Why are memes dying? (and are there exceptions?)
Browsing the internet without stumbling upon a meme or two a minute (at least) has already become unimaginable for me. The communication you have with others is just on a whole other level if it is via a meme. The types of memes are uncountable, but most of you will know the classics (e.g. pictures or video-memes). The lifetime of memes is limited and always follows the same kind of pattern. Here you can roughly see, how this pattern looks like:
- The meme arises out of a specific genre (e.g. a game, movie, video, etc)
- A group of people surrounding the genre it arose from will start to use the meme and communicate with each other.
- Someone else makes use of it and it eventually gets transfered onto another movie, game , video, etc. (sometimes even another meme "crossover-meme").
- The originals users get bored of it, bcs everyone likes it.
- Less and less people use it and it slowly dies.
I know it's very sad but this is just how life is...
In the following you see the rise and fall of one of the most liked and also longest lasting memes on the entire internet: Pepe the frog (You'll notice it is not following the pattern)
First appearance of Pepe in Matt Furies "Feels good man"-comics (2006)
4Chan users adapting his face and used it on everyday-situations (2008-end of time)
So called "normies" abusing Pepe for their unfunny jokes (2009-end of time aswell)
4Chans way of protecting the meme (often misunderstood as nazi pepe) (around 2011)
And from this point Pepe just evolved into a massive thing, literally everyone on the internet knows him, since there are so many different versions that everyone is abled to enjoy them. You may or may not like one or more types of Pepe but you've got to admit that Pepe has arisen to an undying meme that will propably always find an appropriate use.
Thanks for reading and feel free to nab the Pepes above or below :*