify Good Guy Greg, the character’s ideal of goodness appeals to just as broad of an audience as those who are unscrupulous.

Final Thoughts

I attempted to provide more in-depth citation of credible sources during my investigation, but the field of internet memes is so new that very few sources exist. But in the interest of making some defining conclusions about my research, I still feel confident in the following assertions, even if I can’t cite reliable sources to back them up.

1. Internet memes most closely align with the classical views of Quintillian (rhetoric is the art of speaking well) and contemporary views of Kenneth Burke (rhetoric is a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols). Quinitillian’s view allows more leeway for the creators of memes to develop the characteristics that make them funny yet relatable (which could be considered speaking well), and Burke’s view of rhetoric best explains how the meme serves as a symbol for real-life behaviors and emotions. His view also points to the audience’s role in keeping a meme alive by sharing it, or by ignoring it.

2. The rise of the internet meme’s popularity shows that they are effective in conveying a variety of messages. Based on the growing popularity of meme-generating sites and the number of shares they garner around the web, memes have proven themselves as a novel way to convey humor, shared experience, and the highs and lows of the human experience. Though they don’t necessarily exist to persuade (as is usually the main aim of rhetoric), they do end up persuading the audience to keep making them and share with others. As memes continue to adapt and advance, there may be a more persuasive aspect in the future.

3. Internet memes symbolize a fundamental shift from classical humor delivery. While my sources didn’t mention internet memes, many of them noted that traditional humor has a base in storytelling and performance, where plot lines and background are given adequate time to coalesce. Picture a family sitting outside on the porch together or a group gathering for dinner, where storytelling is the primary means of recreation.

But now, internet memes provide what the founder of www.quickmeme.com calls “bite sized humor,” a quick blast of enjoyment that can be consumed during dull moments at work, during the commute, and even at the grocery store. Since the ways in which we interact have changed over time and become much more segmented, it makes sense the most effective delivery vehicles of humor would change as well.

Bite-sized humor has been around for years, too – through comics and one-liner/quick hit jokes, but the internet meme is a new niche for this type of entertainment.

The Final Test: Can I Make a Meme Popular?

With all the research and observation I’ve conducted for this project, perhaps the most effective way for me to prove my meme knowledge is to create one of my own. During our last review class, I had the great idea to make a meme mocking Socrates, since we all agreed in class he seemed like a rather annoying person – someone we would avoid if we could. I also found it annoying that he always seemed to know best and looked down at others, so I decided to generate my own meme: Scumbag Socrates. Here are two examples I created myself:

While the “Scumbag Socrates” meme probably won’t have the appeal that Scumbag Steve or Bad Luck Brian enjoy, I do believe it conveys humor and shared experience remarkably well. It also sets up the template for others to make their own Socrates-based memes. So when this bit of bite-sized humor makes it big, I’ll have my vast knowledge of rhetoric – and memes – to thank for my fifteen minutes of fame.

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