Internet memes

August 10, 2012

If you are an active internet user, you are probable in the trend and you are aware of all the new thing that come into your daily life due to the web.

First, when we started chatting and using social nets we acquired the new language. It’s the language of shortcut words and abbreviations. It also includes the nonsensical new words that can be attributed to a particular situation.

But visual arts and images were always much popular. This is how we acquired popular now and forever internet memes.

 

Being the user of social nets you must have seen these pics. Not even once. They are the pics of different characters (usually animals or children) with a funny phrase above and at the bottom of the pics. Of course the photos themselves are not chosen unintentionally. Each character has his own features and behavior peculiarities which define the phrase used. That’s why there are so many popular animals today, they come from the modern world of web.

There are lots of most popular memes, but none of them can be compared to the so called LOLcats! They are everywhere, literally, in every blog and in every post. They have appeared as the answer to the question “What is the most popular animal in the net?”. Obviously the answer is cats. Most videos and pics are dedicated to them and they become the heroes of modern times together with conquering the wide world of the internet. Sometimes, LOLcat memes use the misspelling to make the phrase look like spoken by the cat itself.

As for the whole phenomena, the notion “meme” calls back to the 70s of the XX century and have nothing in common with the modern understanding of the word. But today, memes take absolutely a different understanding by all web users.

For years memes had been re-blogged on Tumblr, until they squeezed into Facebook and got a new life. Now, due to the activity of Facebook users and the popularity of this means of communication, memes are known by every user and used in different situations instead of smiles,signatures and emoticons.

The trend on memes comes from 4chan and it’s only a few years old, though LOLcats are absolutely not newborn to this world. The idea to use funny cat pics combined with the funny captions comes back to 1870s. Of course they looked in a different way. The fact is that Harry Whittier Frees, the photographer, started taking pics of his pet cats turning the shots into greeting cards. Here’s the story of the first LOLcat. Yeah, this simple)

Anyway, now memes are a part of our online life, so you get an outstanding opportunity to create the ones of your own. For this purpose lots and lots of free meme makers has been created. Enjoy, but don’t forget about the legacy and being polite;)

Written by bigcityproblems Posted in Technologies Tagged with Cat, cats, Cyberculture, Facebook, Harry Whittier Frees, internet, internet memes, Lolcat, Meme, memes, popular memes, Subcultures, tech, Tumblr