Focussing in

After discussing all our ideas for our feature and all the different kinds of memes, different perspectives and different mediums, we came to a realisation - we have too many ideas.

Source: MemeCenter

We don't want our final feature to be a mess of a dumping ground for everything meme, with nothing really connecting or reaching a coherent goal. So we've decided to confine our exploration to to a more specific theme and medium.

Our feature will be focussed on image-based memes. In previous blog posts we've examined viral videos, ideas that have become memes, and memes outside of the internet. All of this has been great as a foundational scatter-gun approach to the whole concept of memes, but not necessarily appropriate for a standalone feature based on a single unifying theme.

The problem is, the concept of "memes" as a whole is just way too broad. But confining our research and discussion to the social significance of image-based memes will allow us to more effectively bring our feature together with a clear focus.

There are a number of terms floating around these days that are connected with image-based memes. Demotivators were an early form of the medium, for example the above image. Characterised by their black backgrounds with a typically white or sometimes coloured border around the image, demotivators were used to signify a single word or idea by placing them in a large serif font accompanied by an illustrative (usually humorous) image and a tagline. These were originally created as spoofs of motivational posters often found in corporate offices in the late '90s.

From demotivators, we now have the term image macros. This is a terms used to describe, broadly, captioned images that typically consist of a picture and a witty message. Demotivators were a relatively early form of image macros (relative to the time in which modern internet memes have been popular), but these days most image macros almost always use large white text in the font "Impact". Within the genre, snowclones can be seen as a sub-set or sub-genre of image macros, where the text typically follows a specific format. For example, "X all the Ys," "In Soviet Russia, X Ys you," or "X is the new Y." In particular, these have been made popular by sites such as Meme Generator.

So from here on out, we're going to endeavour to focus our discussions and research on image-based memes. Other types of memes are relevant and they will certainly deserve a mention, but we envision that our feature will now be a far more coherent and directed product.