I consider myself to be a pretty tolerant fellow. It takes a lot for me to actively dislike something. For example, I’m not too keen on the musical blarings of Skrillex. I don’t hate Skrillex or his family, fans or his fan's families, I just don’t particularly enjoy the tunes he has made for the good people of Frostburg to interrupt my sleep schedule with.
However, there are two infamous entities that have slowly been accruing my wrath for the last several years: internet memes and image macros. Just thinking about them causes my arteries to flex. I've been informed that memes are ideas that exist and spread on the internet, while image macros are those images accompanied by a top text and bottom text. As a small act of rebellion, I have chosen not to use an image macro as the cover photo for this article. In my opinion, most people refer to image macros as memes anyway, it's all crap, so there's no need to differentiate, but there are some people that would be aggravated if I didn't make the distinction.
I like to make people laugh, and people who like and share memes and image macros seem to have a similar agenda, so I’m not sure what causes my aversion to these degenerates. I’m going to use this article to try to diagnose my dislike for internet culture.
My first contact with image macros probably occurred in the eighth grade when I really started to explore the internet. Graduating from elementary school meant breaking free from the prison that is the Netscape browser and being allowed more freedom to surf with Internet Explorer, which was only mildly better. Some of my more technologically-savvy colleagues began to find and share funny images with the class while our teacher would step out to use the bathroom or to flirt with another teacher. We all knew; we were dumb, but not stupid. I remember being astonished by image macros: pictures with words on them, some with the same picture, but with different words, all with the same font, as if there were some system or council controlling all of these wonderful jokes. I’ll admit I thought most of them were quite funny. It wasn’t until high-school and my adoption of a Facebook account that the sweet fragrance of these ripe images turned sour.
Making a Facebook account allowed me to stay in touch with old acquaintances I would see almost every single day in the halls of my high school. Facebook also allowed me to like pages that would share only the finest image macros. My Facebook friends also liked these same pages and would share the image macros on their page in an attempt to gain a reputation as sentinels of comedy. Then, their friends, who were also my friends, would share the image macros. I also shared my fair share of image macros (did I say image macros too many times, there? No? Image macros).
You can probably guess that pretty soon every interaction I had with computer technology was image macro-related. I began to get tired of seeing these every day. Even if the text was different, the joke was probably the same, and jokes don’t retain their humor very long when they are overexposed. It’s like when a really popular song comes on the radio, every day, sometimes every hour. The song might have been fun to listen to initially, but pretty soon a song that was once a hit becomes a reason to listen to Skrillex just to get a change of pace.
Just kidding, I’ve never had a reason to listen to Skrillex.
Perhaps this is the reason for my meme-intolerance: overexposure and saturation of jokes and constant encounters with images and concepts that I understand, but only find funny once or twice. I also personally feel that memes and image macros don’t encourage creativity.
In fact, I think they stifle it. There is only so much room for innovation in the meme-sphere, so I’m not expecting high quality stuff when I see a meme or image macro, but I wish there could be a way to encourage people to make up their own jokes and share them with others, without the prospect of repetition. That does not mean practicing the “self-meme.” I advise against the self-meme.
The prevalence of image macros is also baffling to me. Even my parents and their grown-up friends post them. Why? Why is a minion from “Despicable Me” the focal point of some of these images?! When did Tweety Bird become the representation of attitude?! Actually, that might have happened some time in middle school. Gosh, what a wild ride middle school was. I better pump the brakes, that thing about my arteries starting to flex is happening again, and I want to live to see my children skip their college graduations, just like their dear old Pa.
To summarize: jokes get old if they are heard too often, and in my case, so do memes. Just as Hermey doesn’t like to make toys, Bobby doesn’t like to share memes. Even now ,if I go on Facebook I will see image macros or memes, some posted by my friends intentionally, some posted ironically.
It doesn't matter. They all disgust me.
Even I will post image macros as a joke to express how unfunny I find them and experience a maelstrom of cognitive dissonance afterward, feeling a mixture of shame and superiority when someone “likes” it for the wrong reason. Why can’t everyone be like me and post pictures of tiny white pop-stars, Garfield merchandise, and promotional materials for the Second Annual Frosty Awards? Side note: The Frosty Awards went well, thanks for asking. I don’t fault or shame anyone for enjoying memes or image macros, just don’t expect me to respond when you ask if I got that thing you sent me, because I did, and I didn’t like it one bit, but I love you and I admire our friendship.
