Memes in Digital Culture Book Analysis

What are memes? Should the concept of memes be taken more seriously? That is something that the author Limor Shifman explores in the book “Memes in Digital Culture”. The book opens to an example of how popular memes have become in digital culture by referring to the 2012 hit music video “Gangnam Style” by PSY. She questions why it had become so popular so quickly. Then she realized that the internet has taken images of the video and used them to create corny memes that people found funny. This made the author want to know how much of an influence a meme can truly have. The results were surprising, to say the least.

The opening chapters of the book dive into the origins of memes. For example, Shifman explains that the term “meme” was introduced in the year 1967 by a biologist by the name of Richard Dawkins. Back then, the term was defined as “replicators that will undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention (2)”. While may have used memes much more differently than we do, he certainly introduced the concept to the world which leads to the following subjects in the book. What made memes a term known by practically the entire planet is their introduction to the internet. Ever since the early 2000’s the internet enabled people to spread ideas, themes, and types of humor through the power of memes and social media. She also explains that memes can be original, or they can be remixes or mimicry of original content. She gives the example of the infamous “Charlie bit my finger” video that was extremely popular in the 2000s.  She shows images of people reenacting the video and even a picture of Spartacus from the 2008 movie “300” photoshopped on Charlie’s face. This shows how memes can be quite humorous, but unfortunately, not all memes are like this.

The author talks about the chapter dedicated to the different genres of memes in informative detail. Different genres of memes have different levels of complexity. Memes can span from a simple photoshop reaction picture to original meme cartoons that are referred to as Rage Comics. Some other examples that the author gave were photo fads, flash mobs, misheard lyrics, and more. Different editing styles and literacy make each genre of meme unique. This was part of the reason why memes were able to gain popularity so quickly because their many genres to pick from.

Later in the book, Shifman gives a brilliant analysis of the more serious uses of memes. More specifically political memes. Political memes have the power to influence a massive amount of people. The author proves this by investigating how certain types of political memes have been banned from countries such as France, China, Israel, and Egypt. As many governments watch over and censor the internet, especially social media, activists use code words to hide discussion details and intentions. Evidently, memes are not always meant for humor.