This post was originally published on October 6th, 2016 on Frequency of the Unknown
It’s 2016, and our civilization is well into the age of information. The internet has become the primary medium to exchange material, and the result of it is the power to instantly share content. From a friend putting pictures on Instagram to a news organization livestreaming an event on Facebook; social media has become the platform people use to express themselves. Today the internet has not only become a tool for us conduct ourselves in a virtual space, but an essential complement to reality itself because it has become the ultimate proliferator of memes.
Much like how genes are the building blocks of life, memes are the building blocks of culture. Memes have always been around, from the walls of cavemen to the message boards of Reddit, and flourish at the rate of the preferred means of communication at a given time. Most importantly, they have the power to disrupt the structure of society itself.
One does not have to look no further of this fact than the advent of the printing press. For 1500 years, Roman Catholic doctrine dominated Western Culture, and the Priest’s word was the ultimate authority. The Priestly Class were the men who not reigned with influence to their supposedly spiritual connection with the divine, but above all knew how to read and write. Literacy was a rare attribute in the middle ages and those who attained it had much more agency to conduct themselves with the highest levels of society.
Everything changed when Johannes Guttenberg invented the printing press, and it is no coincidence that the first that he published was The Bible. Seventy-seven years after its first publication in 1440, the Catholic Church monopoly on spirituality broke down with The Reformation, and a large part of igniting it was the ability to translate the Bible from Latin to each region’s own vernacular language. No longer did the common man have to rely on priests to interpret Latin scriptures; there was finally a way for everyone to learn how to read and write in their own language and interpret “God” in a much more personal matter. This development of individual free-thinking helped usher in the scientific revolution.
In other words, out with the old memes of religion and in with the new memes of rational inquiry. From artwork to daily conversation, before the printing press the memes shaped the perspective of the average European were about devotion to Church doctrine. Yet after, there was a much more diversified selection of memes available because new ideas about religion, science, and philosophy spread like wildfire and would put to ashes the total Catholic domination on the continent. By allowing ideas to transmit more freely and rapidly, the printing press shows the cataclysmic effects that mediums have in the transformation of society itself.
Today, just as the words of the mass-produced presses shaped people’s worldview, the memes on the internet are shaping the millennial consciousness. People have access to so much more information than they did 25 years since the internet’s inception and it is effects are changing the way people view the world. Bypassing traditional media filters, the internet grants access to people to connect with like-minded virtual communities and allows people to see what is happening a world away. It is no wonder why among millennials prefer the internet over mainstream media, because they cannot keep up.
When people think of memes in the 21st century, they more often than not associate it with humor and sarcasm. It is hard to notice how these memes are shaping our reality, but if one takes a simple look it is easy to notice. Now take for example Harambe, the Cincinnati Zoo gorilla who met his demise too soon. Not only has his memes in his memories have filled our hearts, but also filled the pockets of others. There are shot glasses for Harambe, shirts in his memory, songs in his honor, and even talks of making a Harambe movie. All of these developments show how memes that are born on the internet can actually come to life in the real world. Another example of this is the Ice Water Bucket Challenge. For months in 2014, Facebook feeds were filled with videos with people dumping sub-zero degree water over their heads for ALS awareness. Two years later, the money raised from it helped discover a breakthrough in ALS research, and will lead to future drug development in the future.
Furthermore, Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash shows how like-minded people can come together and share their favorite memes with each other. Underlying those memes showing how “cool” Bernie Sanders is are ideas about social and economic inequality and what the future of America should be. One of the original BSDMS administrators, Sean Walsh commented that “This generation’s memes are that generation’s C-SPAN or Huffington Post…. Seriously, memes are going to be very prevalent in politics. They’re going to get ideas into your head.” It’s no wonder why conservative millennials are so passionate about Rare Pepes.
The language of memes is still in its early stages of development; the widespread creation and distribution of them has only gained traction within the past several years. Benjamin Burroughs, an assistant professor who studies emerging media at UNLV that, “There’s a space — a very important space — that memes occupy. They speak in a language that people have grown up with on social media … which can make them very articulate and very poignant.”
The problem with memes is that it leads an opening for misinformation to be spread at a wide scale and very quickly. There are a handful of memes that, when you do further research, are completely untrue or are greatly miscued. It is important for the citizens of cyberspace to be aware of this fact and to be mindful when it happens.
Just as the memes of the printing press critiqued the old order though scholarly books, the memes of the internet serve the same function today. The internet is relatively still in its early stages, meaning that what memes could be are far away from reaching their potential. It took three quarters of a century from the inception of the printing press for the first substantial disruption of Western society’s institutions to occur. The internet is evolving at an exponentially faster rate than the printing press ever did. It will be up to the historians of the future to decide what that “reformation moment will.” The questions is not if that moment will happen, but when.