@shenanigansen well to be fair, memes in the sense we know them today didn't exist before the Internet. there were cases like Kilroy Was Here or Frodo Lives that were organically spread/imitated across culture, but they didn't make up culture themselves, they were just an effect of it
@shenanigansen internet memes can be seen through 2 lenses: 1, they help us share in preexisting culture through relatable content and expression, and 2, they actually signal the death of creativity. as memes fully integrate into our lives on a mass scale, they essentially cheapen culture
@shenanigansen in the early days of the Internet, memes were being created and altered in new ways that created new culture, but now most memes are mass spread cultural reactions that have a shorter and shorter lifespan, often skimming the surface of something that millions of people can "get"
@shenanigansen this is of course why certain subcultures online have gone so far in the past couple years to create more absurd/surreal content, to escape the cultural normalization of memes. it's like we've entered into a second surrealist movement
@shenanigansen very little of what constitutes culture we see on the surface is ever spread through memes and we should be grateful for that because it would "mainstream" all the beautiful, mysterious undercurrents that make up who we are. memes rule, but they're a small window of who we are
