Brief on meme

While I was researching the history of memes and their impact on the internet and on society, I have learned many new and interesting things about memes that I did not know before starting. An example being the fact that the word meme was not used until the 1970s by a man by the name of Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene" he said that a meme was an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means. I also learned that they are far older than what I had originally thought, possibly even going as far back as 79 AD during the time of the Roman empire, as what could be described as ancient memes, were found in the ruins of the city of Pompeii. When I first started my research, I thought memes were just a humorous image that was copied and spread rapidly through the use of the internet, but it turns out they have a much deeper meaning contained within them, they can even be used as a type of propaganda if they are used in the correct, or incorrect, manner depending on your point of view.

An example being the memes on modern society and the stereotypes in it. If you take a closer look at them, they can have a much deeper meaning than what is just observed on the surface, they can give a platform to so called social outsiders and their struggle in society. A prime example are the many Joker memes mostly using images from the Batman films and the new Joker movie, according to my research he is meant to represent the outsider, the underestimated and the nobody especially the new Joker.

I also never realized just how much influence memes can have on people and their actions, a perfect example being the storming of Area 51 meme. What started as a joke became an actual event with 150 trying to get into the military base and 1500 attending the related festivals. It makes me think that if people would do something like this because of a joke I can only imagine what would happen if it was used as propaganda. Which is exactly happened during the Yugoslavian war also called the Balkan Civil War. All the participants of the conflict created songs for a genre called turbo-folk, one of the most well know was “Remove Kebab” which was so popular that it became a  became a joke and meme with people all over the internet creating parody's designed make fun of it. 

I feel my group did very well working on this together and have all learned many interesting things while researching for this project, however I am sure there are thing that we can improve on. That we will hopefully be covered in future lectures.