Memes, There’s So Many
Our class discussion on Friday was one that really grabbed my attention. The idea of residual media, especially memes, was something that I have never put much thought into and it very much peaked my interest. The idea that there are new memes, residual memes, and dominant memes is something that I want to explore and look more into for this blog post.
Meme of the Month Calendars
New memes are pretty much self explanatory. These are the memes that are created, get popular, are overused, and then end up being outdated, annoying, and uncool in a week or two. At this current time the new memes have been lacking a bit. Previously, I would see a new meme trend on Instagram first, but I haven’t found much except for the Ice Age baby memes that we talked about during class. Now for the most part, I am finding new meme content on TikTok. However, TikTok has started to gradually become more original content, funny clips, and dancing than meme trend. But that isn’t to say that they don’t exist on the platform because they do, they’re just not the main focus of the app. New memes cycle in and out of the internet now that it’s so hard to keep track of all the trends. Around 2016, people started making Meme of the Month calendars. These pictures had a block for every month of the year and would get filled in with a picture of the most dominant meme from each month. While this is fun to keep up with and look back on at the end of the year, the problem with these was that only one meme per month makes the cut. Since new memes are dead in about two weeks tops, a lot of memes can happen in a month. Especially because multiple memes can be popular at one time. With the Meme of the Month calendars many memes were forgotten and will find themselves in the long, lost dark corners of the internet. Eventually the Meme of the Month calendars joined this part of the internet as well.
Keanu Reeves in 2070
Despite all this, some of these memes that find themselves in the long, lost dark corners of the internet are not always forgotten forever. The memes that you thought were long gone and stuck in 2011 but somehow pop back up on your feed once or twice a year are residual memes. Some examples of these are Minions, Bad Luck Brian, the History Channel guy, The Matrix, etc. Memes that everyone can see so clearly in their head but have been out of trend for a long time. However, these are memes that you see your best friend’s mom post on Facebook, and for some reason she won’t let them die and still thinks they’re the funniest thing ever and has since 2009. For the most part these memes are being used ironically now by internet users. If you somehow find yourself or a really weird meme page, you’re most likely going to see these somewhere if you scroll long enough. And they’ll probably have some super inappropriate or cringey caption that makes you shiver from the inside out. Residual memes don’t go away, and they might not ever. As time goes on it’ll be interesting to see how many of these residual memes will and won’t make it. Who knows, maybe we’ll still be seeing classic Keanu Reeves memes pop up in 2070. I personally hope not, but you never know.
But That’s None of My Business
Dominant memes are kind of like residuals except they come around more consistently and can change and adapt many times to stay relevant. One of the big ones is Kermit the Frog. Kermit memes seem to never die and every time a new one gets created it’s funnier than the last one. Kermit memes were funny back in 2011 on iFunny and when I see a new one on TikTok now I laugh just a hard, if not harder than I did when they started. These dominant memes are ever changing and will be alive for many years to come. For some reason or another dominant memes don’t seem to lose their sparkle after two weeks. While dominant memes can fade in and out of trends, you’ll see them multiples times over the course of a year and with a lot of strength behind them. There have been few dominant memes over the past five years and it’ll be interesting to see which memes become dominant in the five years ahead of us. Maybe some of the new memes that are popular now will become dominant memes. The Ice Age baby might still be popping in 2025. Honestly, I highly doubt it but that would be really funny.
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