What is meme art? For many decades now, meme art has been a crucial part in the entertainment and social media network. There is a great combination between humour, educative studies and the ability to have insights and warning, all conveyed in a meme. Usually, it don’t look serious that someone would convey a message through a meme, but in this digital age, its vital to use technology and maximize on the fact that the youth spend almost over 70% of their time on these gadgets. It's vital to question yourself, how has meme art evolved? How has it gotten this popular? What features fosters for it to be known as the leading and viral means of conveying message, while incorporating humour? Well, in this blog post, you are about to learn more about it. Let's get right into it.
Defining meme art
Meme art can be obtained based on its features based on its relevancy in the realm of the internet. Often, the meme can be a video, with an audio, and also images, attached to different stories that are relevant at the moment. The ability to be collaborative and easily accessible to the people makes it possible to combine the different features, while propelling to the normal people and everyone that feels like serious things don’t serve them when. In this case, humour comes in handy and can helping democratising creativity, making it contemporary in today society.
Characteristics of meme art
Meme art reflects the normal daily activities that happen on a daily basis. Memes are simple and will help in conveying a warning to the youth and offer insights on what happens at the wave of culture at the moment. Contemporary society will ensure that monotony is broken in the society through a meme going viral. The aim of a meme is to combine frustration and voice out emotions in a humorous way. Often, a meme like the one that went viral, where a woman was frustrated by a cat, is an example in which a person can be useful to the society through humour which helps people deal with day to day activities in a simpler way.
Satire and humour
Humour is the core in memes, and in this case, a combination with satire helps elevate the message. Even though humour is always applied, there is always some truth to it. Meme art is the main element that can diffuse a tense situation where people are sad and when they get send the meme, all that changes. For example, there was this meme of someone that slapped a laptop after finding out their girlfriend was cheating. In this case, humour and satire might have been the executor of the meme, but there was a collaborative aspect, where the meme served the purpose of warning and educational aspect of a significant other avoiding the extramarital activities.
Visual simplicity
The contemporary reason a meme is very relatable is due to the simplicity it possesses. For instance, the ritual graphics of a meme to be easy and this stems from the simplicity portrayed. The imagery and its straightforward wording is a reason for the popularity that meme has, making it possible for the meme to go viral. One meme can have a lot meaning, carrying many lessons and having the layers to invite many people to being a part of the engagement, hence creating a viral moment.
However, its vital to know that despite a meme embracing simplicity, this does not mean it lacks depth. Just one simple meme, can convey a lot of messages during the engagement, having different audiences engage with the content critically.
Visual playfulness
The aesthetics in a meme are playful and this is the main feature, treasured with its imagery. The familiarity in its features fosters an easy way people can relate and feel connected to the meme. A playful meme transcends to become relatable and have a generational repetitiveness, due to the ability to be misunderstood by many people
Lets take an example of the “Pepe the frog” meme. It has come transude the generational gap where its relatable to many people and someone has the chance to refer to it in any scenario since it possesses its playfulness. In short, this shows that a meme can be consumable into digestible form, due to the ability to be playful in many forms.
Interactiveness and collaboration
A meme encourages that someone is engaging and interactive, hence the reason a meme goes viral. For instance, a meme offers a collaborative aspect when someone forwards to a group or a friend, fishing for engagement. On social media, this applies when sharing and sending of meme becomes the norm, hence a creative and communal atmosphere is imposed. The creator and the public gets their relationship heightened when there is this collaborative interaction.
In most galleries, the relationship between the creator and audience is heightened when they allow people to foster ideas when creating a meme. Once it goes viral, the relationship increases and becomes substantial since it can actually generate an income between the creator and spectator.
The evolution of meme in fine art
The main element of fine art is that it fosters the incorporation of participation. Collaboration between the artist and the audience is fostered since this isolates it from any other form of art. Its vital to note that meme art transudes decades in existence but it has gained the most popularity in the past five years. Communication has been narrowed down to new pictures and images, with precise wording and imagery to create a lasting impression through a meme. With the various milestones, the evolution can be traced throughout time:
In the early days: 1990-2000s
4 Chan and new grounds held the most supremacy as websites in the early internet days. For instance, a meme like “bad luck chain” seemed so awkward during this time, making it crazy to think that something humorous could actually convey an important message in such a serious culture.
2010s: social media boom
This is referred as the main introduction to the social media trends since some very great apps like twitter, Facebook and Tiktok fostered the importance of jokes, making memes sharable among these platforms. In this time, there was bridging of gap between the traditional and the current internet gap. Celebrities began talking through memes to avoid cancel culture and also everyone embraced memes since it’s an easier way to correct or insult someone , in a playful manner, while conveying the intended message.
Cross-genre influence
In todays world, fine art, through memes, has been an integral part of study in different areas. For instance, graphic design and digital art are some of the current fields that have embraced the usage of memes.
The impact of meme art
Meme art transudes the entertainment purposes to incorporate a very important area in education since the message conveyed might be in a playful manner, but carries a lot of information. For instance, solidarity among the people was fostered in the creation of awareness in serious matters like Black Lives Movement.
Here are some of the areas that memes have played a major role:
Digital literacy
Memes are used to bridge the gap between facts and fiction. For instance, in today world, there are a lot of conspiracies in very vital topics, so memes will enable someone to use critical thinking in identifying truth from fallacy.
Social commentary
Memes are very playful and can ve used in serious matters like protests and social movements. Memes help raise awareness among the youths on social media creating a solidarity with all age groups.
Advocating for mental health
Meme art offers a platform to talk about serious matters like mental health and raise awareness on the importance of seeking help. It fosters a healthy age group, causing the people to take care if stress in a playful and serious manner. It lifts the weight that mental health awareness is a shame and brings embrace on men admitting to their struggles.
Cultural exchange
Meme art will transcend age groups, geographic boundaries, while creating a common language even in places with diversity. In the integration will bring understanding among the people, making it easy to have camaraderie among the different age groups.
Conclusion
Meme art is vital for the integration of educational and entertainment sector since it fosters a point in which it caters for all types of brains. The next time you come across a meme on social media, take sometime to appreciate the message and the imagery that goes into having such a thought in creation. The understanding of something through a meme will offer a calm and non judgmental base for all types of topics. As time goes by, meme art will overtake the usual conversational process to create a society that embraces cultural zeitgeist in these times.